Christmas - Season of Extremes

Christmas is a lot more than we sometimes give it credit for. Beyond the obviousness of gift-giving, Christmas is an amplifier of human emotions. Family becomes a reference that is only heightened.

As my son enjoyed his 11th Christmas this year, his joy of the thought of the day was as high as it was on the actual day itself. He was feeling a bit under the weather, the second year in a row. But he soldiered on, did some speed-unwrapping, and headed up to bed. We brought up a sound machine (ocean waves, rain, birds), some Sonic plush toys, and some love from Mom and Dad. And his face was alight. It's not just gifts, it's family, it's love, it's togetherness.

Well, until he's had enough of his parents, because it's time to play...like any other kid, off to cause trouble. The best of moments.

But there is another side that is equally as difficult, which is the loss of family close to Christmas. My wife received a horrible phone call that her sister's husband, Danny, had died of a heart attack. One week before Christmas. No matter how festive we may want to be, it's the worst of moments, heart-breaking. My thoughts about Danny and Diane this year are mostly silent, but constant.

Thoughts of mortality have really been surrounding me in the last months. Days before Thanksgiving, my wife had an MRI because she was losing the feeling in her arm. They ushered us over to Emergency -- subdural hematoma. She spent the night in Neural Intensive Care, and had surgery the next morning to relieve the blood that had compressed her brain. Very, very scary stuff. Amazingly, they discharged her the next day, home for Thansgiving dinner (which our neighbors cooked for us). Guess what we were thankful for? She is lucky to be alive. My son and I are lucky we still have her this Christmas.

The greatest gift at Christmas is family. Enjoy them while you can.

-- Cole Joplin

The Changing of the Guard on the Internet

The Old Guard
We have been living in an internet world dominated by a number of major players: Microsoft, Dell, Sun, and Oracle. These companies will continue to have influence for a while, especially on the business desktop. But when you take any young person and mention Microsoft, they are not cool anymore. They are the last generation's toys and power technology, the stock market tech darlings.

The next generation will soundly reject the Boomer Generation's technology choices. It's the right of every generation.

The New Guard
For some of the same financial reasons, the next generation of cool technologists are being established.However, they have familiar names. The new power group will likely be Google, Apple, Adobe, and Linux/Open Source. For the next gen, they are simply cool.

Google is arguably the best company to work for on the planet. Their balance sheet is amazing, and they are the darling of Wall Street. Does anyone seriously think that MSN search is going to bury Google? Not a chance, no way, not even close. Google won the mind share war long ago. That's why Steve Balmer throws chairs when he hears the name Google. No amount of money or market pressure can defeat them. Google can't be harmed by Microsoft, and everyone knows it. Google is cool, and have succeeded in not becoming Microsoft-like.

Apple has those great commercials, those iPods, and now iPhones. The dork with the failing PC, the group of sick dorks after Vista, it's all very funny, and 100% true. We all know it. The fact that the Microsoft zealot-dork is hilarious, and resonates, explains my point. The cool/gen gap displayed in full view.

Steve Jobs owns cool right now. The design style that is associated with Web 2.0 is decidedly Apple. In fact, my next computer will be a Mac, because my development is now entirely on the web. Every tool I need is available on the Mac. And if I need a Windows app, I'll use Parallels, now that the new Macs have Intel architecture.

Adobe had me worried when they bought Macromedia, making them practically a creative tools monopoly overnight. But instead of bleeding their customers, stopping true innovation, and locking everyone in, a la Microsoft, they have done the opposite. They have innovated like mad, and embraced the Linux community. No kidding. Look at Adobe Labs and the CS3 product line, actions speak louder than words, and they are on a serious tear. They are also massively cool.

Linux and Open Source really got traction after the .Com bust, because they are all about cost, namely FREE. What's to argue? The Old Guard, which says comments like the monumentally stupid, "We need to get away from this open source crap." If Google can run on Linux and MySQL, it's not crap, is it? I don't think so. Google, Yahoo!, and a majority of the web are using Linux web servers, and growing fast. LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) is here to stay. The quality is better from LAMP than it is from any cooked up .Net solution. And Java hasn't exactly changed the world like it promised.

When the next financial bubble bursts, which could be any day now, Linux will grow even bigger.Ubuntu is even getting a serious look from Dell and HP (who's gums are seriously bleeding from the Vista disaster, reverting back to XP, over Microsoft objections). The younger gen is now even playing with Linux on their desktops.

