Please accept with no obligation, either express or implied, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of a holiday on or near the date of the winter solstice, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious and/or secular persuasions of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, inclusive of the choice not to engage in the practice of any religious or secular traditions.

May you have a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted Western calendar year 2003, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose diverse contributions to society have helped make America great. (This statement made without implication that America is of relatively greater value than any other nation, country, kingdom, realm, emirate, sultanate, principality, or geopolitical state of any kind, whether or not officially recognized by any other nation, country, kingdom, realm, emirate, sultanate, principality, or geopolitical state, or that the United States of America is the only "America" in the western hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, gender, physical ability, religious faith, or choice of computer platform of the wishee.)

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others. This greeting is void where prohibited by law, subject to all Federal, state, and local taxes, and further is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

  7:19:47 PM   Comment 

Shelley Powers:  We are out there... i.e., sitting by the phone, waiting for it to ring?

I have a lot of respect for people who do what they can, based on what they know how to do, even if it is suboptimal or even occasionally outright wrong.  Clay had a Social Software Summit.  Jon Stevens organizes Java Meetups in the Bay Area.  Andy Oliver does something similar here in RTP.  I hosted the first public SOAPBuilders F2F.

As Shelley points out, this is beyond the means and abilities of many.  More importantly however, she demonstrates that a comment enabled weblog is vastly underrated agent for engineering social awareness... a precursor to social change.

  10:23:56 AM   Comment