door sign

rejkavik, iceland

trivium of the moment

on average, people will lose one pound every four years if they have a daily serving of yogurt in their diet.

-- harvard researchers, NEJM

quote of the moment

"Maybe the virgin birth rattlesnakes are minions of God."

-- b1-67er

another craigslist flake

505-290-7475 (his name is something like jason)

agreed to buy a pair of concert tickets from me ... first by TXT, then by voice, but when the concert time approached, he did not return my phone calls or TXTs.

avoid doing any business of any kind with him.

my taxes for 2010

just worked them out ... for CA NV and the US federal government *combined* I owed a total of $21 for the year ...

... and all of that was to CA, a state I only lived in for a few months.

sun and luxor hotel in color negative

paradise, NV

ceiling

paradise, NV

when did steve jobs die? survey says ...

let me start by saying i'm not in any way a conspiracy theorist, nor am i a guy who likes to whack the bee hive just to see what happens (well, not more than once ... but i was a kid).  one guy shot kennedy.  americans walked on the moon.  that's the way it is.

but i do know that high tech is full of smoke and mirrors.  i've been involved with MANY demos, announcements and briefings that were either not wholly factual, or intentionally misleading.  you can read the pages here and you'll see that i'm a person filled with self-doubt, but there's one thing i'm certain of ... i'm one of the very best demoers in america.  i understand, breathe and can promote in a demo fashion better than anyone i know.  i've won every major demo award the valley offers.  i cut my teeth demoing for apple.  i learned by watching carnies and taking apple courses.

i don't follow apple (or steve) conversations online, so i may be missing a beat here, but i haven't heard anyone talking about the date of steve jobs death.  doesn't it strike you as odd that it's the day after a major product announcement?  isn't it strange that nothing was said about, or recorded by, SJ during the release?  haven't you noticed that absolutely no details have been published about it?

could it be coincidence?  sure.  hey, i've been dealt a royal flush on a video poker machine with no draws ... i know lightning can strike.

but i also know this "culture," this company, these people and the importance of these kinds of matters.

i'm the first to admit that a person's date of death truly doesn't matter, but the deeper workings here fascinate me.

i sent an email to my pals and wanted to record the thread here.  every person (save one) has worked at apple.  the large minority knew steve personally.

my initial email:


sirs,


i have a theory and would love to hear your comments.  what if ...


steve jobs didn't actually die yesterday, but instead died on something like the 3rd or the 4th?


doesn't the timing of his departure seem odd relative to the new product release?  and the fact that absolutely nothing was said about him there?


sure, sure, it could be that he actually died yesterday and that's what happened.  but there's not a whole lot of detail coming out.


i'm not saying this is what happened, but i am saying it seems pretty strange to me.


all comments encouraged,
b1


***

cap'n happy


I say it's a compelling conspiracy theory.


But then, everyone thinks I'm an asshole and making up shit just to start an argument.


***

non-apple southerner (and my favorite response)


I'm more of the opinion that he did die on the 5th.  But I'm going to go with they kept him "Alive" until then.  Today people die when we stop whatever mechanisms keeping the patient "Alive".


If it was some extremely painful end then there would have been much morphine involved and I'd consider the last bit not really living.  Could have been he was on a ventilator etc. and they pulled the plug only after the marketing announcement.



So I would say less that they didn't want to leak the news of his death but rather the family/friends would have wanted him to have still been here for his last release.  I think he would have probably wanted that as well (I would have if I were in his place).


Hope that helps fuel the conspiracy fire.





***


former office-mate and juggler.  the person who got me into apple.


Interesting story on managing the goodbyes:


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/With-Time-Running-Short-Jobs-nytimes-175542823.html;_ylt=AkUB4mZvqDo4Hf9DiE_83JG7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE2cTEybzdrBHBvcwMxMgRzZWMDdG9wU3RvcmllcwRzbGsDd2l0aHRpbWVydW5u?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=


He managed everything, so it would not be a stretch to believe that he
managed the news of his death to avoid overshadowing the next phone.


***

mr. crypto

It's just as plausible that he's not yet dead and this is all timed to best-support launching the biography by Walter Isaacson. 


***

a member of the original mac team

I believe that before the fact, this would be something that people (including Steve) gave great thought to, but after the fact, it doesn't seem to matter much.


***

zed zed


I personally think this is crazy talk.  Everyone knows that Jobs died about a year ago.  Apple has cleverly used Keith Richards as a stand-in for Jobs at public events and now Keith has gained too much weight to continue the role.


