Curiosity is a valuable trait.  We learn through inquiry.  As a happy, wandering set of states of energy, I have only one request of you as you sate your curiosity by scanning your eyes across this autobiographical sketch — ask yourself what you have learned and apply your new knowledge wisely.

The author of this blog, Rick, was born in 1962. He spent the first 8 years of his life, along with his family, following his father’s career as an industrial engineer, from Bristol to Bartow, Florida, to Boone, North Carolina, to Greeneville, Tennessee, finally settling in Colonial Heights, an unincorporated community outside Kingsport, Tennessee, where his father worked for Kingsport Press and his mother worked as a first grade school teacher. After secondary/high school, Rick began his college career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with successive enrollment at East Tennessee State University, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Walters State Community College and the University of Alabama-Huntsville. Along the way, he worked as a lawn boy, piano refinisher, fast food cook, store clerk, baritone horn musician (Georgia Tech Navy ROTC marching/jazz band), fast food cashier, restaurant cook, door-to-door book salesman, telephone book deliverer, engineering assistant, technical typist, computer systems operator, computer graphics illustrator, control room specialist, schedule analyst, data analyst, test engineer, engineering project manager, senior program manager, company owner/president, and technical institute instructor.

Not much has changed, though — he’s still trying to figure out what his next pre-occupation will be.

Although Rick’s career has primarily centered on the computer technology market, he has maintained an interest in journalism. While at East Tennessee State University in 1986, he published Swashbuckler, an underground campus magazine and worked as a photographer for the school yearbook staff. He published Spittoon Of Slimy News Items, an underground corporate newsletter, in 1990. Rick has written for the Huntsville Times newspaper as well as for the entertainment weeklies, Urban Propaganda and Huntsville Extra!. While at Walters State Community College in 1985, Richard received the “Outstanding Student Award In Creative Writing.” He maintains a website to catalog his earlier work as a life coach, http://www.treetrunkproductions.org.

He and his wife enjoy the company of two Cornish Rex cats.