Steve Jobs Playboy Interview from 1985

Steve Jobs Playboy Interview from 1985

WSJ: In China’s Orbit

WSJ: In China’s Orbit

People blame their plight on the government and its leaders, or to management and its leaders. They may be correct. But will a change in leadership assure better living? What if the new leaders are no better? How could they be? By what method could new leaders bring improvement in living? Will best efforts bring improvement? Best efforts and hard work, not guided by new knowledge, they only dig deeper the pit that we are in.

W. Edwards Deming

Howard Hughes Camarillo Airport Connection

Came across this little gem in the Wikipedia article about Oxnard Air Force Base, or what is today Camarillo Airport:

Oxnard Airport was opened in 1934 by the County of Ventura and consisted of a 3,500 foot dirt runway … During the thirties Howard Hughes erected a tent on the airport to shelter his H-1 racer, which he tested from the Oxnard Airport.

All the more interesting considering that I always suspected the scene in The Aviator when Hughes crashes the H-1 into a beet field was filmed in Oxnard. Locals may recognize some of the nearby features in these shots (ignoring the simulated bipack color Scorsese annoyed us with), better to just watched on the DVD at 46:35:

Which pretty confidently puts the shooting location about here. The real event took place near Santa Ana, CA captured in this National Geographic photo.

Reading: The New New Thing

As you can see, I’ve been on a bit of a Michael Lewis kick. Ironically, I’ve had this book the longest having picked it up at a discount bookstore in an outlet mall years ago. I was so proud of the deal I got ($4.50 for a $13.00 trade paperback) that I left the price sticker on the cover (typically a sin for the bibliophile). Groping around for something to distract myself from the misery of a cold which ruined our vacation plans a couple days ago, I finally took it off the shelf.

The New New Thing follows Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark from Silicon Graphics to Netscape to Healtheon and beyond. It also spends an inordinate amount of time aboard his luxury sailing yacht Hyperion. In fact, it’s the highly detailed focus on the yacht I found to be somewhat tedious (although I must admit that it inspired my inner geek to explore home automation systems I can integrate with my Mac and iPhone). Being intimately familiar with the the browser wars and web technology, I also found some of those elements to be a bit personally redundant but certainly important to the lay reader.

There is no question Jim Clark is a visionary and great leader/attracter of engineering talent. He amassed a fortune by hitting not one, but three home runs (think billions not millions) in Silicon Valley. His restless nature, exploration and continuous learning are to be admired.

The author was clearly given amazing access to the Clark and the key players around him, which made me wonder why they permitted it. Lewis has a way of presenting the “characters” in his books in different lights; there are heros and villains, and certainly a point of view. It’s seems like a big chance for a businessman to take, but then again, being the central character in one of his books does seem to lead to a certain notoriety.

Lewis’ explanation (point of view) of the dot com phenomenon is concise and telling. You have a great idea, typically a recombination of existing talent and/or technology, but no real product. After attracting the credibility of venture capital investments, you build enough hype for an IPO, and bam, you now have valuable stock you can use to purchase the competitors and small companies with real products. You win.

It’s Lewis’ Hollywood analogy of Clark as the “Jack Nicholson” attached to the “script” of business idea (the “new new thing”) that explains the power dynamic Clark was able to harness in the Valley to build hype. Engineers and investors clambered to get involved in “Jim’s next thing”. Not a bad money machine.

Now off to write some automation code…

Lewis, Michael. The New New Thing.

Learn to appreciate as an artist things as simple as the day; sleep; walking and running–a room–an ordinary phrase; to read instinct; to drink, to gaze at oneself or speak to oneself–to see afresh, in other words, what has been seen so often–but in its place.

Paul Valéry

Reading: The Big Short

Ever since Moneyball, I’ve paid attention to what Michael Lewis writes about and have been looking forward to his new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, about the subprime collapse and subsequent financial crisis. At long last, it was my weekend read and proved to be worth the wait.

In typical fashion, it’s well paced with great depictions of interesting people who see the world a little differently. He explains everything about as clearly as you can (when describing financial instruments intentionally named and designed to be difficult to understand), and undoubtedly oversimplifies some concepts and omits details of other (such as Paulson’s gigantic short). Overall, however, the narrative is engaging and insightful and seems to a layman such as myself to be fairly balanced.

As with Moneyball, I find myself wanting to know more about (if not meet!) some of the central figures who in this case brilliantly shorted the market. Colorful people like Michael Burry and Steve Eisman who rejected conventional wisdom and profited wildly.

He provides a suitable indictment of those who should have prevented the disaster, summed up like this (emphasis mine):

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankefein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, and so on… With them were a handful of government officials… All shared a distinction: They had proven far less capable of grasping basic truths in the heart of the U.S. financial system than a one-eyed money manager with Asperger’s syndrome.

It’s of course the tangents like Mike Burry’s Asperger’s condition that are some of the best elements of Lewis’ writing. People who see the world differently, and in this case, put their money where they mouth is.

Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine.

Gratitude or Greener Grass?

Working in corporate IT, it’s amazing how often I find myself fantasizing about the consulting life. To work with different companies and different people and varying cultures–each engagement new and exciting. To be able to size up a problem from the outside, and propose or implement a solution, then have the luxury of not living with the consequences of my decisions. Sure, it would probably involve more hours and certainly more travel, but the incentive-based compensation would more than make up for it, right?

Then I talk to a consultant or entrepreneur and hear about the stress of not generating enough revenue and the unpredictability of their compensation. The midnight hours spent rushing on a RFP dropped on you with little notice. The sobering reality of corporate politics in every large engagement that can sometimes leave your entire project in limbo, and you on the bench in the meantime. Oftentimes they even wax about taking a corporate role for the “stability” and “low stress” (I know I did back in the day).

It’s easy to get stuck thinking the grass is greener. We all know the cliche, but few of us live with it’s antidote, gratitude. To be able to step back and appreciate what you have and how fortunate you are to have it. How worse things could actually be, and the sobering knowledge that no matter what the job, their will be plusses and minuses. There is no perfect job–even Steve Jobs a had boss to deal with (and got fired!).

About the only thing I can think of that’s good about grass-is-greener thinking is, if channeled right, it might challenge your complacency and career inertia. By contrast, I can find no drawbacks to gratitude. It makes you a happier, better person and compels you to express thanks to others in your life–something that in the end is what life’s all about.

So next time you find yourself peering over the fence at that green grass, use that as a moment to pause, reflect, and be grateful for what you have. You’ll be happy you did.