Holiday Ruminations

Here it is, yet another holiday season approaches and we either find ourselves silently complaining of the hassles and irritations that are associated with the commercialization of our culture, or gleefully going about basking in the holiday spirit. I find myself somewhere in between.

I find myself yearning for the magical days of childhood, when life was less complicated, and I could appreciate christmas for what it should be, not what it is. It seems that in our american capitalistic society worth is deemed by how much one is willing to spend on a present. The guy really loves the girl when he buys her a new diamond. Toy companies want people to think that the only way one may truly love their children is to give them everything and anything they ask for. I remember cold winter mornings of my adolescence talking with my dad, and hearing him express his sorrow for "not giving us a good christmas." I always reassured him that, in fact, he did give us a good christmas, and that we didn't need material goods to be happy. I think that this remark made him happy, but I think that he attributed most of it to the motivations of a good son to make his father happy.

What he didn't know is that I truly felt that way. Of course, every teenager would have loved to have gotten everything on his wishlist for Christmas, and I am no exception, but I was old enough to recognize the things that I did have. For every present I did not receive, I had good conversations with my parents, for every empty space under the christmas tree, I had a laugh with my brothers.

Christmas time has many levels of irony. Christmas is purported to be to celebrate the birth of the son of God, but in fact, was probably started as a continuation of pagan celebrations commemorating the winter solstice. We celebrate the birth of the Only Begotten of the Father, by (at least in America) purchasing extravagant gifts or engaging in affectatious display. How interesting that a what is supposed to be a spiritual holiday evolved from a heathen astronimical celebration, and has evolved into a spastic orgy of consumption.

It is my hope that this Christmas season that we can transend all the irony, that we can motivate ourselves to celebrate Christmas for, not what it is, but for what it is supposed to be. I hope that all of us can take time to reflect on the birth of our Savior, and the blessings of freinds and family. For me that is what Christmas time is all about.

Free Ipods.com and Why I joined

The other day I was sitting around watching TV when I see this news story regarding a website that is giving out absolutely free ipods. I thought to myself that this must be a crock. Why and how would any one be willing to invest so much money to give people something for absolutely free. I mean come on. I can understand giving people a free teeshirt here and there. T-shirts are cheap, and if you print a logo on them you get free mobile advertising on someone's chest. With some guys I know, you find the right person (generally anyone of the opposite sex) and you have a very captive advertising audience. But why ipods? What is the catch?
Here is my analysis:

I know that Newton thought that the laws of inertia and gravity governed the movement of objects, but baby , it's money that makes the world go round. No company is going to be giving out expensive electric gadgets unless they can turn a (probably hefty) profit doing so. This website is almost pyramidal in nature. You log on and create an account. In order for you to earn your free ipod you must complete one of a list of available on line offers. When I did it they had every thing from signing up for a credit card, to BMG music service, to some weird lookin herbal supplement website. Once you sign up and complete one of the "offers" you have to get 5 other people to sign up for an offer as well. Once you have gotten five people to sign up, and once all of them have completed their offers, you get a free ipod.

easy eh???
It still doesn't make a lot of sense how a company can afford to give out a free ipod to everyone that signs up. Ahh but grasshopper, the company does not have to give a free ipod to everyone that signs up, only to those people that complete the offers. It is relatively safe to assume that not every one will have enough friends that will be kind enough to sign up and complete an offer for them, no matter how easy. For all those people that don't get five referrals the company experiences 100% profit for every offer completed. How do they get profit for an offer completed with a company not even related you ask? Well think about it. Major corporations spend millions of dollars a year in an effort to get new customers. Most of the time they spend money on TV, and other media advertising, and the chance of getting even a small percentage of total viewership to join up as a customer is pretty slim. So in essence when free ipods.com gets you to sign up as a customer on these various websites they are providing these companies with a very efficient form of advertising, one that basically guarantees a new customer. -at least for a while- these companies are more than willing to pay freeipoods.com a decent fee for this service.

The result of all this ? The opportunity for us to convince our friends to help us out, so we too can carry our entire music library in the palm of our hand.
Speaking of helping out friends. Help a guy out.
sign up under my link
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=12325618

Number 2 Whoo Hoooo!!!! Purpose of blog

Here it is the second post in as many days. Tthis must be some sort of record. I am trying to figure out what are my general intentions for this blog. I could use it to keep in touch with family and friends, but I don't think that I have that many people in my life that I don't talk to on a regular enough basis that they would find this interesting. I think that this forum may be more adequately used as sort of an impromptu journal. I don't know that I will be writing my deepest inner feelings and thoughst here, because the idea of posting those things in the internet kind of freaks me out, but then again even when I was writing in a journal on a regular basis I wasn't really every writing really personal material.
I guess I just have a hard time being completely candid in any forum even when I belive that the only likely person to read my writing is myself. It would be just my luck to have some great grandchild of mine think his grandfather is some sort of nut job, because he/I wrote crazy musings of his head in some sort of journal. I personally think that it takes a better man than I to be complely candid about ones life in any forum except for ones head. For this purpose dear reader, you will find no intensely personal items here. Rantings, yes. the occasional stupid opinions? definitely, but no thoughts that don't serve some good in being expressed.

This is a test, only a test

Hello All,

Here it is My first attempt to making my presence felt in that great ocean of people that is the World Wide Web.

I am still a little bit wary of posting things on this web site, what it will look like, and what I will use it for.

Never one to pass up something neat, I will probably play with this until I get relatively proficient and then lose interest.

This happens with most every thing that I do. I will play a computer game until I get just good enough to hold my own, and then the game loses all value to me.

I suppose that you can consider me a jack of all trades master of none. Heck, I even took up crocheting just so I could say that I knew how. I have a quarter of an afghan made that I doubt that I will ever finish.

Needless to say, only time will tell whether blogging will turn out to be a long-term hobby or merely a fleeting passion