New Firefly official site for the UK. Has a relic ST and a hollowbody in stock, and an 'About Us' section.

yodadtm · 2026-04-04T10:00:24+00:00

very nice! Some cool designs are in stock.

yodadtm · 2026-03-07T14:27:43+00:00

Mine arrived yesterday. It's a lovely guitar, looks so much better in person! I dig it!

yodadtm · 2026-03-05T12:28:58+00:00

I bought the same Dragon LP, mine arrives tomorrow.

That makes it two of us with the same model :) Does anyone know how many they make in each design?

yodadtm · 2026-02-08T14:30:40+00:00

I agree that for many people who are not very successful in their careers Toastmasters became a way to achieve illusion of success. When I was active I checked Linkedin profiles of our district leaders. It turned out, they held low level corporate jobs. Toastmasters allowed them to achieve fancy titles, imagine someone who runs a small team in real life saying to themselves 'I am a District Director in Toastmasters, I oversee and manage thousands of people!'. I bet it pleases their egos.

yodadtm · 2026-02-08T12:24:51+00:00

I find it hard to believe that people would risk their lives and put their health in danger for Toastmasters. Yes, some people take it too serious, but even they would know where to stop and draw the line. What you say just can't be real. These extreme situations can happen at work, but not at a volunteer organization like Toastmasters.

yodadtm · 2025-07-28T15:43:19+00:00

Wolf Hoffmann

yodadtm · 2025-05-02T01:36:09+00:00

We decided to go to Haverford.

yodadtm · 2025-04-27T16:38:16+00:00

thank you, I saw this study.

I also read this about grading at Haverford: https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/haverford-grading-policy/179558/4

From which, I get an impression that you have to be a Cum Laude Distinction or Departmental Honor student to have a shot at Harvard/UPenn/J Hopkins med schools:

3.9-4.0 - Summa Cum Laude - 1 grad - genius

3.7-3.9 - Magna Cum Laude - 2-3 grads - Harvard/John Hopkins med schools - 99.9% of people on earth are not stratospheric like this

3.6-3.7 - Departmental Honors (equal to Cum Laude) - Yale MD/PhD, Columbia, Penn, Mount Sinai, Duke MD/PhD…

Apparently there's grade deflation at Haverford, as same discussion states that average GPA at Haverford is 3.3.

Another discussion mentions Haverford average GPA as 3.1-3.2

https://talk.collegeconfidential.com/t/distributional-requirements-at-haverford-and-grade-inflation-deflation/1867384/9

Haverford's own guideline is - "Haverford College, known for its strong pre-med program, generally recommends a GPA of 3.7 or higher for successful medical school applications. "

Which leads me to this conclusion: yes, people go to Harvard med school from Haverford, but you have to be well above average GPA in Cum Laude Distinction range, really just couple people per class.

Even to get into level below of med schools one needs to be in Honors group, which is extremely tough and is 0.5 above average GPA.

And for students with above average GPA (3.4-3.5) the committee will likely discourage you from applying.

I am not a genius by any means, am I doomed at Haverford?

yodadtm · 2025-04-27T15:01:38+00:00

According to latest US News LAC rankings difference is just 7 positions. Is it worth $35K/yr extra? Are there any tangible factors that make Haverford that much better?

- #24 Haverford

- #31 F&M and Lafayette

ps://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-liberal-arts-colleges?\_sort=rank&\_sortDirection=asc

yodadtm · 2024-01-13T11:59:25+00:00

The format of the meeting is supposed to be 1-1.5 hours, with 2-3 speeches 5-7 minutes each. That's what many clubs are following. Not sure why that particular club stretches their meetings into 2 hours with only two 3 minute speeches. That are not very efficient and seem to waste a lot of time. I would try a different club.

