Shawn’s Thoughts

I got a hi-pri email from my wife yesterday.  "OMG!  Mal’s on the ESPN site!!!"  Her cousin Mallory is an incredible softball player.  …and a really cool gal.  My daughter loves her to death.  I figured it was a story about all the records Mal’s blown away during her stay at Central.  And then I read this story.  Holy cow, Mal - you go, girl!  It’s really not all that surprising to me that she’d do something like this - she’s just that kind of person.  Really low key, and an amazing athlete.  …and now it’s in the New York Times, too.  …and Kevin Schofield even noticed the story. It’s great this act is receiving a pretty decent amount of attention.  I’d love to see what would happen if this kind of thing happened in MLB.

I’ve been trying to teach my soccer team of 7-yr old girls about the importance of sportsmanship, and now I have an amazing example of it to share with them.  Thanks Mal – see you soon!

Update: Our local TV station picked up the story this afternoon…

Update: Wow. Mallory’s story is getting picked up all over the place. This is really exciting to watch, and couldn’t happen to a nicer person.

• International Herald Tribune
• YouTube has a couple videos now…

Final Update:  Mallory’s going to be on Ellen this week (Wednesday).  It’s so cool to see so many people reacting so favorably to this wonderful story, and to see Mallory taking all this in stride…  Rock on, Mal…

Final Final Update: OK, OK, it’s hard not to want to share every post I can find – Mallory’s such a great example of a true sportsman.  Here’s the last one, I promise – Mallory’s on ESPN.

That was one of the fastest nine weeks ever.  When I first met my class, none had ever been on skis before.  We spent the first day just learning to walk on skis, and how to get up after falling.  At the end of this weekend, we made it down a blue run under control, and laughing at the bottom.  What a hoot.

I love this program because the instructors spend so much time learning about the kids, and learning how kids learn.  Just knowing that some kids learn by listening, some by observing, and some by doing has made all the difference in the world.

Now a quick break, then it’s time time see if I can pass my PSIA Level I test and become a real, *certified* ski instructor, and on to coaching a soccer team for Spring…

So this morning I found out Shelby Lynne is coming to town for a show.  So is the Broadway production of "A Year with Frog & Toad".  Guess which show I just bought tickets for? *sigh*

I had the rare luxury of being able to wander the aisles of B&N late last week, and one of the authors I tripped over (while looking for Prelude to Foundation) was Neil Gaiman. A 30-second peruse of his book, “American Gods” got me hooked enough to bring it home for a read. Holy cow - this is fun stuff. Everything seems normal, as long as you don’t pay attention to your peripheral vision. I’ll leave it at that so I don’t the fun…

Now I see that HarperCollins, his publisher, is working with him to publish one of his books online for free.

I didn’t realize until I visited his site that Neil is the guy who penned “Stardust”. I think I just found a wholebuncha books I’ll be reading soon…

About two months ago, I noticed a book listing in a Costco flier.  What got me all excited was seeing, “Sequel to Pillars of the Earth.”  That’s all is said, and that’s all it took.  I’ve been counting down the days till it was released the way most of my co-workers were counting the days till Halo3 shipped.

“Pillars of the Earth” remains one of my favorite reads of all time, so I had pretty high expectations as I cracked open “World Without End”.  I still have a couple hundred pages to go, and so far it’s living up to expectation.  The story starts out simple enough (like Pillars does), and quickly evolves into multiple intertwined stories.  The story still takes place around Kingsbridge.  That’s all I’ll say for now…

If you’re a Pillars fan, this one should be on your must-read list…

I’ve been wondering what my old manager has been up to lately - he’s been very hush hush about his plans…  Now we all know…B-).

bizjournals.com

Yahoo could take Bellevue space for 600 workers

Friday October 19, 4:48 pm ET

Yahoo! Inc. confirmed plans to set up a research and development office in Bellevue that could eventually house up to 600 employees.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO - News) is the latest major technology company to establish an outpost in the Puget Sound area, the back yard of Redmond-based Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT - News). Search giant Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG - News), of Mountain View, Calif., has been building R&D operations in Kirkland and has a sales office in Seattle’s Fremont area.

