One of the advantages of open source is that projects release when it is appropriate and not for the sake or releasing or to make more money. The Linux OS is stable and useful, it shouldn't be releasing nearly as often as a project higher up the stack.

Vista's release may prove to be a huge step backwards for Microsoft and hopefully a wakeup call. When people look at Vista they are going to either say "it isn't worth it" or "why should I pay more an upgrade when I can move to Linux?". Either way, I expect it to be a huge problem for Microsoft, especially in the server arena.

Fortunately in the technical world, it doesn’t need to happen very often. In my 25 year (ouch) career I have only had to actually fire three people (discounting the company-wide layoffs in the dot-bomb years). Most of the time, if you are not happy with an employee, then that employee is not happy in the job either. If there is enough disconnect that this isn’t true, then you aren’t doing your job. In most cases, talking candidly with the employee and coming from a perspective of trying to help him or her will suffice. If the person really isn’t right for the position, then these talks usually end in the person getting a different job. Sometimes this is inside the company and sometimes outside; in the startup world, it is almost always with a different company.

When I have had to fire employees, it hasn’t ever been a surprise to that employee – again, if they aren’t well aware of the situation, then you haven’t been doing your job in communicating with the employee(s) enough. The only times I’ve actually fired are when some event happens with an already dissatisfied employee who I’m working with and that event is of a severe enough magnitude that employment can no longer be tolerated. One example of this was a network administrator I had one time who was having difficulties and then bragged to another employee that he had been reading the emails of the CEO; of course this is a serious security violation and had to be dealt with.

As long as you go about it from the standpoint of doing what is right and helping that person as much as possible, then it isn’t as difficult as you might think. Don’t get me wrong – it is still difficult and I stress about it just like everyone else (you would have to be a cold person indeed not to). But, if you are upfront and factual with the employee and you are trying to do what is right for the company and for the individual, then any reasonable person will come to appreciate that, even if he/she doesn’t like what is happening. And really, three times in 25 years isn’t very often.

Domestic skills are those required to properly manage and maintain day to day life in the home. These skills range from sewing on a button to planning and cooking nutritious meals. The intent here is to prepare the individual for the time when s/he will be leaving the home, either for college or out on their own. These are basic skills that every person should have learned as they grew up, but we’ve heard from many that say they were forced to learn them on their own the hard way or many that never learned them at all who feel forced to pay others to perform the simplest domestic tasks such as mending or gutter cleaning.

Basic Nutritional Knowledge

This is basic knowledge of what makes up a balanced diet and healthy nutrition. A good diet with consistently healthy choices is not all that difficult when analyzed and broken out into simple clear advice. We explain to our kids that the general concept to keep in mind when planning for a healthy diet is simply concentrating on whole, natural, unprocessed, unsalted and un-sugared foods (foods that don’t usually come in a can, box or package.)

This area also covers vitamins and what we have to augment in our modern diet to have proper vitamin intake.

Balanced Menu

As follow-on to basic nutrition, the individual should be able to plan a week’s balanced menu; explain the various nutritional elements and why they are important. This task should assure everyone that the individual is capable of planning a healthy and varied menu designed to maintain health, energy and proper weight. Over 2/3 of Americans are overweight with over 1/3 of those clinically obese, (a category defined as being 20% higher than normal weight and the most dangerous of categories to be in), thus we believe this knowledge is incredibly vital to pass on to today’s teens. A discussion of portion control is also a vital part of this training section because modern adult America’s, and consequently most teen’s ideas of what actually constitutes an appropriate serving, are so out of proportion.

The individual has to actually produce a plan for an entire week meals (including snacks in between). S/he doesn’t have to shop for or produce the meals, just plan them.

Meal Preparation and Cleanup

The individual should be able to do all the tasks it takes to plan, buy ingredients, cook, and clean up a meal. This particular task is not about a balanced diet or nutrition, but about the mechanics of planning for and preparing a meal. This should include a discussion of comparison shopping, coupons and the possibilities in saving money when done correctly. This is especially useful to people leaving home for the first time that may be limited in available money.

In this case the individual actually has to perform all of this – do the shopping, preparation, serving and cleanup. It is fascinating to see a teenager realize just how much work mom or dad goes through for each meal.

Clothing Maintenance

Clothing is a fairly simple one that includes basic hemming, perhaps some small clothing repairs like unraveled seams, and the sewing on of a button. It also includes the basics of ironing and how to iron without burning a hole in the clothing. We actually call it the “I word” because we all hate it so much. It is one of those (luckily few) things that both my wife and I can’t stand to do. But, everyone should know the basics and how to do a reasonable job of it for those occasions they will actually need it.

