This warning was in a list of 10 predictions that a friend sent to me recently. The implication was that if a cloud provider’s business failed, users would lose digital images and other data. I did not believe that this was likely at first, but now I am not so sure. I have seen other concerns about bubbles bursting and started to connect some dots. Here are things to think about.
1. Benefits of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing involves shared services. Instead of everyone needing to have and maintain their own data and Internet services, a provider does it for them and it is much cheaper. The provider’s computer servers are divided up to provide small virtual servers for users on a shared machine. Smaller businesses find this especially attractive since they avoid the hassles of ownership and receive better service and support than they could afford for themselves. However, the downside is that this requires reliance on others.
2. Growth in Cloud Computing
A short article in a technical journal caught my eye. The writer reported that a major cloud computing provider had a standing order for truckloads of brand new computer servers delivered weekly to expand their data center. I was interested to learn that the servers were made in the United States by a little known company that made one of my own computers that I especially like. It takes lots of money to buy this many servers and to pay for all the infrastructure, installation and on-going service and support. Growth must be phenomenal to support this. I wonder how long demand for storage will continue at this rate. Is it really necessary to save all this data?
3. Underlying Business Models
I rely on a number of Internet Service Providers and e-Commerce vendors. Some of them provide free services including large amounts of on-line storage for photos and messaging. Although the cost of storage media has dropped considerably, someone still must pay for it and the related costs. Businesses certainly expect to eventually recover expenses and profit through fee-based services, but I wonder how long they can operate in the red without becoming profitable.
4. Level of Inactive Accounts
With all the competing products and services, no one has time to use them all. However, when a new one comes along, they probably want to try it out to see if it is better than what they already have, especially if there is no cost to sign up. I have several free accounts that I do not use regularly.
5. Growth of Built-in Waste
Although many aspects of the Internet are automated, the infrastructure must be maintained. The more e-mail and instant messages that are sent, the more server capacity that is required for logging, tracking and storage. Multiple copies add to waste as do trivial messages and spam.
6. Failed Business Models
What is troubling is how cloud computing and social networking compare to business models used by telephone companies in their heyday. Back then, high costs discouraged usage of services. Capacity was only added when revenue growth supported it. Now low costs attract users in the hope that they will buy value added services. If customers don’t rise to the bait, profitability goes out the window. If value is not there when something is free, no one will be able to start charging. At some point, too many players chasing too few paying customers will no longer be sustainable. What will happen then? The recourse will likely be to pull the plug.
Maybe some of us really will lose our data if we don’t back it up.
After Hurricane Irene two months earlier, we thought that a nor’easter would be a piece of cake. Little did I realize in my wildest dreams that this storm’s impact would be much more severe. In fact, there were reports that damage in my area of northern New Jersey was the worst since 1938. After ten days some places still did not have power and just north of us Connecticut was hit especially hard. In any event, when the storm started early Saturday, October 29, 2011, it looked like business as usual. We expected possible freeqing rain and light snow north and west of us, but mostly rain where we live.
As things progressed, precipitation quickly changed to light snow, but not all that much. As we ate lunch in our kitchen, we looked out the sliding glass door to our deck. There was a little snow on it that seemed to be coming down harder, but nothing to really be concerned about. A short while later, however, the lights started flickering. My wife had been making lasagne. I must have had a premonition as I told her to quickly finish up anything requiring electricity. She just finished cooking the noodles when the power went off not to return again for six days.
Later in the afternoon the storm worsened. I went outside to shovel 4 or 5 inches of very heavy snow off the driveway. All of a sudden, I heard explosions and loud cracking sounds. I knew right away that the snow was breaking tree limbs that had not yet lost their leaves. Those leaves played a major role in the major damage that was destined for my area including my own yard. Unfortunately, even though Hurricane Irene damaged and destroyed many trees, there remained countless others that had been spared the first time. Mother Nature was determined to finish filling the void and neglect of the power company, Jersey Central Power & Light, by cleaning house for them.
In over 30 years that I’ve lived on my street, we have had constant problems of downed wires in storms. Our neighborhood has buried services, but is at the mercy of above ground feeders. Had those been buried, we likely would have avoided many outages over the years. The added cost would probably have paid for itself many times over. In this case we probably would’ve lost power, but for a much shorter period of time. The upsetting part is that we are paying premium prices for third world service.
