TomS Words of Wisdom

I haven't posted anything newsy in quite some time. So I guess it's about due.

Pretty much all winter and spring went into getting everything ready for Spring Fest. It went off the first weekend in May. It was in many ways the best one I've run yet. But in many others this year wasn't as good as my previous ones. Afterward I was really burned out on vaulting and especially on fest management and it was really hard to get all the after fest tasks done this year. Fest next year it will be at the same place in Olympia, again on the first weekend in May.

Memorial Day weekend I went to the NW Folklife Festival in Seattle. Much fun. Good food. Big crowds. Parked in Issaquah and took the express bus in and out, which was pretty nice.

I tried to ignore my birthday in June, but my mom clued in the vaulters and they brought me cake.

At the end of June I spent a week on staff at the National Vaulting Summer Training Camp in Nebraska. It was the kind of experience I really needed to get over my burnout. It was sooo... much fun. Vaulting has so many really worthwhile young people and adults too.

Didn't really do much of the Forth.

After getting back from camp, I interviewed for a promotion and this week I was officially offered a new position as a Sr. Engineering Tech. It's mostly making the temporary special assignment that I've been doing for the year or so into a long term thing. It pays quite a bit more then my previous position and more then I made as a Transportation Engineer, but it's still less then I was making as a computer programmer before the dot-com bubble burst.

I'm skipping out on my 20 year HS reunion this coming weekend, as the air fare for the dates I could fly was over $500. I like my HS friends, but not enough to blow most of a grand for the trip by the time you include parking, reunion ticket, vacation time, etc..

Next week a local TV crew is coming out to do a segment on my vaulting club. Then it's off to eastern WA for a weekend vaulting camp. Followed by Nationals in No.Cal. in early August.

Late August will be focused on recruiting vaulters for the fall / winter and competitions in September and October.

A friend of mine had one of these in her blog. Looked cool, so here's mine.


visited 44 states (88%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

Could be just the thing for my Dad's aspiring 50-States marathon friends.

Chris --

I've been a very happy user of Yahoo's "My.Yahoo.com" service since
it was in it's initial beta many years ago. The last couple of
revisions have been pushing more dynamic Ajax layouts and requiring more
screen real estate. So after giving each new version an honest try, and
providing thoughtful feedback, I've opting to go back to the "Classic
My Yahoo".

Much to my disappointment the new version rolled out today (or maybe
it was yesterday) doesn't offer any "Classic My Yahoo" option. I've
filled out their feedback for telling just how much I dislike the new
version and why and asking them to contact me.

In the event I don't get them to restore access to the classic
interface, what are some other news readers that present in a
"newspaper" metaphor rather then a "e-mail" or "tree" metaphor?
Preferably ones that support some degree of rich content not just
headlines.

Thanks
Tom Sayles

http://Soot-n-Smoke.com/tsayles