Why are kids supposed to say "Trick or Treat"?

I found out why kids are supposed to say "trick or treat" when going door to door on Halloween. Here's the story.

I took Norah (2) and Dejaquan (4) out around the neighborhood this time. Norah was wearing fairy wings and Dejaquan was a storm trooper. At the beginning of the candy trek, I would came up with them to the door and tell them to say "trick or treat" and "thank you", as they obviously are too young to understand the process without some help. Dejaquan took off his storm trooper mask after just one house because he said it made his face sweaty. After about 5 houses, they were just getting the hang of saying trick or treat when the person would come to the door.

We rarely allow my 4 year old, Dejaquan, have candy or gum, and he actually likes gum more than any candy. So when he got a piece of gum from a house we had stopped at, he thought he would start asking, "Do you have any bubble gum?" after ringing the door bell. So as he started asking that question instead of trick or treat, I thought it was humorous and let him ask it because it showed his interest in the whole thing and the candy givers were getting a kick out of it.

"Do you have any bubble gum?" Dejaquan would ask.

"Sorry, no, I don't have any gum." the person would reply.

Door after door, he would say it religiously. But something happened that made me realize what he was doing was inappropriate. Norah started saying it too. Ugh, I was kicking myself for having let it go on so long that she thought that's what was supposed to be said. So I had a talk with them about how it was rude to ask for something specific and we should be grateful for whatever they might have to give (one woman was giving out handfuls of pennies). I explained it was the same as when responding to what they give you with "hey, I already have this!", which Dejaquan managed to say a couple times. That one I jumped all over.

By the end, they were saying trick or treat, and thank you. Even though it was the second time I had gone trick or treating with my kids, I still learned a lot from the experience just like them.

Joomla & Freehostia

Until recently, my only method for creating Internet-facing websites was using a client-based program to create static pages: NetObjects Fusion or just straight HTML-editing with Emacs. I've now tried out a CMS: Joomla!, an offshoot of Mambo. I would have to say Joomla! had a bit of a learning curve with modules & components, sections & categories, and menus & content. Not too bad, though. It's nothing like any of the wikis I've used other than you edit the site using the site.

Up to now, I had used doteasy for free web hosting. I had gotten tired of my sites hosted by them being down for brief periods often & on all the time. I also did not like not being able to use any scripts, wanting to get away from static pages and go towards a more self-managed setup so that anyone involved with the organization behind the site could edit the site and not depend on a client-side program.

I looked around and found a good candidate to try: Free Hostia. So far, it's been 10x better than doteasy. I registered my domain for $20 using paypal on a Sunday morning using their interface. The email address I specified for my user account and my paypal account's email address weren't the same, and they noticed that. So then sent me an email just 11 minutes of when I signed up. Within 20 minutes of my reply saying it was okay, I got another reply saying it was all ready to go. I couldn't believe it could be that fast, so I did an nslookup of the new domain I requested, and it was there! That's 50x times as fast as doteasy which I had to wait 24 hours before being able to do anything with the new domain. And this was on a Sunday no less!

Setting up Joomla was a breeze. I simply filled out a short form to create a MySQL database, and then another short form to create the Joomla instance, and within 5 minutes, I had a working CMS. Additionally with the domain, I got a subdomain of Free Hostia to play around with, too. So I decided I would put the Joomla instance in that instead of the domain to try it out before committing to using it for the new site. I wish I hadn't done that though, because I ran into a small glitch with Free Hostia in that when I then tried to install a 2nd Joomla instance, this one on the new site, Free Hostia's interface for creating it through a database insertion error. But to Free Hostia's credit, within 1 hour of my submitting a trouble ticket through their website, my problem was fixed & off I went with the 2nd Joomla! instance.