Steve and the Crazy Man

Everyone is reminiscing on their Steve Jobs stories. I have one to share too, but unlike the others, it's more about what didn't happen.

One little known fact is that I used to work at Apple, back when it was Apple Computer. I was a software engineer working for the International Text Group (ITG). I had been an Apple fanboy since I was a wee lad and this was pretty much a dream come true. I learned a ton: font formats, typography and daylight savings time just scratched the surface. Working at Apple was awesome.

(Sidenote: The reason why I try to keep this on the down-low is that people assume that since I worked at Apple and was a computer programmer, that someone how I could fix their computer. Does anyone ask the worker dishing up fries at McDonald's how to plant potatoes? How about asking a plumber about doing a colonoscopy? Do you have a problem with your computer? I might be able to help, but your best bet is to ask the Chipmunkgeek .)

Anyways, onto my encounter with Steve. I was leaving the office late one night. In those days, the ITG was located right above a top-secret area where a lot of top-secret secrets were kept very top-secretly. I knew it was top-secret because you needed a special key card to open the door to the area and everyone that entered into the area would do the "is-a-crazy-man-following-me" look-around before entering. Steve was waiting in the lobby right outside of the door to the top-secret area that evening. As I came out the elevator, I saw him fiddling with the iMac that they had on a desk for people to sign-in.

You know that crazy man that they're always looking for before they go into the top-secret area? At this point, I became that man. I thought to myself: "Hey, there's Steve Jobs! What if I went up to him and just started punching him in his face!?" I was seriously insane. It got even better worse. The crazy man continued: "Man, I'd be famous! I'd get on Slashdot and MacWorld." Fortunately, the conversation in my slowly-becoming-sane mind took a turn for the better:"Then I'd get arrested. I'd get fired. I'd spend a lot of time in court. Man, I'm hungry. I just want to get something to eat." So I quickly walked by Steve. I left him with his face intact; he left me with my life unscathed.

So there's my brush with greatness. Thanks Steve! Because of you I have no memories of going to court or spending time in jail.

Humanity wins!

As Watson completely dominated the human race, I have taken a step forward in restoring faith in the power and strength of humanity. For centuries, 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' has been the foundation of all conflict: Should I create an impenetrable defense? (Rock) Should I initiate a sharp pre-emptive strike? (Scissors) Should I wipe my butt? (Paper)

Witness the complete domination of humanity over Skynet!

Being in College

This semester I'm taking two "non-language" classes. The hope is that I'll be able to practice my listening and speaking in contexts that aren't exclusively language focused. This is, obviously, a little harder than my usual language class but it's more fun since I get to see language in action.

My first class was my computer science class. The first thing I noticed was the relationship between the teacher and the students. First, she lectured them about coming in on time (they still come in late). It's interesting how most of these students are 18 or 19 (or 20) but they still get treated like seniors or juniors in high school. There was this one point where she basically said: "I know you guys are all lazy..." and I totally snorted in class and these girls stared at me. Haha.

Second, a lot of the interaction reflects a rote learning style. The teacher asks a question, and if the answer is obvious, everyone answers in semi-unison. Or if the teacher is repeating a point, she'll ask a question and then proceed to answer it herself with everyone joining in unison.

There is a complete emphasis on practicality. This is fine, but when I was in college the emphasis was completely different. There was an attempt to make the concepts taught language agnostic and we used an "unpractical" language (Scheme) to get us to focus on the concepts instead of the implementation. The emphasis on practicality means that they talk a lot about C language constructs, how to use Borland's C compiler and the importance of programming in Windows. The computer lab totally reflects this emphasis on practicality: there's no internet access in it and the machines are all running these old (probably pirated) copies of XP with old copies of Visual FoxPro, Visual * programming tools, Borland, etc.

It made really thankful for UNIX and how I got started on UNIX; I felt a lot of the concepts and tools learned were useful in a way that transcended the specific idiosyncrasies of each tool. I certainly don't feel that way here.

