Bad Tasks and Great Jobs

Wednesday, 05 October 2011

Today, out by the tree in our front lawn, I found a discarded tampon. “Huh,” thought I. “That’s weird. And gross.”

At least it appeared unused, which is something I can’t say for the one that was waiting for us on our front lawn when we first moved in. I don’t want to dwell on this topic, but, um, who walks down the sidewalk and just thinks, “Yeah, I think I’m done with this tampon now”? Removing it from my property was a disgusting task. Want to hear the details? Okay, fine, I’ll spare you.

In a related story: the other day I was cleaning out the downstairs bathroom and I found an empty bottle of Summer’s Eve. It smelled pretty bad. Getting rid of it was another task I’m sure you’d rather not hear about.

My hope is to find a someone else’s condom laying around somewhere on my property. Then my life will be complete.

Thursday, 06 October 2011

So, the big news on NPR today was Steve Jobs passing away. He died of pancreatic cancer yesterday, and NPR talked about how influential he was. One reporter even went so far as to say we wouldn’t have personal computers today if it wasn’t for Jobs.

I don’t know about that. I think the technology was trending that way, he just happened to get in on the ground floor. It’s like saying we wouldn’t have light bulbs if Edison hadn’t lived…no, I don’t think so; I think, if anything, they just might have come along a tad later.

I’ve been an Apple user for a long time. My first experience with computers was in my elementary school’s library. They had a computer nook – consisting of one computer (an Apple IIe) – and I loved it. In fact, in my copy of My Book About Me, on the page that says “What I really want most of all,” I wrote “an Apple IIe.”

When the mid-1990s rolled around, and I was finally able to afford my own computer, I did what nearly everyone at the time was doing: I bought a Windows-based computer with Windows 3.1 on it. Later, I upgraded to Windows 95.

But a couple of years later, I tried Windows’ software for editing videos, and it was terrible, I couldn’t even make a 30 film without the audio and video becoming out of sync.

My friend Ryan, who was always the most knowledgeable computer used I knew, showed me his new iMac. Specifically, he showed me the program iMovie. I loved it – especially the fact that it actually worked. It was a little surprising, however, because I had assumed Apple had gone out of business. “Nah,” Ryan assured me, “they’ve been around the whole time, they just haven’t been doing so good. But they’re gonna rebound in the next few years.”

Man, was he right.

But not at first.

At first, our computer was a novelty. Besides Ryan, I knew no one else who owned an Apple, and most of our friends and family had no idea what that thing was that was sitting on our desk. Jennifer and I loved to point out iMacs we spotted on TV shows and in movies, and we kept wondering when other people would get interested in them, too.

In fact, about a year later, when one of our friends expressed interest in buying his first computer (with the express purpose of editing movies), we extolled the virtues of Apple. My wife’s sister, however, was passionate about Apple being an inferior platform that had limited options. She even started crying about it. In the end, though, our friend bought an Apple and, eventually, so did my sister-in-law.

Nowadays, it doesn’t seem to make as much of a difference. I use a Windows computer at work, and I swap files between it and my home computer all the time. And during the last five years or so, I’ve seen homemade movies created on Windows software and, well, they’re synced up!

Here’s a super-inspirational speech from Jobs.

Anyway, RIP Steve Jobs. Thanks for the great computers, competent software, and PIXAR.