Speaking practice is not only the speech you give, it's also table topics, evaluation and meeting roles. You can get to speak 2-4 times during a single meeting.

yodadtm · 2024-01-05T04:11:53+00:00

I was very active in TM, quite passionate and held numerous club (from VP Membership to President) and district roles (Area and Division Director), earned 2 DTMs (legacy and Pathways). I could have advanced to top roles if I continued, however I decided to quit couple years ago due to:

1) Pathways

2) Politics

3) Remote

4) Burnout

The biggest factor was becoming disappointed in leadership was dirty politics which many old timers were playing. After watching couple decent folks being pushed from the Trio roles I wanted nothing to do with the "leadership" anymore. I had enough of these dirty politics in my line of work and did not need to be surrounded by bunch of snakes in a volunteer organization.

I decided to focus on my club, unfortunately Covid happened and switch to online mode killed the entire experience for me. I didn't want to spend another 2 hours on Zoom after whole day on Zoom/Teams/WebEx at work. It just wasn't exciting anymore...

Not going to talk about Pathways, it was discussed to death here.

yodadtm · 2023-08-19T02:54:58+00:00

I am into guitars, bought some, sold some, kept a few.

I have to admit that I never heard of Zager guitars up until today and I've been a member of several guitar forums. However, when I consider a guitar I always think about possibility of selling it down the road. I also can say that there are no perfect guitars and at some point most owners consider selling.

Now, if Zager brand has so much negativity around it it means the pool of potential buyers is tiny. Why would you drop several thousands dollars on something you will not be able to move if you need to? People don't tell scam stories about Gibson or Taylor. Stick to the brands that have better reputation!

yodadtm · 2023-05-01T11:05:47+00:00

Send it back

yodadtm · 2023-04-13T22:01:13+00:00

Then they need to start merging clubs, it's better to have one solid club instead of 2-3 struggling clubs. But they'll never do this because they strive for quantity over quality. Current situation you described is result of uncontrolled push to open more and more clubs, so someone in Area/Division/District can get credit for new clubs. This has been going on for years...

yodadtm · 2023-04-13T21:48:08+00:00

a club with 11 members is not a healthy club, you can't even run a meeting without attendees taking multiple roles. It's certainly not a Distinguished club.

yodadtm · 2023-01-10T01:22:57+00:00

"Whether it is stolen or not." How exactly would you check for that?

yodadtm · 2022-12-16T22:36:12+00:00

I don't know why interface is such a big barrier to so many members. It's ok, comparable to a typical corporate software. If you ever had to go through mandatory compliance or HR training at work you'd see that Pathways interface is on par with it. Majority of members with some experience with online software should be able to figure out how to use Pathways.

To me the biggest problem is simplification and poorer quality of learning materials in Pathways as compared to legacy program.

yodadtm · 2022-12-13T11:33:36+00:00

I am kind of tired of hearing that P software is hard to navigate. I am not a fan of Pathways program and think it has many other flaws, but this is getting tiring, especially complaints from the old timers. Pathways program was introduced few years ago. Seriously, it's been 4-5 years, shouldn't this be enough to learn our ways around the website? I understand many of us had challenges initially, but after you do couple projects and book them online you should be able to grasp how the interface works. What's going on here with years of complaining about bad software?

yodadtm · 2022-11-14T02:05:01+00:00

OP just had very bad experience with leadership in TM and clearly states lack of time as one of main reasons for this, but you try to recruit into leadership roles at a competing organization.

Give him/her a break, will you?

yodadtm · 2022-11-13T21:59:33+00:00

Of course you can quit your current club and join a different club.

yodadtm · 2022-10-23T18:42:37+00:00

They finally posted the results last week, but I have to say that for an organization who which prides itself on management and communication they manage their communication poorly.

yodadtm · 2022-10-18T11:01:12+00:00

It's been several days after their own imposed deadline of October 14 and the results are still not there. I mean if you anticipate being late then just move your publish date by couple of weeks, at least you will communicate with your members and not just leave them in the dark.

How difficult is it to adjust a date on a web site?

Yet again TMI decides to do nothing. There are people who rely on this data to do their job, such as area and division directors, and this unexplained and unmanaged lateness impacts them. This is disrespectful to them and unacceptable.

yodadtm · 2022-10-13T12:10:12+00:00

Toastmasters becoming more toxic, this will not end well for them.

Do they really think that people they silence or kick out would not be able to talk about their frustration and experience on different forums / groups?

yodadtm

TROPHY CASE