Author: Stagger Lee

The tale has been told time and again, but there I was, sitting outside at Cafe Du Monde on a gray December morning in 1996, waiting on a plate of beignets and sipping on some cafe au lait, and I looked at the USA Today business section.  They were announcing that Apple was acquiring NeXT for $400 million and that Steve Jobs would be returning as a special assistant to the CEO.  I wasn’t a technology professional at all – I was a grad student in political science – but I’d been a Mac user for two and a half years, and I was well-familiar with the constant doom-talk around Apple Computer.  And I said to myself, “well, this is it, we’re going to live or die on this one.”

I got word of the resignation today on Twitter, while sat in front of a MacBook Pro and an iMac, working on setting up the new deployment solution for imaging machines with Lion.  Since September 1997, every nickel I’ve earned has been, in some measure, a product of working with Apple products.  Four jobs on two coasts, fourteen years next month – in a career that I fell into because I spent three years noodling around with my Power Mac 6100, squeezing that extra 20K out of the system heap and paring the excess out of the System Folder.

Apple made a computer that anyone could use.  They made a computer that a lone dork could teach himself how to support without a lick of actual training or instruction, enough to pass an interview and get hired for workstation support.  That was Steve’s first tour of duty.  His second one was saving the company and making it viable enough that “Apple specialist” has paid my freight for a decade and half with no signs of slowing down.

And when I moved out here with no job and no immediate prospects, within three weeks I was working…at Apple.  Where I did get the formal training, and a 401(k), and stock that tripled in value by the time I sold it, and a company discount on buying my car and on my cell service, both of which I still rely on.

So yeah.  When I plummeted out of academia and nearly to my death, there were a lot of people who held the net.  But when you get right down to it, that net was manufactured by Steve Jobs.

And yeah, I’m grateful.

Well, the day has come.

I’m not particularly worried about Apple.  Tim Cook more than has what it takes, Jonny Ive and Scott Forrestal are as good as it gets, the talent is there to carry on.  They can probably coast for at least a year just on what’s in the pipeline, especially given the caliber of competition in the mobility field.

More than anything, I hope this isn’t because Himself’s doctor told him “you need to start wrapping things up.”  The man changed the course of personal computing.  Twice.  He deserves better than that.

Bruce Pearl catches a three-year Show Cause penalty – meaning that any NCAA institution has to demonstrate to the NCAA why they need to hire him – and his assistants all get a year.  And Tennessee as a whole gets two years probation.  And Lane Kiffin and the football program get nothing, despite TWELVE self-reported secondary violations in a single year.

Tennessee get punishment for their NCAA violations?  LOL NO SIR F U ENJOY LOVING TONGUE BATH.  Absolutely fucking ridiculous how the Big Orange never seems to get blasted for anything…but then, you don’t want to burn your number-one snitches, do you?

On my way back from running another 5K this past Sunday (not my idea, honestly, but I’m not sorry I did it), I happened to see a headline in the Merc saying, in essence, that the PC era was over.  This conclusion based on the ridiculously expensive purchase of Motorola Mobility by Google at the same time that HP was shopping their PC division and killing off WebOS (a real shame, as it might have been the most genuinely interesting iPhone challenger out there), along with the fact that Apple has passed Dell, and Microsoft, and…well, every other publicly traded company on Earth in terms of market cap.

I hadn’t really thought about this as a post-PC thing until today, when the developers of NetNewsWire (my indispensable RSS reader until this year) released their new hotness, an iPhone and Android app called Glassboard.  It’s basically another substitute for mass text, albeit slightly different to Beluga or GroupMe: you create a “board” and add people to it, and it becomes a permanent stream for text and photos.  Basically instant personal social network.

And I started to think about it – social networking really is starting to become a mobility phenomenon.  Skype just bought GroupMe, while Facebook acquired Beluga and turned it into Facebook Messenger.  Hipstamatic kicked off the mobile-photo-share space which was promptly exploited by Instagram and Camplus and Path (not to mention more esoteric options like With or Color).  And Twitter was built from day one on the notion that it could piggyback on SMS (thus the 140-char limit).

