Aging
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions.
"How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.
You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
"How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50
and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.
You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!
You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I Was JUST 92."
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay "them "
2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9 Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every o pportunity.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
And if you don't send this to at least 8 people - who cares? But do share this with someone. We all need to live life to its fullest each day!!
"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming Whoo what a ride".
June 23, 2006
June 22, 2006
Steve Job's Quotes
One of the great things about Steve Jobs is what comes out of his mouth.
The CEO of Apple Computer is a master of hype, hyperbole and the catchy phrase. Even when he's trying to talk normally, brilliant verbiage comes tumbling out.
Here's a selection of some of the most insanely great things the man has said, organized by topic: innovation and design, fixing Apple, his greatest sales pitches, life's lessons, taking the fight to the enemy and Pixar.
On Innovation and Design:"It's rare that you see an artist in his 30s or 40s able to really contribute something amazing."
-- At age 29, in Playboy, February 1985
"I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do."
-- BusinessWeek Online, Oct. 12, 2004
"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."
-- Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
-- BusinessWeek, May 25 1998
"It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much."
-- BusinessWeek Online, Oct. 12, 2004
"(Miele) really thought the process through. They did such a great job designing these washers and dryers. I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years."
-- Wired magazine, February 1996
"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"
-- On Gil Amelio's lackluster reign, in BusinessWeek, July 1997
"The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament."
-- Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company, by Owen W. Linzmayer
"If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
-- Fortune, Feb. 19, 1996
"You know, I've got a plan that could rescue Apple. I can't say any more than that it's the perfect product and the perfect strategy for Apple. But nobody there will listen to me."
-- Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995
"Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could -- I'm searching for the right word -- could, could die."
-- On his return as interim CEO, in Time, Aug. 18, 1997
-- Apple Confidential 2.0
"The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That's over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it's going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade."
-- Wired magazine, February 1996
"Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste."
-- Apple shareholder meeting, April 22, 1998
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
-- The line he used to lure John Sculley as Apple's CEO, according to Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, by John Sculley and John Byrne
"We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."
-- Jobs, on Mac OS X's Aqua user interface (Fortune, Jan. 24, 2000)
"There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod."
-- On the iPod's $300 price tag, Newsweek, Oct. 27, 2003
"It will go down in history as a turning point for the music industry. This is landmark stuff. I can't overestimate it!"
-- On the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), Fortune, May 12, 2003
"What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the internet -- and no one's gonna shut down the internet."
-- On how he sold iTMS to the music industry, Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003
"IMac is next year's computer for $1,299, not last year's computer for $999."
-- iMac introduction in Cupertino, Calif., May 6, 1998
"The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we're thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers."
-- Macworld Expo, July 19, 2000
"It'll make your jaw drop."
-- On the first NeXT Computer, in The New York Times, Nov. 8, 1989
"We believe it's the biggest advance in animation since Walt Disney started it all with the release of Snow White 50 years ago."
-- On Toy Story, Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995
"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy."
-- Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple
"I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I'm only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I've got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that."
-- Playboy, September 1987
"I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year.... It's very character-building."
-- Apple Confidential 2.0
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
-- Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005
"John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place -- which was making great computers for people to use."
--The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program oral history, April 20, 1995
"It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."
-- On Apple's lawsuit following his resignation to form NeXT (Newsweek, Sept. 30, 1985)
"My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple."
-- Fortune, Aug. 26, 1991
"Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire?"
-- Fortune, Feb. 23, 2004
"The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful."
-- Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003
"The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish. They're just like dead fish washing up on the shores."
-- Playboy, February 1985
"They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen."
-- On Pixar co-founders Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull, in Time, Sept. 1, 1986
"If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company."
-- Fortune, Sept. 18, 1995
"I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney -- not replace Disney -- but be the next Disney."
-- BusinessWeek, Nov. 23, 1998
Owen W. Linzmayer (owenink@owenink.com) is author of Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company (No Starch Press, 2004, ISBN 1-59327-010-0).
Inspirations, Reflections, Muzings
When ur really down n out, u feel like u need to be inspired.
like u need to look up, and see an image of you as you see yourself, as you want to be.
i see a guy called Steve Jobs.
once going thru google i came upon's Steve's resume .
and later his address to the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University.
Which a Hummer driving senior of mine, who preaches that
he knows not how to pretend (No se fingir) reminded me off at 3 in the morning.
Timing ,eh?
Still felt like these things deserve a place here.
like when u see some quote and really feel what it means, the urge strikes you to note it down inyour diary or something so that u can relish that feeling again.
maybe its reassuarance.
maybe comprehension.
maybe an epiphany.
or maybe its the pathetic dal fry the mess guy screwed up.
whatever it is, its more than a gut feeling.
its like accounting for your actions and feelings to the only person worth answering to - yourself.
Suchintya, while he was here recently mentioned an idea that he (& now, I) incorporated as a new habit.
