I went to my sister-in-law’s going away party tonight. She’s leaving for the Army in the next couple of days and while I’m happy for her, I am concerned about some of the choices she is making. Those choices are neither here nor there, but the party setting is pertinent to this post.

Being a male vegetarian is weird. Not from my end, I enjoy eating vegetables, not eating meat. That’s the point right?

I’m at this party and there is no one manning the grill, hot dogs, brats and burgers. I know that the number of people coming is going to be many and without someone grilling now, a disaster is brewing.

The hostess walks up, hugs me and then asks me to man the grill, finishing up what she had started.

Dilemma: Does the vegetarian prepare the meat for the group or does the only guy there with grilling knowledge shirk his social duty?

I ended up grilling all 40 burgers, 36 hot dogs and 24 brats in record time, but ended up having next to nothing to eat during the party. Such is the odd life of being a male vegetarian.

I took the Online Identity Calculator and depending on my career aspirations, I am either a 7.8 or a 9.0 out of 10. That’s pretty good. I guess it also means that if I want to become a thought leader, I should write more here, and start writing else where. I wonder what the requirements are to get a Wikipedia entry?

I have had this post sitting in limbo for a long time. I have been trying to gather all of my thoughts on the subject and I think I have finally reached my conclusion. What is the point of learning how to click, where to click, without understanding why to click.

In my freshman year of college (circa 2000), I took “Introduction to Technological Systems”, which was a renamed “Introduction to Computers”. I enjoyed the class and quite liked the professor, eventually getting an A in the class, along with pretty much everyone else in the class. The introduction to technological systems went through a computer part by part, from CPU to databases to the internet, giving a broad overview of a little bit of everything.

While the number of students entering college are becoming more technologically savvy, the problem that professors are, or should, be running into is teaching students why to click instead of where or how.

Speaking in broad terms, students entering college have a firm grasp on technology. Can they point to the ISA card slot on a late 80’s motherboard? Probably not. Can they install iTunes 7.3 and sync their iPhone? Probably. The level of computer literacy is rising rapidly. Students are rapidly coming to high school and college never knowing what a computer-less household is like. And fewer remember a time when the internet required the computer to make very strange noises via its modem.

The imminent failure of basic computer education is this: By focusing on the mechanics of how a computer works, the human element of computer is lost. By this, the computer education received tells us that a computer works, but does not educate us in how to interact with it. What is the most efficient way to store files? How should one reply to email. What are the basics of security when it comes to the internet? Why, when sending a mass email, should one use the BCC: instead of the To: in addressing? Why does my computer run slowly when I have 7 applications open, each with 16 windows?

These skills, while not as concrete as the how the laser reads the data on a CD-ROM, are the ones that are not being taught, but can ultimately be the most useful. Efficient, courteous and savvy computer users don’t need to know the physical happening to get work done. While it may be helpful in diagnosing problems or troubleshooting, there are plenty of people willing to take the time and put in the effort in that arena, I happen to be one of them. For the average user, teach them that repetitive task can be shortened to key-commands, that click around the computer’s interface can be shorted by using a launcher, or that email “stationary” is not really all that cute and can sometime gunk up an email client would go miles.

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom.
from Wikipedia

The rote memorization of how a computer physically functions is no longer relevant in today’s world. Computer education instead needs to focus on the imparting of knowledge and well-developed wisdom.

Alright, so I didn’t post the photos, I didn’t even take the camera. Crud! I’m trying to get back on the blogging band wagon, really I am.

Today, I have found a new love the open source software. Our MS Exchange server bombed out sometime around noon today and we have been without email for the past 4 hours. Word has come that they are on the horn with Microsoft, but they don’t really know what is wrong. The interesting thing about Open Source versus proprietary is the possibility of getting a temporary solution up and going rather quickly on limited resources.

Seeing how most open source is free, an IT department could take an old beige box that has just enough horsepower, some software (Samba, Sendmail, Courier’s imap server, Apache, Squirrelmail, Spamassassin, ClamAV, openLDAP with PostgreSQL database as a backend, Thunderbird) and any flavor of Linux OS and you can have a temporary solution up and running in as much time as it takes to install everything or plug the box in and power it up if you are disaster ready.

I’m not trying to speak poorly of our IT department, but the entire School of Business has ground to a halt waiting for their email to come back up. We shall see how long it takes

Yesterday, I went to the driving range with Casey and I had a total blast. We were chatting about picking up golf as a new hobby. I remembered that Esther’s mom had some golf clubs in her garage and we ran over there and snagged them. You have to understand that the most golf that I have played was a back to back 18 of putt putt. Lining up on the driving range was imposing, no windmill, no castles, no grinning clown, in other words very imposing.

After hacking away at half a bucket of balls, I was feeling pretty good. I really think that this could become a hobby.

Also, I have been working my rear off at work. You can see my fine work at: http://masonweb.wm.edu/marketing/gradetrade.html. I had to capture, re-encode, convert to flash video and create the HTML for the page. Whew!

I also found out that some of the people that I work with are high-rollers in the VC and tech communities (specifically Python).

So, golfing and knowing high-rollers and the like, all combined, does this mean that I’m becoming… upper crust?