Sooner Blue

So, a woman in a hot-air balloon realizes she’s lost. She lowers her altitude and spots a man in a boat below. She shouts down to him;

"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago,  but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his  portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon,  approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above  sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north  latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west  longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an  Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you  know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you  told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with  your information and I'm still lost.  Frankly, you've  not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded,  “Which means you must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist.  "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantities of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, now you expect me to solve a problem you created, you're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

Want an Internet that's 100 times faster?

Remember the groaning whine of the dial-up modem? Remember web page download times so slow that you could run to the store for a loaf of bread? Remember waiting an hour for email with photos to download?

Well, for most of us, dial-up Internet has gone the way of TV rabbit-ears and the cassette tape .. they're just something that we'll one day explain to our wide-eyed grandchildren.

Now, close your eyes and dream of an ultra high-speed Internet .. where movies and webpages can download almost instantly, in a fraction of a second.

It might sound like a fantasy, but it’s very real .. and it's our old friend Google who is experimenting with new ways to make Internet access better and faster for everyone .. 100 times faster.

Google announced a couple of months ago that it's working on an ultra-high speed network, called Google Fiber for at least 50,000 and maybe up to 500,000 people.

I saw on the news recently that Google is looking for a few lucky communities to be guinea pigs for the new system.

Competition has been fierce (and funny, a mayor jumped into an icy lake), cities are pulling outrageous stunts .. anything to catch Google's eye. Remember when Topeka, Kansas renamed itself 'Google"? And Google renamed itself "Topeka" for April Fool's day?

Most of us take our high-speed connections for granted .. but dial-up is still a painful reality to nearly 100 million Americans who live in rural and low-income areas. Maybe faster connections are too expensive, or maybe access is a problem .. many of the big Internet service companies don't want to shell out the bucks to add the needed infrastructure.

So, this isn’t just about downloading movies, or video chatting across oceans .. hopefully Google will push the federal government to expand high-speed Internet to everyone across America.

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