The thing is: how many of those options don’t require a PC?  Hell, how many of those options aren’t even available on a PC?  Factor in the location-based element to social networking – things like Foursquare or Loopt are basically worthless if you have to rely on a laptop to use them – and you wind up with the inevitable truth: social networking is most effective when it’s always on and always with you, and that means a phone.

Time was, a cross-platform killer app ran on Windows and Macs.  Now, the killer cross-platform app runs on iOS, Android and Blackberry.  The age of the personal computer is still with us, of course – what could be more personal than your phone? – but it’s important not to confuse a personal computer with a mere PC.

Just thought I would throw in a couple of links here to the mid-90s AT&T campaign tagged “You Will.” They predicted a whole bunch of stuff – WWAN, EZ-Pass, GPS, video on demand, videoconferencing, and so on and so forth – real heady stuff in an era where most people had no idea what the Internet was about.

Thing is, it pretty much all came true.

I mean, I have my iPhone which does all sorts of insane stuff.  I have my Kindle where I get my magazines, I have the EZ-Pass on my car for the tolls, I’ve remotely controlled other people’s desktops from 2500 miles away (something I first contemplated in 1997 when wondering if I could telecommute for tech support with the notional NeXTSTEP Mac OS), I’ve done video chat cross-country, and I actually have sent a fax (well, an email) from the beach, more than once.  And video on demand is the only way we see movies these days.

We really do live in the future. I don’t think I appreciate that enough.

Things that are pissing me off today, in no particular order:

 

1) My 401K/IRA balance.  I’m going to be working until I’m 70.

 

2) The fact that my employer uses a service that charges you $10 to download your W2.

 

3) The fact that my employer – WHICH RUNS ITS OWN CREDIT UNION – has replaced the ATM in my building with one that charges $3 to withdraw (after having been free since I started).

 

4) My credit union in the old country has a UI for downloading your statements that looks like it was written by some hayseed with a Geocities account in 1995 and not changed since.

 

5) Mac OS X Lion was built for people who presumably were familiar with using iPhones and iPads but NEVER EVER TOUCHED A LAPTOP IN THEIR LIVES.

 

6) Getting rid of the damned accent popups when holding a key requires COMMAND LINE CHANGES AND LOGOUT.  What. The. Actual. Fuck.

 

7) Not only is Google intent on forcing you to use your real name on Google+, apparently you need a completely filled out profile for Google READER as well.  Why the hell do you need personally identifying information to use a fucking RSS READER?  Well, duh, so Google can keep sodomizing your privacy for their own profit.  That tiger went tiger.

 

8) I still have glee to spend money on watches, sunglasses and laptops for which I have absolutely no justification.

 

Too early for Maker’s Mark?

* Two matches watched this weekend, two 0-0 draws. Not exactly enthusiasm-building, but interesting. I definitely like Ian Darke and ESPN2’s coverage over Fox Soccer, but the latter is now in HD and that’s a nontrivial improvement over five years ago.

* seriously, the GOP’s man on a white horse is a Texas governor? This is the worst fucking joke I ever heard.

* this post brought to you by another go-round with the iPad. Blogging just to see what’s up; also need to try the Bluetooth keyboard on SBNation sites again.

* Texas A&M needs the SEC to give them the throw-weight to compete with Texas and their private network. The SEC needs Texas A&M not at all. For the Aggies to think the SEC would cast aside all thoughts of legal liability and divisional balance to throw open the doors says a lot more about the pathologies of Texans than about the practicalities of college football.

* Brooks Brothers now sells Vanderbilt merchandise INSERT YOUR JOKE HERE.

* Why does one always get the urge to spend money when money is tight? Even if – especially if – there’s nothing remotely justifiable to buy?

Right on time, here’s Grantland with the season preview, complete with “Recommended If You Like” for all twenty teams. I had forgotten who got promoted, and I’m tempted to throw in with Norwich City for Stephen Fry or Swansea just for the Welshness of it all.  Probably still Spurs or Fulham, though – Newcastle is looking less likely than ever if they’re really in a situation as dire as described below.

