First of all, I am excited to announce that I have found a new internet crush: I don't know who Rands is yet, but I've spent the past hour unable to do the car research I was supposed to be doing because I was enjoying reading his blog so much. He has definitely made it onto my rss reader (which is perhaps the highest form of approval I am currently able to give).

Second: his bag article. So good. Read it, and then come back to make fun of me.

I've been thinking a lot about what I'm looking for in a school for Riley, and I'm starting to get some ideas about what I think is most important to me for my kids' education. At base, more than anything else, I want them to learn how to create things. That's different than being creative; it's not that I want them to both be artists exactly. But I want them to know how to create a new thing of value, in whatever field or fields that they are choosing to work in at the time. Or to improve a thing that is already valuable, or to fix something of value that is broken. If they can contibute to a group making something of value, or even lead that group to create something, so much the better.

My junior high and high school seemed to concentrate entirely on providing the tools with which to create things - math, science, english, history, etc - and missed the overall goal of these things, which was to teach how to take those blocks and make something with them. The blocks are important, for sure - but how to use the blocks is more important still. I understand now that the papers and group projects were supposed to be the time I was learning how to make things with my toolset, but at the time, I didn't know that - which made the entire exercise a waste, because I didn't understand what muscles I was supposed to be using. Without knowing the goal, most of the work seemed like an exercise in futility (how is knowing 18th century european history going to help me in my day to day life?). And if I had known the goal, I Might have been more interested in science and math classes (because really, how does european history help? :))

The other major piece that I think was missing from my education was the idea of an apprenticeship. I realize now that in jr. high, high school, and even college, I had no read idea of how the world worked outside of the walls of academia. I knew that my dad went to meetings and stuff, and I had an idea of what cop and lawyer life was like due to TV shows, but that was about the extent of it. And there was a real feeling of dread that I wouldn't be able to cut it once I got out, because I had no idea what I was supposed to do. That dread was somewhat right, because it took a few years in the workforce to feel like I knew what the rules were and what was expected of me. If I had done some sort of work in high school and college, it would have helped to expose me to the working world and have an expectation for what I was getting into; even more helpful would have been an apprenticeship, where there was someone specifically in charge of getting me up to speed on the ways of the company, where it would be ok for me to ask stupid questions and do stupid things. I am starting to view apprenticeships not as something that's useful for the company, but as a social service, almost like paying taxes. Yeah, it's a pain, but everybody's better off if most people do it.

PS: on the distributed file sharing front - Dropbox looks very promising (www.dropbox.com). But for corporate, the security concerns of the cloud are just too much. Maybe a combo of dropbox and Truecrypt to share a secured volume?

I have hopes that dropbox will come out with a plug and play box to put behind a firewall that hastheir syncing tech, sort of like the google search appliance.

I'm beginning to install LinuxMCE 7.10 on a box at home - the thing is, I want to use it primarily for the security features, with the option to do home theater stuff in the future. Most people I can find on the net seem to be doing it the other way around, so guidance is slim. I'll try and post updates here on what I'm doing and how it's working.

But we all know how good I am at posting.

Distributed File Sharing

How do you do it? My company has offices all over the US, UK, and Europe. I'm sure we'll have an asia office or 3 pretty quick here. so what do we do about keeping everyone on the same page? Distributed email, services, phones - no problem. The options I see:

everyone uses one file share
+ central management and easy admin
+ everyone knows where stuff lives
-slows down the further away you get
- maybe some security risks with everyone in the same pot
- big by


syncronized file shares
- pain to do
+ best solution for end users


This is gonna be fun.

Here are the pictures from the 2006 family picnic. Good times, good food, and nice and quiet, as always. Krista and I had a great time with everyone - I can't wait till next year.

Family Picnic Pictures

I didn't post anything while I was there, but Krista and I just got back from Guatemala. We spent a week down there with our church - Krista and a nurse practicioner friend spent the week putting on medical clinics in a very rural part of Guatemala, and I spent the week working on construction projects in a poor village called San Miguelito. It was an amazing time. Here are the pics we took:

Raw Pics from Guatemala

I'm going to post a set of my favorite ones in the next few days so that you don't have to sift through the junk, but this way you don't need to wait.

UPDATE: I've finished posting, and putting together my favorite ones. Here they are:

Joe's Favorites (so far)

Enjoy, and happy reading.

I've finally gotten the video from the China trip copied onto the computer, and I'm working on turning it into a DVD. With any luck, I'll have it ready to give out at the family picnic. I'll let you all know.

Here are some of the china pictures. I'll post more when I get more Flickr bandwidth. Seeing China through the eyes of the Catholic Church is a unique way to experience it, and I feel honored to have gotten to see a small part of that. Traveling with Fr. Tom was also a trip - we got to hear some great stories and histories from his past, and learn fun family facts that we would have never gotten any other way. I hope I have that much energy when I get to be that age. And I hope I have that much courage someday.

Flickr pics from China