Aint Technology Grand!

Here I sit in my garage on a rainy day, waiting for buyers to search through our treasures at a garage sale. While I am out here with my laptop I can do some business, send some e-mails, post on a few forums, prepare for an upcoming leadership training course in July, study some readings for my lector duties next week, and all from the comfort of a camp chair in a garage in the rain while I wait for the sun and the customers to come out.

Even Baden-Powell couldn't do that with a new set of semaphore flags.

Not everything new is bad.

Technology ...At the speed of light...at its best =-)

(Ironically as I post a reply from my Treo as I am waiting for something while out shopping).

BB

P.S. ...and then use my Garmin GPS to find my way back home. (Not really, but I do use that also often as I travel). LOL

Yeah, I have to agree with Bob White. But I am still pleasantly surprised when it works the way it's supposed to. And...I still just LOVE maps. Can't get enough. Perhaps that's the constructive purpose in death, to clear the path of people like me so that the nerds can take over.

Edited part: Not that any of you guys ARE nerds...and, ahem, not that there's anything WRONG about being a nerd..sheesh I should just slink away while I still can....(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Technology like most things is a wonderful servant. Best of luck with your garage sale but nowadays I log into E-bay and buy things from all over delivered to my door. If you have stuff left over I commend it to your attention. Most wonderful servants make harsh taskmasters though. My kids take online classes and are relentlessly reminded of due assignments. I pay most of my bills online but they do tend to be a little relentless with the reminders. Everything is a trade off. One must always remember who ones customer is and why they come to us. Our local scout camp has spent a lot of money building a brand new scoutmasters lounge with Wi-Fi access, coffee pots, and A/C while most of the local troops refuse to go because the camp director has trashed the program and food service. Seems to me someone has lost site of who their customers are.

Technology can be Great. Technology can be bad. I have just spent the last 4 hours trying to figure out a "basic" Home Theater system. We finally figured it out, but it sure took forever. Told my dad his "$49.99 speaker system" went up in price quite a bit tonight. He bought the system this afternoon while I was at work. I come home and we deal with it and rip the cable connection right out of the back of the TV. So we went and bought a brand new LCD TV Then, with basic cable, the quality was so bad he called and has added HD programming

Also, place I work we rely heavily on the internet. We worked two days without internet and we got very little paperwork stuff done. We still worked with patients, but doing the paperwork was nearly impossible. I spent close to an hour on the phone with ISP before I got that figured out.

Technology is great when it works and VERY bad when it doesn't

Not trying to hijack the thread.

But....

While maybe it's not true?

I have been told that one of the first signs of going nuts is talking to yourself.

While I of course know that I'm very slightly nuts.

More and more I find myself talking to myself.

Her Who Must Be Obeyed, knew I was a nutter when I started singing little songs to the dogs.

She gets upset when I argue with the GPS thingy in the car. (I hate that voice -Even though I have it set on English!!)

I get some very strange looks when people come in my office and I'm having a chat with my computer. At times using language that is very un-scout like!!

I don't have very big hands but I always seem to push that silly wheel on my i-pod past where I want. So I have a little chat with that.

Seems to me that thanks to technology, I'm spending more and more time talking to myself.

Eamonn.

Great point hops! We rely heavily on technology! Maybe too heavily.

Out here in the radical West, we still have lots of issues with GPS devices, cell phones, and so on; even though it seems some of these things are permanent attachments to certain individuals. There are a lot of mountains and canyons out here, some of which are really deep or high. Lots of places where signals simply disappear. At our scout camp, people with cell phones have to hike out into a wide open area, or clear up on a ridge to get service sometimes. GPS is a wonderful thing, but if the batteries go bad, or you are in a canyon, they will be pretty much useless. So, you better have a map and compass to back you up. Also, a decent Silva compass with direction of travel base plate costs around $10-$15; and one of the fancier ones is less than $30 generally. A dependable GPS in much more expensive, and still requires periodic battery replacement. Also, I have read (though do not know if it is factual) that on occasion GPS signals conflict or get misdirected somehow. More fodder.

