TomS Words of Wisdom

Kody --

Please let me apologize for my less then "couth" response.

Part of bing an effective coach (especially to teenagers) is knowing exactly what to say that will quickly and efficiently achieve the desired performance goal(s). In this case my goals were:

1. Break the attention barrier.
   Due to the detailed contact information I deduced that you probably were a real human and not just a spambot. I needed a way to standout from other "sorry not interested" replies.
   
2. Make a strong memorable impression.
   At a physiological level, strong emotions build the strongest neurological connections in the brain's memory centers. A good coach knows when and how to exploit this fact.
   
3. Again try to point out that the information you're working with has serious quality issues.
   Both your 07/16/2007 08:41 AM and your 07/25/2007 07:24 AM e-mails have data quality issues that give a first impression that you don't know what's going on. The employer information in the first one was more then ten years out of date. The data in the second one is just plain false. Thirdly the tools you're using really should have brought to your attention that you already contacted my tsayles {-at-} Soot-n-smoke.com address and got a "sorry not interested" reply.
   

Because you wrote a personal reply I can assume that I successfully achieved goal 1.

Your reference to my "vaulters" indicates that you probably followed the link in my July 16th reply, most likely because your somewhat upset and wanted to know just who you were dealing with. This indicates that I likely achieved goal 2. And now when my name shows up in your data, you will hopefully remember it and act on it accordingly.

At this time I have no way direct or indirect way of knowing if I achieved goal 3. (Some lessons are only achieved through repetition.) If I did/do get this point across and you act on the information, it will probably improve your success rate. This would then have been a positive response to the request for "assistance" in subject line your form letter e-mail. You're welcome.

BTW, I'm posting this conversation on my blog.

Sincerely,

Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Tom,

I apologize for the mistake as I would not waste my time with someone that is not interested or as uncouth as yourself. I hope your vaulters see more patience and understanding from you when they make meaningless mistakes. Rest assured that nobody from our firm will waste their time on you!

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

---

From: Tom Sayles [mailto:tsayles@Soot-n-smoke.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 11:35 PM
To: Moore, Kody
Subject: Re: Tom, Can I get your assistance?

Kody --
Get your face out of your !$$ [crude reference to hind end body part replaced] and pay attention to what your doing. You information is incorrect as I have never worked for MDSHA and I replied, nicely, to your inquiry last week. See my e-mail timestamped at 07/16/2007 05:02 PM PDT.

If you contact me again about these same positions, I will inform your supervisor and track down the firm that you are recruiting for and report the contact as harassment.

Disrespectfully,

Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Tom,

I am a recruiter in the land development and transportation industries, and my understanding is that you are a Project Engineer with the MDSHA. I represent many clients but am presently involved with a full service engineering company in the Baltimore area, that is looking to expand its transportation department with a team of three individuals. They include a PM with a transportation planning or design background, a highway engineer, and a traffic engineer. This firm has been in the business for over 50 years, operate our of 4 offices(2 in Maryland and 2 in Virginia), and employ around 200 individuals. The reason they are expanding is that they have multiple large projects(MD DOT, DC DOT, and MD State Hwy Admin) that need to be staffed. These are full-time positions with a company that last year was ranked in the top 25 engineering firms in the DC Metro area, recognized to be in the "Top 15 Mid-Size Engineering Firms to work for in the Nation" by CE News in 2006.

If you know anyone that would be interested in an opportunity like the ones mentioned, could you please pass along the information. I would be happy to go into greater detail about the position. As always all conversations I have are completely confidential, and I appreciate any and all help you can provide.

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

---

Kody --

Your information is only 10.5 years out of date, as I haven't worked in Civil Engineering or for VDOT since December 1996. Current resume is here.

While I am somewhat interested in getting back into Traffic Engineering, I am not interested in relocating back to the Baltimore / Washington DC area. I'd only be interested in opportunities in the Seattle area, preferably on the eastside in cities such as: Woodinville, Bothell, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, Snoqualmie, etc.

TTFN
Tom Sayles


Moore, Kody wrote:

Thomas,

I am a recruiter in the land development and transportation industries, and my understanding is that you are a Traffic Engineer with the VDOT. I represent many clients but am presently involved with a full service engineering company in the Baltimore area, that is looking to expand its transportation department with a team of three individuals. They include a PM with a transportation planning or design background, a highway engineer, and a traffic engineer. This firm has been in the business for over 50 years, operate our of 4 offices(2 in Maryland and 2 in Virginia), and employ around 200 individuals. The reason they are expanding is that they have multiple large projects(MD DOT, DC DOT, and MD State Hwy Admin) that need to be staffed. These are full-time positions with a company that last year was ranked in the top 25 engineering firms in the DC Metro area, recognized to be in the "Top 15 Mid-Size Engineering Firms to work for in the Nation" by CE News in 2006.