It’s the quadrennial ritual: be an American, watch the World Cup, get swept up into the madness and vow you will find an English Premier League team to support.  It didn’t really happen in 2002 for me, but it sure did in 2006, when Setanta Sports dangled temptingly out there with three games a week plus Celtic.  Famously, Bill Simmons solicited suggestions and did an exhaustive analysis, winding up as a notional supporter of Tottenham Hotspur (although there was a never-explained dalliance with Newcastle United that went maddeningly unelaborated-upon).

At the time, our household (and by that, I mean myself and my surrogate big sister) settled semi-organically on Newcastle, because they always seemed to be on and because they looked sufficiently interesting (and because we snickered like ten-year-olds every time the play-by-play man said “Rammage, into Butt”).  Problem was, they weren’t very good, and went through a succession of managerial changes and ownership chaos before ultimately taking the drop a couple of years later.  Meanwhile, Celtic were at the height of the Strachan era, clubbing Rangers with regularity and routinely winning in injury time on the road with a fabulous goal from Venegoor of Hesselink or a deadly free-kick from Nakamura, so I had a tough time latching on when there was a perfectly serviceable Scottish team playing in the Champions League.

Then Strachan went, and Setanta went, and the Bhoys cratered with Tony Mowbray at the controls, and I started sniffing around again.  I glanced at Aston Villa, because they had American ownership and Martin O’Neill at the helm, but he went.  I thought about Man City, but they suddenly got a filthy-rich sheikh as an owner and turned into Blankcheckster City. I glanced at Everton, but Landon Donovan chose to stay with Galaxy, and I know too many Liverpool fans.  I thought I had settled on Fulham, but there are rumblings that Clint Dempsey may not be there for long.  And Spurs lurched into the picture again, because their shirt sponsor makes the backup app at work AND they’re the partner club of San Jose Earthquakes AND they’re the first team on ESPN2 this year AND they’re playing in Europe.  And sure enough, after the 2010 World Cup, Spencer Hall did the EPL Rootability Index, and the top three teams were Everton, Fulham and Spurs…

I don’t know.  I keep wanting it to happen organically again, but I don’t quite know how, short of watching games whenever I can and seeing what grabs me.

But the other thing I remember from that era is that August 2006 is when I went all-in on Vanderbilt.  Having fully disavowed my undergrad institution that spring, I made the decision that I was going to *be* a Vanderbilt supporter.  And I remember going through quite a bit of mental gymnastics to arrive at a conclusion that let me feel like I was a valid Commodore, and I shoved all my chips in.  And that’s sort of how we wound up with the Music City Bowl, and my Vanderbilt jacket, and a VU hat lost in London, and my handle on the masthead at Anchor of Gold.  And how I wound up cursing the universe outside the Tank after the Murray State shot, sulking on the couch after the Siena flop, and drinking myself stupid on said sister’s couch after the nightmare this March.

August 2006 was in the middle of the “dull moment.”  Honestly, I have said it before, but in a lot of ways I was shot out of a gun at the end of my Vanderbilt career and didn’t come to a full stop until we moved into the house eight years later.  I think a lot of the reason that year was so good for me was the relief of just being able to relax – but at the same time, I was still in that void post-2005 of “well if I’m not the man I was, then who am I?”  And clearing the decks for Vanderbilt – to the exclusion of undergrad and (very nearly) of my childhood allegiance – was a critical part of answering that question, for a little while at least.  So in the grand scheme of things, it worked out for the best.

Now I just have to get around to picking that EPL team.  What’s a season or five?

They’re closing the 4Ps.

On the one hand, my first instinct is to run out and buy a ticket and be on a redeye Thursday, sleep through the day Friday, and then close it Friday and Saturday nights in succession.

Then again, I have pictures (and a little bit of video) and a decade of memories, and it might be best to leave them where they are – going back may only make things worse, especially since I still have yet to find a functional equivalent anywhere in the Bay Area that has good pints AND good food AND live music AND actual singing.

But seriously, this is just more proof of how my past always seems to crumble behind me.  Gotta keep running forward, because the ground is disappearing back there and it’s gaining.  And again I’m reminded of the old line: “Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end.”

Dan Brown’s and the 4P’s inside of a year.  What the fuck next, are they going to close In N Out?