Catching Up

I haven't posted in quite a while because I had a crazy busy summer, and much of that crazy busyness was fairly personal. My point with this blog is to share pictures and event information with friends, not to have an online diary, so there were several things I didn't feel like writing about here. But now that the summer is over, I do want to get back to updating this site, and the best way to do that is to catch up on a few major things that have happened.

The biggest event of the summer, and one of the main things I had avoided writing about, is that my father succumbed to lung cancer in August. I'm not going to say much about it except that the experience gave me an immense respect for Hospice. His Hospice nurse ensured his final weeks were as comfortable as possible and the entire organization was efficient and remarkably helpful.

One good thing that came as a result of my father's passing is that Radford University's College of Education and Human Development has started the process of creating an endowed scholarship in his name. I'll get more information about it up here when I have more myself. Considering his lifelong love of teaching, it's a fitting tribute.

In other news, the company I work for, Ricciardi Technologies, Inc. (RTI), was recently purchased by Science Dynamics. The biggest change in the short-term is that it makes us a publicly traded company, albeit on the OTC bulletin board. Last year, Science Dynamics purchased Systems Management Engineering, Inc. (SMEI), another company about our size that is based in Reston. We'll probably be merging offices with them soon, although it's not clear where that will be. We're apparently also going to have a new name that won't be Science Dynamics, RTI, nor SMEI.

Finally, the summer ended last week with my 20 year high school reunion. We had a great turnout and it was fantastic to catch up with friends I hadn't seen or heard from in a very long time. I got roped into creating a web site for our class to share pictures and keep in touch. I'll put a link to it here once it's up and running.