Parenting

I was going to try to keep my posts related to techie things but I am compelled to blog about an article I read in the newspaper today. The text can be found here if you are interested in reading it. The basic story behind the article is that a mother made her 14 year old daughter stand on a busy street corner (the mother was present the entire time) holding a sign that read:

I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me
for my future. Will work for food.

I say BRAVO! However, a psychologist was quoted as saying that this is psychological abuse and can damage the child. Is that same psychologist going to be there to support the parents when they have to deal with the pain of bailing the child out of jail when skipping school escalates to something more serious? How about the trauma on the parents when they ask the adult child to move out of the house in hopes if teaching them to live on their own when they know they will just probably live on the street?

It is obvious that this mother cares! She cares more about her daughter than herself. If you think about it, the mother was holding the invisible sign that said, "Look at me, my daughter is a screw up!" It would not be easy for a parent to go out in public and do what she did. When there is obvious caring and love like this, I don't think you can call it abuse in any way, shape or form.

I just hope that articles like this one don’t discourage other parents from doing what they feel is best when it comes to teaching their children. I think that Ms. Henderson did the right thing for her child and I would stand behind her. I would really love to sit down with the children of the people who think she is so out of line. Hmm, I wonder if they even have children? <s>

AtoutFox

Welcome to the inaugural blog entry for F1 Technologies. Mike and I hope to use this as a way to communicate with the community. I just hope that we can find interesting things to post about each week. :-)

For my first post I would like to talk about the AtoutFox conference. Mike and I both had the pleasure of speaking at this conference November 3-5, 2005. This year the conference was held in Lyon, France. It is held around the annual meeting of the AtoutFox group. This group is a large user group whose members are spread across much of France.

Mike and I arrived in Lyon in the morning on November 2, 2005. As we were exiting the plane, we noticed a backpack with the MVP logo on it. The gentleman did not look familiar to me, but based on the speaker list I guessed that it might be Anders Altberg. While waiting for our luggage I got a closer look and saw that it was indeed Anders. I had conversed with Anders over the years but never met him face to face. What a great surprise meeting we had. We shared a cab with Anders and his wife to the hotel. He used to teach French so his language skills were much better than mine.

The conference started with a single track on Thursday (11/3/2005). I received a surprise phone call in the morning from Anders. He was scheduled to present a session on What's New in VFP 9 with Louis de Lacroix and they wanted me to participate too. Of course I could not say no. So I met with Anders and Louis and picked some topics. Then I was off to throw together some demos. The session went well even though I felt unprepared. Luckily, Steve Black translated for me so more people were able to understand what I was saying.

Mike and I had planned to head out and see the sights after my session since the rest of the sessions were in French. As it turned out, I understood enough to keep my attention and we hung out in the session room. The last session of the day was with a Microsoft France Community representative. He was grilled pretty hard but held his composure well.

After the last session ended, at 7:30p, we had a short break and then headed out for dinner in Lyon. It was a wonderful time and we were able to converse some with the attendees. English is not spoken as much at this conference as it is at some of the other international conferences but we all managed to communicate.

On Friday, there were three session rooms going at one time. I presented a session on n-tier application development that seemed to be pretty well received. I was asked several good questions which is a fine indicator that people were paying attention. :-) Mike and I were going to head into town after the session but the weather was terrible. It was raining cats and dogs so we decided to stay at the hotel.

Mike gave a Visual FoxExpress demo on the final day. That session was extremely well received. We are proud to say that we now have several new VFE users in France. Welcome to FoxExpress!

After Mike's session we left for Paris. We took the TGV train and traveled from Lyon to Paris at close to 300 MPH. We made it in just less than 2 hours. What a ride!

We had a nice day and 1/2 in Paris doing all of the touristy stuff. We went to mass at Notre Dame Cathedral which was really neat. I could only understand a little of what was said, but it was in the same format as home so we could follow along. The bulletin had the readings in French, English, Italian and German so we were able to read them. And to answer everyone's question... "No, we did not see the riots."

After we returned home and got back in the swing of things, I received an email from François, the conference organizer. He informed me that I had been elected as an honorary member of the AtoutFox board for 2005-2006. What an honor. I am still waiting to find out what my duties are.

All in all this was a great trip. The French VFP users are a wonderful group and we would like to thank them for their hospitality and patience with us. I speak just a little bit of French and Mike speaks almost none at all. It was totally awesome seeing the passion that this group has for VFP. I sure hope that we will be invited back next year. I promise that I will practice my French between now and then.