I just want you to have them with you in your backpack

So begins another day . . . . .Wife and Son have already left for school. Daughter and I are eating breakfast and reading the paper. I check the weather.“It’s going to be snowing today, and in the low 30s. Please make sure you have your gloves with you.”“I don’t like wearing gloves.”“I know. I just want you to have them with you in your backpack.”“OK.”This is my version of compromise. I have no interest in battling with her over clothing. It’s a battle that upsets us both, and nobody wins. Even if I prevail and make her wear something, reliable sources indicate that once she’s out of sight, she sheds the offending item and chalks one up for her side anyway. On cold days I know she isn’t going to get frostbite walking a block to the bus stop, so I feel that as long as she has the gloves with her, we can both be happy. She’s not wearing gloves she doesn’t want to wear, but she has options. If she gets cold, putting the gloves on is her choice, not my decree.But she has become a virtuoso of passive resistance, so the following conversation ensues not 10 minutes later, as she is heading for the door. It may be fresh to you, but to me it is depressingly, exhaustingly familiar.“Do you have your gloves?”“No.”“Why not?”“I don’t like to wear gloves.”“I know, I just want to make sure you have them with you.”“Why?”“Never mind why, I just want you to have them. Where are they?”“In my backpack.”Please imagine the sounds in my head right then. One of them is a loud, agonized scream with a slightly syncopated oscillation because I am mentally hopping up and down in frustration. Another is a confused babble made up of several shrill versions of my voice saying things like “OhmyGOD why didn’t you just say that to begin with!!!” and “That’s what I was ASKING!!!!” and “Why does it have to be like this?! It didn’t USED to be like this!!!” and the old standby “What have you done with that beautiful sweet child who was my DAUGHTER??!!”I’m a pro, though. I’ve been doing this for years, so none of that stuff escapes from inside my head. My face assumes a Buddha-like serenity as I say:“OK, that’s all I was asking. Have a good day at school.”I doubt you guessed that Daughter is in sixth grade, but it would have helped if you did because that fact constitutes the segue into today’s next subject, to wit:My next-door neighbor, who teaches sixth grade science, won a Golden Apple award yesterday. This award is a Very Big Deal in our part of the country. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Golden Apple is a general excellence award given to 10 teachers each year in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Recipients get a paid fall sabbatical at Northwestern University, $2500, and a new Apple computer, along with all the local publicity and ancillary accolades they can handle.I love this award. I think it’s great for the teacher who gets it, great for the school in which he or she teaches, and great for the profession as a whole. It creates news stories in which kids and adults reflect on how they have been inspired by their best teachers, and what a powerful relationship it was. It also gives the lie to the lovely folks who always have a snide comment handy about those whiny teachers with their limited hours, summers off, and excessive pay.When I see my neighbor go off to school, I think of spending seven periods every day facing 25 kids who have learned how to create conversations like the one I had with my daughter. Nice kids, kids he has a good relationship with, but who have all become miniature preadolescent jailhouse lawyers. It can happen at any age, but I think it peaks in the sixth and seventh grades. At that age, they’re still closely engaged with their parents and teachers, still focused on what we say and do, but they are savvy and skeptical enough to want to question it, dispute it, or subvert it. Not all the time—it only seems that way. Later, as they get into eighth and ninth grades, they’re already starting to look past us for the first indistinct glimpses of their independent futures. Their attitude toward our once-Olympian pronouncements tends to become more like “yeah, OK . . . whatever.”For now, we’ve got sixth grade going on, and it’s rough on parents and teachers alike. At least we parents get to stick with our kids as they grow up, and if we’re at all lucky, see what kind of people they become. My next-door neighbor, though, doesn’t get to complete the circle. His students spend nine months with him while he does what he can, then they’re off living the next year of their lives somewhere else, and then the year after that, and he just has to guess what becomes of them.But not always. Sometimes they come back, and my neighbor has just experienced a stunning example of what that can be like: it was one of his former students, a kid he taught 11 years ago who is now a teacher herself, who nominated him for the award and got the snowball rolling.After learning he was a finalist a few weeks ago, my neighbor tried to forget about the whole thing so it wouldn’t drive him crazy waiting for the winners to be named. The Golden Apple folks originally told him that it would all happen the first week of March. As the week drew to a close, he began adjusting to the certainty that he was an also-ran. We spoke with him Saturday night around 10:00 (when, for the benefit of the teacher-doubters out there, he was grading papers. Grading papers! On Saturday night!), and he told us that his 4-year-old daughter had comforted him by saying “Maybe they got the day wrong.”Here’s how completely he had convinced himself that he had lost the award: yesterday morning, as his principal, some Golden Apple people, several newspaper reporters, two newspaper photographers, his wife, and his two daughters filed unexpectedly into his classroom, he said to himself: “I guess this is how they soften the blow when they tell you you didn’t make it.” Even as the person was HANDING HIM THE ACTUAL AWARD, he still thought some kind of consolation event was under way. This is a humble man having a moment he’ll never forget. I love that so much, and couldn’t possibly be happier for this friend and neighbor getting the kind of validation that so few people in any field ever get. (If you want to see part of the moment, there's a photo of him and his family in his classroom on the front page of the Metro section of today’s Chicago Tribune. The picture isn’t online, though.)I briefly thought of getting him some champagne, came to my senses, remembered one of our shared pleasures, and bought him a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We gave it to him with a big white ribbon on it to help him toast this sweet, sweet moment.So today’s post is dedicated to the sixth graders, both students and teachers. To you, Daughter, I say, You just keep doing what you’re doing. It can be trying, no doubt, but I can deal with it if you can, and we’ll come out the other side eventually, and together. And to you, neighbor, I say, Congratulations on a richly deserved reward. As the British used to say, I wish you joy of it!

