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November 23 Yearly Christmas ReprieveEvery year I get more and more disgusted with Christmas. What is supposed to be the crowning event of the year where we look to Christ and his atonement has been turned into the yearly greed-fest. And I have noticed that this season starts earlier and earlier each year. It used to be that I was disgusted with people who lit their Christmas lights before Thanksgiving (although I think it's okay to hang them much earlier when it's not snowing). Now that is the norm and I am horrified when people light their lights and put up their tree before Halloween! By my count there are about 55 days between Halloween and Christmas (62 until New Years). That means that they have their Christmas tree up for nearly 15-20% of the year! If you put your tree up on December 1st and take it down January 2nd that is only about 8% of the year. In keeping with the trend, so-called Black Friday has been starting earlier and earlier every year. In fact, this year it actually started at 9PM on Thanksgiving in our local malls and other retail stores. There was some crazy lady on the News who caped out in front of Circuit City for over 36 hours missing Thanksgiving entirely!
I guess the big question is why does this matter, or at least why do I think it matters? The reason I think it matters is because I really think this is having a horrific impact on our youth. I know that some people actually incur a large amount of debt just to have "the perfect Christmas". They need to buy their kids everything they asked for Christmas. I also know that their Children notice. They notice the debt, the excessiveness, the kinds of things you do at Christmas, and why you are doing those things. Kids pick up on these kinds of things. Obviously every child is different but I think that most walk away with a sense of want=need and with assurance that it is okay to do whatever it takes to fill that want-need. They may also gain a sense of entitlement that has become so prevalent. They may feel that they are entitled to the luxury's of life rather than understanding that those things can only be had by hard work. They think that luxury is a basic human right and that not having an iPod or a cell phone has robbed them somehow. Many become Democrats :) But all have real trouble adjusting when they have a family of their own and try to provide all of those want-needs.
So with that, here are my suggestions for ways to keep the good things about Christmas while leaving out the bad things:
I'm sure anyone reading my blog that can relate to what I am saying can add more so feel free to leave a comment. I hope that 10 years from now I can write another blog entry about how we need to make a bigger deal about Christmas. --Nathan Zaugg November 06 Fall Code Camp RetrospectiveThis code camp was better than last session. Last time we had major problems with doors being locked, no Internet, and an abundance of the same technology. This code camp was completely different! We were given a WEP key for the wireless Internet, the doors remained unlocked most of the time (I only got one call about someone being locked out), and there were few Microsoft presentations. What I Liked: There was a lot of technology that was different than the same-old topics. It was great to see presentations on the Mac platform and I really wanted to attend the Ruby on Rails presentation but XNA was also that hour and I choose that instead. There were also a lot more people out this time due to better advertisement and involvement of the Java community. And as always, I actually feel like I learned something; or at least a lot more than I do from most any other of this type of event. I also learned a lot from the different presentations styles and I have found how I like to present. What I didn't like: Most presentations ended really early! The one on Core Animation went only about half of the time allotted. That means we're just sitting around waiting for the next session and that is a big waist of my time! I also don't so much like the idea of the "tire kickers" giving presentations. I was to some degree guilty this time because I don't feel like I have mastered WPF, but I could answer any question the general audience had and so I think that was good enough. My qualm is when you have a pretty basic question (remember, this is the first time I have heard of this new technology) then I would expect the presenter to be able to answer so long is it's not an off-the-wall question. I think the idea is to have people in the area that are "experts" in a subject give presentations that help the community learn about this technology and possibly answer some questions. Also, when people RSVP the night before (as almost all did) then there is a pretty darn good chance they are coming! Why would you expect that only 80% are coming? We ran out of Pizza *really* early on! Also, last time each presenter had some little nic-nac to give away at the end of their session. Lots of people had those but they brought them themselves. I still think we should have had some presentations twice (the more popular ones), and I still think that we should have more sessions going on. There was one hour where I didn't want to go to anything! My list little qualm is that I don't think Neumont University is really a good central location! I think we are loosing a lot of people because of the location. Overall I know it looks like the con's outweigh the pro's but that is not true. It was a really good code camp and I think that in 6 months when we have our spring code camp it will be a lot better! I hope more people from SolutionStream will get involved this year but I think Bruce and I both gave really good presentations. Bruce had a good showing and was a big hit. I had almost 100 people at my session and they all seemed to really like it. I didn't have nearly enough time to present the content I wanted to. I think I could have taken a day to present just WPF! If you enjoyed the Code Camp, please leave a comment and let me know what your thoughts were. Thanks! Nathan Zaugg |
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