Well, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged, since I got sick and went to the hospital, or shortly there after…. I’ve got something to write about now, sadly….

Now it’s not that I didn’t know that Steve Jobs was sick, or that he was so ill that he stepped down from running apple. It’s just a shock to me because Steve Jobs was part of my childhood years, my formative pre-teen and teen years.  No, I didn’t know him personally, I knew him from his computer; the Apple. It was his computer that started me off into the industry that I have come to have a love/hate relationship with.  It is an industry that has given me the opportunity to make a living, and hopefully make some small difference through the work that I do and have done over the years.

In High School, my computer science teacher told us that with computers, and the work you do with them, would extend your impact and reach well beyond your life span…. At the time, I didn’t think that was really true, and in most instances I still think it isn’t true. What is true is that your reach and impact is much, much greater than it would have been and the potential of your life work, or influence, lasting beyond your life span is much much greater.

Then there are people like Steve Jobs… his impact has been huge. His running of Apple, and Pixar… plus all the other things he has done will continue to have an influence on society, your life, our future…  In Steve’s case, my teacher was right… but there are few out there like Jobs.

I was talking to my wife about Steve’s death. She asked me if I was shocked or troubled by it. I am sad that someone has died, he was good at what he did. But in really thinking about who had the most impact on my young life when I was introduced to computers (around 12 years old), I really would have to say that the man who was Steve’s partner in the beginning had the greatest impact. Steve Wozniak. He did the design of the Apple I and II, wrote Integer Basic and FP Basic…. Jobs was the sales guy… the front man.  It’s easy to give him all the credit, but Woz was the man.

I have never wrote this before, and now that one of the founders is dead I should, so here we go “Thank you Steve and Steve for all the great work you have done, releasing the magic of computers into my world when I was young”.