Merry Christmas Everyone.

Merry Christmas

And a happy new year.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen (which is suffering from a White Christmas)

At 8:00 pm, the greater part of Christmas Day is already gone here in India. In the tribal, eastern part of the country where I live, it's long been the tradition to hold communal feasts organised by the church on this day. In recent years, it's been more usual to have it on the 26th, but as tomorrow is Sunday, most localities will have the feast on Monday.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Well, just so long as you include the Pastafarianism's Holiday, Festivus, Kwanzaa, and the earlier Hanukkah (Chanukah.) Wouldn't want to miss any of them, you know.

I work on Christmas when clients have a schedule and I need the time to reduce schedule risks. Just like another day at the office. I'll be putting in 12 hours on Christmas for paid work, for example. So wishing me a merry christmas is like wishing me luck at work!! And I'll take it!

Thanks, Jon

I didn't include any of those, but it's fine with me if you do. I looked up Festivus, cause all I new of it was from Seinfeld. Seems as though it was cooked up about the same time as Kwanzaa around 1966.

"The original Festivus took place in February 1966, as a celebration of the elder O'Keefe's first date with his future wife." "Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 as the first specifically African American holiday"

Happy good luck at work day. Gee, 10 years from now wikipedia will have a reference. " Econzakahpastivus, a celebration wishing for luck in capitalistic pursuit created by Jon Kirwan in 2010.' MikeK

Do the non-Christians celebrate Christmas? When I was a kid, most of my Jewish friends had a tree and presents; their parents didn't want them to feel left out.

The Brat gave me two 22" monitors and a new video card for my PC up in the mountains. I suspect it's really because she wants to be able to lay out PC boards when she's up here.

John

Not that I know of, at least not to any significant degree. But India has 27 million Christians, out of which my people make up about 3 quarters of a million. All native inhabitants of my region as well as illegal immigrants from Myanmar (together ~90% of the state's population) are all Christians, at least in name. Immigrants from Bangladesh (also illegal) are not Christians though.

When I was a kid, most of

People from my area studying or working in the plains area enjoy the Hindu 'Puja' season as a time for relaxation that has nothing to do with religion.

don't pretty much every once celebrate something around now? It was easier to convert people to christianity if they could still have their big party at winter solstice ;) Here in Denmark it isn't even called Christmas, we call it 'jul' from the old vikings 'Yule'

-Lasse

Hey, John, I think you know I teach at the college in Truckee. Just for grins, where is your place "up in the mountains"? Nothing specific (too many kooks on this ng) but just generally. Distance and bearing from some relatively obscure location would work.

Thanks,

Jim

The Jewish members of my family do.

And we put out the candles for the granddaughter to light during Hanukkah.

Tradition is tradition, no matter the flavor.

My wish, for the New Year: May all the "flavors" learn to live and let live... in Peace and Harmony! ...Jim Thompson

Hey Merry Christmas to All here. And a Happy New Year!

And to Larkin, were going to be measuring our snow in feet also!

Cheers

It's been quite chilly over here since yesterday - on the downward part of the (roughly) weekly cycle. It's about 1:30 AM and the thermometer reads 19.4 C (67 F) inside my unheated house, and 12.6 C (.~55 F) on my front yard. I expect it will get back to about 71/60 F inside/outside at this hour in a few days. We had a nice summer, with afternoon temps seldom exceeding 30 C (86 F).

Tahoe Donner, Mougle Lane.

You should drop by for a beer sometime when we coincide. We'll be here all this coming week, and a bunch more here and there. We may have an electronics+skiing guy-seminar in March.

My next project, if I can scrape up the funds, will be to build a barn with a decent workshop, for waxing skis and designing electronics. Every ski lodge needs a 20 GHz scope or two. It's hard to concentrate in the city, what with meetings and phone calls and people barging into my office and shouting numbers out of context.

What do you teach up here? At Sierra College?

We're (me and Bratinella) are headed out to plunk around for a few hours at Tahoe Donner. The snow was perfect yesterday. It's only a 400 foot vertical, but it's fun when you just want to play for an hour or two. My senior/member/half-day ticket costs $10. They are building two new semi-serious terrain parks, which will make the place a lot more interesting. I almost killed a kid at Sugar Bowl last month, in a terrain park, but that's a whole nother story.

John

Yup, the whole world is having a White Christmas.

Me+Brat just shoveled our tiny deck. Took about an hour. The next storm is due tonight.

John

Yeah. Rodney King deserved a Nobel Prize the year he said that, and they instead gave it to Arafat, the terrorist, so he could buy and use more bombs.

The most retarded awarding of a peace prize I have ever seen in my life. And the bastard DID go back to committing terrorist acts again too.

Fuck "all the flavors" Keep the good, and let "all the flavors" cull out their bad.

If we cannot figure out that the bad in our individual "races" are our own fault, we will never cull them from our society. We need more prisons. We need more walls. Look again in another hundred years if you want to see if we are yet 'civil'.

Merry Christmas means "Happy Birthday, Jesus, and happiness to all that acknowledge that fact..."

The electronics department at Sierra did a complete makeover about five years ago. The traditional electronics program was graduating people who couldn't find jobs. We found a little college in Minnesota that was cranking out graduates that had five jobs for each graduate when they got out, but they had combined the electronics with the mechanical and got something they called "Mechatronics". The control of a mechanical process by means of electricity controlled by an electronic brain (microprocessor, microcontroller, etc.).

We probably should have called it "Robotics" but the Mechatronics name sounded a lot sexier. We have graduates in every bottling plant from Fresno to the Oregon border, a lot of gambling casinos (electronic slot machines, etc.), and, yes, your ski lifts are computer controlled mechanical machines. We actually have a summer program that we teach AT the ski resort specifically for the lift maintenance.

I taught Mech. at Truckee in Spring semester, Summer session, and I just finished Fall semester last week. I'll probably be up the hill working on cleaning up the lab sometime after the 4th (campus is closed and locked shut) for a day or so. I'll let you know when I know and I'll split a beer with your. I am down in Rocklin for all of Spring semester and I have no idea about Summer session right now. Probably not.

Thanks,

Jim

At least the northern half. Christmas in New Zealand has a nice touch to it tough. Girls in tight tops and short skirts selling Christmas trees.

Maybe that's her new office. ;-)