Political Conventions

The other day, I was watchting the Democratic National Convention with my daughter for a homework project. I was kind of surprised the amount of BIASED reporting that occured from all of the networks. You have Fox News, which again proved that they were extremely Liberal, CNN, typically middle of the road (again refreshing), and MSNBC, which proved to be the extreme right and annoyingly conservative, that seemed to have attempted to shove their own political views down the throats of their viewers. I know that they all have fans that appreciate the type of entertainment that is provided, however, through the deliverance of biased reporting, it appears that we have lost the necessary forms of communication needed to make an educated decision.

I am the typical independent, you know the type of voter that weighs all of the issues and votes their conscience and not the conscience of a given party. After all, the definite view of the parties are self serviant and not for the public majority. We all have successes and failures in our life, and we all seem to have our own views of what tends to be overwhelming and destructive. We do not need the assistance of others to help us wallow in our misery, we need to have a leader that can unite us with the idea's and ideals needed to lift us out of the depression that everybody has fallen into. We don't need to argue about experience, since the president needs the assistance of the legislative branch and visa versa to get any true change done. A good example would be Presiden Jimmy Carter. He had some really good ideas while in office, however, due to the full GOP House and Senate, his entire presidency became a Lame Duck presidency and went down in history as a failed term.

With out the ability to bring all individuals together, without the concerns of specific parties, nothing will get passed, and the typical view of our government's status quo will continue forward. Pointing fingers and finding fault in all that one has done or will do will only cause the delay of what really needs to happen, CHANGE.

Let's take a chance, drop the senseless following and promptings from supposed leaders of each party and lets listen to what the candidates have to say and how they propose to follow through with their plans. Maybe we can take a chance and follow the proper candidate for what they propose rather than blindly following a mostly two party system only interested in maintaining their power. Views and opinions are what makes our form of government exciting, so let's listen, DEBATE and DISCUSS, and then vote our conscience. We may flip the Electoral College on it's rear and may make the most of the opportunities presented to us.

The Difference Between Mac and PC

I am sure that you have watched the different advertisements that Mac has put out in the past 90 days. You know, the one that shows Windows Vista as the user with an identity crisis that is continually self evaluating him self in the eyes of Mac. That commercial drives me nuts, and to be completely honest, I am surprised that Microsoft hasn't come back with a vengence.

Now I may be a part of a narrow group that likes Vista. I remember all of the hullabaloo when Windows 95 came out, and Mac users complaining that Windows 95 was a poor knockoff of their beloved OS. I currently support three server technologies, Windows, Mac, and Linux, and the one that I have the most problems in the enterprise is my Mac server and clients. Windows and Linux have their own little quirks, and even the OS developers do not claim to make their operating system interoperability to be flawless. Mac on the other hand has made claims that their OS will work with multiple operating systems flawlessly, and since it's built on a Linux platform, cross compatibility is simple.

Ok, I can buy that with basic items. You can mount and launch OS independent applications, however, when you need to use resources from a MAC, good luck. Sure, don't get me wrong, all of the necessary items can be done, however, they're not for the layman becuase they require consistent tweaking and monitoring to ensure enterprise level benchmarks.

Now, on the Vista front, you need to take a momey and decide what you want to used Windows for. If you're interested in running nothing but new applications and hardware, then Vista is your best XP SP2 or SP3. Not only is xp forward and backward compatible, it's compatibility mode is more robust than Vista is, and theres already support sites with researched answers to fix your issues. Vista is slowly coming to its own, and by the time xp is fully phased out later this year, Vista should have released sp2 with the necessary fixes to run all of the latest XP applications, which will add the necessary compatibility modules to run other legacy business applications, such as Great Plains and the like.

Take your time and give Vista another chance, and if you're lucky, buy that mac and use them for what they were intended for: Microsoft Business and Gaming, Macintosh for Graphics and Other media applications.

IT Support

What has happened to our different generations in the work place. Today's younger generation is the most technilogically advanced group in history. They are growing up with interactive gaming systems, MP3 players, smart phones, etc, and the desire for more toys or tools only advances them even further. Not to say that I'm extremely old, however, I never had the sheer amount of technology that people have today. Now with all of this, I find it extremely infuriating when I get a phone call from a rep that says their cd rom isn't working, or their screen is dark, only to find out that either is was powered off or unplugged to make room for a fan or heater.

I know that I shouldn't be so critical on the employee's as they end up paying for my salary, however, if they would just listen to the basic premise of simple troubleshooting, I would have the opportunity to focus on projects to help streamline our processes, which in the long run would decrease IT expenditures by running more effiiently with what we have. I have been compiling a knowledge base for our employee's, which has taken a very long time, however, when I'm done, I have NO faith that they will use it.

As a final thought, I believe that they are all lazy and don't care. This frame of mind will and probably has crippled businesses in the past, where if employee's try to work on their efficiency, all would work towards the interest of the company and employee. Let me know what you think about your work mates, and don't hold back.

Starting an Online Presence

Trying to start my own business from scratch has proven to be the most formidable challenge. On my previous blog, trying to come up with funding ( through gov grants all the way through investors) seemed to be more difficult that I imagined.

My business plan, proforma, marketing plan, research, etc hasn't been enough to crack through the current credit crunch. With the looming threat of a recession, I have had to put my business endeavors to rest. I am always looking for other ways to look for funding, so if you know of anything, please let me know.

If I'm not showing enough drive during this fiscally responsive economy at this point, please give me some feed back and such.

Thanks.