[Cialug] SysAdmin FYI

[Don Ellis]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Dave Hala <dave at 58ghz.net> wrote:

...

The difference between an old man and a young man, is that the old man
> has already done all the stupid things that the young man is about to
> do. He is powerless (because of the inability to effectively
> communicate with the kid)  to prevent the kid from making the same
> mistakes he did, so he just sits back and watches it unfold


Or, the old fart makes an effort to learn the language and participate with
the young folks. Most of the attendees at local user groups are 40+, but
I've found at least one group, the St Louis hacker space (Arch Reactor)
that seems to be much more weighted toward 30 somethings. I'm hoping they
bring in <30s as well.

[Digression: I have heard stories of people graduating from college now
complaining about how the incoming freshman had so much earlier intro to
computing and software stuff that the old farts graduating now are at a
disadvantage.]

I try to make acquaintance of younger people, much like how I behave when I
go into the local Mercado: I inflict my broken Spanish on them, often
apologizing that "Su Ingles es mejor de my Español, pero I need the
practice." Similarly when I have contact with German speakers (but much
more primitive on my part. When I learned that the man digging up my front
yard to repair the sewer system last year spoke Albanian, I brought out my
iPod and communicated with the translation software, allowing some pretty
good interchanges and gathering mutual social context. (I haven't tried the
Bosnian translation, since most of the 70,000 Bosnians here seem to speak
tolerable English, or have interpreters nearby.) Unfortunately, I don't
know how good the 133t translators are, and semantics comes more into play
(what kinds of things are appropriate to say in the context?).

All the same, I believe I am more respectful and able to connect with
younger people than some examples I remember from my own youth (although
many older people looked to me for guidance then as well).

--Don Ellis