Technology changes. It changes pretty fast actually. And with this in mind, I would like to share with you something that’s been on my mind the past couple months.
Americans in general aren’t adept to change.
When things change, people worry. They don’t know what happens next. They’re scared of change…they fear it. Maybe I should change this to leaders?
can i be real here? this makes me upset…
I take a look at say this Census fiasco and am just shocked. We are supposed to be the tech center of the world and we can’t even manage a project like counting people? Yes, I’m oversimplifying but I think it has merit. Take this quote:
"The computers proved too complex for some temporary workers who tried to use them in a test last year in North Carolina."
"Now, officials say, technology problems could add as much as $2 billion to the cost of the 2010 census and jeopardize the accuracy of the nation’s most important survey."
I love the fact that it’s a "technology" problem and not a people problem. It can’t be a people problem, we understand the real problem, it has to be the technology! Right…
We not being able to adapt to change is one of the biggest hindrances to America. And for the near future its only going to get worse in my opinion. Take a look at our education system. High school drop outs are rising high, in some cases coming towards 50%! Here is another quote, but check out the articles here and here.
"Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent."
Take a look at some of the top corporations in America. We see Intel, Sun, Microsoft, Google and the likes starving for talent. They can’t get enough. So what do they do? They look abroad. They look to India, China and Pakistan (many others too). But when they do this they get hit with the "don’t outsource American jobs".
What do we do? How do we change this perception? Do we need training? If so, on what? Do we need it with the technology, or how to approach problems dealing with technology? I think our approach is wrong, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
How do we solve this problem to keep Americans relevant with technology?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/staticarticles/article59693.html
An excellent article on the perils I and my family have to face thanks to our wonderful insight on a government that is bent on giving away freely.
I’m even frustrated by the fact that we’re bailing out people who signed mortgages they couldn’t pay. If I had known if people who got ARM’s were going to get assistance, I would have gotten an ARM too.
Frustrated…
When I think of the differences between the liberal mind set and the conservative one, in the end, for me it comes down to good vs. evil.
Many people don’t agree with this statement.
To those who don’t, often consider the actions of others a “mistake”. I want to offer this as proof that this is not a mistake, this is just evil.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0911071logansix1.html
A warning to young ones, this is a bit gross.
Today I heard on the news that there was a cop killed in Marion County by some Mexicans that were coming back from a wedding. Although I don’t know their legal status, or whether alcohol was involved but judging by history and statistic I can just imagine what the facts really are. Truly a sad time.
On the note of illegal aliens, I heard on Lars that Senator Gordon Smith is going to announce a new bill that I believe has a good chance of success and truly makes sense! In short, since the illegal’s are here for jobs, wouldn’t getting rid of the reason they’re here be the place to start? I thought so and so did Lars & Smith! Senator Smith is drawing up legislation requiring the name and social security number of an employee to match in order for the business to deduct the wages! AWESOME! Do you know how quick they’re going to drop employees that they have to pay extra for? I have never really been excited about legislation, but I must admit this looks promising!
I know I have been lax on the updating…I’ve been preparing for Texas and house signing, but when I saw this I just had to post!
Michael Moore wrote a letter to Fred Thompson challenging him to a debate. You can find that here. Now Fred has responded…and I must say…fricken funny! You can find the rebuttal here.
-Michael
Hrm, not voting for someone just because of sex…impressive. New found respect for French people?
Women voters shun Segolene Royal - Yahoo News UK
Well I took a look at the Google stats today and what do you know, many people are being referred to my blog from his! Cody (the owner of the blog, cypherxero.net) is an open source guru who has a passion for technology. I can’t blame him, I have the exact same passion…I just live and breathe technology. I didn’t know he had this much viewership on this blog, but I’m always more than happy to welcome people from his site! How did this all start you may ask? Well…
As I mentioned earlier, he is well into FOSS (Free Open Source Software) but is unfortunately one of the people who just can’t accept the fact that Microsoft has a place in the market. I started to engage him with some comments regarding some inconsistencies and just over all helping people understand the benefit of software, no matter who made it or if it costs money. I’ve had to wrestle with the idea of FOSS or for-profit software and have come to the conclusion that you use what works, I’m a capitalist at heart so let the best product win. If Windows works, use it. If a Samba (Linux) server works, use it! So much hate against for-profit company’s start to get rather old though. But getting to the comments at hand, I would love to point out 1 inconsistency that just irks me.
Cody, like many other people was curious about Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. But what some people make the mistake of is comparing an old OS with a new OS and not have a good understanding of what to expect. For instance, take performance. Cody compared Windows XP vs Windows Vista. That’s all fine and dandy, but when you compare it, you have to understand that these are two very different OS’s. You are comparing an OS that was built in 2002 with an OS that might as well have been released in 2007. Not only that, the mechanics of the different versions of Windows is stunningly different. So when you compare performance, you have to understand what the OS was designed to run at. Cody makes comparisons with a computer with 512MB of RAM. For Windows XP thats great but with Windows Vista…well…lets just say that is not “optimum”. The OS was just not designed with performance in mind at that low level of memory resources. So what does Cody do? Slams the product and falls into the category of the “M$ Sucks!” zealots.
With very little understanding of the product, he has already made an important determination and opinion for himself. That’s fine. But what ticks me off the most is when people like these, when asked to further explain or engage in discussion to further the understanding of an opinion just simply ignore you (or delete your comments). It’s like someone asking you a hard question and instead of stopping to think about it, you just give them the cold shoulder.
I believe this happens when you don’t have a good answer.
So I got the privilege to head to New York City & New Jersey to implement an SBS installation for a new client. This was on short notice and the integration of the new technology is on a compressed time schedule. I knew about a week before, which is not a whole lot of time to prepare but oh well. I had to ask Matt if I could get the time off while he was on vacation in Cancun! I do love business trips (well…this is kind of my second involving an airplane *grin*) but travel is always bitter sweet.[photopress:Airport.jpg,full,alignleft]
My plane was supposed to be leaving 8:00am on Friday morning, but due to the slight wind we got in the northwest, my ticket got “protected” and rescheduled to 7:00pm. I’m thinking to myself “great…I have the privilege of sleeping on a plane”. I was supposed to go to Chicago and then Newark from Portland, but instead they had me going to the city of San Francisco and then a 5 hour flight to Newark. When I got to the counter to claim my ticket, I was told that the flight didn’t exist. When I gave the nice lady my paper work, she worked some magic but told me instead of my flight leaving at 7:50pm, it was leaving at 6:00pm. The current time at that point was 5:45pm. Fortunately I didn’t have to suffer through a body cavity search and when I got to the gate, the lady at the counter was wrong, the plane was on schedule for a 7:50pm departure.
While on the plane to San Fran, I sat next to someone who I swore looked like one of the employee’s from my old consulting job at Ischus Networks. The clients name was The Generator Group, and although I don’t remember her name she looked striking similar. And then I looked down at what she was reading and I chuckled inside. It was a book named Are Men Necessary? By Mauren Dowd. The book fit the profile of the women I remember perfectly. So I have a woman, looks very like the person I remember, reading a book that is along the topics she always talked to me while I fixed her computer, and to hit the nail in the coffin, we were heading to San Francisco.
God does have humor, He knows me too well.
On the flight from San Francisco to Newark, I got absolutely no sleep at all…and I’m supposed to “go to work” when I get there. The things I do to get my fix of technology. Oh yea…another thing. Hopefully another update tonight!
-Michael