Recognition is a good start...

Recognition is a good start if there is going to be a change in the way we do things in the US. I listened intently to the President's State of the Union address, and I was very excited when he specifically mentioned biodiesel, ethanol, wind and solar energies. I'm also glad he mentioned trying to improve fuel economy standards in cars. I wish he would have said trucks and SUVs would get improved fuel economy standards also. Diesels are already helping trucks and SUVs get better MPG than gasoline engined equivilants, so it's already kind of a good thing. There will be diesel engines in small SUVs and 1/2 ton pickups by 2009.

This article by CNET.com describes how we have a long way to go with the US's production of biodiesel. The US used 62 billion gallons of diesel, and will be soon be producing 150 million gallons of biodiesel. Yeah, LONG WAY.

The US has made great advances in the production of ethanol. For 2006, 4.9 billion gallons were produced, which is a good number if we are to meet the Energy Policy Act of 2005 goal of producing 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012 and the President's new target would bump that figure up to 35 billion gallons by 2017. Check out this CNET.com article.

Ethanol 2.0 is a nice way of stating cellulosic ethanol. We need to get away from competing with food supplies by using corn to produce ethanol. The ethanol industry had to start somewhere, and corn was an easy place to start. Watch DuPont in the near future. They were the first stop on the President's alternative fuel tour, they own Pioneer, and recently revealed that they had co-developed biobutanol with BP.

What will February bring?

Lots happening at the end of January. President Bush will make his State of the Union address for the first time in front of a Democratic controlled House and Senate. I'm looking forward to what he has to say about renewable energy.

I've been following the increase in wind energy, ethanol, and biodiesel on a couple different websites and blogs since leaving college. I know some of my interest in alternative energy was planted in college when we decided to power our Formula SAE racecar with E-85. My interst has been growing steadily since, and even fertilized by my current career in the energy service industry. Ethanol is a good direction, but not when it's competing for resources with our food industry. I hope that there is a large shift in the ethanol industry in the near future toward using feedstock for production. My hope is in the future of biodiesel. Diesel engines are much more efficienct than spark iginition fueled engines.

Secondly, Microsoft will be releasing to consumers both Windows Vista and Office 2007. Office 2007 has a new user interface that reveals a lot more of the features that are already available. Windows Vista is Microsoft's solution to the ever growing security problem. Let's see how many bugs Microsoft has fixed since Vista went RTM in November.

iPhone and changing the world one device at a time

I must admit that I've been an Apple fan for years, but Microsoft's dominance over compatible software has kept me a loyal Microsoft user. I've never been into music as much as most people around me. As I was finishing college, the iPod appeared on the scene. I saw my fellow classmates displaying them proudly in the computer labs. Would I get one? No. I've never had a large music collection, until getting married, and it's still not large. It's kind of always just been background music while I was working on my car or on a computer.

I've always been a little bit of a techie. I've had a mobile phone for a little over 5 years now. My current phone is an Audiovox SMT5600. It's been a really great phone, and has a crazy amount of features. A year and half ago, as the cell phone companies were marketing cell phones with MP3 players, Microsoft snuck onto the scene with Window Mobile 2003 software in mobile phones. It was a little weird to see advertisements for brand new "music phones", when I had just that in my pocket already. What was the big deal?

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago when Treo released it's 750. Beautiful. I think I found a replacement for my Audiovox. I've always had a little dilema though. I needed a phone first, then a multifunction devise with contacts and a calendar that can sync to Outlook, then an MP3 player, camera, and internet connection. All of this had to be small enough to fit in my pocket comfortably, which is the reason I have not updated to a PDA sized device.
Just days ago, Steve Jobs reveals what everyone has been waiting for. The holy grail iPhone. It has made a glorius entrance into a market that already has products that have the same features. (OK, I can't get an 8 GB memory card for the Treo 750 just yet, but it's coming.) I do have to admit that I love the iPhone. It's super cool. It's quite amazing that it runs that same software as Apple computers, which is a one up for Apple compared to the Windows Mobile 5.0 and Pocket PC software packages on smartphones and PDAs. The iPhone is kind of like the Treo LifeDrive, but can also be used as a phone.

So where are we headed? The UMPCs are coming. Bigger than a smartphone or PDA, smaller than a laptop. Being a gearhead, the auto industry is trying to plan for the integration of infotainment systems in the new cars you buy. There were a significant number of cars this year that had a provision to hook up your iPod. PDAs and UMPCs have just about the perfect screen size for GPS navigation or watching videos in a car. Cars, trucks, and SUVs have a much longer life than most electronic devices. How is the iPhone going to change things? I think the radio in the dash will just become a hub for distributing all the informaton we have on a personal device that we attach to it, or a screen with a storage device that we sync our home's PC to before we leave on a trip.

New Year's in New Orleans

I ended up spending New Year's Eve in Jackson Square in New Orleans with friends. I had a great time. It seems as though many of us will be hoping that '07 brings us all a little luck, as we look forward to many of us having changes take place regarding work and our lives.

The older I get the more I really cherish spending time with friends during an activity. Although we spent a lot of the time in our friends' house in New Orleans, it was great to get to share some new memories together. The fireworks in Jackson Square were expecially wonderful to see, considering all that New Orleans has been through and what is still to come.

I only got to observe a little of New Orleans as I was driving to and from the city, but there are still lots of repairs taking place. It's a shame that it's taking so long to rebuild the city.