So they say, "Money can't buy happiness". First off, who exactly are "they"... The mysterious source that seemingly everyone sites for the standard issue cliches? That being here nor there, again "Money can't buy happiness". I contend this is wrong. Well, at least partially wrong. Money can't directly buy happiness, as if happiness was a commodity. It can, however, buy... stuff. I'll be the first to say that as a whole, society has too much "stuff". Conversely, having stuff can be a good thing. Yes, I am a study in contradictions... It's part of my charm, appeal, curse... I have the ability to see the whole picture... the good, the bad and myself... I mean the ugly. So, with this ever elusive, at least in my case, money... I can buy happiness! That's right, I can. I can buy iPads, My Little Pony©s, fast pitch softball equipment and lessons, emerald encrusted jewelry, tools(!!!!) and all the little things in life that make my family and friends... wait for it... HAPPY! That being said, the single most important thing that money can buy... Time! I know, I know... it appears as if I have lost it (hard to lose what was never there to begin with!). Just keep reading... it'll come together... maybe... Anyway, yes, money can buy time. Having money would allow me to be more selective about my employment options. This would allow me to find something that would keep me from having to constantly be out on the road, away from my friends and family, just to make a living. See... money would buy me some time and happiness by way of allowing me to take care of all those annoying bills that are required to function in today's society while being able to spend time with family and friends which makes me and at least some others, happy. So there it is... money CAN buy time and happiness!
Now that y'all have been infused with some of my twisted logic, on to my rant about college degrees and the fact that more merit is put in a piece of paper than the actual person that is bearing it...wait... no... not today.
So, yeah... Not go off on a tangent, today... Instead, I'm going to spread my dream a little. So... I want to do THIS !! Not go to one... well yeah... go to all of them, but I want to build one... run one... enjoy one... right here where I live. Without getting too in depth in all the particulars, I can see in the "normal" part of my twisted little mind, how things could pan out and allow me to not have to travel, by embedding knowledge, experience and happiness in the local educational infrastructure and the community as a whole. Just imagine... a class field trip... 20 or so 3D printers and an instructor... the result would be a classroom's worth of customized Mother's Day gifts and interest in all the things that could by laying down heated plastic in a programmed order. See what has happened there? Not only have a bunch of children designed and created a physical object for their maternal guardians, but they have been shown that the things in their head CAN become a reality. They have been exposed to computers as the tools that they were designed to be, to programming, to science by way of how a 3D printer extrudes the plastic, to design... to technology! So, here is where money would have bought some more happiness. Happiness outside my little (and I do mean LITTLE!) social group, as well as for me. There's nothing greater, in my opinion, that seeing that breakthrough moment in a child, when they realize that the sky is the limit. This is what I want to bring to my community, my friends, my family and myself! Being closely tied to the educational community, it saddens me to see the lack of support for technology. Albeit, it's necessarily the fault of the educators, but more so of a society that is increasingly supporting the religion of sports and neglecting those that do not excel at them. I want to bring that spark, that hope, the realization that just because you can't catch a football or hit a baseball or shoot a basketball, doesn't mean that you can't do awesome things in life. I want to help, not only my, but all the children I can, to see how technology and creativity can enrich their lives. THIS is the tool that I want to use to launch careers in engineering, design, art, computer science, education! Here's where money can again buy time and happiness. Now, if I could just find the funding for my happiness...
Piece
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
15 January 2013
18 April 2011
Randomosity
Where to start? It's always my biggest problem when I'm trying to write these. I have so much bouncing around in my head that it is generally hard to focus in on one key point, except when something REALLY gets under my skin. Lately so many things have tweaked me that I couldn't really dial it in on one in particular, so I'm just going to drop them all in one post and see how it goes.
My mind is diverse. My problems, both actual and perceived, are diverse. So here's a small sampling of what's been brewing in my head and, I reckon, a small hashing out of it: School budget cuts, unemployment, the economy, my kids, the Monster at the top of the stairs (which is my Mother-in-Law, for those that might be interested), advancing technology, the lack of technology, and money. I guess I'll address them in this order, so here goes.