As we think about developing relationships and possibly hiring here, it makes me a little apprehensive; there was a huge learning curve for me in going from the university to working. I appreciated the work ethic (e.g. staying up all night, being committed to deadlines, etc) that being at Cal gave me (I was a lazy bum in high school). With all the culturally acceptable plagiarism here as well as varying degrees of work ethic, I hope we can find the right folks to network with here.

Basketball class... that's for another post!

Dropbox dropped

I just discovered that Dropbox, maybe the most useful piece of cloud software ever, is blocked here. This doesn't matter so much to people that use VPNs or tunnels, but it is an interesting event. I can understand the political/social motivations for blocking things like Blogspot, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook. It's not really clear to me why you would want to block Dropbox. Is Dropbox being used in ways that are perceived to undermine the government? I just use it for syncing files between two computers. Two computers that I own. I promise!

UPDATE 1

I posted this article to Hacker News. It's basically a voting site for nerdy news articles. A couple of observations. First, the number of Nerd Points (Hacker News, or HN, likes to call them 'karma') I had this morning was 0. Now I'm up to 167. You get points for posting and commenting. If people like your comments or articles you get even more points.

Second, it's been about 7 hours and the article is still at the top. I think the article rank system is something like highest points/minute or something like that. This is the second time I've been famous in the last 30 days! The first time was even nerdier than this. The truth of the matter is that I'm totally envious of all the cool internerds that everyone pays attention to. Maybe one day I'll be invited to the lunch table. I'll probably have to say something or do something better than posting articles on HN. Update 2 It's no longer number 1 but now I have enough Nerd Points to downvote other people. Yay! Some seriouser thoughts on this: • This is most likely related to viewing Dropbox as a source of information sharing that cannot be controlled. It is a testament to Dropbox's influence, that the government would see DB as a threat. Until DB can promise the government a sufficient amount of control over the content shared, they won't be allowed to be accessed here. (See Google) • Up until this point, the whole Google fiasco has been settled quite well.

1. Google didn't want to remain in China and be forced to censor content. Check.
2. China didn't want to make an exception. Check.
3. Google still has a presence in China and doesn't have to filter its content. China hasn't lost face and been forced to make an exception. Check.

Even though it's not ideal and the service gets blocked sometimes, I sense that China and Google came to an agreement together that Google's move to Hong Kong would be the most appropriate thing to accomplish the two seemingly contradictory goals. You will note that if China didn't want Google at all, they would've blocked Google in HK from day one. That's not to say that Google will never be blocked, but at this point it's safe to say that the government does not see Google as a big enough threat to warrant being blocked. • Could DB do something similar? Maybe. It seems that DB would have to reach out to the Chinese government and cooperate to some degree in a sign to show that there is a desire to be in China. Then, like Google, they could choose to pull out to HK, where hopefully there would continue to be this unspoken agreement to let foreign companies be. This might backfire in that the government might just pull the plug on all foreign companies in HK, feeling that the initial overtures were superficial and that there was just a desire to be given a certain level of access in China without having to abide by the other stipulations that other companies have. If DB chooses to cooperate, this would lead to some form of censorship (either by DB, the government, or by the users themselves) thus defeating some of the benefit of using DB. DB is fundamentally different from the service that Google offers, though, so following Google's path might not work. • This whole thing makes me sad. Chinese culture is fundamentally different from Western culture. That doesn't justify certain things but you'll have to talk to people (real people…not just read chinaSMACK) to understand better some of the reasons for these policies. The point is, though, that the Chinese government is dealing with a different set of problems with a different set of values than other Western governments. Until there are some changes in the problems or in the values, we'll continue to see different permutations of these kinds of policies. I've also seen a pattern of non-risk taking behavior here. Policies like these discourage people take chances at producing great ideas. Most Chinese comp sci students want to get a good job at a stable company. From what I have seen, and I'm still learning a lot about tech here, the lack of the entrepreneurial spirit is related to a lack in the quality of programming. There isn't the same kind of cut-throat competition that I've seen in the States and this leads to less motivation for learning the best (or better) way to do things. There are obvious exceptions to this, but in general, the motivation for someone to set up their own business is very low. It's too risky.

