The holiday season

This week we enter the major holiday season. We have four major holidays: Hanukkah, Yule (Winter Solstice), Christmas, and Kwanzaa. Just a few days after that we are off celebrating the new calendar year and we are off on another torrid pace in our lives. Stress seems to get a lot of many of us during this time of year. Weather it is trying to find the perfect gift for a loved one, being crazy enough to join everyone else in the malls or just dealing with holiday travel plans, we all have to deal with it on some level. Most of us are celebrating just one of these holidays, but there are many families that celebrate more than one. My family is one of these. We celebrate the changing of the seasons for Yule, where we welcome the light back from the darkest hour (ie, longest night of the year) and encourage the sun to gain strength each day until we reach the springtime. We exchange gifts, but we are trying to set a tradition of these being gifts that can be used for rituals or something that is made from scratch and has heart put into it. When it comes down to it we try to be simple folks who love nature and believe in the power of it. After we have had our peaceful celebration, we then get ready for Santa to come and celebrate the Christmas holiday with the rest of the family. While I'd love to say we keep it simple here, I realize that we do our job in trying to aid the local economy too and tend to get caught up in the festivities. This week we've been having issues with the children as they are overcome with the excitement that is ahead and are nearly at our wits end, trying to enjoy the holidays but not let things get too out of hand. My observation with how other children are this time of year, I am not feeling left out, but I do feel the stressors of the season building up. My question is how to people find a way to maintain control of the stress while enjoying the holiday so that traditions and new memories can be made? I can't wait to enjoy the time with my family this season. It is my second season out of the snow and it feels strange, but we are making our new traditions and having new experiences all the time.

Getting to be a kid again

This past week I was able to spend two great days with my kids at Disney World. It was the first time for the three of us and we had a blast. It made me feel like I was a little kid again. I was excited about going, happy to see everything around me and amazed at the size of the Magic Kingdom park that we spent the two days at. It was wonderful to get away from the stress of life for those two days and get lost in the world of the great Walt Disney. It's hard to pick out my favorite moment of the trip. I don't think it matters, I was so happy to just see the reaction of the kids while we were strolling around the park, hearing new sounds, trying all the rides and seeing all of our favorite characters. We even had lunch with the Pooh Bear gang! It was a wonderful couple of days with my wife and mother-in-law there with us and all five of us having so much fun. We have even talked about making this an annual event. Timing is key. A Thursday and Friday stay was nice, but I think Wednesday and Thursday might be better. Friday the park felt smaller because there were just so many people there. Short lines == more fun for all of us. Do research before you plan a trip to a big place like this, make the most of it and above all don't be afraid to just feel like a kid.

Teaching our beliefs

An interesting story hit the CNN headlines in the last couple of days about a father who is suing his ex-wife to be able to teach his 10 year old daughter about polygamy. While I am not in favor of teaching something that is illegal in all 50 states, it brings up a question about when and how to teach our children about things we believe in. As a homeschooling father, I believe that I have the ability to add in studies on our religious beliefs and this point is on reason why homeschooling has been a growing movement, among other reasons I won't describe here. Is it not our right to teach our children what we are passionate about? I for one have already tried to get my kids to see alternatives in the computing world. I have two systems setup at home, one windows system that is used for work and play that works with most of the software we have for the kids. I also teach them about the cute, cuddly penguin named tux and have allowed them to use software under linux to show them that there is a choice. Open source software and non-monopolistic alternatives fuel my passion in the computing world. I don't worry even though there is a major company out there trying to prove (well we can't say they are trying at all, they won't show any of the "proof") that the linux software I use has "stolen" code in it. If we were afraid to express what we are passionate about, especially in this country that was founded on principles that allow us to do so, what are we living for? Teach your children as much as you can. Show them that they can be passionate about any subject and always be willing to support them, even if it doesn't sit right with you. It is our duty as parents, teachers and community members to inspire our children to be the next generation of open minded, free thinking leaders of the world.

A Father's Role in Education?

As I have stated here before, my wife and I have decided to homeschool our oldest child when she is eligible to start in the Fall next year. Today there was a good article on CNN. This article references the Father's role in homeschooling. While homeschooling is generally done by mothers, some of us would like to take a larger role in the education of our children. Our family situation where I work a full time 24x7x365 techie job and my wife is a stay at home mom doesn't really allow me to play a full role in the homeschool but I hope to be able to do my best to get in a lesson at least once a day. I am a believer that if you don't learn something new each day, you're not getting your part of the deal done. With homeschooling I hope to instill this in my children. Learning doesn't stop just because it is Saturday or Sunday, Summer, Yule or Independence Day. As far as father's taking a role in homeschooling, I like to see publications like this. It is hard to go out and find a website for father's who homeschool and perhaps this trend will continue and more of us will take an active role in the homeschooling model. I've always wanted to be a teacher, and now that I am a father I get to do this on a daily basis. Homeschooling allows us to build upon the lessons we've already tried to teach our children and help them become well rounded, open minded and independent thinking citizens who can offer something back to the world. I am looking forward to the challenges ahead and I'm going to enjoy it every step of the way!

Penguin for the people?

Today I had the opportunity to read the white paper written by Bruce Perens about UserLinux and his proposal for moving forward with the project. I took the opportunity to join the discussion group mailing list as I think that this is an interesting opportunity for myself to get involved in the linux community and offer something towards a big project. As companies like TurboLinux (Asia Pacific), RedHat, SuSE and others move closer to the enterprise level to stay in business (hey that is what they are doing business for) we need to make sure that there is always something that the people, as in the average linux user base can have access to. Interestingly enough it looks like UserLinux will be based on the debian distribution giving a nice stable and free core to the system with a great packaging system using .deb files and the apt system for easy access to new files and fixes. Debian is also used in projects such as Knoppix and ClusterKnoppix (a variant of knoppix with the ability to create your own server room cluster, great for education labs). I hope that I can add something to this project and help make sure that there is always a Penguin for the people....

Back to the grind today as vacation is now over. It was a fast paced day and after fighting with a problem for 6 hours, I was able to fix it and get a machine working again. No lunch when working on these kinds of problems where people are waiting for the system to be ready. At the end of the day it is all worth it. I was told all my hard work over the last year is being rewarded and I have achieved the respect of my peers in the office. Now that the work day is over, I get to sit back and work on my pet projects. This week I am working on digitizing the home cd collection so that I can store the media away as we listen to most of our music in mp3 format anyhow. One of us is usually always near the computer. I am using CDex to rip the music and compress it into the mp3's. It works great. It even has a sweet autolookup to freedb.org to get all the song titles. Even better, it's an open source project.