Nokia Quietly Launches N-Gage; Details From the Show Floor

After months of anticipation on when Nokia (NYSE: NOK) would launch its gaming platform called N-Gage, the world's largest handset maker did it quietly this morning when it let the Web site go live worldwide. Nokia spokeswoman Camilla Pagliaroli said from CTIA that, the formal announcement will go out on Monday, but it is already selling six games for five handsets as of today. The Monday release may include the launch of more games, and details on other handsets that will be supported in the future.

Game developers are hopeful that N-Gage will lead to a second stage of higher-quality gaming that will drive sales, and it's a big part of Nokia's push at becoming a content company (The WSJ reported details on the market opportunity—Gartner expects revenues to hit $9.6 billion by 2011). The platform supports 3D graphics, and will eventually span many devices. Originally, Nokia's N-Gage was a specific gaming device, now it's a platform that can run on many devices. Pagliaroli said the platform is designed to push developer's imaginations. She said when developers should incorporate community features, where players can play another person from across the world, or use the phone's camera or other high-end features. In a kick-boxing game called The One, the graphics are console-like quality, another neat feature is that messages can appear overlaid on the screen as they arrive.

N-Gage can either be downloaded online and sideloaded to the phone, or bought on the handset. Users are able to try the games before they buy. They range from $7 and $13, and there are different prices for whether they want them for a week, a month or longer. On the Web site today, Gameloft's (EPA: GFT) Asphalt 3: Street Rules, was available, and there was one player, and two reviews already posted. One simply said: "I love it."

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Quiet Period Is Ending; Qualcomm, Verizon And Others Address Spectrum Auction

The high-profile spectrum auction ended two weeks ago, but the really interesting information is only starting to come out now that the quiet period has ended. The FCC, which garnered nearly $20 billion from the auction, prohibited the winning companies from saying anything about what they were going to do with the spectrum until 6 p.m. Eastern today. The timing was lousy given that it coincided with the industry's big annual event—CTIA. Arun Sarin, the CEO of Vodafone (NYSE: VOD), which owns about half of Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and happened to be the biggest winner of the auction, even joked about it yesterday, saying everyone will have to wait another 24 hours for an update. Verizon Wireless said today it will hold a Webcast tomorrow to discuss its plans.

Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) also stayed quiet. I met with Qualcomm MediaFLO division yesterday, when they refused to say anything, but today, they announced the spectrum will indeed be used for its MediaFLO TV service. It said it paid $558.1 million for licenses including the E block covering Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Qualcomm said: "These licenses double Qualcomm's 700 MHz spectrum holdings throughout a footprint of more than 68 million people in 28 individual markets," the company said.

With the additional licenses, MediaFLO will be able to deliver additional content and services in these top markets, which is precisely what I chatted with Omar Javaid, the vp of global business opportunities, about. He said already they are starting to see what users prefer, and they were surprised to learn that people didn't want bite-sized content like a lot of people assumed, but preferred full-length TV shows. AT&T (NYSE: T), which is launching in May, even included a channel by Sony (NYSE: SNE) which will play full-length movies. But moving beyond even those basic services, he said they will develop future services, including chat and voting capabilities.

Here's A Way To Get Operators To Cut Costs: Out Them In Public

Here's a novel way to shame operators into cutting their data and text costs: shame them in public. At least that's what Viviane Reding, European telecom regulator, is proposing to do if the local operators don't cut costs for roaming text messaging and wholesale data transmission by July 1, reports IHT.

"I will look at all the tariffs available and put them on a Web site...That way, people will be able to see which ones have not lowered their prices," said the always plucky Reding. This isn't the first time this clash has happened, and it won't be the last, for sure.

She asked that the price of a SMS sent outside of one's home country be capped at 12 euro cents, down from the average of 29 cents in Europe and 23 cents in France. She also requested a cut in wholesale prices for data roaming..some operators charge as much as Euro 11, or $17 per MB of data transmitted outside of their home country, but most charge Euro 5 to Euro 7, she said, which is still crazy pricing. She would like to see those roaming wholesale prices cut to 35 euro cents per MB.

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Reding Slaps 'Wishful-Thinking' 3G Bidders, Urges Spectrum Reform Support
Five European Operators Cut Mobile Data Roaming Charges
Ofcom Takes Aim At Pricey Mobile Data Roaming Charges