Pet care

Most animals need shelter from the elements, food, water, regularly cleaned litter or an appropriate place to toilet, vaccinations and examinations from a qualified veterinarian, spay or neuter (we firmly discuss pet overpopulation, neglect and condition of overflowing animal shelters in the U.S. with all of our kids and why birth control is the most responsible, loving thing one can do for animals in general).

Choose and Wrap Gifts

This is easy and fun, but most kids when they start out have a tendency to choose gifts that they themselves would like to get. We like to discuss how to pick gifts for other people, taking care not to let one’s personal preferences figure in too strongly.

Other than that, this is a fairly simple task that includes how to wrap tasteful, age and station appropriate presents that look like you care and how to wrap them quickly when needed (e.g. via a gift bag). We also mention bringing small but thoughtful “thank you” gifts to hosts & hostesses.

On a related topic, we teach to always send a thank-you card for gifts. We make it fun and let them create and decorate their own, but we always make sure it gets done.

Being a “good guest”

Ideally all children would be taught from a young age that being a polite, thoughtful guest is important. It garners admiration (and a return invitation!) But it also helps to oil the wheels of life, which can be somewhat squeaky and uncomfortable without a bit of graciousness along the way. In our observation modern children may not always understand other people’s viewpoints and may simply forget to practice niceties such as offering to set the table, asking if everyone has had enough before taking last servings, clearing their dirty dishes after the meal, keeping their personal areas neat and clean, wiping muddy feet or removing shoes, saying “thank you for having me, I enjoyed myself”, etc

Home Maintenance

This is a huge topic and very few people know all of it let alone actually do what is supposed to be done for home maintenance every year. There are various lists of home maintenance tasks available on the Internet. Some are incredibly complete and others very superficial.

This topic covers indoor periodic/seasonal maintenance like checking the smoke alarms and air filters to outdoor maintenance like preparation for winter in cold climates.

Shop Skills

Finally we cover basic shop skills including the use of various tools and the potential dangers.

The individual is expected to be able to cut lumber and build a small project. We also explain basic electrical and plumbing maintenance and what should and shouldn’t be done by the individual. In our house, I so almost all home maintenance and am building a cabin on some property we have, so we make sure to tell them that this isn’t how it has to be and that they can hire professionals to do some of the more complex work.

Next post, when I get to it, will be about Financial Skills.

Humanist organizations need to concentrate on making humanism more visible and more viable to the general population. This should include things like public speaking, books, articles, etc. as well as promoting ideas that replace some of the valuable aspects of religion (rites, traditions, social interaction, etc.)

The Boulder International Humanist Institute seems to be much more geared to teaching and evangelizing humanism than whining. They have a great speaker series (recently they hosted Sam Harris, author of “The End of Faith”, which was a great success).

I met with the founder (Gordon Gamm) last week and was very impressed.

Of course their web site is really crude, but that is something I can help with…

Sean

We set out defining a set of criteria that the children had to pass with a final test as a kind of modern rite of passage. We now have one through this process and two in the middle of it. We have spoken to quite a few parents (and some want-to-be parents) about it and they all thought it was such a great idea that we decided a while back to turn it into a book. It will [probably] be called "Aostach – A Modern Rite of Passage"?. Aostach is a Gaelic word meaning Adult.

I plan to put some of the concepts out on this blog and hope to get feedback from anyone reading it.

The Aostach is broken into a number of sections with each section having 6 to 10 topics that the child has to learn or demonstrate. The sections include the following:

Domestic Skills

Financial Skills

Safety and Survival

Physical fitness

Daily practical knowledge

Ethics, Morals, Social Responsibilities and Manners

You can see that it is a diverse set of knowledge and abilities. The culmination of all of it is a somewhat difficult test that the child has to perform.

The next blog will be about the first section of the Aostach.

But this seems to be changing. Recently I had the misfortune of having to find a new job. One thing that happened during that process was that it became clear that the interviewers were expecting nicer dress than I was use to. One even had concerns about my ability to present to the board – that made me laugh; I think the concern though came from the fact I wasn't wearing a nice suit and he was. I also go to networking events and I've seen the trend moving more and more back to wearing suits or at least a sport coat. A few years ago at similar events I would see maybe 20% of the crowd wearing ties and the ones I've been to this year it has been more like 70%.

I have mixed feelings about the trend, but I do wonder what is driving it…