Ubiquitous WiFi

I'm not sure why, but Southwest changes its flight times about every other month. This week I am flying from Oakland to Salt Lake City at 4:00 pm while last month the flight was at 3:35 pm. You wouldn't think 25 minutes would make much of a difference, but I use public transportation to get from my office, near the San Francisco airport. As I have to go across the San Mateo bridge there is a single bus line I can use and it is mostly geared towards commuters. That means there is a bus at 11:00 am, one at 12:45 pm, and one at 2:30 pm. The 2:30 bus puts me at the airport way too late and so I take the 12:45 pm bus to catch my flight. I get to the airport at 2:00 pm if everything goes smoothly after taking a train and another bus. That gives me 2 full hours to waste at the airport. I liked it better when I was only wasting an hour and 35 minutes. Like I said, it may not sound like much, but week after week, it adds up.

This week I decided to maximize my time and came to the airport with a list of tasks to accomplish. Updating my blog was one such task. This wouldn't be possible without an Internet connection. Amazingly, I also had an Internet connection on the bus across the San Mateo bridge. Finally, chances are good that I will have an Internet connection on the flight as well.

Sometimes I want to be disconnected from the rest of the world and I loathe the ubiquitous availability of connections. However I really appreciate it when I can connect when I want to and get real work done. Besides, when I really want to get away from e-mail and the Internet, I just use the excuse that my battery died.

A College Degree

I have a brother-in-law that used to run around asking my wife's brothers how their college degrees were working out. At the time, there was a housing boom and he was making a seemingly huge amount of money with nothing but his high-school diploma and the knowledge of how to pound nails. Meanwhile my wife's brothers had spend large sums of money on their college educations and really didn't have much to show for it. I'm sure the "college" comment stung pretty bad at the time.

A little before my brother-in-law started taunting those around him, I threw him a proverbial bone and had him install a loft in my garage. He had been doing construction for some time and I figured he would do a better job than me. He told me the lumber to order and I had it delivered. Then I paid him quite well for his day of labor. That was a little over 10 years ago. Then last Thursday, that professionally-built loft that I mostly use to store empty boxes came crashing down. Had it not been for the garage-door rails, it would have crushed my two cars. Luckily I was able to get them out and the loft rebuilt without any serious damage. This time I consulted a close friend who is a mechanical engineer and he helped to ensure that the loft would never come down again.

I learned a lot about structural engineering this past weekend and I am glad there are people who spend a little extra time going to college and actually get degrees. Now the next time my brother-in-law brings up the topic of college, I can remind him that had he gone, my loft wouldn't have fallen down. You see, he didn't understand the sheer strength of grabber screws used to secure 2x4's to decks vs. lag screws used to secure joists to studs. I guess that is why he is out of work right now and my wife's brothers both have high-paying jobs.

Are You Better Off Now

It is election season and I try to avoid politics in my blog, but this is a question I keep hearing, "Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?" One thing about technology is that it continues to evolve and so we should all be better off as time passes. The President of the United States could be a monkey with a dart board and we should all be better off with regards to our computers. So let's look back over the past 4 years and see how computer technology has improved.

When I look at my desk in my home office, I am much better off than I was 4 years ago. The biggest change is the advance in video monitor technology. I used to have a single 17-inch LCD monitor capable of displaying 1280x1024 pixels. Now I have 2 HDTV monitors on my desk. Both are seamlessly connected to my desktop computer and are capable of displaying 1920x1080 for a total size of 3840x1080 pixels. I don't know how I survived before.

Video monitors for my desktop are just the start. I also have a tablet computer. I actually have 2 tablet computers, both of which were given to me. I only keep 1 on my desk as the other one is kept upstairs in the bedroom. Most of the time I just use the tablet to play Pandora, but it is nice to be able to keep tabs on things when I leave the office without having to grab my laptop. The tablet is much lighter.

Speaking of laptops, I used to have a MacBook and now I have a MacBook Pro. The biggest difference there is that I now run a solid-state drive. They make great sense for a laptop because they are much more shock resistant. They are also a lot faster. My laptop boots in about the same amount of time as it takes me to count to 3. I'm still not sure about reliability, but my current drive is almost a year old and seems to be working great.

One final improvement worth mentioning is that we are starting to see more cloud technology. Sure some of it is just marketing. However we will start to see more services come to the cloud and life should improve because of it. Imagine walking into your house and having your digital camera automatically sync with your home network and upload your most recent photos to a staging area where you can sort them and share your favorites. We are almost there.

Technologically, we are all better off now than we were 4 years ago. Just don't let the politicians think they are responsible.