I guess the main thing is that we've survived it all - Candia and I will celebrate our 30th this fall and all 4 of the kids have survived along with us. As for an update on what we've been up to in the last 10 years, I'll have to say we've made some big changes and are looking forward to making some more. Ten years ago we decided to escape the Willamette Valley. In 1999 we moved from Portland to Baker City, in many regards a step back in time. Baker City is a little mountain town in Eastern Oregon that has today the same population it did 47 years ago when I moved away to Milwaukie. Life is quiet for us on the corner of A and Main and it was a great place for our kids to finish up school. The kids are now scattered to the winds - one still in Portland has given us 2 grand kids - one in Klamath Falls attending college - one in San Francisco attending college and one in Asheville North Carolina who has followed my early footsteps and become a Recording Engineer. Jason aka: Jayro Rockola spent two years after college working at big studios in New York City and had the good fortune to work with Yoko Ono on Johns 2 newest posthumous releases. He now has his own struggling little studio in Asheville NC - another great little mountain town.
When we moved our business (TCI Corp - Tom & Candia Inloes - tcicorp.com) to Baker City 10 years ago we did mostly commercial mapping related software. While we still do a bit of that we have transitioned to mostly mapping services. About 5 years ago we decided to focus on customers who "would never go out of business or experience cutbacks". For us that was the Tax Man and the Law Man. It was a good plan - we now work almost exclusively in Payette County Idaho (across the river from Ontario). They call me the MapGuy and I keep 18 different City/County agencies (including the Tax Assessor and the Sheriff) happy with maps. My pride and joy is a custom mapping application that runs on laptops in all ambulances, fire trucks and Police cruisers guiding emergency responders to any address in the County. It has saved lives and prevented peoples houses from burning to the ground while the volunteer fire fighters try to figure out how to get to that house back in the sticks (it's Idaho - they have a lot of houses back in the sticks).
Right now we are in the process of buying a second home in Payette and this one has 2 acres of land with irrigation. By next reunion we expect to be mostly retired and being able to produce the majority of our food. I'm looking forward to the next transition from MapGuy to FarmGuy - hey I'll need a tractor, sounds like fun!
Tom