Yahoo has leased four floors totaling 115,000 square feet of space in the One Twelfth@Twelfth building in downtown Bellevue, said Dave Sobeski, Yahoo senior vice president of strategy and technology. The space was formerly occupied by Nortel Networks and is being "Yahoo-ized" in accordance with the company’s specifications, he said.

Sobeski, a former Windows general manager at Microsoft who left the software giant last October, was coy about Yahoo’s hiring goals in Bellevue. But he said the company, which currently employs 30 to 40 people in Puget Sound, wanted over the next two years to "maximize" the new space, which he said could ultimately accommodate 500 to 600 people.

Sobeski said Yahoo was attracted to Puget Sound because of the region’s technical talent, not only at Microsoft but at other large technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), as well as the local startup community and the University of Washington.

"We wanted to come up here because we believe the talent base is superior," Sobeski said. "We’re going to be able to find gems in all these different places."

He said Yahoo picked Bellevue and the One Twelfth@Twelfth building because of their proximity to State Route 520 and interstates 90 and 405.

Wow… I think we set a record on Monday – 11 hours and 45 minutes to get from DFW to SEA.

Things started out slow – lightning was too close to allow the ground crew to fuel the plane for over 2 hours.  We finally pulled back, and were number 9 on the runway.  Then some switch was going random, so back to the gate we go.  Another 45 minutes, and we taxi again. 

We begin to roll down the runway, and all hell broke loose.  Right after the front end of the MD-83 lifted, there was a huge bang outside.  We were in the last row of the plane, so we were right beside the engine intake.  We found out later a fuel compressor blew inside the engine.  As we passed through 2K feet, we hit a wind shear, and the right engine “burped”, according to the captain – less air pressure at the front of the engine than at the rear.  It would “burp” again two more times.  We hit turbulence worse than I can remember.  I was pretty sure we were on our way down – the power in the engine was going up and down pretty randomly, and it was loud, loud, loud.  We finally leveled off, and the captain came on and told us we weren’t going to Seattle in that plane.  We turned around, and dropped back down into the turbulence.  With potential damage to the engine, it seemed the pilot was reluctant to apply reverse thrust, so we were moving down the runway for a long time.  We deplaned, and had to wait for another two hours to get another plane, get everything moved over, and get everyone onboarded again… 

Through all of this the flight crew was absolutely fantastic.  They were calm and professional throughout the ordeal.  They maintained their humor at all times.  They took damn good care of us.  We finally took off around 2pm DFW time…  This time, things went a heckuva lot smoother, all the way home

.  Landing in SeaTac has never been such a relief.   Man oh man – what a day…

I learned the hard way that you don’t let a motorcycle sit for two months without starting it.  The motorcycle gets bored, and starts eating its own brain - the battery dies, the water in the gas starts to separate out, and so on.

Luckily, the blog’s not quite in that bad of shape.  I made the conscious choice early in the summer to de-prioritize the blog.  A major home remodel was in full swing, work was crazy, and I was coaching a tball team.  Then the blog just sort of drifted off my radar.  Then I’d get the occasional ping for one of my three readers: “Dude - whassup???”

So I’m back. I’ve got a good backlog of brain spews, and there’s some exciting new “stuff” just over the horizon to discuss - Leopard, etc…

…and we’re off…

Wow…  40 years ago today, The Beatles released Sgt Pepper’s.  There’s a pretty cool video on YouTube - boy do they look young…  It still blows my mind that this album was created on a 4-track recorder…

Saw this interesting bit on the iTunes weekly mailer today.  Paul McCartney’s new album is on iTunes, as well as the entire Wings catalog…

Dance Tonight, the first single from his new album, is on YouTube now.  Make sure you keep an eye out for Natalie Portman…

Good stuff…