Jeesh.

me and steve jobs

i've been surprised at how many people have talked to me in the last 10 hours about the death of steve jobs and the future of apple ... i worked there for seven years, almost 20 years ago, but it seems to leave this indelible impression on others.  my youthful passion ran high there only because i worked in the best conceivable group, with the best possible people, in a company that mimicked a 10 year old boy's dream fort.  like someone dating a super-model, i was two orders of magnitude out of my league.  and loved it.

when i worked in the valley i was lucky in that i brushed shoulders with some of the biggest of the big.  cursed in that it never ended up having any serious financial meaning.

i have several good steve jobs stories ... a couple i'd like to put down after talking with pals about it, but i'll give you this one for now.

***

we had a decade long tradition of juggling at apple and the atrium of new-ish R&D campus was the perfect spot.  as long as someone in our juggling clique worked at apple, that's where we would go practice.  the spring of 1998 was an even numbered year and that meant bo3b was working at apple.  juggling on campus?  easy.  i didn't even have to use the fact that i knew all the security guards to get in.

steve jobs was recently back on the terra firma in a big way and heads were rolling.  projects, and in some cases, entire departments, were catching the axe.  most -but not all- of the chop was to fat from the crazed pepsi cola years of too many egos and not enough people who actually understood what a legitimate financial direction should be for a latter 20th century technology company.  (if you missed what it was like, don't worry, you'll get to see this happen all over again with ms. whitman at the wheel of HP.)

employee fear ran high.  there was a good chance that anything you said on email could (and would) be read.  you watched your back, turned in your status reports, never played the video games in the hall and, for damn sure, never got in an elevator with steve.

that is, if you actually cared about your job and what it meant.  my friend bo3b ran in a higher playing field.  he worked hard and (way more than frank sinatra) did things his way.

juggle in the atrium while steve jobs is working just upstairs?  you bet.

every time we'd get out the props and start, dozens of people would say something along the lines of "steve jobs will fire your ass."  i thought it was unlikely, but maybe possible?  and anyway, it wasn't my ass on the line.  i get banned and, what?  steve takes his wand and makes the security guards not know me any more?

bo3b wouldn't even discuss the matter.  he was so much cooler than that.  more fearless.  and hey, he didn't really need that job anyway.

every monday we'd cause a ruckus.  and every monday we'd never see steve.

weeks went by like this with nay sayers getting ever more adamant ... you could sense the disappointment in their people whenever they'd see the two, three or five of us going at it.


one day steve will bring down the hammer ... oh yes ... he will.

and then one day steve walked in.  i knew he was in the building before i even saw him because people always acted differently around him ... like the way water behaves after you throw a pebble in it.  he was talking to someone i didn't know, a valley insider and techie -but not an apple guy- probably someone from pixar (a company he still ran at that time).

he stopped and watched us for a couple of seconds as his accomplice yammered on, then went away.

"hey bo3b, think you're gonna get a call from steve's office this afternoon?"

"i guess i'll find out."

the call never came.

the next week we were juggling and in the middle of a ten club feed, just beyond the pattern, i could see steve on the second floor railing looking down at us.  a couple minutes later, he was down with on the first floor and he beckoned me over.

"hi steve."

"hey.  are you guys going to be here tomorrow?"

"no.  we only juggle on mondays.  why?"

"oh.  my daughter was going to be in and i wanted to show you off to her."

"bring her on a monday and we'll do it."

which we eventually did.  (just for the record, SJ's daughter was sorta bored by it all.)

months passed.  as christmas neared, apple put a christmas tree in the atrium.  a big one.  right in the middle of our juggling spot.  we juggled a bit, kinda cramped to the side and steve walked by.  he stopped and watched a bit.

"you guys are pretty good."

bo3b was quick on the draw, "we'd be better if this fucking tree wasn't in our way!"

steve laughed.  he went to lunch, came back, watched a little more, then went upstairs.

when we came in to juggle on the following monday, the christmas tree had been moved to one side of the atrium.

quote of the moment

"I'm finding myself into a lot of swedish crime fiction."  (sic)

-- ms. liberace

quote of the moment

"a lot of bad people are deeply unimaginative."

-- entropy dave

quote of the moment

"new york is about status.  that's ALL it is about.  this is not a pleasant city to live in aside from the fact that there are a lot of people here who are ambitious."

-- tom wolfe

aquarium

clark county, NV

yellowman and his philosophy on life

be nice.
if you can't be nice, be good.
if you can't be good, be careful.
if you can't be careful, merry christmas.

yellowman in color positive and negative

clark county, NV

black balloons in color negative

las vegas, NV