RSSGrowing Old and Growing Up
May 23
The Philippine Linux User Group (PLUG) mailing list currently has a thread that (according to the archives.free.net.ph) is 44 replies strong. The thread started about a query on how to increase one’s technical portfolio (I assume for job interviews, but it is still too early to trust my memory) but, in typical internet forum style, morphed into opinions and lamentations that the PLUG lists are getting boring and losing the old hands.
Various comments were put forward but the reasons that stuck with me were that (1) the usability state of Linux has evolved that solutions to majority of technical issues are just a Google away, and (2) the old posters have moved on to the pressing need of their real life.
I don’t see myself much of a contributor but I have been a member of the list for more than five years and I am not posting as much as did. I don’t even police the lists anymore but I have always attributed that to the reduction of the number of PLUG mailing lists, the members sharing the policing responsibility, and the members actually knowing better than to post off-topic questions. The last two signifies that the PLUG mailing list members have grown up and the new members are savvy enough to respect proper list netiquette or they are afraid to post, whichever you want to believe in. 😀
People might not grow up proportionally to the rate they are growing old but they will grow up nonetheless even if they don’t realize it. The PLUG thread sparked an eureka moment, I am growing up. I just noticed that I now often sign my blog comments using my nickname instead of just “ramfree17”, and if left unchecked I am using proper capitalization on those comments which is a far cry from the “all low-caps” rule that I was imposing when I was younger 😉 . The downside if it can be called that is that I am losing some of my idealism in favor of pragmatism. I was always in favor of pragmatism since childhood but I guess right now the pragmatic part of me is consuming more of the idealistic share.
An email reply jokingly contributed that the “golden years” of PLUG might have already passed but it is time for the new blood to step up. Whenever I hear the term “golden years” I remember this snippet from Mary Schmich’s essay “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” (made popular as Baz Luhrman’s “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”):
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
ciao!
May 25, 2008 @ 13:02:20
Getting old? Yeah, I feel that, too.
I would love to see more interesting posts in PLUG — it was (hopefully, still is), after all, the hotpot of excellence (naks!) in the Pinoy tech scene. Unfortunately, with Google only a few keystrokes away, and much better topics elsewhere (like internal mailing lists, as Orly mentioned), I think PLUG members have to rethink the org’s reason for being.
May 26, 2008 @ 08:52:49
getting old lang? walang growing up? are we destined to be forever kids at heart and mind? /lol
michaelcole and i talked about something along that line when i took his offer at the token bar. my opinion is that getting an organization up and running would be great but i don’t have any qualms about PLUG becoming a club that does organization deeds sometimes.
that was how (i think) PLUG started: a group of users wanted to help each other out to learn about the new thing on the horizon called linux.
i am staying in the list because they give a pulse reading on what is happening in the local tech scene.
ciao!