Jim Matysek, web master nonpareil and extraordinaire, deserves nothing but appreciative gratitude for the past year of extraordinary Forum, Blog, and possibly Go the Distance web mastery!
Now, having thanked him for this, I propose we use this thread to jot down our various wishes for Christmas presents of the web servicey variety that we know Big Jim can provide!
Let me get the ball rolling with the present that is atop my masters swimming technology wish list:
Time charting/graphing capability!
I would love a place where all my USMS meet performances over the years are not only listed (thanks, by the way, for supplying this via the "My Meet results" link in the My USMS area), but a way of showing the results graphically by event.
Since I live in an area where most of the meets I swim in aren't USMS sanctioned or recognized, I would furthermore like to be able to manually enter meet results in this new Time Charting/Graphing Capability area so that I can get a better sense of my performance trajectories over each season and over the years.
I would futhermore like it if Santa Jim Matysek or one of his Christmas programming elves could add an age grading feature that would automatically crank out a ranking along these lines, too--and figure out some way to adjust for body suit vs. jammer swimming times so that it won't look like tons of guys suddenly got much slower and closer to death.
Chris Stevenson's age grader, which I think he's planning to recallibrate at some point, is a good example of something to incorporate into the Time charting/graphing capability (now with automatic age-grading feature)!
www.vaswim.org/.../rcalc.cgi
Okay, so that's what I want for Christmas, Santa Jim Matysek.
I want more, as well, much more, but I don't want to seem like one of those greedy children who ask for much and deserve little.
I now grant the floor to the next swimmer who wants to sit on your lap and ask for whatever it is he or she wants. I only hope, Santa Jim M., that you grant requests in the order that they were delivered to you.
As readers of my award-deserving vlog know, Anna Lea, I am a firm believer in the old chestnut, "It is better to give than to receive."
My gift to you Jim, therefore, is the most selfless one of all: I am placing him in the role of the giver, not the receiver.
Which makes him the better person.
And when you think about it, what better gift can there be than a gift that makes you better than you already are?
Now, of course, there are no doubt philosophical conundrumists out there who have already begun to think,
"Well, if it it better to give than to receive, then a person who volunteers to be the recipient is acting altruistically...but would not the person who volunteers to be the giver to a receiver to a giver be even one step more altruistic yet? And so on and on and on in a giant solipsistic house of moral cards?"
Of course! Who could deny the force of that logic?
But the ordinary human mind can only hold so much at one time. I, for instance, am still struggling to solve equations of state via the Monte Carlo method of calculation while chewing gum!
So, to make things easier for us all, let us simply stipulate that Santa Jim Matysek is No. 1 on every decent forumite's Christmas list this year--and we have decided, en masse, to give him the gift of letting him give rather than receive this year, and all the benefits this entitles him to from the Gods on High!
As his lovely bride, I hope that you, Anna Lea, will enjoy all the spinoff benefits by proxy!
As readers of my award-deserving vlog know, Anna Lea, I am a firm believer in the old chestnut, "It is better to give than to receive."
My gift to you Jim, therefore, is the most selfless one of all: I am placing him in the role of the giver, not the receiver.
Which makes him the better person.
And when you think about it, what better gift can there be than a gift that makes you better than you already are?
Now, of course, there are no doubt philosophical conundrumists out there who have already begun to think,
"Well, if it it better to give than to receive, then a person who volunteers to be the recipient is acting altruistically...but would not the person who volunteers to be the giver to a receiver to a giver be even one step more altruistic yet? And so on and on and on in a giant solipsistic house of moral cards?"
Of course! Who could deny the force of that logic?
But the ordinary human mind can only hold so much at one time. I, for instance, am still struggling to solve equations of state via the Monte Carlo method of calculation while chewing gum!
So, to make things easier for us all, let us simply stipulate that Santa Jim Matysek is No. 1 on every decent forumite's Christmas list this year--and we have decided, en masse, to give him the gift of letting him give rather than receive this year, and all the benefits this entitles him to from the Gods on High!
As his lovely bride, I hope that you, Anna Lea, will enjoy all the spinoff benefits by proxy!
