…please press your passenger call button.

Wow, I’ve never heard that on a flight until today. I’m not a constant traveller, but I do end up on a plane at least a couple times a month. I’ve only heard a flight attendant ask for a doctor on a TV show or a movie.

So I was curious. But I couldn’t tell much of what, if anything, was going on. There wasn’t any commotion, but everyone on the plane certainlny had their interest piqued. Upon deplaning (deplaneing?), I noticed an older, heavy woman at the front of the plane seated and breathing heavily. She was calm, but seemed at least previously distressed. I assumed she was the subject of the request.

The only other interesting tidbit in this story is that someone sitting in my row was a Nurse Practioner and I heard him saying to his companion once we were off the plane that he was not allowed to use “the kit”. I assume this means the cardiac arrest kit, but I’m not all that up on medical equipment.

As parents, we want our kids to behave. What this really means is that we want them to behave LIKE US. We want them to do what we think is right and to act like we think they should act. This isn’t necessarily bad, particularly when the parents are well-educated, forward-thinking and caring people. But hell, how many people are there like that? 10?

Kids are told to listen to and to obey their parents. Many times this is drilled into them in such as way as to impede free thought and reasoning. The message becomes “just do it, don’t think about it”. But for kids to really listen to their parents and to believe in what they say, they need to TRUST their parents, to believe in their authority. When kids know that their parents are right about something, they’re more likely to believe them, and then will actually listen to whatever relevant parental suggestions are given.

With smaller children, this approach can be difficult as there’s a limit to how much reasoning power a child has, as well as a hard limit on the attention span given to an adult going on about irrelevant nonsense. So what do you do? How do you get them to trust AND reason?

For the discriminating geek, perhaps one with a wee bit of money, there is a desire to have a supremely stylish and functional working environment. A design that will most likely have a James Bond meets Star Trek: Next Generation edge to it. Something that maybe Richie Rich would build…

But how could we possibly realize such a dream? The answer is among us my friends, each and every one of us. For any problem is solved by simply dividing it into pieces. Imagine if all the wizards and electronic artisans of the world each conspired to solve a piece of this puzzle? One team tackles chairs, another media server containment and/or display, another team for the media server. We’d get breakthroughs in displays and control surfaces. New designs in desks, workspaces and storage. Lighting, sound, everything…

Now, the idea here is that every contribution to the project shares in the benefit of the project. The richest geeks must pledge to buy the first units. This funds the next level of the project, where the money is reinvested in manfacturing in order to lower the cost of the units. Now, the next richest geeks buy that round of “ulitmate offices”. Reinvest those moneys into manufacturing and lower the price again. Then, we can all have the incredible workspace we’ve dreamed of…Yay!

Well, I’m exhausted from installing this software, so it’s off to bed for me.