Tuesday, October 18, 2022

My life

A not-so-brief summary of my life:

My father wanted my sister and me to go to medical school.  We moved from Columbus in the summer of 1980, to Scott County, and attended IUS in New Albany.  We were both accepted to IU Medical School in 1984, but I disliked it so much that I dropped out.  I went back to school to study computers while running a bit of software business on the side, mostly writing video games, and got my first major job at a database company in Lafayette, Indiana in 1988.  I got a different database job in Indianapolis in 1991.

I lost my father to suicide in 1986.  He suffered from depression.

I wanted to program video games.  After searching nationwide, I got a job in Salt Lake City in 1993 programming video games.  It was a demanding job and they tended to work us to death, so I switched to a different company in 1999, a small video game startup in Sandy, Utah.  

In the fall of 2000, the second company went out of business, so I went looking for work.  I found a major military contractor in Salt Lake City that did satellite communications for military drone aircraft.  Their business spiked in a really big way after 9-11.  I worked there until September 2014.  Their business had contracted mostly due to cutbacks by the Obama administration, so they had major layoffs.

I loved living in Salt Lake City.

I had saved and invested enough that I retired at age 54.  In 2015, I moved to New Whiteland, Indiana.  In 2018, I moved to Columbus, returning 38 years after I left it.  That was always my plan.

My sister has been practicing medicine for around 34 years.  She lives in Russiaville, Indiana, just outside of Kokomo.

My mother has had cancer for 22.5. years.  At age 82 she has had more difficulty with the cancer but she is for the moment doing okay.  About 14 years ago she married Paul Belding, a nice man who is 85 years old.  They live in his home in North Vernon.  One reason I moved back to Columbus was to be closer to my mother, especially with her illness.

I was always interested in chess.  I barely qualify as an "expert", which is one category below "master."  I am officially 28nth in the state of Indiana.  In Utah I was 9nth.  I served for a while as the vice-president and then president of the Utah Chess Association.  I helped run state chess tournaments right up to the time that I left Utah.  

On moving back to Indiana, I started the Greenwood Chess Club.  I ran a chess club in Salt Lake City for 22 years.

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