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.

windows start menu history

Interesting history of windows start menu and also about http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/31/technology/windows-10-start-menu-evolution/index.html?iid=SF_LN Also date of 10 release is given as July 29.

Women in computing

Interesting article on women in computing by NPR at http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonuazPZKXonjHpfsX67uspXqK1lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATsFiI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFSrXMMbZmwLgFWBU%3D \ Having gone to college learning computers in the 1970s, I find this interesting as it has always been told to me from then when in college to when started teaching after that and to today that this is a male program. In college my classes were mostly women but I was in unique situation being one of fist men at a former women’s college. However teaching at technical colleges since, quite often my classes have always been majority women except the early 2000s when I was at HGTC and first couple years here at GNTC. Not sure why shift then. Just like my day Cisco class now (5 of 6 are women) my data processing classes in 80s at STC were often 80-90% women. Even though I would always hear it was male dominated, pictures were women with computers. I also know that the people called computers in the 40s (that was a real job title for people who sat in Washington doing calculations for artillery tables) were mostly women. My mom was one of them. I have her score sheet from the test to be a computer if anyone wants me to send. So I am the son of a computer. lol

phishing emails

There are new varieties of phishing emails going out which look more and more real. One came from the bank Wal-Mart credit card is with now appearing very real and actually had muy name on it but had wrong last 4 digits of credit card shown. It had a mis-leading link that wanted you to click link to get important message. However hovering over the link neither Wal-Mart or Synchrony bank was the domain but some bill paying domain. Wal-Mart told me it was a phishing email when I contacted them to see if real. Now one has come from Adobe which looks ok except that it is supposedly receipt for signing up for Creative Cloud and has an attachment that appears is a word document on hovering, but I suspect has links or other in it. The two give aways are 1.) I have not signed up for anything form Adobe recently and 1.) it is written to Dear Customer instead of my name. If it was a real receipt it would have my name and normally receipts by email are in the body of email. Looking at the headers further shows it cdid not come from Adobe but somewhere else. These people did try harder and set sender and reply to as billing@adobe.com but then when they sent adobe.com would not verify that address to yahoo as a sending ip address. Furthermore in looking I see the email address it came to is my old version I have not used in years as it was supposedly closed on that subdomain. I have written adobe at phishing@adobe.com and you can use same address (it is on their web site). When I get response I will follow up. Don't click on links in emails that look suspicious like these as it may download malware on your machine to steal information of ask you for information that you should not give from a link like social security number, credit card info, bank accounts, passwords, etc. Be safe and be careful, but enjoy the world wide web.

Bringing manufacturing back to USA

This weekend I am in Rogers Arkansas at the Daisy National BB Gun Championship Match. Daisy headquarters and their assembly plant are here in Rogers and have been for 50 years or nearby. I assembled a gun here several years ago I still have. Tonight (July 4, 2014) at the opening ceremony for the match (55 teams of kids from across the USA who placed in top three in state competitions), the president of Daisy announced that he is beginning the process of moving the full manufacturing of their BB guns back to the USA. He said it will take several years as they will have to locate or start organizations to make the parts and that it will result in increased employment. Next year is the 75th year of the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun and tonight they gave all coaches and staff (including me) a 75th anniversary edition of the Red Ryder ahead of future release of the gun. Next year will the 50th match. I do the web site and photos for the match and have been at the match either as this or coach, match director, national director for 19 years.