Steve Jobs

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography of Steve Jobs.  This book is basically a lengthy (630 pages with index and notes in hardcover) narrative account of Jobs's life.  Since Jobs led an eventful life (an adopted child and Reed College drop out who co-founded Apple Computer but left after losing a power struggle with John Sculley and then went on to found Next and finance Pixar before returning to lead Apple to great success until his death at 56) this makes for a fairly interesting read.  But the book is weaker when it comes to the bigger picture.  For example it is natural to ask why Jobs was so successful.  Was it mostly luck or did he have some rare and valuable talents (and if so what were they)?  This book isn't too helpful in answering this question although it provides plenty of material for speculation. 

Even considered just as narrative the book has weaknesses.  It isn't an authorised biography in the sense that Jobs had veto power over the text but Jobs did initiate the project by suggesting Isaacson write his biography and Jobs (and people close to him) cooperated by giving interviews in his final years.  This has obvious advantages for a biographer but also risks in that you can get too close to your subject (and their family and friends) and it can become hard to stay objective.  While the book includes plenty of negative material about Jobs it seems on occasion to incline towards not dwelling on it.  The discussion of Jobs's improperly backdated stock options is pretty cursory and I would have liked more about why his habits of driving around in a car without a license plate and parking in handicapped spaces apparently didn't cause him any problems.     

Another problem is the book appeared soon after Jobs died.  While there were no doubt good commercial reasons for this it also means the book lacks the added perspective (and material) which will be available in a few years.  I thought the last part of the book was not as good perhaps because it was rushed (or maybe this is just a sign the book was too long).  And for whatever reason the book says nothing about Jobs's will or the disposition of his sizable estate which seems a rather considerable omission. 

As to why Jobs was successful, certainly a large part of it was luck.  It is easy to imagine worlds in which Jobs dies an embittered failure, where he doesn't catch the breaks that led to the quick success which gave him credibility and made people more willing to tolerate his abrasive and obnoxious side.  But I don't think it was all luck.  I think the following traits contributed to his success.  He was willing to aim high and take chances. He was persistent.  He was generally decisive.  He recognized that good styling, appearance and image were important and worth considerable trouble and expense to get right.  He had good instincts about what would make a new product appealing.  He was an inspirational leader.  And he was willing to push his people hard and replace them if he came to believe they weren't the best available.  This last trait was somewhat double-edged of course as he could be a notoriously abusive boss but I think it is difficult to achieve what he did without being at least a bit of a jerk.   

In summary this is a reasonably entertaining (albeit lengthy) account of the life and career of Steve Jobs.  But it didn't seem particularly insightful to me and lacks the perspective that time will give.  And it concentrates on Jobs so is not a good choice if you want a broader view of events.  So unless you are particularly interested in Jobs and Apple perhaps you should skip this book.

Princeston, NY 08540

Well this is rather annoying.  When I moved from New York to New Jersey at the beginning of the year I made numerous change of address notifications.  One of them was to my former employer, IBM, which is paying me (through direct deposit) a monthly pension.  IBM somehow recorded the last line of my new address as being "Princeston, NY 08540" instead of the correct "Princeton, NJ 08540".  This was rather dumb of them as the zip code and the state are incompatible and a simple check would detect this.  However the post office managed to deliver the confirmation to my new address and I didn't notice the error until I received a year end summary showing all the state withholding had gone to New York instead of New Jersey.  So now I will have to file a New York return just to get these payments back.

I guess the lesson here is that just because the post office manages to deliver something doesn't mean the address was correct.

Cornell 2012

I attended the Cornell graduation over Memorial Day weekend.  There were 2 main events.  The Senior Class Convocation was on Saturday followed by the actual Commencement on Sunday.  Both were in an outdoor stadium.  The photo shows the stadium on Sunday morning before the graduating students file in and fill most of the chairs.

The main speaker on Saturday was Michael R. Bloomberg, currently serving his third term as Mayor of New York.  I thought his speech was reasonably good (as might be expected from a successful politician).  The main speaker on Sunday was the University President, David J. Skorton.  I was less impressed with his speech but perhaps he has other virtues.  In any case the main focus on Sunday was the graduation ritual itself.  First the thousands of students filing in and being seated and then the mass awarding of their degrees.

I stayed in a student dorm.  The accommodations were a little spartan (apparently indestructibility is still an important criteria) but tolerable.  There was a problem with the parking which was inadequate with no arrangements for overflow (at least that the staff on duty was aware of).  The campus and city of Ithaca looked interesting but unfortunately I didn't have much time to explore although I did catch some views of the famous gorges.

Motor Voter

When I changed my driver's license and car registration from New York to New Jersey a few months ago one of the forms had a box to check if you also wanted to register to vote in New Jersey.  I checked the box and was impressed with how simple this was.  Too simple as it turned out as subsequent checks showed I was not in fact registered to vote.  My best guess is a clerk was suppose to notice the box was checked and give me a registration form.  Not a big deal as I found a form on the internet which I filled out and mailed in and I recently received a post card confirming that I am now registered.  However this kind of defeats the purpose of motor voter laws.

TurboTax Pitfall

A word of warning, if you use TurboTax and have long term capital gains make sure it is handling them correctly.

I have been using TurboTax to do my taxes again this year. A couple of weeks ago it looked like I was going owe the government a substantial amount. This was unexpected and irritating but it didn't occur to me that the program might be wrong. My income was quite a bit higher (mostly due to some long term capital gains) and I hadn't been real careful in figuring my estimated tax so I figured I hadn't gotten it quite right. But today I made some small changes and my tax owed dropped significantly. This prompted me to investigate further and I found that TurboTax had apparently been failing to treat one of my capital gains as long term. Since long term gains are taxed at a favorable 15% rate this meant it was overstating the tax I owed. I believe this was due to a program bug because when I tried to fix the entry it started reporting a gain of zero which was obviously wrong. I had to delete the entry entirely and reenter the information to fix the problem.

This is rather disturbing. It is nice to have TurboTax handle the computations but not if they are going to be done wrong especially since it is sometimes hard to tell exactly what TurboTax is doing.

Another irritation is the Deluxe version doesn't handle ESPP sales easily because they want you to pay more to upgrade to the Premier version. All in all my opinion of the program has taken big hit but I really don't want to go back to doing my taxes by hand either. I guess I will just have to review the results a lot more carefully.

Green Shoot?

I noticed a help wanted sign posted as I was leaving the restaurant I ate at last night. I don't remember seeing one for quite a while so perhaps the economy is recovering a bit. Ironically the restaurant had seemed emptier than usual.

John G. Fletcher RIP

I sadly note the recent death of my stepfather, John G. Fletcher. Like my father he had a doctorate in physics and had a long career at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Unlike my father he quickly moved away from physics to work in the lab's computation department. Here is a 1983 video in which he talks about the lab's computer systems. And here are transcripts of interviews with him in 1993 and 1995 looking back at his career at the lab. Finally here is the wikipedia article on Fletcher's checksum which he invented.

He shared my interest in mathematical games and puzzles and continued to work on them after he retired in 1993. He submitted many solutions to IBM's monthly Ponder This puzzle from November 2001 through June 2011, before, during and after the period I was puzzlemaster.

I took the photo in 1991 at Big Sand Lake, near Park Rapids Minnesota, where his parents lived. I have fond memories of vacationing there in the early 1990s.