With Hurricane Irene, the outage was much more localized and a day shorter. We were able to find relief by visiting our children and their families who each live about 2 miles away. They never lost power from Irene and only for a couple of days this time. However, travel between us was difficult both times, mostly from flooding with Irene and this time from more extensive downed trees, branches and wires.
The small portable generator that I used for Hurricane Irene continues to be a godsend. This time, I also used it in my yard to power an electric chainsaw, and spent three full days cutting up and clearing debris. For anyone considering the investment in a chainsaw, I recommend getting a carbide tipped chain for it. About ten years ago I got tired of replacing the regular carbon steel chains!
After the power went out, the Verizon wired phones worked for a couple of days before going out of service. They came back on before the power did. The Comcast cable did not come back until a day after power was restored. My cellular services, including the data card for my laptop, degraded more severely this time (compared to Irene) until people started to get their power back. There were also reports of over 200 cell towers being out of commission from the storm this time that may have contributed to weaker signals before being repaired.
From a contingency planning and disaster recovery standpoint, I believe that these storms provided good lessons. The large medical center that I use near my daughter’s home, had no power for a few days and was completely shutdown. Normally, they have an urgent care center. Also, even though I am an advocate of cloud computing, I also believe that standalone local solutions should not be abandoned to assure more failsafe service. It is important to have a backup plan in case all else fails. In particular, one of my weak links is a limited supply of gasoline to run my generator. Many nearby gasoline stations had no way to pump gas without electricity. I am considering a solar panel to charge my batteries, just-in-case, but many businesses are also talking about getting generators.
As for Trick or Treaters, they had their Halloween either Friday, November 4 or Sunday, November 6. Most schools used up all their snow days by being closed for a full week because of lack of power. So everyone seems to be wondering what will happen the next time.
When The Pentagon was found to have charged taxpayers $434 for a hammer and $600 for a toilet seat cover, people were outraged. What they failed to realize was that the same thing is happening to us all the time. Unless we see something blatant that affects us directly, we do not even think to question what is going on. A case in point is a healthcare system with similar excesses.
The other day, I stopped at my local drugstore to pick up a new prescription that I had left to be filled. The drug had not been in stock. In retrospect, that should have been a red flag. Others were probably too smart and were not buying it. Anyway, when I went to pay the bill, I learned that it would cost $121.37. This, by the way, was for a prescription strength version of a medicine that is available over-the-counter for a fraction of this amount. My first reaction was that my insurance had not paid its share. But no, they had disallowed the claim and I must pay the entire amount as if I had no insurance at all. Needless-to-say, the drug got put back on the shelf.
For an accountant like me, it is easy to see what is happening. Costs are what they are, but who pays and how much they are charged is another matter. One way or another, costs are going to be marked up and allocated to someone for payment. Nature abhors a vacuum so if there is pushback in one place, something else must give way. When an insurance company avoids paying at all, so much the better for their bottom line. If they negotiate too many discounts or too many people who lack insurance and cannot pay are subsidized, everyone else foots the bill. The consumer has little say in the matter. Costs simply get spread through the prices of products that we buy, the taxes we pay, insurance premiums, co-pays and deductibles, contributions that we make and so on. It is anyone’s guess what the true cost or price should be for anything.
There are different prices. Some people pay nothing out-of-pocket at all. Until the alarm goes off, we simply take whatever comes along without question. In my case, I had one other piece of information about medicines that most people do not know. I had learned from Bloomberg Businessweek that roughly half of the costs of prescription medicines are wasted because they do not work as the prescribing doctor had intended. In 2008, this amounted to $145 Billion wasted by all of us in that year alone. A year ago, I spent $100 on a co-pay for eye drops that did not work. Quite frankly, I was not ready to risk adding to this waste especially when there were other options.
Looking at the world around us, I believe that it is important to find out the facts, tell it like it is, and fix what is wrong. If you agree, please join in by sharing your comments and experiences with us.
Saturday, August 27, 2011, Hurricane Irene started its rampage north past our home in the hills of New Jersey. My wife and I watched its progress with the Weather Channel on our smartphones. A map showed that the eye of the nearly 500 mile diameter storm was barely in North Carolina when we started to feel its fury. We could see the rain bands as they headed in our direction. Fortunately, the eye would pass to the east of us lessening its impact, but damage in our area would still prove to be severe. We are thankful to have escaped serious damage.
