Labor Day Weekend Camping Trip

This past weekend, I took my son and a couple of his friends on a camping trip, partially as an early birthday present (his birthday is today, Sept. 2).  I had decided to go the Family Camp Weekend at the Anthony Wayne Scout Reservation so that we could take advantage of some of the activities that the boys enjoy there, but don't get to do much of when we go for Cub Scout Resident Camp.  For example, they open up the BB gun and archery ranges, which are both popular activities with the boys.  During Resident Camp, however, they usually only get to do each of those one time, which is kind of a let-down after the waiting around they have to do.  This weekend, though, we were able to pretty much do as much shooting as we wanted, within the three-hour window when the ranges were open!

We went up Friday night, got registered, and had camp set up by 7:30 or so.  We spent the rest of Friday night just hanging out at the campsite, enjoying a nice fire, and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.  The boys also enjoyed throwing a football around for a while.

Saturday, we ended up being pretty busy.  The waterfront opened up at 9:00 A.M., so after breakfast we got our swim trunks on and headed down.  We swam for a half-hour or so, and then got dry and grabbed a canoe, loaded our gear in, and set off across the lake.  By the time we got back, it was pretty much time to head back to our campsite to have some lunch.  After lunch we grabbed some bait from the trading post and hiked to the far end of the lake for some fishing.  We didn't catch anything big, but we had fun anyway.  We hiked back to camp around 1:45, changed back into dry clothes, and hiked over the shooting ranges so that we could be there when they opened at 2:00.  By 4:45, we were getting pretty hungry, so we went back to camp and started a fire for dinner.  After a dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs grilled over the fire, we enjoyed a relaxing evening of hanging out at the campsite, throwing the football around some more, and of course, s'mores and hot dogs.

Sunday morning, we ate breakfast, broke down camp, and headed home around 10:00.  All in all an awesome campout!  As much as I enjoy camping with our Scouting unit, it was nice to just have a small group, no outside schedule, and much less responsibility and structure.  We were able to just do our thing and have a blast.  It's pretty likely that I'll go back for the Family Camp Weekend over Memorial Day.

Here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone (next time I'll take a better camera).  My son (Will) is the one in the yellow shirt:

I'm really not a techno-elitist... Well, sorta.

I read an editorial recently by Ted Pin over at SQLServerCentral.com, and I have to agree with him 100%. His beef is with the term "IT guy". That is, even though many of us work in IT, we don't necessarily like to be referred to as "IT guys"... Why? Well, because of the common perception of what "IT guy" means. If you've ever seen the "Nick Burns" Saturday Night Live skits, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The general population equates "IT guy" with the rude helpdesk guy that they are forced to call when Excel crashes, or worse yet, with the Beetle-driving Geek Squad from Best Buy... To put it bluntly, I don't fall into this group and I don't want to be categorized as though I do.

What I have beef with is the broad categorization of any person who works "with computers" for a living all into the same group of "IT guys". And my beef breaks down into two parts.

First, there is the "guy" part of the title. By tacking on "guy" at the end, it cheapens the whole thing. To quote from Mr. Pin, "When we refer to other professionals, we definitely don't say "the plumber guy," or "the doctor guy," or "the lawyer guy." If you say those out loud, the inclusion of "guy" somehow changes the connotation, and not in a good way. (Try it.)".

Second, is the grouping of all technology professionals into this one group of "IT guys". I think many professional software developers (or data warehousing experts or enterprise architects, or many others) would agree that being grouped together with pre-entry-level helpdesk techs is irritating. I imagine that most neurosurgeons wouldn't want to be categorized together with CMAs (certified medical assistant) and be called "medical guys". I mean, let's be honest here...

Before I offend anyone else, let me clarify something. I am in no way saying that there is anything wrong working the helpdesk (or any other job, for that matter). I know where I came from, and I have held a wide range of IT jobs from helpdesk to network administrator to webmaster to developer to consultant. I have been an "IT guy", and there is nothing wrong with it. I'm really not trying to be elitist.

Having said that, I still don't want to be called an "IT guy", because I feel that my experience and skills separate me from that title. Does that make me an elitist? I guess it kinda does. Oh well.