This spring/summer has been particularly cloudy in the northwest. But today it is sunny and looks to get to the pleasant high 70s. This, obviously, is due entirely to the fact that Bill Gates controls the weather and today is his last day at Microsoft. Seattle is of course, introspective on the man who certainly changed the region dramatically. Here are some of the more entertaining Gates articles.
Would you have invested? Speaking of which why isn’t someone working on face recognition software to predict future business success. I mean, come on, if that picture doesn’t say “creators of future tech behemoth,” I don’t what does.
Time to change my field to bioinformatics or radical nuclear energy ideas?
Still no word how Bill will get to the charities new offices in lower Queen Anne when they are completed:
He is setting up his own Eastside office, apart from Microsoft and the foundation. He is tentatively expected to spend about two days a week there, along with two at the foundation and one at Microsoft…
Come on Bill! You know you want to build us a teleporter to get from one side of the lake to the other.
Some kid just walked in…
Mellowing?
Q: You seem to have mellowed a little over the years, but you’re —
Gates: Bullshit. (Laughter).
Q: — you’re famous inside Microsoft for lines like, “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” And I think that’s the censored version, actually.
Gates: No, no, no. Literally, I do say, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Some people think I add some other word in there, but I don’t — usually. … Rarely. (Laughter.)
Queue Microsoft bashing in three, two, one….
Microsoft suck etc.
Buy a mac etc.
Linux rulz etc.
“Would you have invested?”
Actually, I did and kind of hit it big even though I didn’t know what I was doing. I bought the IPO stock in 1990 because I worked with someone who’s brother was an MS developer. So, I bought a bunch that year, and more over the next few years, and when Windows 95 came out 5 years later I hit the jackpot. In fact, that is an event in my life that convinced me that the simple luck of being in the right place at the right time indeed exists.
“Linux rulz”
here! here! You bet. Right now I’m on Ubuntu server and the goodies for programmers is absolutely amazing.
And then there’s me. Back in ’98 I was working for SAIC which, at the time, owned Network Solutions who, at the time, was the company that controlled and kept track of all Internet domain names. SAIC is an employee-owned company, but they decided to make a portion of Network Solutions public and offered SAIC employees first dibs at $12 per share (this was around March or so if I recall). For whatever reason my wife and I decided we couldn’t afford to buy and we didn’t expect the payoff to be all that great. By Christmas that year the share price had passed $250 (I think it settled back down to $150 or something crazy like that).
BAM BAM BAM (sound of Ian banging head against wall)
That’s okay, Ian. My luck had nothing to do with me. Just one of those things. In fact, it because of it that I get so irritated by motivational speakers who go on that the successful are those who think successful thoughts and do successful things. Nonsense. Sometimes good things happen just when you’re looking the other way. I take no credit for it.