Loving commercials

Most of the time, when it comes to ads, I want to run away like girls ran away from me in kindergarten. And the way they ran away from me in elementary school. And in junior high. And in high school. And in college. But I digress.

The reason why people have stuff like Ad-blocker is because they don't want to see the ads. It might seem obvious but that is the biggest reason why people want to block your ads. It's because your ad sucks. So, actually it doesn't matter if people see them or not, if your ad is uncompelling no one will want to click on it and view it. But if it is compelling then I'll want to see it no matter what.

Case in point. I run a Flash blocker when I use Safari. For the most part I find that most things Flash are just ads. Unless I go specifically to watch a video or play a game, I don't want Flash running around in my browser. But there was one time, the Flash blocker stuttered and allowed me to see a quick picture of the Ivan Brothers. They're a Capital One ad campaign and I spent some time trying to figure out who they were and what they were about.

Which brings us, gentle reader, to the amazing point which you have breathlessly waited for. Chinese people get this stuff. Or at least some of them do. I found that a lot of the ads that I see on TV are actually 30-second pieces of a longer production. For example, this Nissan commercial. Ads should be interesting; that's why they are created, to garner interest for your product. When they suck, like most ads do, people want to run away. But when they're awesome, I'm willing to watch it for more than 30 seconds.

The iPad Killer

The other day my pocket got picked. I ended up losing my wallet, which was a sad thing, but this event put me into a market for an item that I hadn't truly considered. If you know me well, (or if you know me superificially), you'll know that I'm a forgetful person. The statement itself isn't completely true. The truth is, if I consider something important, I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it, and thus, I won't forget it. Like our taxes. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could give money to my Uncle Sam, so I didn't forget that it was due on April 15th. But things like 'where my wallet is' gets a little less air time on WVRY (combination talk-show/Top 40 format). So there's been a lot of talk about the iPad these days. I'd like to introduce you to the iManPurse. This is part of my ongoing personal development journey. I'm not the same man that I was yestergay, so there's no real shame in pursuing new and different ways of living. Right? So what's an iManPurse? And how does it compare to an iPad? First of all, it's called an iMP. Just so you know. Similar to the iPad, the iMP can fit any kind of lifestyle. What we were looking for, in this case, was something that could complement the Coolness of Active Lifestyle. If this phrase seems strange, it is because it *is* strange. No matter, folks here seem to ignore English taglines anyways. So while you could get an iMP that reflected Luxury in Ageless Fashion or Fitness Mountain Tribes, I finally picked this one:

So right now it's a draw between the iPad and iMP since, I heard, you can customize your iPad by buying different apps. Whatever that means. Well let's look at battery life. The iPad gets 10 hours on every recharge. The saleslady told me that the iMP never needs recharging. Point goes to iMP. What about email? Well the iMP can carry your iPhone AND your letters from the post office. The iPad...can't carry your iPhone but it can carry your email. But it can't carry your letters from the post office. Point goes to iMP

When I touch my iMP I don't leave all sorts of nasty smudge marks everywhere. So I guess point goes to iMP here too. For cost, well I got my iMP plus a free wallet thrown in for $6.71. For the price of an iPad I could've had 74 differen iMPs. Think of all the possibilites: a jacket made of iMPs, a luxurious towel, and then maybe some handy briefs. (I don't think anyone would want to pick that pocket.)

This pretty much puts the iMP in the Top 10 Greatest Devices of All Time. I leave you with some action photos of the iMP in action.

Nice try! My wallet wasn't in my back pocket!

Check out this active lifestyle!