With all the obvious governmental waste that is readily prevalent, why the fuck are we trimming educational budgets?! My wife, who happens to be an educator, passed on a statistic recently revealed to her... about 70% of the adults in the US do NOT have school aged children.70%!!! That leaves the other 30% to fight for a decent education for our children. The statistic seems almost surreal, but I have flushed it out and it's probably accurate. How's this, you might ask? Well, folks are living longer and the "Baby Boomers", being the largest generation (No, I didn't fact check this. This blog is my perspective and should in no way be considered fact, unless I do cite it as such!) in US history are still out there. Their children, a much smaller generational group, being around and in their 40's. This generation (X, Y, whatever the sociologists have branded us) including myself, who is knocking on mid-life crisis' door, are the also starting to age into their empty nests. My kids (overlapping topics... get past it!) are younger as I spent my "reproductive years", this would be one's early 20's which are traditionally the years in which one starts a family, serving my country and sewing my wild oats, so to speak. I was 28 when my first child was born. So to dial it back on course, My Grandmother, 86 and my Mom, 65 are still alive. That's two generations of adults without school aged children. My darling, younger sister, has no children, yet another adult, in just my family, that has no "real" stake in education. So of the adults on JUST my side of the family, 75% of them are without school aged children. So you see how this all would scale up to make the 70% make not such a large and disproportional number. STILL... The children are our future. Not just the future of our family lineage, but the future of our country. Do they not deserve some sort of priority over fancy sports arenas and Presidential golfing trips?! Personally I would want the smartest person possible managing the purse strings in my waning years! If they "trim" the educational budgets much more, around here at least, we're going to be back to the ole one-room school house era, as there won't be enough educators to properly educate the kids, or actual facilities to accommodate them. I guess this is fine, if we WANT to drive the US from it's barely held position (which some, including myself, could argue is no longer true!) at the top of the civilized world! While admittedly spreading the topic base beyond it's scope, The growing lack of a technologically competent work force, is pushing this country even further down. It also seems that the first thing to get "trimmed" from budgets is the technology education and resources. I stand by the knowledge, that lack of manufacturing in this country is spurring the continual growth and maintenance of high unemployment rates, but failure to expose our children to present and future technologies in the educational environment will only serve to progress this problem! Being privy to some of the technological implementations within the school systems and their lack of use, training for usage, and funding, only helps sharpen the focus on what I see as a problem. The days of readin, writin, and 'rethmatic on a chalkboard, no matter the size, should be a thing of the past. If you ask me, the days of cutting down acres of forests to make textbooks, is also antiquated. Personally, I like a "hard" copy of my study text, because that is what I am conditioned to want. My 11 year old, who has had some of the finest, both technologically and motivationally, teachers, in this country (my opinion! Like it or not!), would rather sit at her rapidly antiquating iMac and type up her homework in Pages or whip up a wicked Keynote presentation, than use a pencil and paper!
I reckon what I'm trying to get at with all this is, that cutting the funding and the subsequent job and technology loss is detrimental to not only the future of our children, but the future of this country!
My mind is diverse. My problems, both actual and perceived, are diverse. So here's a small sampling of what's been brewing in my head and, I reckon, a small hashing out of it: School budget cuts, unemployment, the economy, my kids, the Monster at the top of the stairs (which is my Mother-in-Law, for those that might be interested), advancing technology, the lack of technology, and money. I guess I'll address them in this order, so here goes.
With all the obvious governmental waste that is readily prevalent, why the fuck are we trimming educational budgets?! My wife, who happens to be an educator, passed on a statistic recently revealed to her... about 70% of the adults in the US do NOT have school aged children.70%!!! That leaves the other 30% to fight for a decent education for our children. The statistic seems almost surreal, but I have flushed it out and it's probably accurate. How's this, you might ask? Well, folks are living longer and the "Baby Boomers", being the largest generation (No, I didn't fact check this. This blog is my perspective and should in no way be considered fact, unless I do cite it as such!) in US history are still out there. Their children, a much smaller generational group, being around and in their 40's. This generation (X, Y, whatever the sociologists have branded us) including myself, who is knocking on mid-life crisis' door, are the also starting to age into their empty nests. My kids (overlapping topics... get past it!) are younger as I spent my "reproductive years", this would be one's early 20's which are traditionally the years in which one starts a family, serving my country and sewing my wild oats, so to speak. I was 28 when my first child was born. So to dial it back on course, My Grandmother, 86 and my Mom, 65 are still alive. That's two generations of adults without school aged children. My darling, younger sister, has no children, yet another adult, in just my family, that has no "real" stake in education. So of the adults on JUST my side of the family, 75% of them are without school aged children. So you see how this all would scale up to make the 70% make not such a large and disproportional number. STILL... The children are our future. Not just the future of our family lineage, but the future of our country. Do they not deserve some sort of priority over fancy sports arenas and Presidential golfing trips?! Personally I would want the smartest person possible managing the purse strings in my waning years! If they "trim" the educational budgets much more, around here at least, we're going to be back to the ole one-room school house era, as there won't be enough educators to properly educate the kids, or actual facilities to accommodate them. I guess this is fine, if we WANT to drive the US from it's barely held position (which some, including myself, could argue is no longer true!) at the top of the civilized world! While admittedly spreading the topic base beyond it's scope, The growing lack of a technologically competent work force, is pushing this country even further down. It also seems that the first thing to get "trimmed" from budgets is the technology education and resources. I stand by the knowledge, that lack of manufacturing in this country is spurring the continual growth and maintenance of high unemployment rates, but failure to expose our children to present and future technologies in the educational environment will only serve to progress this problem! Being privy to some of the technological implementations within the school systems and their lack of use, training for usage, and funding, only helps sharpen the focus on what I see as a problem. The days of readin, writin, and 'rethmatic on a chalkboard, no matter the size, should be a thing of the past. If you ask me, the days of cutting down acres of forests to make textbooks, is also antiquated. Personally, I like a "hard" copy of my study text, because that is what I am conditioned to want. My 11 year old, who has had some of the finest, both technologically and motivationally, teachers, in this country (my opinion! Like it or not!), would rather sit at her rapidly antiquating iMac and type up her homework in Pages or whip up a wicked Keynote presentation, than use a pencil and paper!
