Category Archives: Personal

Atop the London Eye I went to London to teach there for
the first time, bringing along Zuzana and Kerrigan. While I
was teaching, they were touring London and seeing all the
sights. Finally, Zuzana and I celebrated our fifth wedding
anniversary atop the London Eye, a humongous Ferris
Wheel that hoists you in a capsule 135 meters (or about
400 feet) into the air overlooking the Themes River and
Big Ben. Kerrigan came along for the ride. Wonder if
he’ll remember anything? Continue reading →

Tony’s World-Famous Chili Sneedorino! OK,
maybe there’s a little hyperbole there. But after 23
years, I think it’s time to reveal the secret recipe for
my Chili Kahlua, otherwise known as Chili Sneedorino. I
first discovered the recipe back in 1983 when some
friends of mine in Thousand Oaks gave it to me. I even
still have the little card where I first wrote the recipe. God
only knows why I still have it – I don’t think
I’ve managed to hand onto anything else as long.
J Actually, the recipe as I now make it is not the same as
that written on the recipe Continue reading →

A New Chapter Today my son, Kerrigan, turned one year old. And boy, what a year it’s been.
Not only for him, but also for me and for my wife Zuzana – for us as a family. We found out February 2005
that Zuzana was pregnant with our first child. I was attending a leaders’ meeting for KJB over in
the Czech Republic, so I immediately shared the good news with everyone there, including the founder,
Ricardo. I remember taking our Bradley class the following summer, then the Preparation for Parenting
course from GFI. The weeks following the birth were filled with swaddling and shushing Continue reading →

We Made It!!! Tony has finally transitioned to his new job as an instructor for DevelopMentor! He has
spent the last three months preparing to teach Essential .Net 2.0 with C#. He’s now scheduled to
teach in Boston and New York. Kerrigan will celebrate his first birthday on November 6th! Can you
believe it’s already been a whole year? Boy, does time fly — we must be having fun! Continue reading →

Chillin’ in the Heat I’ve “gone dark” on my blog since coming to stay in Thousand Oaks
about a month ago, primarily to focus on preparing to teach the Essential .Net 2 course for
DevelopMentor. So far the prep has gone well and I’m past the half-way point. There are 14
lessons, and I’ve prepared technical notes, demos and a teaching outline for 8 out of the 14.
I’ve also found time to practice-teach the lessons, so I’m beginning to see the light at the
end of the tunnel. I’m also getting more into Linq and the next version of ADO.Net (vNext). I Continue reading →

Tea, Scones and Castles After finishing the DevelopMentor Guerilla course in London, I hopped on a
plane up to Manchester to visit the parents of my brother Tom’s wife (Sue), Derek and Verena
Thomas. What a contrast between the capitol city and the English countryside! Although Sue’s
parents live in Preston, they picked me up in Manchester and we proceeded to Grasmere, the place
where William Wordsworth did most of his writing. I don’t know about the poetry, but the ice
cream there is to die for. We also took a walk around Lake Windermere (to work off the ice cream), and
I had my very first Continue reading →

Chasing a Dream (Part 2) I’ve just finished my very first DevelopMentor Guerilla course – what a
blast! I’m now one step closer to realizing my goal of becoming a DM instructor. There are still
more steps to complete, but I think I’m well on my way. The last step, of course, will be to do the
actual course preparation, but I’m in the process and have completed technical notes and
demos for 4 out of 14 lessons. It should take me just a couple of months more to finish. I have to say I
was pretty much blown away by the Guerilla course. They call it Continue reading →

Chasing a Dream (Part 1) I suppose it’s always been kind of a dream of mine to
teach software developers (at least since I started writing software back in 1994),
spending the rest of my time delving into the technology and tinkering with some of its
more esoteric aspects. After all, software development is pretty much a glorified
hobby, at least to me. It just so happens I also get paid to do it, but it’s a heck of
a lot of fun. The problem is, working in the real world tends to make you somewhat
lopsided in your grasp of the overall technical landscape. Inevitably, the tasks of Continue reading →

Tracing Roots, Chasing a Dream I’m now sitting in the Prague Airport waiting to
catch a flight to London to sit through DevelopMentor’s week-long course,
Guerilla Essential .Net 2.0. I haven’t got much time before the plane boards, but
I thought I would take the opportunity at least to start this blog, seeing it’s been a
couple weeks since my last post and a lot has happened since then. First of all, we just
returned from a week-long visit to Zuzana’s family in the middle of Slovakia. Her
parents live in what is probably the third largest city in Slovakia (next to Bratislava and
KoÅ¡ice), Continue reading →

And on the Eighth Day, God Created Skype In case you haven’t heard by now, Skype is a service
that, like MSN Messenger and others, lets you make free voice and video calls over the Internet, provided
people on both ends of the conversation have installed Skype and a microphone with speakers and/or
headset. To make video calls you need some sort of web cam. What sets Skype apart from the other Internet
telephony services is the clarity of the signal and the additional services it provides. For 2 cents per minute
you can call any telephone in the US. For about 6 cents per minute you can all land and Continue reading →