If you get one of the better ones, GPS units are fairly accurate today (as you say, if you can get the signals). In the past one of the problems was something called 'multipath' where one or more signals was received from both satellite as well as from a reflection off some nearby structure, thus causing very large errors. We mapped a large reservoir (West Point Lake, for those of us in GA) using a state-of-the-art survey unit and without base station correction it was over a kilometer off. But those were the old days when selective availability was still being applied as well, the best GPS units took two people to carry them around, and it took forever to acquire the satellite signals.

But I agree...give me a map and compass and I will never have to worry about good batteries.

"Our local scout camp has spent a lot of money building a brand new scoutmasters lounge with Wi-Fi access, coffee pots, and A/C"

would not mind seeing this at our camp.

we have most of it but at different locations. we have a good program also an executive board that will listen and act on complaints. also tread mills and weight station. we been told about running in camp and to get some one to sign you out at 6:00am to run off camp won't happen.

Reference: "Our local scout camp has spent a lot of money building a brand new scoutmasters lounge with Wi-Fi access, coffee pots, and A/C"

If this is true, then it really reflects a sad situation about a Scout summer camp.

As someone that has worked in the technology field (IBM, Deloitte, Intel) for the past 34 years, I really enjoy going to Scout Camp to get away from technology for a week.

Personally, I think that this "Scoutmaster Lounge" sends the wrong message to Scouts at summer camp. If Scoutmasters have an a lounge with A/C and wifi, why should the Scouts not have the same facilities?

At summer camp, I would not want to have Scouts hanging out in a Scout lounge playing video games.

My council summer camp, Camp Sequassen, is reamarkably similar in facilities to the Scout summer camp that I attended in the 1960s, Camp Noquochoke.

I think that the lack of "modern creature comforts" is a good experience for both leaders and Scouts.

How do others feel?

Most coins have a flip side and this one is no different. While at first glance this might seem a luxury for many adults this is a feature that makes it possible for them to go to camp, which means it makes it possible for more scouts to go camp.

As an example I will be volunteering 10 days away from home to go train scoutleaders this summer. Service that I would have had to turn down if it were not for the fact that the camp has recently added WiFi access so tat I can keep in touch with my business responsibilities while I was at camp.

By making it possible for adults to have vital communication resources available it makes goping to camp for the scouts easir to say yes to.

You can have all the scouts you need wanting to go to camp, but if you don't have features and services that get the adults to conme to your camp then the scouts will not get there.

Why do you think that Disney has stuff for adults to do and not just for the kids? Because they understand that it is the adults who bring the kids and so you need to market to both groups in order to maximize attendance.

I enjoy roughing it to but life just does not allow me the kind of tine to be out of touch with others as it used to. I sometmes have to take work with me and when to opportunity is right I get my work done. IOf I could not do that then I would not be able to give as much time to the program as I do, I am sure there are a lot of other adults in the same situation.

You can have these features for the adults without adversely effecting the program for the scouts.

If ya can't go to camp without your laptop then maybe you shouldn't go to camp!

I agree to a point with BobWhite about availability of technology at summer camp for adult leaders. Not as a lure for adults so that they can have all the comforts of home, but for those troops that find themselves with adults willing to spend a week at camp but cannot be completely out of touch with their jobs.

Personally, I look forward to that week away from the world. A week to get away from ringing cell phones, clacking keyboards, and the glare of computer screens and watch the glare of the sun coming up. I look forward to a week of listening to bird songs in the morning and sounds of boys having a good time during the day, the lapping of water in the creeks, streams and lakes, and the ever-present tree frogs at night.

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Of course, if the leaders use their laptops and time in the lounge to post messages on Scouter....

Like most of you, I think, I usually use vacation time to go to summer camp. I really enjoy turning off the phone and knowing that anyone off-site has to go thru camp bureaucracy to reach me.

However, I also accrue unreasonable amounts of compensation time(during which it is understood that we will remain "somewhat available") during different years - occasionally enough that if I were to use the comp time instead of vacation time, I would need to be able to "check in" and see that things weren't falling apart at the office.

So I can see times when I wouldn't want it (the Wi-fi) and other times when it might help me to be available to be there.