Robert Pogson

I attended a Thanks Giving dinner yesterday on my wife’s side of the family. I roasted a stuffed turkey. At one point the young folks stood up and spoke about what they were thankful. It made me proud to see that the younger generation are pretty well grown. Some attended by video-conference from far away places: Chicago, Vancouver, Germany… There were only a handful of small children in attendance. I felt like my life is nearly complete and it is time for me to retire. The new generation are ready to run the world for a few years and the problems will be theirs.

There was good food and good fellowship. A few visitors included new immigrants to Canada. I talked to some young people just thinking about graduating high school and their plans for careers. It felt like teaching again. I even gave out Debian GNU/Linux URI to two different people. One has two older PCs and I mentioned using them as thin clients could give them a new lease on life as thin clients. The new immigrants are tight for cash but I told them that, thanks to the prevalence of that other OS and its bloat, many few-years-old PCs are available for free and the major cost could be a connection to the Internet if we used GNU/Linux to restore them. We can also build a desktop PC from parts for about $300 or buy a netbook or tablet for about $200. It feels good to share information.