Three flights today, 4.5 hours plus the prep time.
So, not much time for original content. Instead, I’ll give you Steve Jobs on life, speaking at a Standford commencement ceremony.
For my own part, I’ve greatly enjoyed the pleasures he brought into my life, even if I remain fairly certain that I wouldn’t have enjoyed working for him.
Still, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
That works about as well as anything.
Lotsa flying = lotsa flying stories on the blog ! What you excel at. Bring ‘em on.
Not to minimize the value of your uniformly excellent social and political commentary but, the nets, they are full of that. Kfir aggressor pilots – there is but one. And you’re it. You lucky dog, you.
Remember all the claims of undue influence of the oil executives and the demands for the White House visitor records?
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-fundraiser-pushed-solyndra-deal-inside/story?id=14691618
An elite Obama fundraiser hired to help oversee the administration’s energy loan program pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife’s law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.
“How hard is this? What is he waiting for?” wrote Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate before being appointed to a key job helping oversee the energy loan guarantee program. “I have OVP [the Office of the Vice President] and WH [the White House] breathing down my neck on this.”
Many of the emails were written just days after Spinner accepted a three-page ethics agreement in which he pledged he would “not participate in any discussion regarding any application involving [his wife's law firm] Wilson [Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati].”
Seems like we are getting Chicago Dem. Machine politics in the White House.
“Seems like we are getting Chicago Dem. Machine politics in the White House.”
Was there ever any doubt? I figure it started the day he got there…
((kicks moderation beast))
Three hops in one day! All I gotta say is “work, work, work!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMOWYGrtY9c
Greetings:
I was watching the France24 newscast earlier this evening in an attempt to whittle down some of my impending purgatory time. The end of week discussion panel did not seem to be aficionados of the above-mentioned Mr. Jobs. One Asian-Indian looking woman with an eSpanish last name hit the European nail on its head when she excitedly exclaimed, in the best “all your money are belong to us tradition”, “Where’s the Steve Jobs’ foundation ??!!”
IIRC, it’s actually associated with his wife, Laurene. Somehow I don’t think he had much of a personal need to be seen to be doing good, necessarily.
I watched the Jobs speech video for the first time the day after he died. Found myself going back a few times more. There was much I admired about him and an equal amount that I didn’t care for. But I found myself wishing I had heard something like that when I graduated from college some 35 years ago or so. “Don’t settle…”. In reflection, which I do a lot of these days, I admitted to myself that pretty much summed up what I’ve done for most of my life. It hasn’t served me all that well. Hope I can maintain the courage to change going forward. If so maybe I can find something I truly love to do before I find there simply isn’t time to do it.
I gain inspiration from our host as he plainly loves what he is now doing. Wishing I was right there on his wing, knowing that an impossibility, I remain committed to making a difference by finding my niche. “Don’t settle…” Maybe I’ll end up walking 7 miles for a meal at a soup kitchen but if my passion can be ignited I’m sure it will be the best meal I’ve ever had.
Glad you’re busy.
Really glad you’re busy doing what you’re doing.
Semper Fi.
All these years in the workforce, I have found there are very few I would want to work for. My ex boss just died and when someone said, “Was he a good boss?” my reply was, “He was never mean and he wasn’t an impediment”. Not sure those could be said for Jobs. However, I’ve been pretty bummed about his death. Pancreatic, liver cancer runs in my family. I was just really hoping the man with all the money and all the connections could beat it. I figured if he could… there was eventual hope for the everyman. Not so much anymore…
I worked for a few years at Apple, during his first period at the company.
Not a problem, as long as you weren’t working directly for him on some project or other. And I didn’t.
I did, once (it seemed like a good idea at the time) offer some unsolicited input during some of the early Macintosh design period, something to do with choosing the display resolution. I had enough sense to make the suggestion from the other side of a Herman Miller partition as he was passing by with a couple of the team in tow. (His initial position was demonstrated by grabbing a sheet of paper from his secretary’s typewriter, arguing that 72 characters per line were plenty.)
I got the distinct impression that it would not have gone well had he figured out who I was, the project being extremely rilly supur sekrit at the time.
I was, however, very interesting to watch him in action, especially if you didn’t have a particularly delicate ego, as he drove the projects along. He was surprisingly often right in the end. It was also interesting to see some guys stand up to him and convince him he was wrong on some points, too. That seems to get lost in most of the stories.
Reflections on Mr. Jobs, courtesty of Guy Kawasaki via CNET: http://cnet.co/nyQc4t