Rick Melick 
South San Francisco, CA
rick
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About MeI have a degree in Computer Science (2000) from Indiana University. It succeeds my other interests, philosophy and belief systems, which materialized itself as a degree in Religious Studies from the same institution in 1992. Outside interests include music, for which I have a deep appreciation for the piano and saxophone. I was born in Brazil Indiana and grew up in Indianapolis. I graduated from Southport High School in 1985 where I was in a variety of bands and participated in countless competitions. I am excited and proud to be an Engineering Manager with Walmart Stores, Inc. I manage the ISD Enterprise Systems Management team responsible for the tools and infrastructure used by the Site Operations and Engineering departments, for the day-to-day operation of the Walmart global e-commerce platform. |
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Genealogy
This web site and these pages
are not a full-blown, genealogy, in the traditional sense.
Rather, they are my attempt to know and understand my direct lineage...
a tree traversal. It spans over five hundred years
and nearly sixteen generations. In the process of doing this,
information is presented on other surnames as well: Van Horn,
Overstreet, Eytcheson, Deever, Wilkin and Plank. Perhaps in the
future I will have an opportunity to research more of the women who
have married in to the Melick and Deever lines leading up to me. Two key books capture much of this history and broadly appeal to a general audience: | Story of an Old Farm, or Life in New Jersey in the Eighteenth Century, by Andrew D. Mellick draws from family and unpublished papers to beautifully paint a picture of social life, manners, customs and political history of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods in East New Jersey. Genealogical appendix. Published by The Unionist Gazette, Somerville, New Jersey, 1889. Hardback scanned by Google Books. Length: 743 pages plus errata. |
 | God Leads the Way is the life sketch of Otterbein T. Deever, my great grandfather. To read the book is to sit again at the feet of a grandfather telling his grandchildren the story of the family struggles and disappointments typical to pioneers during their trek across the wilderness territory from West Virginia to the prairies of Kansas back in 1857. Published by the EUB Church, Dayton, Ohio, 1962. Paperback scanned by yours truly. Length: 147 pages. |
Computing History
No introduction to me would be complete without talking about the Commodore VIC-20. This little machine has been part of my life since 1982. I mention it because it helped me define where my interests are in life (at a very early age) and paved the way towards a rewarding career that is not only my job, but a fun hobby too. In fact, here is one of my old games from 1983!
I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of fascinating people surrounding that computer. Special greetings go out to Ward Shake, Marko Makela (Veni vidi Vic!), Earl at RetroBits for your podcast, and the entire Denial VIC-20 community.
Link - MOS 6502, 6522 and 6560 documents from 1996 have been retained and are available online.
Link - PET 2001-8 restoration project.
Link - KBASIC driver program for the Cardco Cardkey 1 (CK/1) numeric keypad.
Link - Cardco Cardboard/6 interface.
Link - Cardco Cardriter Light Pen.
Link - Speakeasy / Protecto Enterprizes Voice Synthesizer (Votrax chip).
Link - Burn your own EPROM with a Promenade C1.
Link - 40/80 column 16k Video Pak from Data 20.
Link - SpeedScript 3.2 word processor.
Link - Serial Box 64K print buffer.
I was not on a 'Made in America' kick when I created these web pages, but it suddenly struck me that all of these retro-80s products were made in the USA: computer; keypad; speech synth; eprom burner, etc.... All of it!
South San Francisco, CA
rick