And they have iPods. And they podcast.

And they are watching YouTube (using Adobe's Flash Player).

And they Blog, Flickr, and use a dozen more weird web technology names.

And they launch their Firefox browser and search on Google.

Personally, I think this is good news. We need a new guard, with fresh ideas about making life better for people. The things the old guard used to do before they got a huge stack of money and started concentrating on lawsuits, market share, and playing hardball business. And ignoring the average person. Especially ignoring the average young person.

-- Cole Joplin

Murder and Suicide in the Disabled Child's World

Chris Benoit, who killed his wife and son and committed suicide, a sad story. Especially since Wrestling Entertainment's assertion that the boy had a form of mental retardation called Fragile X syndrome. While the rest of the TV pundits were railing on about wrestling and steroid use, my wife and I had a very different reaction as to how this could happen. Namely, as parents of a disabled child, we get it. And the photo I chose to add here, is a look I understand deeply.

It's not entirely unknown that some parents with children suffering from Fragile X, will give their children steroids (HGH) to overcome some of the physical traits of the disease, like shortness. Until they check the boy's DNA, and the wrestler's blood, we just don't know. But if the blood is negative, and Fragile X is positive, it explains a lot of things, and opens a rational, less hysterical possibility.

Parents are under stress by the mere fact that they have a disabled child. I don't think the world of "normal" parents has the faintest clue as to the level of stress this can cause. The things that parents take for granted, like babysitting, finances, school, insurance, taking your child in public, watching them interact with other children, are very different for us. If you think your insurance is a problem, just guess how bad it is for autism or Fragile X. It's instant denial of literally everything.

When you stack all these things on top of each other, our lives are extremely hard! Words can't express the pressure. Or the pain. It takes a serious emotional toll. It takes a serious financial toll. The divorce rate for parents with autistic children is 85%! I'm not shocked. I understand it. It takes considerable effort to stay together. Everyone has a breaking point.

So consider this possible scenario, I admit it's speculation. If the Benoit parents were arguing over the boy, like maybe one in denial, or treatment not being an "instant" success, whatever, things may have gotten out of control. Dad unintentionally kills the mom from too much rage. Sometimes people snap (which my wife and I have no problem imagining). Steroid use would only make this more likely.

Now he's screwed. He's going to jail, maybe for life. What's he going to do? His son, who will take care of him? The state? Not a chance! Ever been to a mental institution? Seen a movie about about one? Everyone doesn't have a perfect extended family. Maybe they don't get it either. Or maybe you don't want them to go through what you're going through. What will his son go through when he realizes that his mother is dead, and his father is going away forever? What will the rest of his boy's life be like? Doesn't look happy, does it? Benoit took all night to think about it. My wife and I don't even want to think of what will happen to our son when we are gone. Nothing is more terrifying to us, honestly. So he makes a choice, that unfortunately is very common in autism, murder/suicide.

I know it's hard to understand, and I'm not condoning it in any way. I'm just saying I can see the path that leads there. The number one cause of death for autistic children is murder/suicide by a parent. It's a fact. I'm not remotely happy about the statistics regarding parents, autism and disabled children in general. They're all bad stats. I'm simply trying to explain how it can happen. It's completely plausible that this is a horrible tragedy, that has as much to do with disabilities as well as steroids. The impact and weight is easily explained by the very nature of the challenges that parents of disabled children face.

When I see the TV pundits banging the steroids drum, it makes sense to them. Drugs are such an easy out, a short path to explain it. It's easy for everyone in their living rooms to understand. Hey, "the doctor did it" or "that's the problem with pro wrestling." I can't say for certain. But here's what I see and know.

What the general public doesn't understand, or appreciate, is the world of the parents of a disabled child. How the world treats the children and the parents, every day, makes the path to tragedy a short one. There's a real possibility that the untold stories of these families have finally broken through to the national news. Only they still don't see it. And that's another tragedy.

-- Cole Joplin

A Beginning....

So what is Cole's Huginn? In Norse myth, Huginn ("thought") and Muninn ("memory") are the two raven of the chief god Odin. Each morning Odin sends forth these raven and they fly over the earth. At night they return and sit on his shoulders to tell him what they heard and saw.

Cole's Huginn is a place where I'll place the thoughts of what I've heard and seen. I will touch on a balance of subjects from computer programming, web publishing, creative arts, and autism.

-- Cole Joplin