Another is a 13 year old firm that is already in the top ten engineering firms in the Metro DC area. The President of the company is a former president of Greenhorne and O'mara who grew the firm from 150-200 employees to over 1800 employees. They are a growing firm and looking to bring in the right team of individuals to ensure it continues to grow. They are the General Engineering Consultants for Spotsylvania county, are the on-call engineers for Fairfax County, involved with the Dulles Rail Extension, and are the prime Contractor for the work on VDOT 495/395 hot lanes. The firm is fully networked and all employees have their own workstations. They are looking for Professional Engineers that are looking to work with side by side with the main principles in the firm on these and many other projects. These individuals have to be willing to put in the time and effort to keep this firm growing and become the premiere firm in the area.

If you know anyone that would be interested in an opportunity like the ones mentioned, could you please pass along the information. I would be happy to go into greater detail about the position. As always all conversations I have are completely confidential, and I appreciate any and all help you can provide.

Best regards,

Kody Moore

Associate - Civil Engineering

MBA Management, Inc

14900 Conference Center Drive, Ste 300

Chantilly, VA 20151

703 273 0028 x 223 office

701 371 3909 mobile

kmoore@mbamgmt.com

www.mbamgmt.com

The information contained in this electronic message is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are informed that any dissemination, copying or disclosure of the material contained herein, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify MBA and purge this message.

Note: I made some minor edits to this e-mail when I posted on this blog, first to eliminate a crude body part reference and second to obfuscate my e-mail address in an effort to cut down on th spam I have to wade through each day.

I recently had an external hard drive die. It had been kind of flaky since I fell down the stairs at x-mass and dropped it about 6 ft. Since I knew it wasn't working well, I was using mostly as yet another location for backing up data (like from my parent's home network). So when I finally gave up on it this week, I had lost any data.

In planning for the replacement, I was trying to remember the hardware in the Ubuntu server, PopsHP, I have setup for my parents in their condo. A quick search of Google showed me the lshw command. It was already installed on PopsHP and when I ran it (via an ssh connection), it suggested that "you should run this program as super-user". Which I did and piped the resulting text to a file. Next I ran a little script I have that uses rsync to transfer files to a subdirectory in my home folder on my main desktop machine. So in under five minutes I had a complete and detailed listing of the hardware in PopsHP, on my local machine.

Then as a bonus, as I was typing up this blog post, I discovered that lshw will format its output as HTML. So in under a minute, I reran the entire process adding in the HTML command line switch.

What can I say except that I love linux.

This printing catastrophe video was sent to me by one of the vaulters. I was able to quickly find it on YouTube.

Turns out the problem with the Jeep Noir was just the crankshaft position sensor, even though the mechanic kept calling it the cam sensor. (And yes sensors occasionally fail on older jeeps.) If It's the sort of think I could have fixed myself but would have had a hard time diagnosing on my own. I probably could have even pulled the sensor off the Geek Jeep, though that would have left it immobilized and thus harder to sell.

I saw this linked to from my friend Gretta's blog and thought some of you might like it.

http://cacaolab.wordpress.com/

Cam-Crank Sensor Relationships:

My mechanic was too booked up to get a look at the Jeep Noir today, but he said that it sounded like the cam sensor.

Aaack!

After tune-up on 7/13 at Model Garage in Fall City, I drove the Jeep Noir two miles to Patterson Creek Farm, where it was parked for several hours. Friday evening I drove from Patterson Creek Farm 20 miles to home in Kingsgate area of Woodinville, where it was parked overnight.

Saturday morning I drove the Jeep Noir from Kingsgate the 20 miles back to Patterson Creek Farm for regular vaulting practice. About midday I drove from Patterson Creek Farm toward Issaquah. On Issaquah – Fall City Rd approaching Klahanie Dr. (4.5 miles form Patterson Creek Farm) the Jeep Noir stalled while decelerating down hill and would not restart.

At the time of the stall Radio and A/C with fan on high were running and vehicle was coasting (clutch depressed) and breaking to stop behind traffic at signal.

On the side of the road, I then checked various superficial possible causes:

• checked for loose coil & spark plug wires,

• confirmed fuel under pressure at fuel bar test port,

• visually inspected various ignition related fuses,

• rotated positive battery terminal to avoid possible grounding on battery bracket

After each of these the engine would crank but would not start. Sounded like lack of spark or possibly lack of fuel. [Did not check exhaust pipe for fuel smell, and tank is 2/3 full.]

During repeated cranking and 45+ minutes of flashing hazard lights, voltage indicated at instrument panel gradually dropped from ~12v down to ~9-10v, at which point the starter motor would no longer engage / rotate engine.

