Story

Thomas Christopher is a part time writer, speaker, storyteller, poet, contra dancer and teacher, and choreographer, and a Unitarian Universalist lay preacher; although for a living, he consults in High Performance Computing.

After 20 years as a professor of computer science, Thomas Christopher resigned to write books full time for two years. (He likes to watch academics turn pale when they hear that.) He is an author of three books published by Prentice Hall. His second negative royalty statement encouraged him to pursue his long term interest in high performance computing by becoming a consultant. His clients have included Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Thomas was a co-principal of Tools of Computing LLC, a Chicagoland training company, that presented a series of Java short courses. He is brushing them off and updating them to offer again.

TC, as Thomas prefers to be called, has also developed a series of well-received workshops on rhetoric and humor. They are fun, but he doesn't expect they will ever offer income comparable to computing.

Contact

1140 Portland Place #205
Boulder CO 80304

303-709-5659

tc AT tools-of-computing.com

Links

Web T-shirt shop

www.wittyselfexpression.com

Thomas Christopher's Consultant Page

Computer Science.

Tools of Wit

TC's Creativity and Cleverness Page.

Blog

Targetted at creativity and rhetoric.

Artsy Page

Stories, poetry, essays, music.

Animated algorithms

Java-based visualizations of some algorithms.

http://www.tools-of-computing.com

The Tools of Computing home page.

Handouts

UU Worship Services (some assembly required)

Belief

This service presents the politics surrounding the vote at the 1886 meeting of the Western Unitarian Conference, which rejected any creed, and asks whether they were right in doing so. The service requires eight or 10 readers, including the presenter, and has the members of the congregation themselves vote on the motions made at the 1886 meeting. This service was first presented at The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Lafayette, Colorado in 2004.

Jairus's Daughter

This service takes the story "Jairus's Daughter and a Woman's Faith" and applies the literal, allegorical, and moral levels of scripture interpretation to it. (These levels of interpretation have been known and used in Christianity since the Middle Ages.) It requires a group of participants to meet several times before the service to reread and discuss the story. Two or three of them will deliver personal statements on how the story speaks of their lives, i.e. interpret the story on the moral level. This service was first presented at Second Unitarian Church in Chicago ("2U").

Link for UUF:

Elephant Manifesto (same as "Thoughts on the Elephant Club")

Sunday Service Presenters' Survival Kit