I reckon what I'm trying to get at with all this is, that cutting the funding and the subsequent job and technology loss is detrimental to not only the future of our children, but the future of this country!
21 January 2010
Just a thought...
Okay, so I haven't gotten to the commentary on the tech and auto shows... it'll be there eventually! Sick kids and the start of a new semester has kind of put a damper on my research. Well, that and WoW!
So, having a need to go pull money off a credit card and deposit it in the bank, I had this thought... You should get a VPN with your bank account! With all the security issues surrounding online banking transactions, this seems like a feasible solution. Albeit, an expensive solution, from the bank's stand point, but it would offer a much more secure connection to our information. Plus, I think that I should be able to transfer money from 2 non-adjoined accounts from the comfort of my couch, computer chair, toilet, or whatever your seating of choice is! A VPN would help facilitate this. Why is it I can use my card to order any number of things online, but cannot make a cash transfer from it to my account? Now, I'm talking about my State issued unemployment card, that I'm supposed to use to pay my bills, but none of the utility companies around here seem to want to honor, because it's a "pre-paid" card. Funny that it works (better at times)just as good as my bank issed debit card anywhere else. It just seems odd that the very folks I am supposed to be using the monies to pay, won't accept it! So I end up driving (uses gas ($$$)) to an ATM, withdrawing the money (which the card issuer charges money for!!), then driving (MORE GAS! And who's bright idea was it to ONLY have a drive up ATM AT the bank!!)around to go into the bank to deposit it, so I can use my bank issued card to pay the bills! Yes, I could do the bureaucratic song and dance to get it switched to direct deposit, but why, if it can be transferred from the card as a debit, can't I transfer it to my account... wait for it... ONLINE!
I guess I'm just ranting, because I don't want to have to go out in the rain and waste the gas to be able to do what this stupid card was designed for me to do! Although, I still think, while logistically it would be a nightmare at first, an individual VPN tied to my primary account would be a safer (for me anyway!) and more efficient means of conducting my online transactions. Yes, it would cut into those massive profit margins, initially, but I feel like the greater security that could be afforded to their customers would be worth the headache!
Just my little spin on a problem that I have that could be remedied using presently available technologies.
L8r T8rz
argosytech
So, having a need to go pull money off a credit card and deposit it in the bank, I had this thought... You should get a VPN with your bank account! With all the security issues surrounding online banking transactions, this seems like a feasible solution. Albeit, an expensive solution, from the bank's stand point, but it would offer a much more secure connection to our information. Plus, I think that I should be able to transfer money from 2 non-adjoined accounts from the comfort of my couch, computer chair, toilet, or whatever your seating of choice is! A VPN would help facilitate this. Why is it I can use my card to order any number of things online, but cannot make a cash transfer from it to my account? Now, I'm talking about my State issued unemployment card, that I'm supposed to use to pay my bills, but none of the utility companies around here seem to want to honor, because it's a "pre-paid" card. Funny that it works (better at times)just as good as my bank issed debit card anywhere else. It just seems odd that the very folks I am supposed to be using the monies to pay, won't accept it! So I end up driving (uses gas ($$$)) to an ATM, withdrawing the money (which the card issuer charges money for!!), then driving (MORE GAS! And who's bright idea was it to ONLY have a drive up ATM AT the bank!!)around to go into the bank to deposit it, so I can use my bank issued card to pay the bills! Yes, I could do the bureaucratic song and dance to get it switched to direct deposit, but why, if it can be transferred from the card as a debit, can't I transfer it to my account... wait for it... ONLINE!
I guess I'm just ranting, because I don't want to have to go out in the rain and waste the gas to be able to do what this stupid card was designed for me to do! Although, I still think, while logistically it would be a nightmare at first, an individual VPN tied to my primary account would be a safer (for me anyway!) and more efficient means of conducting my online transactions. Yes, it would cut into those massive profit margins, initially, but I feel like the greater security that could be afforded to their customers would be worth the headache!
Just my little spin on a problem that I have that could be remedied using presently available technologies.
L8r T8rz
argosytech
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