The economy - mixed stories

The beginning of the week a week ago, I heard President Obama say that the economy is doing good now with unemployment near 5%. Then the end of the week I was listening to an interview on the radio with the head of the Democratic party in Georgia, Dubose Porter. He was making comments about the Republican debates a couple nights prior. He commented that the Republicans only wanted to get rid of things and he said his biggest disappointment was that none of the Republicans said how they would put America back to work. The president a Democrat says everyone is working and the head of the Georgia Democratic party is wanting to know how the Republicans will put America back to work The unemployment rate may be only 5% but it covers up a lot of weaknesses. Many people are working part-time because they cannot find full time work. A large number of Americans have given up looking for work. In my area I keep hearing the technical colleges need to prepare more students for computer careers. They site large numbers of computer jobs in the area. The problem is that the jobs available all want people with 5-10 years experience. No matter how well I train my students 95% of them do not qualify, (I get a couple each year who come to expand their knowledge.) I am trying to help them find jobs and it is hard. We need government to find ways to get more people to work with good jobs. This means in some cases the government getting out of the way of employers, in other cases encouraging employers to hire more people whether thru government stability or incentives. However what approaches are used they need to be considered of whether it helps short and long term and keeps economy growing in both. The political leaders need to get their stories straight.

Microsoft and privacy

I wrote a newspaper article about this over a week ago that is on my articles page (technology article 308 on 9/16/2015 (that was the publish date in newspapers) on my web site. Now Microsoft has responded to similar reports in the press http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/28/technology/microsoft-windows-10-privacy/index.html

One million and counting

This weekend I passed putting a total of one million miles on my three vehicles. The numbers vary by the vehicle and model year, but added up together they are over one million now and I am still adding miles. I put about 45,000 miles per year on my vehicles in recent years with the most miles each year on the Saturn. My 1986 Chevrolet Silverado pickup has just over 141,000 miles and is my low mileage vehicle. It also has the lowest MPG. The odometer goes to 99,999 miles and has rolled once My 1986 Buick Skylark has just over 289,000 miles on it. The odometer in it goes to 199,999 miles and rolls and so it has rolled once. It is a digital dashboard My 2001 Saturn SL2 has over 570,000 miles on it and is my high mileage vehicle. It has the highest MPG of 36. The odometer in it goes to 999,999 has not rolled over. Saturn apparently thought they would last forever. It is a digital odometer but analog speedometer.