My favourite present

My favourite Christmas present this year was from my youngest son.

He likes to make things (especially if it doesn’t cost anything). And also leaves things to the last minute. So on Christmas Eve afternoon he was running around, trying to find a blank CD at home. He didn’t say what for. I didn’t suspect anything.

I couldn’t find one, so he disappeared back into his room, and played with his laptop a bit more. Stayed up late.

On Christmas Day (after finally getting out of bed at 09:30!)  he showed me what he’d made.

A powerpoint presentation set to music, of lots of loving, kissing pictures. Mostly free pictures with watermarks that he’d downloaded from Google, they were soppy pictures like Minnie and Mickey mouse kissing.

At one point the music got out of sync, so he improvised on the spot, republished it without sound, and played the music direct from his iTunes account. Very resourceful.

But I couldn’t get over the fact that he had done for fun, what they had been paying me to do at work last week, synchronising sound (and voiceovers) to powerpoint presentations.

(Yes, his copy is legal. I bought him the student version of Office for his Mac, as thats what they use at school).

We should subcontract to him – its much better than waiting for the local papershop to give him the paper-run, after 2 years of  being on the waiting list and then seeing them advertise the next street  (Cumberland Newspapers – you are sooo disorganised!).

I went into his room yesterday (you have to be brave), and he was there on his laptop, with two other laptops next to him. “I fix things”  he said. Although the fan problems on the Lenovo were beyond him, and the battery problems on the Thinkpad. But he happily wiped them, to use them as backups.

Scott, you’ve got a great future ahead of you in IT.