Imbeciles create energy policy!

Warning: Political rant – feel free to express yourself in the comments

Yes, energy is expensive at the moment. The average American is hurting as they are having less disposable income due to increase energy cost. However, energy cost is due to a whole host of reasons none of which are due to lack of capacity of oil drilling sites.

This group of Congressmen and associated lobbyists advocate drilling anywhere there is oil.  How idiotic is that?  The drilling argument is so ramshackle that they do not even try to offer alternative solutions.  If your congressman supports this group, I highly recommend you write him/her to tell them drilling is not the answer.

I will not labour and debate the simple things that can be done to reduce our reliance on gasoline.  I do know that drilling anywhere is irresponsible as much of the oil that remains in the United States is in environmentally sensitive areas.  I value a healthy, clean and diverse environment over $2.50 a gallon gas.  If people think by drilling more gas prices will come down then they are sadly mistaken.  The biggest objection I have about drilling is that with the current cost of oil products, innovation has picked up, and soon you will see demand drop as new technology (electric cars, hybrids, mass transit, etc) will reduce the need for oil.  Should they allow drilling right now, it will take years before the new capacity comes online and it still does not address America’s major problem of lack of refining capacity.  What these stupid rich white men will create is new oil wells in environmentally sensitive areas that once activated will see a completely different market demand than currently exists.  In short, it is incredibly short sighted and driven by factors outside the desire to help the average American.  This is a boldface attempt by the richest companies in the world to pad their bottomline and use a short term difficulty for unethical gain.  Some days I really loathe American politics.

Please take a minute to think beyond the next six months and write your representatives to express your objection to such short sightedness.  Should you wish to discuss energy policy or know more about why this policy is short sighted, do leave a comment for email me.

Do You Trust Your Hard Drive?

My classmate, Stuart, had his Mac Book (his personal laptop), die a very quick death. His hard drive “crashed” meaning the computer could no longer communicate with it. This will impact me as he had files and information for our Management Consultancy project as we are group mates. I feel bad for him because he lost all 3 of his papers and he was almost finished. He will have to do a full semesters work in about 10 days to hit our looming deadlines.

This is not a major problem other than the fact he did not back up his data! My dear friends and family, if you have any information on your computer you cannot live without and there is only one copy of said material, I beg of you to buy a packet of CDs or an external hard drive and back up your information.

Before you get to alarmed, you need to answer the question, “Do I have information I cannot replace on my computer?” If the answer is no, you have no problems. If you are worried about your emails, you only have to worry if you download them to your computer using Outlook or a similar email program. If you use AOL or another email service, generally, you will have no problems. This only pertains to information on your computer (aka your hard drive).

Backing up your information is very simple. There are numerous methods to do it. Here are a few articles which I recommend you look at.

• Windows XP Backup Made Easy – This is old information but a good place to start.
• Back up to Email – If you have a large email account or want to create one at Gmail.com, then you can use this to back up your files. I do not recommend this for financial data.
• This is how we back up – This is a bit complex but I do not trust anyone with my data and I do not trust my computer not to break. All our important information is digitized and we run weekly (if not daily) back ups to push the information to external hard drives. From time to time, I encrypt the information and place it on space I rent on a computer in Michigan.
• For just a little bit of information (under 5 Gigs) – I would use Mozy. If you have $50 a year and want the peace of mind, especially for your financial data, I would recommend you give Mozy a try.

If you have questions and are interested in setting up a backup system, send me an email and I can point you in the right direction. I cannot impress upon you enough the importance of taking care of your data. Your hard drive will fail, it is only a matter of time until it goes.

Enough procrastinating on my part, back to preparation for my strategy exam!