A year ago today, I quit my job of over 6 years. In the 12 months following, so many things both positive and negative occurred that I can't honestly decide if it was a good year or a bad one. The only certainty is that it will forever influence my life. When I think about any of the situations I faced last year, I realize that either I was ready or not.

If a child got $5 they might be excited to buy them self a candy bar. Or a teenager with $50 would get the latest XBox game? Maybe a college kid getting $500 would pay for their spring break to Mexico? I could go on, but in every case you see someone who is restricted by some cost which, when overcome, would make them happier or provide some momentary gratification.

From reading Fear of philanthropy, the following question is presented in regards to donations and charity: "how much is enough?". A good read with some interesting points. My adopted philosophy is quite simple: Give out of need, not out of abundance. What I share comes out of my pocket, so I will decide how much based on the gravity of the need. Sticking to some percentage seems far less ... considerate.

In certain scenarios I am a little skeptical of Linux and open source applications as worthwhile competitors for closed source or proprieraty alternatives. This is not to say I do not think that there is any lack in potential. In my opinion I do disagree with some choices made by open source projects or linux distributions. In any event the point of this post is not to argue any of that.

I joined the Fedora users/group mailing list ([fedora-list](http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list)) in April 2005, after being on Usenet since the late 1990’s. I somehow always assumed mailing lists were of much higher quality than the “anything goes” attitude of Usenet. Since then, I really haven’t asked too many questions. For the most part I try to only answer questions that others miss or when I think I have a better response than what is posted or to correct obvious technical errors.