Alaina and I were married 20 years ago in June, and as a celebration, we took a family trip to Puerto Rico. We went with friends 8 years ago, and stayed in San Juan for excellent food and culture, but this time we brought the kids and drove out to Isabela; we explored the beaches of the region, including Mar Chiquita, Playa Jobos, Crash Boat Beach, and made a jaunt down to the surfing capital of Rincon. We visited the beautiful Cascada Gozolandia, a series of waterfalls and swimming holes in the jungle, rode horses on the beach and ate delicious food for four days. It is a gorgeous island with great culture and I cherished the time with my family; Traveling has always been a high priority for me when I have the time, but the last decade with small children has been a different sort of adventure. I hope that we can find more opportunities to explore this immense world as a family in the next few years.
It is psychologically conflicting for me to spend a winter weekend in a warm environment.; skiing has a limited time frame and I want to take every opportunity possible to head North and bask in the frozen gleam., so we packed the Subaru Forester and drove through a heavy snowstorm to Vermont. I had purchased two-day Epic passes for the family and we chose Mt. Snow as our weekend destination. I had skied there frequently as a kid, visiting trailside condo owning friends, and it was a nostalgic return with my own family. I told them that I remembered looking down the pitch of Ripcord when I was about 11 or 12 and deciding that it was too steep for me – the only time in my life I ever bailed out of a run – and that I had always regretted that decision. Ripcord has haunted me ever since! It was closed at the beginning of the day, but opened in the afternoon… I brought my family to the precipice of the trail and encouraged them to live with no regrets and we tackled one of the steepest trails in the East! It was a glorious moment for me, completing a 35 year deferred personal challenge and watching my kids ski it much better than I ever would have at their age.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
This biography really made me reflect on my technological upbringing and the era of personal computers. Jobs is a complex and intriguing character; a visionary genius and maniacal jerk. Adopted and raised in nascent Silicon Valley, surrounded by burgeoning tech industry, he met Steve Wozniak and convinced him to commercialize and sell his hobbyist computer, the Apple II. But while he was driven by business instincts and capitalism, he was also a product of the hippie counterculture, an acid-dropping, Indian guru-seeking, unbathed love child of the 60’s. He was determined to make beautiful products that would enhance creativity and expression, but he was ruthless in his execution. He built the first Macintosh using a graphical interface design he had seen in Xerox’s development labs, and insisted on cohesive design and user-friendliness. Soon after his innovative machine was released (along with the iconic 1984 ad), he was ousted from the company, essentially for being too prickly to work with. He went on to found NeXT Computing (spitefully poaching several of Apple’s top developers, and eventually selling their work back to Apple as he regained control) and then bought a small animation arm of Lucasfilm enterprises, Pixar, which would go on to revolutionize the film industry. When he returned to Apple, the company was in shambles and on the verge of collapse. He refocused their efforts in four distinct quadrants, desktop and mobile for professionals and consumers, and made the company a relevant and eventually dominant player in the industry. His eye of design and insistence on completely integrated products made the Mac a staple for creatives and changed the image of a personal computer to one of personal expression and communication. He led development of the iPod and iTunes, which revolutionized the music industry, the iPhone, which revolutionized telephony, the iPad and App Store, which revolutionized tablet computing and small firm software development, Apple Retail Stores, which revolutionized retail branding and store design, and iCloud, which revolutionized cloud computing. Throughout this process, he transformed Apple from a few friends building machines in his parent’s garage to the most valuable company in the world. My family bought our first computer, a Mac Classic, in 1991, when I was in 7th grade and I was in love with it. We had a word processor, a few games and MacPaint. I learned a little programming and made some simple hypertext adventures. A few years later, we got a 1200 baud modem and I began connecting with BBS bulletin boards and communities beyond. I was always fascinated by computers and loved the creativity they afforded; reading about Steve Jobs made me realize how much I owe to him and his vision of their potential; I am grateful for his contributions and deeply appreciate what he (and, of course, many many others) built and continue to develop for my creative expression. Writing this here on my MacBook, I am reflecting on how lucky I am to be living though this revolutionary era of personal computing. When he was asked in the coda of the book what drove him, he suggested that all creative people stand on the backs of all those who have come before them and have a profound desire to give something back and contribute to the great flow of humanity. I am grateful to everyone at Apple, as well as all the other companies that make the hardware and software I use, for creating the tools to express myself and make whatever small contribution I can to history and culture.