So I ended up having the Jeep Noir toed back to Model Garage in Fall City, where I'm hoping they will be able to quickly fix the problem, especially if it ends up being one that they caused.

While the Jeep Noir was getting a tune-up today, I pent several hours "bucking hay", i.e. helping to bring it in from the field. Hutch and I hauled in about 150 of the estimated 600 bails that the neighbors cut and bailed this week. It was a hot sweaty and strenuous job that doesn't pay much, but it needed to be done and was a big help for the barn. The neighbor's hay is good quality at a good price.

Before bucking hay, we had a short vaulting practice for our Nationals bound vaulter and did a little bit of a vaulting demo for the Natural Horsemanship camp that has been taking place at our barn this week. Several of the campers were very interested and I hope that we will get another vaulter or two.

The Cascade Vaulters entries are in and my plans for Nationals are coming together.

Nationals this year are in Denver on August 9-12 at the National Western complex.

I have only one vaulter going to nationals this year. She will be part of composite trot team with the Warm Beach Vaulters and will be using their horses.

It looks like I will again be hauling horses to Denver with Tammy Denault, now with the Mtn. Wind Vaulters. I should be in the Denver area from about August 5th until August 13. For the return trip, Tammy will be flying back east from Denver to be with her family, and I will be driving her truck trailer and horse back to Kettle Falls, WA.


We'll also be traveling with and hauling a horse, Joey[?], for the Harbor View vaulters who are an off shoot of Tammy's former club, the Emerald City Vaulters.

It took all day Wednesday and big chunks of Thursday and Friday, but I got almost everything switched / moved from the Geek Jeep over to the Jeep Noir.

• The passenger side rear door window has been switched with the one from the Geek Jeep.
  
• The stock speakers and some of the stock wiring for them got switched from the Geek Jeep as the after market speakers in the Jeep Noir didn't really fit. They interfered with the window cranks.
• I had to repair the stock wiring harness for the radio as the previous owner had wired his directly. For the Geek Jeep I had an adapter harness that plugged into the stock harness.
  
• All my "jeep stuff" has been moved from the Geek Jeep into the same places in the Jeep Noir, so I still know where to find everything and can pull almost any needed item out of my jeep on short notice.
  
• The tune-up is scheduled for next Friday (7/13).
• Windshield will probably get done sometime in the next few weeks, but it isn't an urgent fix.
• Still need to get the hitch package ordered, as moving the old one isn't easy. (It would require fishing nuts out from deep inside box beams of the Geek Jeep frame and threading them into the Jeep Noir frame without the aid of the special springs that initially came with the kit.)
  
• The breaks will likely need get done some time between Ben's wedding (in September) and Thanksgiving.
  

I've been driving the Jeep Noir around this weekend and I think it is now ready for the hard core daily use that the
Geek Jeep provided so well.

I still need to clean-up the Geek Jeep and get it posted on Craig's list or otherwise find it a good home.

I signed paperwork this evening and received the key to my "Jeep Noir". It's has a black exterior with a small red sport stripe. The interior is the same gray as the Geek Jeep!

The "Jeep Noir" passed pre-purchase inspections this afternoon in good shape. [Much better then the Geek Jeep did in 1999.] The only serious hits were:

• Needs a tune-up
  (routine maintenance item)
  
• Breaks will need to be done later this year
  (routine maintenance item)
• The windshield is cracked
  ($244, including mobile instillation service while I'm at work, just had this done on the Geek Jeep about a month ago. )
  
• The passenger side rear door window is broken out
  (this can easily be replaced with the one from the Geek Jeep)
  
• And when the cooling system was pressure tested the heater valve exploded!
  (A common failure point on early '90 jeeps. I've gone through about six of them, and have a spare on hand most of the time.)

The inspection and the replacement of the heater valve cost under $80.

There are a number of cosmetic / comfort items that I will transfer from the Geek Jeep, including:

• Radio w/ custom cut cluster bezel
• Gray floor mats (new from Costco only a few weeks ago)
  
• Driver's seat, and possibly front passenger seat if they don't match,
  (Twenty / forty minute job. The Driver's seat in the Geek Jeep is in better shape.)
  
• Driver and front passenger door panels, including stock stereo speakers,
  (Jeep Noir has after-market speakers that don't really fit.)
  
• Passenger side sun visor
  (JeepNoir's is broken.)
• Driver and front passenger window handles
  (Jeep Noir has back and I think the gray looks better.)

An unexpected bonus is a Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio receiver module that should plug into the Kenwood Sirius Satellite ready radio that's currently in the Geek Jeep. So at some point I'll have to get and install the proper cable.