I ♥ iMP

I'm following you

I know lots of people hate Google Buzz. I like it because I don't have to turn on a VPN to use it. Also, its right there with my email, I don't have to open another application or go to another website. It's too bad that its probably going to fizz out.

One super annoying thing about Facebook is that I always get these emails that say: "You could be cool if you joined Facebook. Look, Auntie Jenny  is on Facebook. She's so cool. You could be cool too if you joined."

First of all, I already know that I'm not cool. Let's just get that out of the way. Second, Facebook, do you really know how cool Auntie Jenny is? I don't think you do. Because if you did know how cool she was you wouldn't have let her join Facebook. So there. 

Along those lines I got this awesome email from Jacob.

Football and Me

I've been pretty sick lately, thus the dearth of posts. I was sick for a week in early September, but now I just have a lingering cough. The Boss got sick too, but she's better now. There's the oink-oink flu scare here, so having a fever isn't good. Fortunately, we're both better now. :) (I got asked if my Boss had a fever by one of our school officials. I told her no. Which was true since she didn't have a fever when we took the Boss' temperature that morning. I wasn't going to tell her that the Boss had a fever the night before.)

I love football. I love playing football. I love watching football. I love listening to football but that's not as good as watching or playing. I thought about how to get my football fix out here. There has been some talk of getting a Slingbox , but, for now, I'm gonna do it old-school like it was when I was in elementary school. I'm just going to listen to the radio. I decided to record the Cal Bear stream and then listen to it later. For all you folks in country who care about football (currently, none of my readership) here's how to do it (on a Mac).

1. Make sure whatever team your following has a radio broadcast that they stream online. If you're a Cal Bear or Niner fan, you're in luck! Joe Starkey still broadcasts for Cal on KGO 810 and the Niners are on KNBR 680. Look for radio streaming.
   
2. Put the radio stream in iTunes.
   
3. Figure out what time your team is playing and let iTunes run. (Don't forget the timezone change!)
   
4. Schedule WireTap Pro (yeah, it's not free, but it's a great program!) to start recording at that time. Set it to record for 4 hours.
   
5. Go to bed.
   

So I did this last night for the Cal-Ducks game. I woke up, terribly excited. Like a small child that desperately needed to go pee, I sat in front of the computer clicking nervously, listening to the broadcast. As I began listening, I faced a moral dilemma: should I go and see if Cal won?

In college, I would get depressed after watching my teams (9ers and Bears) lose. I would just go to my room and mope. Sometimes I would play hours and hours of Eradicator or Quake just to dull the pain. So it's really difficult for me to choose to watch my team lose.

I decided to listen to it without the benefit of pre-knowledge. This is one benefit of living in a significantly different time-zone that is ahead: you feel like you are living in the future and that you have mutant super-powers. But I wanted to make sure I got the whole game, so I clicked to the end; that was my undoing. Joe Starkey spoke solemnly of the need for the coaches to convince the players that this was an aberration. You usually don't speak that way of a team if they had won. Since I knew they had lost I went and checked the scoreboard. They got blown out!

I am not one of those who enjoys watching the suffering of small puppies. Sigh. I don't think I can stand listening to my team getting blown out. So there goes part of my plans for today.

It's You, Not Me

I've been a Mac guy pretty much all my life. I remember when Macs were a magnitude of awesome better than PCs (5th/6th grade). Then I remember when all my friends had PCs and got to play cool games on them. And the Mac, still pretty advanced, sucked pretty bad (7th grade to high school). Then Windows 95 came along, and the PC not only was awesome at gaming, but it was pretty good for getting things done too. I used Xacto's Dell my whole freshman year. It was challenging to share a computer, but he was gracious in giving me free rein over it. I remember when Toshi did something to screw it up and I recall thinking "I'm glad I don't know that much about PCs; I could've done that". My biggest fight with the Dell came when I accidentally emailed to my whole address book a sappy love letter. Sigh. I wanted to throw it out the window. Or hit control-Z on my life. My year-long experience with the Dell, though, convinced me to buy a Mac. I bought my first computer my sophomore year in college. It cost $1800 and I bought a 17 inch Viewsonic monitor for $300 to go with it. Sigh. Those were the days. After I graduated from college, I bought a Powerbook G3 Pismo (one of the best laptops ever made) and then a Powerbook G4 12 inch (also one of the best laptops ever made) after that. Since then, though, I now share (by marriage) a Macbook with the Boss and, recently, a netbook, an ASUS Eee PC 1000HE. It came pre-installed with Windows XP.

