An introduction

Having already once posted to the list, I suppose it is time I intruduced
myself:

My name is Brian Heyboer and I am a 38-year-old BSA Unit Commissioner and
District Committee member (finance -- Unit Family Friends of Scouting) in the
Skyway District, West Central Florida Council. I live in Pinellas Park,
Florida (just north of St. Petersburg, in the Tampa Bay area of Florida's west
coast) and make my living as an Engineer for Honeywell Space Systems Division.
I'm married, and my wife is an occasional volunteer at the council office but
is otherwise uninvolved in scouting. Our 15-year-old son is a Star scout in
Troop 359 here (and, not being advancement-conscious, will probably not follow
in my footsteps and make Eagle). Our 12-year-old daughter started in Daisies
and graduated to Brownies but dropped out of Brownies since she got interested
in dancing and horses and just doesn't have the time for scouting as well.

My scouting experience includes 10 years as a youth (Cub Scouts to Arrow of
Light, Boy Scouts to Eagle, Exploring, and OA to Vigil Honor) and going on 7
years as an adult leader (Webelos den leader, unit committee member, and my
current positions). As an "Air Force brat", I did my youth scouting all over
the US and in Japan and Turkey as well.

(Side note: If anyone is in the Omaha, Nebraska area, I am looking for the
old-style, red-and-white city/state strip for Omaha to complete my "where I did
my scouting" patch collection. I'm not interested in a current CSP or CSP
trading in general, just something to complete a personal history since I seem
not to have saved that one.)

I decided on becoming a Unit Commissioner when I asked our Pack Committee
chairman who our unit commissioner was and got the reply "What's a Unit
Commissioner?". At the time, I found this to be all too common -- what few
commissioners we had in the district were almost invisible. That was 4 years
ago and I don't think that any unit committee chairman or leader in our
district would say that today. I'm pleased to have had a part in making that
happen.

I attended Wood Badge course SR-53 this spring and am currently working on my
ticket. My primary ticket item is the establishment of a Scouting BBS (which
will be going online as soon as I can find a cheap or donated hard drive of
sufficient size) and I intend to include an archive of Scouts-L digests on it.
I can see that this group is going to be an excellent resourse for me and those
who get it through my BBS.

Those of you who participate in the FIDO Scouter echo may recognize my name,
though I'm not one of the more vocal participants there.

I don't participate in alt.rec.scouting, as our news server doesn't offer any
alt newsgroups.

I'm getting this group using the digest feature, so if you have something you'd
like me to see immediately, please cc a copy directly to me (my shortform
address is bjheyboer@space.honeywell.com) as well as posting it to the list.

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