Time To Vote

Today I voted. I will not be in my state of residence on Election Tuesday and so I took advantage of early voting here in Utah. There was one polling location open on Saturday and so I had to drive all the way to the city/county building in downtown Salt Lake. I was pleased I was able to vote as this is a very important election year.

In my eagerness to get downtown and vote, I probably didn't spend enough time researching the issues and/or candidates. My wife warned me that there were a few bozos and so I steered clear of them. What about everybody else? I hate political ads on the TV and so I tune them out. I don't think they are the best source of information anyways. As you may have a week or so before the election, I recommend you use your favorite Internet search engine and educate yourself on not only the candidates, but also the issues being voted on this year. I voted against any new taxes, but you may feel differently.

I try to avoid politics in my blog and so my only advice for the election this year is for the office of president: Mit Romney. While some believe it was nice to have a change in the Presidency these last 4 years, I think Obama's health care plan is just one more nail in the coffin for American jobs. I know a number of small to mid-sized companies that cannot afford the increase in health insurance premiums. With the ease of outsourcing jobs overseas these days, these small to mid-sized companies will find it much less expensive to employ someone in a foreign country.

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.