Thank you. Lennon, while not really my generation, was far more influential to me than the cluster of copycats that followed between 1965 and 1980. What’s more, Lennon and I had a lot in common. For example, his family taught him to play the banjo and my family taught me, let me think . . . . Um, well, they taught me, let’s see . . . . From my family, I learned the skill of . . . . Say, can I get back to you on that?
The club drill press may happen this week. I have a cotton shirt with material too heavy for the summer that I wore to bingo the first time in four months. This morning, I go to empty the pockets and find $26. Within moments I located a desktop drill press owned by an aviation engineer up on Wiles who says it is in perfect condition and I can have it for $25. There you go. And he gave me some pointers on where to buy high quality drill bits needed for PCB work.
Update. The drill press did happen. Today, in fact, and it is a practically new beauty, shown here, maybe an hour on the drive belt. We drove to Coral Springs in rush hour, it was worth the aggravation. Expect an instant improvement in the quality of our work and we will now have all the heat sinks we need. Note the club’s drill press is set up on a brand new external air conditioning pump that looks suspiciously like the one that was slated to go into Walley’s Folly. And on PCBs, another breakthrough already, meaning us, not the entire universe. We had got so used to the gap on breadboards, we had not allowed for the fact it is not there on a circuit board. I was actually wiring the pieces around the chip that I could have soldered across the bottom. There you go.
WW 3.0, the chronicle of MicroSoft graft. I’m more studying it than reading it this time around, a luxury caused by the terrible weekend weather. This is heavy material, especially if you are not familiar with the various systems whereby computers and the Internet work together. And forget it if you are one of those Homers who think they are the same thing. The last time I read the book, MicroSoft and Bill Gates were synonymous. This has changed.
[Author's note 2020: The following passage is not pro-Gates. It is a critique of the people who indulge in name-calling. They are as bad as Gates, whom I do not admire, consider a liar and a manipulator. It is my opinion his company, MicroSoft, set computer development back by twenty years. MicroSoft has never invented a thing.]/
I see now more of a condemnation of the legal system in America. I am disgusted and upset by the amount that judges can select personal bias over legal facts. They must really think they are gods. While not the book’s intent, there is a clear mindset in America that as every person gets older, they will “learn” to conform with society. That’s bullshit, because society is so imperfect that it is certainly not any ideal to which anyone would strive unless they had no other choice. The courts seem all too willing to enforce this sordid conformity.
So look at Gates in isolation rather than the corporate icon. The judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, viewing a picture of Gates as a teenager, actually calls Gates “a smart-mouth kid . . . who needs a little discipline” (page 169). Even if that were true, is Jackson his father? Anyone smart enough to train a dog knows you don’t punish it half its lifetime later. Jackson was hired to determine if MicroSoft was a monopoly, not indulge in name-calling. Jackson goes further to say Gates would have been “better off if he had finished Harvard.” You don’t have to tell me which of these men was more the juvenile.
And it smacks of pure jealousy. Here was Gates, who made money while young, and is that not precisely what most of us dream of? To have so much money that we don’t have to kiss the establishment’s butt? Is not a primary privilege of riches the option to not to sell out to the man? Jackson reveals his covetous nature by harping on Gate’s freedoms rather than staying focused on the trial. The author [Auletta] is also at fault for the same tack, opening Chapter 9 by stating, as if it was a bad thing, that Gates
• never had a boss
• was never reprimanded or fired
• had ever been forced to conform to the norms of superiors
• had never been poor
• had never served in the military
• had never really endured business adversity
These people are monsters. To me, that reads like a list of abuses, not achievements. Who in their right mind would choose to these punishments over free will? There is nothing inherently good about any system which compels membership or seeks to punish anyone for being different, or worse, for simply being smart enough to attain success without kowtowing. I speak from personal experience on that one.
And of the six points just listed, except for having to conform to the mindless insanity of law school discipline, the same criticisms could be stated about the majority of judges and lawyers. My view on Gates has softened; my dislike of MicroSoft remains the same. They need to be removed for being a blockade to innovation. There are so many things wrong with Windows that would never have survived a competitive marketplace. Why are there not ten mutually compatible operating systems on the shelves for $30 each so I can pick and choose?
So you know, Lennon’s murderer, Chapman, a thick-necked greaser looking bastard from the word go, is still in prison over concerns of public safety. That’s wise. If they ever release the sumbitch, the death toll could run into the hundreds when the lynch mobs stampede for first place.
