On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 17:29:03 +0000 (UTC), "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
wrote:
Jeff Liebermann wrote:
to get one present per day, I decided I could live without Christmas.
Unfortunately, the added presents were fairly tacky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah_gelt
My son asked me, as a joke, if I could buy him a 5 trillion dollar Zibabwean
bill from eBay. I thought he was serious, so in the grand tradition of
Chanuka Gelt, he got 5 trillion dollars yesterday. :-)
It's made quite a splash in the humor section of redit.
A what? Digging....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/270863837896
http://www.ebay.com/itm/250943869930
Plenty of others. Great idea for Hannukah. I wish you had mentioned
it a few weeks ago so I could have used it on the spoiled brats.
My father used Hannukah gelt to introduce me to how money works. I
think I was 6 years old at the time. He gave me an old silver dollar,
and informed me that it was worth more than a dollar. Huh? This was
new to me. Explanations were useless, but I kept the dollar well
hidden, looking occasionally to see if it would grow. By about 10
years old, I was the only kid in skool with a (co-signed) bank
account. I was buying stock when I was 16. The lessons were
invaluable.
There are lots of lessons that should be applied or demonstrated
early. That includes how to repair things. My father was always
fixing things around the house or delivered by friends. Repaired
presents were common. I just assumed that he enjoyed fixing things.
Later, I found out that he only repaired things because we were
sufficiently broke to not be able to afford new items. However, it
was too late. By then, I was fixing (well, attempting to fix) things
and was hooked.
These days, repair work has changed. In the bad old days, it was
assumed that most items worth repairing were of decent quality. These
days, I can't just repair things. I have to re-engineer the design
and try to improve on what I consider to be crappy design and shoddy
construction. In the past, products were usually designed to be
maintained. These days, they're designed to be non-repairable.
Actually, it's not repair as much as it is remanufacture. In some
product areas, it's impossible to buy quality at any price.
Ok. That's my holiday rant.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558