We had been doing pretty well with one computer. I've been able to cobble together a system where we have different user accounts but share the same music and photo library.  But as I began doing more and more web work, we thought it would be best if we got another computer for times where the other person just wanted to check something on the web. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do. I didn't really know XP that well, and had really no interest in trying to develop skills in understand that system. There really wasn't a low-power netbook-type of computer offered by Apple. We bought a Mac-mini first; that became our family computer with the Macbook being the mobile computer. But as we moved overseas, it wasn't that practical to have a desktop computer.

I did a little bit of research and I discovered something called Ubuntu. It was a free operating system, based on UNIX, and it was touted as being extremely user-friendly. One of the things that I'm hoping to do here is to leverage technology as a business. Piracy is pretty common-place here and I was wondering if this could possibly be polished enough to use in a work environment. So I decided to buy the netbook and install Ubuntu on it.

And after trying really hard to use it and like using for almost six months I've given up. There are a lot of cool things you can do in Ubuntu and I really appreciate its UNIX roots but it's just too much of a hassle to use.

•  I found that the wireless and networking configuration were spotty. Sometimes I had have to toggle it on and off to get a connection. 
• The suite of applications that it had to offer were as good as the ones offered for XP but not as good as the ones offered for the Mac (Textwrangler vs JEdit; iTunes vs anything-else; web browsers). Granted, there's some nerdy/programmy stuff that I could on Ubuntu that I really wouldn't know where to begin with XP, but in terms of everyday usage, I didn't find Ubuntu compelling.
• The software updating system seemed cumbersome to me and I felt that, unlike the Mac, I had to conform my usage behaviors to the system instead of being able to tweak the system to enable me to work the way I like to work. Some things I did like better because Ubuntu was UNIX, but I suppose that wanting it to be well-organized was something that I've been spoiled with on the Mac. Granted, I had the same experience with XP, but if Ubuntu is just as good as XP in some areas and not as good in other areas, wouldn't that make XP the better choice?

So... now I'm officially abandoning Ubuntu. Maybe it will be more usable in a desktop environment. Or maybe version 10 will be much better. But for now I've gotten used to using XP. And I like it a lot better than Ubuntu.

nwcmptr.exe

Whoa. I just noticed that there's a tab in the Blogger interface called "Monetize". Interesting. It's spring again. That means most of my brain melts and pours out my nose. Actually, that would be nice. Instead it makes itself comfortable in my sinuses, eking out a living as super-thick nose jello. I can't wait till spring is over.

So I've been playing around with netbooks. I like them because they are small and they are relatively cheap. The Boss gave me permission to get one because

1. I told her that I'd use it for work.
2. It would give us two computers to work on but still allow us to keep one main computer.
3. It wasn't that expensive.

So it's been a while since I've been on a Windows computer. The last time I was on a Windows computer for a significant amount of time, I was rooming with another guy, Notorious BIG was killed, email was still fun, and I wore a pumpkin to one of my math classes. It is amazing, then, how much on Windows hasn't changed. The graphics are a little snazzier than Windows 95, but all of the confusion, obfuscation, and frustration are still there. But let's start with what I like!

1. I like that even though it's pretty confusing, Windows XP is pretty customizable. I was able to remove all of things from the Start menu that I didn't need or want, and I was able to customize (for the most part) a lot of the UI. But this was pretty hard to do.

