No zombies? No end of the world? This Mayan thing is starting to become a disappointment.

I think we are in somewhere in the middle there. I think.

The answer is : Powerpoint.

In a presentation, the PowerPoint files are kept in the presenter's computer, and he or she plugs it to a projector to present his points while the computer goes to sleep halfway or goes into screensaver and bores everyone to death. That is fine. Because you can leave the room.

BUT, somehow people thought that PowerPoint might also be perfectly good tool for file sharing, or to type out jokes in them to share for some reason, so they put a perfect piece of 40kb sized high quality Jpeg photograph into a lousy PowerPoint slide which inflates that size into a 5.5 mb file and also drops the photo quality so it renders the photo useless. And once you start downloading that email you can't stop it. Some people compile that into a .exe, so only Windows users can use it, or they get tagged as potentially harmful downloads.

People are saying the newer versions don't take up much space, but I don't care. For the love of Santa Claus, just stop using PowerPoint, PLEASE!


It's interesting to see that the Steve Jobs in the video is not the shouty, abuse-throwing, slave-driving, intimidating person as described and depicted by countless publications, books and even movies about him. That is not to say he isn't, but he was most probably certainly not like that most of the time. And in fact, his opinions I agree much in the video - if you set a target, and you try to stick with it as much as possible without changing plans. If you read the biography, this attribute, also know as the "Reality Distortion Field" coined by his co-workers, allows people to create and do things initially not thought possible - be it to complete something in a time frame, or to make something work when previously thought not possible. In fact, you can see how he is correct in that if they don't ship by a certain time frame computers will be all expected to be in color (remember that this is 1985) and they would have to make major changes soon thereafter.

Since people that had to work with him were generally either genius or shit to him, then as long as they are the person on the correct side or show that they can flip to the correct side, they would be fine. With people like him, the need to show that you can change, have the drive & will to do something proper or generally, just being an "A player" instead of a "B player". People that get results. Attributes that most bosses want in an employee anyway.

But people who don't work with him see a very different side.

This other side of Steve Jobs was also documented in an article by one of his neighbors in which he described as just is the typical neighborhood parent in the neighborhood, again, a far cry from what was depicted. Also as described here, this is a man who would respond to emails - although very short ones, even if outrageous, or answer questions from a boy in a shareholders meeting with "rapt personal attention".

Or the time a guy and his buddy decided to drive miles away for an Apple Store experience, he sent an email to The Steve, which although he didn't receive any reply, but got a call from the vice president of Apple, and subsequently got a nice treatment from the Apple Store. When asked about what Steve wrote to them, they reply that Steve told them "This guy is driving 100 miles for a Mac; let's take care of him." Would any CEO have done this? Or even any other person for that matter, most likely they'd pass this to some PR guy for the Q&A.

I have his biography. I mean, who doesn't, nowadays? It's an interesting read of one of the greatest icons of our times. He's inspired me just as he had inspired countless others on many, many areas, many times over. Rest in peace, Steve.


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