Before heading to bed that night, we still had electricity. A couple of hours later (after midnight) we were awakened to the sound of alarms from our computers’ battery backup units complaining that they had lost power. By morning we had occasional sun before the main storm arrived later in the afternoon. I started a small generator to power the refrigerator, phones, a laptop and a couple of lights in the evenings. I only ran it when I was awake as it needed to be fed with gasoline every 1-1/4 hours. Power was finally restored five days later. After two days, I was able to get to a gas station that still had gasoline to fill up my cans. I needed to go back a second time before power was restored. Total cost of gasoline was about $50, certainly not an inexpensive and efficient way to generate electricity.
During the power outage, we had no cable service (television, Internet or Internet phone). One of our favorite links to the outside world was a 50-year old AM transistor radio. For some reason, there was no wired telephone service for two days during the middle of the power outage. Were it not for the generator and our cellular service, we would not have had any way to make emergency calls had we needed them. We were also lucky to have a Data Card for the laptop so we had much better Internet and email capabilities than with the smartphones. They were reserved for texting and occasional calls. A neighbor used Wi-Fi at a local Starbucks that required a circuituous route to reach due to many downed trees.
The Saturday after we got power back, we went out for dinner with neighbors across the street. On the way, we passed a long row of utility poles and downed wires. There were two trucks from the cable company surveying the damage. After what we saw, we assumed it would be a long time before we had cable again. However, much to our amazement, service had been restored when we got home from dinner. The next morning it was out again until the following day.
Until services were restored, there were short times when cellular communications appeared overloaded. Text messages were always reliable, but had we needed emergency services, there were enough downed trees to make it unlikely that they would have always been timely and dependable.
Thank you to crews from Toledo and Ohio Edison who came to our aid. Had vegetation around power lines in our area been maintained better we would likely have gotten power back a couple of days earlier. In any event, when a storm such as Irene is on the horizon, is not the time to be doing contingency planning. It is the time for final preparations. Now is the time to take what we have learned and consider where we might not have been so lucky. We can start taking these things into account now and do even better the next time.
Finally, it was a comfort to know that we had family members nearby who could have reached us in an emergency. Too bad the highway department has never raised the level of roads and bridges so we would not always need to take long detours around areas that flood regularly.
It surprises me that people who lose their jobs think that they will get rehired as soon as the economy improves. Such an expectation is unrealistic and politicians should not give them false hope. Their jobs have either been automated out of existence or they have been outsourced to an area with much lower labor costs. When companies need more workers, they may need different skills or will find contractors and part-time, entry-level employees who work for less money and are not eligible for costly benefits. If things work out, fine, otherwise it is on to the next candidate with no strings attached and no legal hassles.
The Industrial Revolution brought increased productivity that could usually be absorbed in a growing, manufacturing economy. This was especially true for products where demand was relatively inelastic. After all, some products are needed no matter how good or bad an economy is. Until computers were introduced to more and more processes, an unskilled workforce took the brunt of any force reduction and reduced demand was a good excuse to eliminate outdated facilities and those with unneeded skills.
Today, things are different. Computers are replacing labor everywhere. They are doing things that were unheard of only a short time ago. Smart attendants are programmed to talk to us, answer our questions and solve our problems. They are handling more and more complex tasks as companies pick the brains of highly skilled professionals before they retire and program computers with their expertise. They precisely control machinery that provides superior dexterity to even perform heart surgery. Soon robots will be doing our bidding and taking care of us in our old age.
There are exceptions to every rule. What remains to be seen is how people will respond to computers and foreign outsourcers taking their jobs. One interesting sign is that some recent law school graduates are suing their schools because they had been assured of jobs that did not materialize. Perhaps it is because of Legal Zoom and the entry level legal work that is being outsourced to countries such as India. One thing is certain. If people are encouraged to pursue jobs in healthcare that are growing in number due to an aging population, they will be disappointed if robots become commonplace.
We believe that people who expect jobs should consider business startups. Innovation is likely to bring new and different types of work. It is certain that computers will continue to reduce the ranks of those with traditional jobs so it is important not to get caught in a trap with the masses. Understanding what is needed and how it is done is always important. As computers become more and more self-programable, anyone with the know-how should be able to boss them around.
This morning I woke up to a warm bedroom. At first I was a little disoriented, but soon I realized that something was wrong with the airconditioning. Normally when the heating or cooling is not behaving, I go downstairs to check the thermostat. If it tells me that something is on, but I do not hear it, I know that something is wrong. This time the thermostat screen was blank except for a couple of small dark spots in the middle.
