merry christmas....

and the best of the season to you, and yours.


well, another christmas has arrived, and i find myself once again undecided. christmas and i don't have a great track record.... they've included several deaths in the family, being left, and being close to death sick. i find myself a little melancholy for those reasons.

and up until that point, i am fine. but then come the politics of family christmas.... who is hosting this year? what do you mean you're doing christmas there this year!? what is the limit for gifts? when are you coming over here? why not?! things have gotten easier with one of the divorced parents moving out of country - one less house to make it to is that less stressful. if you can imagine, one year we made it to 3 major 'dinners' the same day, plus another 3 places over the two days after.

with our own family now... we are in a better position to define our schedule and start new traditions. for one... only one family house visit in a day. as for the others? well... christmas morning is ours alone now.

christmas eve? not sure if it's a new tradition, but tonight will be sushi and salad rolls. my snack at the moment is crispy anchovy. i don't think it will be a regular christmas eve tradition... but it's good for now.

a wonderful christmas and the best of the holidays to you all.

immigrant? or native?

my son is a technology native. 3 years old. has his own computer; and can start it, log in, load his favourite game or website, and shut the system down (correctly). he also enjoys a wide range of dvd's and movies. (we have no cable, so are thankfully disney channel and treehouse free.... plus skip most of the general advertising.)

he also plays with play dough, and other assorted items like kids from time immemorial. including..... magnetic letters on the fridge.

now what's different isn't that he has the old fashioned magnetic letters (2 sets of 72), and the leapfrog phonics set of single letters, 3 letter words, and the lowercase letters - it's the message.....

www.sonywonder.com or www.disneydvdgameworld.com

here are some other samples.... unassisted samples just to clarify.....




actually.... what scares me is that i'm afraid i won't be able to keep up.

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on the off chance anyone is wondering what brought on the whole immigrant/native topic, here is the background:

a while ago, a friend of mine posted an entry about technology, and how agency executives are digital immigrants instead of natives.

"natives have never seen a world without the digital. they use it “natively.” if you grew up pre-CD, pre-mouse, pre-cell phone etc., you’re an immigrant."

it sort of riled me up a bit.... and i made the following comment:

what amuses me, is that the digital natives become helpless without the digital immigrants. those (meaning the vast majority of natives) who use technology and take it for granted, are dumbfounded and adrift when it doesn’t work. they also have no second thoughts about putting massive amounts of personal information freely on-line in social networks.

the backbone of the system - those who concern themselves with operations, keeping things running, fixing that which is broken, and security are largely immigrants (at least those I know.)

it’s always amused me, that while I’m considered a “dinosaur” because I am of the “e-mail” generation (nay, I preceed even that) i am the one who is repairing the technology they broke.

i suddenly feel like playing the immigrant song at top volume from my iPod now.

i still stand by that, but have realized it's not completely true... i know many kids in the new generation are able to understand and fix technology. of course, all the ones i know are the children of parents who are technology immigrants and work in information technology.... who else teaches their 12 year old how to set up *nix networks, and would consider starting to teach their 6 year old SQL and Oracle?

game, set, match.....

There is no light at the end of the tunnel,
Only a pack of matches handed down
From one generation to the next.
Humanity does not have a long fuse
And this generation holds the last match.

JonArno Lawson
Bad news, in The Noon Whistle, 1996

remiss.....

friends, my apologies. i've been remiss in my posts lately. just a short update....

• i quit my job, but took another position in the same department, but a different section. this should be an improvement.
• i wound up as acting village idiot for my last month, and had two major projects dumped on me. i near killed myself getting them done (39 hours of overtime in less than 2 weeks.)
• i did not in fact get them completely done, and am somehow fine with that. (i actually left halfway through one, and am not sure how it fared)
• i have thought of work very little over the last couple of days. i don't miss it at all.

oh yes... i guess i should mention, i'm on holidays for the entire month of december. unused vacation time that was mandatory to take due to company policy. have tons of accumulated overtime as well.

i got out of dodge the first three days, and have spent the last couple catching up on errands. hopefully another week will see me mostly caught up - i'd desperately love a week between catch-up and christmas.

we'll see how it goes.

happy holidays if i don't make it back as planned. the new year looks promising.