2. I like that I can use Google Chrome. It's a pretty awesome browser; fast, clean, and fun to use.

And that's about it. On the hardware side, I like that my ASUS 1000HE is small and light; it's really easy to carry. It's got a pretty good keyboard for it's size. It's got really good battery life (about 7 hours of normal use). And it's cheap!

And I really think that's the big selling point for Windows. It's cheap. Most people I know that use Windows have pointed to the cost as a significant characteristic for them in decision making. And a lot of the issues that I have with Windows aren't an issue for them. Things like how the system tray is cluttered with things that I don't need. I mean, do I really need an icon telling me everytime I use a trackpad? Or how, when I try to figure out what startup items I can delete, I get names like ImScInst.exe. 

To be fair, things on the Mac or Linux side can get like that too. But, at least for the Mac side, most applications are self contained. They don't have a hundred different files in different parts of the system. When you want to delete a program, you just delete it. And the name of the program is something reasonable. Like Microsoft Entourage. As opposed to msimn.exe.

There are very few apps on the Windows side that make me think: Wow, they took a lot of time to get it right...and it does a bunch of cool things. The apps that I have seen that I think are relatively well done fall into two categories: Microsoft apps and games. Most Windows apps look ugly and aren't fun (this is admittedly subjective). And I think this says a lot about the development culture related to the two platforms.

So I guess the big question is "Well if you hate it that much, why did you spend $400 on it?" Well, because it was cheap!

Anti-technology

When I was in college (in a galaxy far far away) I remember there was this new cool product; the cell phone. As more and more of my friends got one, I promised myself that I would never. It was a very insidious device; it would ring at the most inappropriate times. And every time it rang, the person had to answer right there. Even while they were doing their business right next to me! And it got worse. It seems that when you got a cell phone, people would except you to be accessible all the time. It wasn't like you could just have a home phone and people could leave a message on your answering machine (remember those)?

But after moving 4 times in 3 years, I finally broke down and got one. And, I'll admit, the cell phone has changed my life, for the better (I think). But that whole episode made me realize that I'm something of an anti-technologist. Which is ironic since I am (by training) a computer programmer and have a more refined insight into computer technology than the average person. I remember when the iPod came out and I was working at Apple, I was like "Who is going to buy this thing? It'll never sell." I only got one later because Apple offered all of its employees the chance to buy one at a steep discount. Good thing I wasn't a decision maker at Apple. Haha.

And when the iPhone came out, a number of people asked me when I was going to get one. Psh. I already have the iPhone nano, I don't need that. Or want it. I'm not on Facebook, I don't believe in Twitter. I'm not such a Luddite that I won't consider something new, but it's got to have real value. It can't just be one more thing that I have to add to my to-do list.

I think that's one thing about the Mac platform that really appeals to me. I feel like it has real value. There are a whole bunch of pragmatic reasons why you shouldn't by a Mac, but if those reasons aren't your reasons then I think a Mac is a great purchase. One of the things that I've noticed too is that there are more people passionate about the Mac than there are people passionate about Windows. Even percentage-wise I would say this is true (this is all anecdotal of course). But I think this is reflected in the kinds of software that are available. I remember doing a little googling a while ago to look for grade-A Windows developers and their products. Folks that really loved what they made and paid attention to detail to make their products awesome for XP or Vista. I really couldn't find any. Most Windows programs that I've seen don't seem to take a real disciplined look towards design and ease of use; compare SmartFTP to Panic's Transmit (screenshots at the bottom). And, I really haven't seen a program for Windows that was fun! And I'm not just talking about games. I'm just talking about a program where you just wonder, why hasn't it been this way the whole time?

That's why I love software on the Mac. And that's why I love trying out new software. There's very little obligation and it's really cool to see what kind of innovation people use to solve a problem. So one of my latest experiments in software is eschewing Firefox for Omniweb. It's been fun trying out something new, but we'll see if I got back to tried and true or not.