My first reaction was that the thermostat finally wore out. After taking it off the wall, I got my glasses and took it out to the kitchen to examine it more closely with a better light. Much to my surprise, those two spots said, “REPL BAT.” I still was suspicious that the thermostat was bad. After all I have a ritual of replacing the three AA batteries every January. I put a piece of tape on the top with the date. There was the tape and the date. No problem there. Rather than get a new thermostat, I decided to take the outside chance that the batteries were in fact the problem. Much to my relief, I found that one of them had leaked. So, I replaced them and all returned to normal after resetting all the times and temperatures.
Recently, I have seen a number of articles about Homes of the Future and the use of Smartphones to interface with them. Everything relies more and more upon computers and electricity. With all the complicated control circuits, it is logical that there are many more potential points for failure. Unfortunately for me, if my thermostat does not work, all I can do conveniently is run the blower that forces air through the duct system. Getting heating or cooling requires figuring out which terminals on the mounting plate behind the thermostat can be used to manually bypass the thermostat. Not a job for a typical homeowner.
“What is this complicated life of ours doing to us? What if all these things go bad at once? Certainly food for thought when hackers can attack networks that control transportation systems, power generation, and virtually everything else that modern societies rely upon including Houses of the Future. Image if someone incinerates your dinner and your house along with it. Maybe it is time to get off the grid.
I often wonder what led me to do certain things that have proven to be invaluable. One of them was to take typing in high school; the other was to take my first computer class in college. At the time, boys seldom took typing, and I was in the last class of Mechanical Engineers to graduate without having to take a computer class. I can remember hearing the dean emphasize this point in a meeting to discuss schedules for our senior year. I am not sure whether he was telling us that we were lucky or that we should take one anyway. All I know is that a good friend from the business school took a computer class and had a terrible time with it.
As a practical, hands-on person, I am a little surprised that I would have done anything that was not required. I looked upon many required courses in Mechanical Engineering as being too theoretical with too many theorums to prove and not enough practical applications. With the exception of a machine design class where we designed, built and tested our design, I preferred my business classes and was driven to be an engineer primarily because it seemed the best route to a good job.
After that first class, I found more and more reasons to get involved with computers. I also found that knowing how to type gave me a distinct advantage. Since then I have found that many of my peers have been forced into retirement because they lack skills that have become second nature to me. It is sad to see how a person with an obsolete education is much like a machine that was built with old technology. Although attempts are made to adapt or refurbish machines to perform like new ones, once they need to be replaced, they are simply thrown on the scrap heap.
Unfortunately, obsolete people with declining health require costly treatment and little to show for it. Sadly, while machines get melted down and recycled, people at first get paid to do nothing. Later as they add a growing number of affirmaties, they consume vast amounts of money for medicines, surgeries and constant care. Hopefully, advancements in medicine will bring increased quality of life and reduce these costs. However, people need new challenges that keep them mentally alert. Perhaps, new occupations will be found that require minimal retraining and put them back into leading more normal, interesting, healthy and productive lives.
I am happy that a series of decisions to stay informed about new innovations has helped to keep me in the game. Hopefully, this is a lesson to all to keep learning.
Back in January, I got a letter from AT&T that my cell phone would no longer be supported after May. Not a concern or priority for me in the beginning, but ultimately, this triggered quite a learning experience. I will probably report more about my experiences later, but right now, suffice it to say, I delayed action until mid-May. After all, the service that I already had was meeting my needs and I was thinking of switching to a smartphone. I was not sure which one and new, better models were coming out regularly. Ultimately, I replaced my plain vanilla flip phone with a Motorola Atrix Android. I decided that it would be perfect to use for testing software that I was working on. It would give me an alternative to phones that others also are using to help me.
Most of them either have a Blackberry or an Apple iPhone. Some have even upgraded more than once since their first smartphone. They use them for voice calls, but mostly for texting and email. They also like to share pictures, listen to music and play games. In fact, our daughter’s three and five-year-old sons are quite proficient with Angry Birds, Bejeweled and a number of other games on her iPhone. Some games are recreations of ones that were popular years ago. They were found in arcades or early computer or television games or on special purpose hand-held devices. In our daughter’s case, when the iPhone is in use or both boys want to play, they have the same games on an iPod Touch. How times have changed.
