707 Leahy St. #127-C
					Redwood City, CA  94061
					December 7, 2003
					650-367-8019
					tim@tim-mann.org


Dear Friends and Family,

God's blessings to you on another Christmas celebration of the coming of the
Savior to earth!  This year I'm a bit more on top of things and am not waiting
for my annual visit to family in Milwaukee before writing my Christmas letter.
Good thing, as I'll be there only from December 24 to January 3 this year!
Mom's number is 414-466-3082 if anyone would like to call me there.

This year I stayed close to home until Bible Camp time late in July, but then
I took two weeks off.  I spent the first at camp in the Sierra foothills,
serving as music leader and assistant camp director as I usually do.  This
year our musical group included one of the campers on flute, a nice addition.
The week after camp I drove across the mountains to Nevada and spent a couple
of days at a bed and breakfast in the little town of Genoa.  Genoa was the
first permanent settlement in Nevada and was on the earliest Pony Express
routes, but it never grew beyond a small crossroads town.  Today it's scenic
and peaceful, a great place to rest up and relax.

Bad news came soon after.  My mom was diagnosed with a recurrence of her
kidney cancer, this time in her lungs.  I borrowed some extra vacation to go
back and see her and my sister Mary in September.  I also got to see my nieces
Amy and Beth and their families on my last couple of days in town.  Beth and
Tom made the long trek back from Japan with all four of their kids, including
new baby Abby, whom the rest of the family hadn't gotten to meet yet.  Mom
tires quickly, but she is still at home and able to take care of herself, and
I'm looking forward to seeing her again at Christmas.

In October my company flew me out to a conference in upstate New York, near
Albany.  It was a nice chance to reconnect with folks I know in the computer
systems research community, whom I don't see so much since I've moved from a
research job at Compaq into engineering at VMware.  Actually a lot of them
have made the same move.  Quite a few are at Google or other companies in the
Bay Area that have survived the tech bust.  Speaking of that, VMware is doing
very well too.  Last week we were written up in USA Today, and we're
continuing to grow and to show a profit.  There's always a lot to do for me at
work, but fortunately it hasn't been too much to handle -- no insane hours or
impossible deadlines, just working hard and getting a lot done.

I've been able to find a little time again lately to work on my free chess
software.  I put out a new release over Thanksgiving, and I've reorganized
things to make it easier for others to contribute without me being a
bottleneck when my time is short.  Several new volunteers have joined and are
working on a lot of things.  See the XBoard page on www.tim-mann.org for info.

I've had more chances to play my guitar at church lately, too.  Our pastor's
wife is teaching a real Sunday school singing program, and I'm helping by
playing guitar on most of the songs.  It's given me the chance to learn some
new songs and to accompany the kids when they sing in church.  I've also
gotten the chance to play on some psalms and other parts of the liturgy.
Today I played on the Advent Gathering Rite that we use to start the services
in this season.

                                        Love to all in Christ,