End of the Term

This is a very special time for a lot of university students.  It is when their undergraduate degrees end and they start new stuff, you know like grad school or med school or gasp, they get a job or something.

It is a pretty special time for me as well.  For the first time in my career I am taking a sabbatical.  Basically I don't have to teach for a year, and don't have any mind numbing committee work service to do.  I can concentrate on scholarly stuff, and play xbox oh and drink Pernod.

This year is also very special because we have a really great group of fourth year students.  I am very proud of this group.  I said goodbye to them today, and while I know I will keep in touch with many of them, some I honeslty probably won't see in person again.  The neat thing is that through things like facebook I will see them again, and see them get married and have kids and careers and all of that stuff.

It is also the year my daughter graduates from Algoma and she was in that last class of mine.  Today was probably the only time I ever actually ever made mention of it besides the standard 'you should all know that is my duaghter' disclaimer I make at the beginning of each term in a class she takes.  I felt a strange mixture of sadness and pride when I talked about her and her two highschool freinds that are in the class.  She has better grades than I ever did, and I fear she may be smarter than I am....  As an aside it is pretty cool that today is world autism day, as the day reminds me of Jonno as well.  So this day is about both of my kids and always will be to me.

I just want to end by thanking this great group of people for allowing me to teach them for the last four years, and I guess for paying tuition.

Thanks guys.

Why Did Steve Jobs' Death Affect Me?

When Steve Jobs died the other day it affected me in an odd way.  I felt sort of empty.  I felt like something was suddenly missing.  I have not felt this way about someone I have not met for a long time.  I remember when john Candy died, and Pierre Trudeau, and Rocket Richard.  I did not know any of them either of course (though I did shake Trudeau's hand when I was 12 while on a class trip to Ottawa, alas that is another story).  

To be sure, this was nothing like losing my Dad to cancer, or my friend Duncan to the same disease.  Those two guys influenced me probably more than any two men in my life.  (When I don't know how to solve a problem at work I think 'WWDD' meaning What Would Dad/Duncan Do?  Oddly, the solutions are almost always the same...)

No this was different.  Why did I care so much about a billionaire?  I mean, I understand Trudeau, hell, when I was a kid, until I was 19, he was the Prime Minister, ok except for that brief Joe Clark thing....  So, he affected me every day, I lived in Trudeau's Canada.  The Rocket, well, I am a Habs fan, and we are big into tradition and history we Habs fans, so, I guess that made sense.  I had heard the stories, I had seen grainy film etc.  But Jobs, I mean why?  He was, by some accounts, a ruthless and arrogant businessman.  Then again, Trudeau was a ruthless politician, and often seen as arrogant.  The Rocket was ruthless on the ice, and also often seen as arrogant.  I remember when Gretzky came in the league, and the Rocket was asked how he would do in the 50s.  His reply was something along the lines of 'He would win the scoring title, if he was on my line'.  Jonathan Mak's excellent tribute logo. 

Was this arrogance though?  Trudeau had an IQ of 180.  The Rocket was, up until the arrival of Lemieux and Grezky, the greatest goal scorer ever.  They KNEW they were great.  Did everything they did in their work turn out?  No.  The National Energy plan was a disaster politically for Trudeau.  Maurice Richard was not the easiest teammate to have.  

Jobs was a visionary.  He guessed what we would like, before we knew we would like it.  He saved Apple when he returned.  He did this by doing stuff other people had done before (mp3 players, phones etc) better than they had.  He was bold enough to use UNIX as basis of OS X.  He, by all accounts, did not use focus groups.  He somehow just knew.  Oh he had his fuckups.  The iPod HiFi, the Cube, Mobile Me (oddly, I sort of like Mobile Me...)

However, he did not let his screwups get in the way.  He moved on.  He came across, to me, as a genius, but as a flawed one.  Not some fatal flaw, just flawed like all of us.  As an academic I have known/know many people with the sort of drive, vision and flaws that Jobs had.  Maybe that is why he resonated with me.  He also made geek cool.  

Strangely, I hated Macs until OS X.  I had no interest in them, when I used them they bothered me, it all seemed clunky.  OS X changed that.  I did not have an mp3 player until the iPod came out.  The first smartphone I bought was an iPhone 3Gs.  His sense of what worked usually worked for me.  Plus, it is way easy to zoom in on a Mac, and that helps me a lot what with the blind thing and all.

As he said in his famous Stanford address: 'stay hungry, stay foolish'.  Maybe that is where Candy fits in....