My choice of the Atrix was largely influenced by its replaceable battery and memory card and the internal WiFi hotspot that I can use to connect my laptop to the Internet. Normally I use a cellular datacard with the laptop, but it is always good to have an alternative in case of service problems.
Just like the multitool that I have carried in my pocket for years, smartphones have a lot of interesting features and capabilities in one package. Little by little I have tried out the GPS navigator, weather forecasts, airline reservations and used the camera and tried out a movie. Most important, I am gradually puting some inportant information on the phone in PDF format since there is a free copy of Adobe Reader for my Android phone. My Emergency Medical Card was first, but I plan to add more things. Before I do, I will decide how best to protect the information in case the phone is lost or stolen. I already downloaded a program that will scrub information off the phone if it is lost. I am also looking into applications that use the phone’s camera and facial biometrics to unlock an encrypted partition on the memory card.
The way I look at it, having the capabilities of a smartphone brings peace of mind.
Please stay turned for more of my experiences and report ones that you would like to share.
When I wake up in the morning feeling congested, I turn on the Weather Channel. As the Air Quality Report shows Unhealthy for Certain Groups, I think about growing up in a polluted Pittsburgh where the sun shone as an orange disk through the smog. Later I saw a power plant in Ohio with a stack so tall that the company bragged that pollutants would never reach the ground. Years later, I heard a that dust-borne bacteria from the Sahara Desert was killing coral in the Caribbean, and an aunt of mine complained that each time she took a cruise to Alaska there was less and less beautiful ice. Forty years ago, I even heard about receding ice when I visited a glacier in the Canadian Rockies. I also remember once when the smell of forest fires in Colorado was noticeable in the Northeast. A lot has been learned about pollution since then. Considerable progress has been made. It is especially noticeable in Pittsburgh, but there is still much to be done in many other parts of the world.
I started my career at a steel mill with smoke and gases spewing everywhere and later spent time in factories all over the country that used dangerous chemicals. I think about workers who have died from exposure to asbestos and coal dust including those involved in the cleanup of the World Trade Center site in New York after the 9-11-2001 terror attacks. I remember the controversy about acid rain traveling to New Jersey from Ohio and dust coming to the Caribbean from the Sahara. Now the talk is about mercury from China raining down on the waters off the coast of the Western United States and tainting wild fish caught in the sea. Reports show more widespread damage as researchers keep looking for it farther and farther from the sources. Measures like tall stacks may help to prevent high localized concentrations of pollutants, but cannot keep up with the broad, longterm impacts.
No doubt these poisons are building up in our bodies. Certainly does not sound pleasant or reassuring, does it? Especially when no one really knows precisely what concentrations are hazardous to our health!
The question is, “What can we do about it?” Or, would it be better not to know so much? One thing is certain. This is an important subject for Outcome Improvement. Please watch for more commentary on it.
Following is a partial list of items where we have knowledge and experience, as well as opinions. We recognize many interrelationships. We will add to the list and provide information likely to be of interest and stimulate discussion.
1. Personal Distractions - Overload, Errors and Omissions, Personal Assistants, Consequences
2. Personal Information Management - Content and Accessibility
3. Health Care - Living Healthier and Measuring Progress
4. Employment Alternatives - Options and Preparation for Robotics and Continued, Interim Outsourcing
5. The Environment - Impacts, Ideas and Solutions
6. Resource Conservation and Energy Management - Recycling, Alternative Energy Sources
7. Occupational Health and Safety - Risks and Exposures
8. Security and Protection - Physical Assets and Intellectual Property
Please suggest any other areas of personal interest and concern.
A few years ago, I printed a few thousand pages per month on my laser printer. I wore out several of them and used dozens of cartridges and countless cartons of paper. Today, I hardly ever turn my printers on. In many respects I have gone paperless and have readily searchable files in electronic filing cabinets. However, it is not as simple as it sounds. Along with the benefits, there is a downside.
I can remember seeing people on television who had lost all of their personal records. One woman tearfully told a reporter how all of her children’s baby pictures were in the house that they were watching float down a river to certain destruction. A survivor of Hurricane Katrina had also lost all his medical records when his hospital and doctor’s office were distroyed. It was difficult for him to tell doctors what they needed to know to treat him. Having electronic records in their pockets would have helped both of them.
