Geezer

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The “Entitlement Generation” : Anchor Mom

I had a few friends repost this on their Facebook pages, holding it up perhaps as an example of ideal parenting:

“If your parents had to use a wooden spoon on you, then they clearly didn’t know how to parent you.”

Yep. I got that email last night after I posted my blog. I honestly had to laugh. Here was a stranger criticizing my parents. I tend to think they did a pretty good job. They raised three, well-rounded children. One is a successful HR exec, one is a journalist and the other is a doctor. Clearly they did something right. 😉 And let’s be real for a minute, it wasn’t all about a wooden spoon. It was about manners and respect.

Put me in the camp of the person who told this woman “If your parents had to use a wooden spoon on you, then they clearly didn’t know how to parent you.”

There are better ways to earn respect than by beating your child. If you have to beat your child, you are doing it wrong. You. Are. Doing. It. Wrong.

You know, maybe if we stop teaching kids that might makes right and that violence is a legitimate solution to a problem, we would have fewer domestic abuse issues, murders, riots, and maybe even wars. Maybe adults could try acting like adults and work a little bit at the parenting thing, rather than striking out like a three-year-old would?

I don’t hit my kids, I’ve never hit my kids, and the thought of hitting my kids makes me sick. And you know what? They are awesome. They can be frustrating at times because they’re kids, but they respect me because I model the kind of behavior that I expect from them. If my kids make a mistake, they don’t feel the need to be deceitful in an effort to escape a beating. The lesson we teach is to own up to your mistakes and fix them. They claim both their successes and failures.

My ultimate job as a parent is to teach my kids how to interact with the adult world. If my friends or coworkers don’t do what I say, I don’t go punch them in the face. I talk with them and sort things out. This is what grown-ups do. This is how we solve problems.

I’m sick of corporal punishment apologists blaming the “sparing of the rod” for a kid’s issues. If a rod is all you’ve got in your parental toolbox, you’re a poor parent. And it’s not just your kid who will suffer.

via The “Entitlement Generation” : Anchor Mom.

Death dream

i-told-you-i-was-sick

I don’t normally post about my dreams but this one has been on my mind. An entry from my dream journal, dated 16 July 2013:

I dreamt that I had 1,346 more days to live. I would die of an expensive disease like cancer, one that would stretch the limits of my health insurance. It was all matter-of-fact. According to the calculator on timeanddate.com, 1,346 days from now is Thursday, 23 March 2017. Of course, I am not ready to die and almost certainly won’t be ready on 23 March 2017. Even so, it makes me consider how I might choose to spend these days if I know I only have x number left.

To add some detail, I was told in my dream by someone in authority that this was how many days I had left to live. It was simply explained to me that this was how it was going to be. This was my fate. And it did seem matter-of-fact, as if this was the plan I had agreed to all along. I recall not being particularly excited or concerned about the news.

And the way the data was presented in days rather than a date really stuck with me. It is a very unusual way of conveying that information, perhaps so that I would better remember it.

Dreams don’t always come true. I know this. This dream had a very sober reality that I can’t ignore, though. It is an important message to me.

So if it’s wrong, we will all have a good laugh. I will go ahead and pen a future blog entry, scheduled to post on 24 March 2017. With good fortune perhaps I will mock it along with everyone else. In the meantime, though, I am going to take in as much as I can in the 696 days I might have left.

Because you never knows when you might die. Or do you?

Fifteen years of public service

Found in the attic a few weeks ago is this letter from the late Garner mayor F. Don Rohrbaugh, thanking me for my service on Garner’s Land Use Ordinance rewrite committee. It was my very first public service (outside of the military).

Thanks, Don (wherever you are), for getting me started!

Garner_Land_Use_Ordinance-letter

Five years gone

It was five years ago today that my close friend Gerry Reid was killed in a freak traffic accident. The days that followed were some of the darkest days of my life, though obviously they don’t even come close to what his family went through.

The scars heal but the wound never goes away. I miss Gerry’s wisdom and humor. Someday we will hoist tasty brews again, my friend. Cheers to you, wherever you are.

How RadioShack Helped Build Silicon Valley | WIRED

My friend Laura Leslie posted a classic advertisement for the RadioShack TRS-80, complete with absurdly-high price tags. It reminded me of RadioShack’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on Thursday, and of how different I’d be if it weren’t for RadioShack.

RadioShack was once every geek’s Mecca for electronics. Much of our digital world would not exist if it weren’t for RadioShack’s inspiration on a generation of geeks and tinkerers. Wired.com takes a fond look back at how many of our modern-day tech giants spent their formative years browsing the aisles at their local RadioShack.

Today, RadioShack filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Part of a coming reorganization will involve co-branding as many as 1,750 stores with Sprint, one of the company’s largest creditors, and will almost certainly result in the closing of many others. While the RadioShack name may live on, its original spirit is probably gone for good. As it goes, so goes one of the unsung heroes of a generation of tinkerers and builders, a key piece of the Silicon Valley tech-boom puzzle.

via How RadioShack Helped Build Silicon Valley | WIRED.

Vets study links PB pills, genetic variations to Gulf War illness | TribLIVE

A government-issued pill intended to protect troops from nerve agents may have made some troops more vulnerable to a chronic condition marked by headaches, cognitive problems, pain and fatigue, researchers say.

People with certain genetic variations were 40 times more likely to contract Gulf War illness if they took pyridostigmine bromide, or PB, pills that the Defense Department issued to protect them from soman, a nerve agent, during the 1990-91 war, researchers concluded in a study funded by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and published this month in the journal Environmental Health.

via Vets study links PB pills, genetic variations to Gulf War illness | TribLIVE.

If there’s an economy in your sharing then it’s not really sharing

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

You can say I know a thing or two about sharing. I was open source long before it was cool. I support Wikipedia with not only my money but my photography, which I freely donate to the public domain. Even this blog is licensed under Creative Commons, allowing anyone to take what I’ve made and use it practically any way they choose. So the brouhaha over the “sharing economy” in Raleigh has me puzzled.

I attended what was billed as a “public hearing” on Airbnb Monday night. Fans organized the meeting to make a case for why Raleigh should consider legalizing use of the home-hosting service. Like other cities, Raleigh, they say, needs to embrace the “sharing economy.” I’m friends with many of these folks but I have a different take on this issue.
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Reconnecting with the Digital Connectors

These young people are going to change the world

These young people are going to change the world

Recently I was invited to give another talk to the Raleigh Digital Connectors and I delivered that talk tonight to a roomful of attentive young people at the St. Monica’s Teen Center. My experiences with blogging was again the topic of conversation, so I spent about 45 minutes going over the highlights (and some of the lowlights) of my twelve years of blogging experience.

It’s hard to boil down so many different posts over so many different years so I mentioned some of the posts that got noticed or those that mean a lot to me. I also had fun comparing blogging to Facebook and trying to show that they’re not the same.

Given a little more time, I would have mentioned a few other things, too. Near the conclusion, I was trying to make a point about how I speak my mind here and if you find what I say to offend you then it’s your fault. If you come into my proverbial home, don’t be shocked when you find me being myself. Many of my friends and family find agreement with things I write and many do not. That doesn’t bother me because I feel obligated to the world to always call ’em like I see ’em, regardless of whether my opinions are popular or not. I hope I’ve demonstrated that characteristic throughout my years as a blogger.
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Parks board service is complete

I learned last week that my replacement was finally appointed to the Parks board. Thus, the October meeting I attended was indeed my last one. I was humbled by the kind remarks my fellow boardmembers shared with me. It’s been a great ride, that’s for sure.

I do also want to wish my replacement, Shane Malun, all the best!