TomFoolery

I think this is more an example of a fucking moron that fell into a great opportunity despite himself.

Yeah - I just read that this morning.

Its coming on the heels of some pretty major decisions for me too. So, I know where you're coming from.

Btw - I applaud your courage to mix it up :-)

Ms. Hux got me back onto this - a constant theme in my life too...

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.

It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.

What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did.

The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Steve Jobs

Change keeps ya moving...

I'm going to post a speech I read this morning in a moment.

50-50.

I'll make the punch.

CJ - films are not still on the floor. However, they're easy to get mitts on.

Let's chat more about this next week ;-)

Sounds good. Keep me posted.

I've also got a 16mm projector and we can get old nfb film from Carleton. If anyone's into that we could maybe set up a film night sometime too.

You're supposed to dress as something out of the ordinary for Hallowe'en.

Btw, one other "Lost" item as described below - let me know and I'll email Yish if anyone knows its whereabouts.

Hey ya'll,

I lost a hippee scarf near the stage while I was dancing, purple with pink

and orange and silvery sparkled lines throughout. There is a hole in one

corner of it. I am strangely attatched to it and am sad it has left me so

this is my last effort. If anyone picked it up by accident and have no use

for it please let me know. If ya picked it up and love it-then by all means

enjoy it. Thanks.......

:-)

Leftovers consisted of:

- one unopened keg

- one shoulder of pig

- one completely demolished lamb carcass

- one kg of coleslaw

- two kg of pasta salad

- two cases of pop

- one persistent guitar player wrapped in "Danger" tape

The keg was returned

The carcasses were unceremoniously donated to the local crow population

The salads and pop were given to anyone interested

The guitar player was last seen wearing the same clothes he showed up in (leather pants and a wife-beater) sneaking up on an unsuspecting motorist in Chelsea...

Hello all,

Well, a week has gone by and Kayte and I have finally gotten our house back in order and finished off the post-Wakefest break-down. It was a helluva time and we really appreciated all the help we received and the great vibe you all created.

Wakefest 2005 was an official success. The QUAIL House should be receiving a donation of $618 in the next couple of days. More important than this, though, is the fact that the QUAIL residents in attendance enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Our neighbours, Ray & Gert, were perfectly blown away by the friendly and happy crowd that attended the party. All of their friends that came to celebrate thought it was a wonderful event, too.

Lost & Found:

· I believe we’ve a couple of lawn chairs we didn’t have before.

· There is one Teva sandal looking for an owner.

· One red lamp (Roxanne?!?) with a Michael Jackson pin, as an identifier, is left.

Requests:

· Please send any photos that you may want to share to either Kayte or myself. You can use our email address for digital photos (rockutt@gmail.com), or our mailing address (Box 152, Wakefield QC, J0X 3G0) for print photos.

Thanks, btw, to Bouche and Matt for sharing those photos - I was a bit busy for camera wielding so its nice to see a few snaps from the day.

Future:

The owner of the Black Sheep was blown away with the success of the evening. He really wants Kayte to do some more work with him in promoting future shows.

Kayte (with some support from her loyal assistant) is considering putting together a couple of events over this fall. This will not be a recreation of Wakefest as neither of us have the energy for that quite yet. However, there may be some fun shows coming up in Wakefield and/or Ottawa.

Thanks again to all of you that made it out. For those that did not – you were missed!

Cheers

J & Kayte

Yay Dr. EM.

Congrats on great life.

Congrats on great wife.

Congrats on great kids.

Congrats on avacado and lime ;-)

No promises about not leaving, but watch this space for some upcoming (slightly smaller) events. We had SOOOO much fun seeing this come together that we are thinking of doing up a couple more things before heading out.

I'll make an official announcement shortly, but we're in the black! Yay. Once the chips are totally down, I'll let you know how much we donate to the QUAIL House on everyone's behalf.

Lazlo - as previously discussed, you are at least partially responsible for the result ;-)

Quick post - I am on course this week so no regular computer access.

The show at the Sheep was killer! The Riddim Ryders did a stellar show.

It went so damned well that Paul (BSI Owner) has actually asked Kayte to do some further promotions and bookings with him. So, we may wind up piecing together a few more events with him this fall.

Dave - there is little I would like better than to make it monthly :-) I suspect that we will have to live with a couple more modest evenings restricted to the sheep.

The fire pit has now become a permanent part of the back yard. Why we never had that before is beyond me...

Awww shucks.

Thanks all. It was an exceptional experience to put it mildly.

There were a lot of others who really pulled through as well. Soon, very soon, I hope to thank them all properly.

Big ups to the bands and all their efforts - Brad, Pat, Deeps - you dudes are all headed for some SERIOUSLY fun times with your respective bands!

See yall again soon

Hey guys,

Thanks to those that made it out. That was one helluva great day. Kayte and I have both been busting with what an incredibly positive vibe it was all around!

There was a lot of people aside from me and Kayte that pulled through BIG TIME. We would have been screwed many times over without lots of amazing people that were there to help.

Bouch - killer photos. I cannot wait to share those around.

Deeps - again - WTTS rules my world.

Just ona quick break from a crappy course I have to take this week. More thoughts soon...

J

Hey guys,

Looking forward to seeing those of you coming out.

We're officially ending sales so that we've got enough food to go round.

If you've got tix arranged at the door already - you're golden.

If not, there's no more door tickets

See y'all soon!

J

- tears

- too much acid

- fist fight with stapes

I forsee a little romance come Friday.....ahhh.....

Sure sounds like foreplay to me.

Gateaux.... you've got some explaining to do!

Tear it up bro!

Can't wait to see you guys Saturday

Thanks bouche!

Brad,

Check your yahoo acct.

The email I just sent out...

Directions to be attached shortly.

Hey folks,

First of all - please forward this to anyone you know that is coming. I'm not sure that my email list is complete and don't want anyone left out in the cold on this. Your help is appreciated.

Second - there are still some tickets available and will likely be available at the door. We've capped things but I think we'll still have a bit of space for door tickets.

Things are shaping up nicely out at 35 Wakefield Heights. We're really looking forward to Saturday and hope you're as excited as we are!

Here are a couple of details that may be important...

The bus is now officially organized. Here's the details:

Leaving Glebe High School parking lot (roughly Glebe and Percy) at 1pm

Leaving Loeb in the market (Rideau and King Edward) at 1:20pm

Return bus will be leaving the Black Sheep at closing time

A few things you may consider bringing:

swimwear if the weather is good

lawnchairs if you so desire

sunscreen

If you are driving out to Wakefest, here are directions (attached). Our phone number is on the directions. We probably will have you park at a friend's place down the road but we'll play that by ear so come to our place anyhow and we'll set you straight.

Hope to see you all on Saturday!

J

Jack Johnson has given hope to another generation of 'almost talented' singer song writers. Its not a nice thing to do.

Tickets still available but the bus reservations are now done.

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Saturday!