Businesses also save millions of dollars of postage and other costs when they can send out bills via email, and it is easier and cheaper for customers to pay online. There are security concerns, but think of all the forests that can be saved. Yet, email reminders may get lost and there are healthy penalties for failing to pay on time, and people who need receipts must now print their own. Also, if you store your records online, in a cloud somewhere, there is no guarantee that the business will not be discontinued as is happening with Google Health and their online personal health records. Fortunately, for Google Health’s users, Google is giving their customers plenty of time to find alternatives and make an orderly transition.
For the do-it-yourself electronic recordkeepers, there is another set of challenges. People who remember 35mm slides, 5-1/4 inch and 3-1/2 inch diskettes, 8-track tape, VHS and music cassettes, and other obsolete media have probably agonized when they found that they no longer had a means of using their old media. When they could find a working machine to read it, they often found that the media had degraded and could no longer be read. Electronic files become corrupted and, at best, it can take a costly commercial or government process to attempt to reconstruct electronic information. It is certainly not possible for the masses.
I have scanners that enable me to convert documents and pictures into digital files. I could not be without them. However, once something is digital, dangers of corrupted files and outdated media need to be addressed. The first time I lost a few pictures on a camera memory card reminded me that everything has a failure mode. Same thing with hard drives that have a lot of moving parts and wear and tear. Then there are CD-ROMs and DVDs. Even if they stay in their jackets and avoid scratches, they will ultimately deteriorate. Molecules constantly jump around and fields from magnetic particles damage adjacent areas on tapes.
Backing up information is extremely important no matter where it resides. Consider the smartphone with the MicroSD card. The phone can be lost or stolen. It can fall into water. However, even electronic solid-state memories have life expectancies like my camera memory card. Some fail prematurely. Same with ubiquitous flash drives. Some memories are consumer grade, designed to last several years; others are commercial grade and cost a large premium, but should be good for ten years or so.
Even experts get surprised. Redundancy is the best way to minimize risk and exposure. Part of a good backup policy says to separate the copies as far as possible. We are reminded of the small company in San Francisco that kept backups on a different floor in the same building. They were lucky, but what if an earthquake had damaged or destroyed the building.
In the mid-1960s, I had a small portable AM radio that operated off household power, 4 NiCad batteries or a solar panel in the handle. Later, I had an exciting assignment responsible for Energy Management at a large manufacturing company with plants all over the United States. We weathered an oil embargo and other engineers and I initiated various projects to test novel new concepts. At least one solar water heater is still operating successfully after 30 years.
Today’s world requires us to finally get serious about replacing fossil fuels with alternatives. There are new innovations and new ways to deliver and manage the growing amount of energy we depend upon. Please share your insight and thoughts.
It is easy to get caught up in the marketing hype about something new, especially if it could solve an important problem or satisfy a special need. However, I have had enough disappointments when things have not lived up to expectations. More recently, consulting on-line product reviews has been a big help to avoid these surprises. However, care needs to be taken since they cannot always be taken at face value.
When product reviews are based upon early samples, they may no longer reflect the current product. Bad reviews may then no longer be accurate since problems have been fixed after the review was posted. It is therefore very important to make sure to take into account the date of a review and make sure that it is current especially if it is a bad one. Otherwise, the downside is that benefits from a truly good product could be missed.
Welcome to Outcome Improvement! Everyone has a lot on their minds. The pace of life continues to increase and things have gotten more and more complicated. We first attempted to get this blog started on June 14, 2009. Unfortunately, other things got in our way and we were never able to follow through until now.
A lot has happened since then. We have found that personal management and recordkeepting have become especially important to living a successful life. Healthcare offers many opportunities for improving cost-effectiveness and quality of life. However, since we have recently started another blog dedicated to Personal Health Records at http://lifelongphr.com/blog, we will concentrate on broader aspects of outcome improvement in this forum.
We continually find challenges addressing technologies and products that get to market before they are ready. However, we have found that with a little mentoring, a reasoned, incremental approach will deliver positive results for those who otherwise can become veru frustrated. It is sad to see people abandon and miss out on something that would gradually deliver value and exceed expectations.
If you are afraid to tackle something without a support group, please look for one in us. You are invited to use this as an opportunity to make connections with others, share information and better address challenges faced with technology and the change that comes with it. Expect to find new ideas and insights, lessons and experiences, viewpoints and suggestions that are relevant. What you contribute will help others as well.
As we get started, we are especially interested in hearing what you are thinking including needs, interests and concerns.
Thank you for your interest and participation.
Tom Rockwood