Termed a Reader's Shelf, it consists of buying a book that you have read or may not ahave read, and keeping it on your shelf.NOT lending it to the milling crowds that swarm thru ur door incessantly begging for movies/songs/books to borrow, and probably never return.
nada. not this time folks. The purpose of this shelf is to have the books there when u want to read them for exactly the reason u bought them in the first place. because you like to read them.
there was another quote i saw on the fms brochure which goes like
every morning a gazelle wakes up , it knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion
every morning a lion wales up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle
but no matter who you are
when the dawn breaks , you better be running.
(thanks for the original quote to kkkishore)
now, thanks to the reservation issues, i wonder if there is any reservation for the general category.
I remember the gist of what Alfred P. Dolittle says in My Fair Lady when he turns up at Professor Higgin's house try to coax a few pounds out of the man.it went something like being a part of the undeserving minority.a part of that hapless crowd who dont have voice's demanding justice for them in the courts.the undeserving minority, who have every right to everything as anone else, but dont get anthing, whether or not they work for it, being a different metaphysical issue altogether.
hmm. sometimes, thinking over things can make ideas come out looking completely different. renewed, reprocessed and presented from a totally different perspective.
Well, whatever.
There's this thing i have been trying to comprehend. bout phrases that stick to the roof of your mouth and launch themselves at unwary people at the least expected moment. as for reasons, let's not start on that issue, shall we?
Like
Don't Know Don't Care.
Apparently.
Oh Well! What The Hell!
You talking to me?
Perhaps.Perhaps.Perhaps.
Cogito Ergo Sum
T H i N K
Comet Nosce.
What Do You Care What Other's Think?
Et Scientia
and the biggest one....
n i a n e m.
that's one word that keeps convoluting itself transfroming, vanishing and reappearing in various mutilated forms in my head all the time.
maybe it's sorta hangover or something. like stuff u read or see that just get sleft behind. chewing gum found under the cinema seat.Unexplicable. unavoidable. unreasonable.
hmmm.what to say..
except perhaps,
Who is John Galt?
like u need to look up, and see an image of you as you see yourself, as you want to be.
i see a guy called Steve Jobs.
once going thru google i came upon's Steve's resume .
and later his address to the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University.
Which a Hummer driving senior of mine, who preaches that
he knows not how to pretend (No se fingir) reminded me off at 3 in the morning.
Timing ,eh?
Still felt like these things deserve a place here.
like when u see some quote and really feel what it means, the urge strikes you to note it down inyour diary or something so that u can relish that feeling again.
maybe its reassuarance.
maybe comprehension.
maybe an epiphany.
or maybe its the pathetic dal fry the mess guy screwed up.
whatever it is, its more than a gut feeling.
its like accounting for your actions and feelings to the only person worth answering to - yourself.
Suchintya, while he was here recently mentioned an idea that he (& now, I) incorporated as a new habit.
Termed a Reader's Shelf, it consists of buying a book that you have read or may not ahave read, and keeping it on your shelf.NOT lending it to the milling crowds that swarm thru ur door incessantly begging for movies/songs/books to borrow, and probably never return.
nada. not this time folks. The purpose of this shelf is to have the books there when u want to read them for exactly the reason u bought them in the first place. because you like to read them.
there was another quote i saw on the fms brochure which goes like
every morning a gazelle wakes up , it knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion
every morning a lion wales up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle
but no matter who you are
when the dawn breaks , you better be running.
(thanks for the original quote to kkkishore)
now, thanks to the reservation issues, i wonder if there is any reservation for the general category.
I remember the gist of what Alfred P. Dolittle says in My Fair Lady when he turns up at Professor Higgin's house try to coax a few pounds out of the man.it went something like being a part of the undeserving minority.a part of that hapless crowd who dont have voice's demanding justice for them in the courts.the undeserving minority, who have every right to everything as anone else, but dont get anthing, whether or not they work for it, being a different metaphysical issue altogether.
hmm. sometimes, thinking over things can make ideas come out looking completely different. renewed, reprocessed and presented from a totally different perspective.
Well, whatever.
There's this thing i have been trying to comprehend. bout phrases that stick to the roof of your mouth and launch themselves at unwary people at the least expected moment. as for reasons, let's not start on that issue, shall we?
Like
Don't Know Don't Care.
Apparently.
Oh Well! What The Hell!
You talking to me?
Perhaps.Perhaps.Perhaps.
Cogito Ergo Sum
T H i N K
Comet Nosce.
What Do You Care What Other's Think?
Et Scientia
and the biggest one....
n i a n e m.
that's one word that keeps convoluting itself transfroming, vanishing and reappearing in various mutilated forms in my head all the time.
maybe it's sorta hangover or something. like stuff u read or see that just get sleft behind. chewing gum found under the cinema seat.Unexplicable. unavoidable. unreasonable.
hmmm.what to say..
except perhaps,
Who is John Galt?
You've got to find what you love
You've got to find what you love(Text)
You've got to find what you love(Audio)
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
*********************
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