Apple's Steve Jobs can't be dead, he has too much to do yet

Too many prayers not done. Too many petty gripes not balanced with hoorays about neat things accomplished. Great sadness at hearing that Steve Jobs has transitioned.

Back in the mid-1980's, he was working off barely in my awareness as I struggled through my many personal life struggles at the same time he was creating Apple Computers. First I heard of Apple Computer, was hearing that the company I was working for in Sunnyvale CA was manufacturing flexible disk drives for Apple Computer, and it was helping finance the company that employed me at the peak of my career, Shugart Associates, a division of Xerox; I had become a non-degreed design-development electronic engineer, at the urging of my supervisor, Alastair Heaslett, in 1982.

Unknown to me, Apple computer was forming, in nearby - and often passed by in my travels - Cupertino, CA.

I did not become more aware of Apple Computer until my oldest son Paul, who was an avid Apple Computer enthusiast, got me aware of Apple Computers; and I bought my first Apple Computer in 1996, a Performa - 630c was it? - already obsolete and thus on sale, for my freshly laid-off low finances, at a Fry's electronics store. I had had a 386SX before that, running on DOS command line before that, itself a big step for me, but the Performa was what was hoped would enable me to find a new job, connected to the internet. The Earthlink.net internet connection came with 6 MB of web pages, so I got to learn how to make my own web pages, some of which remain at http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/

I type this on my Macintosh MacBook circa 2009 model. A thing made possible by Steve Jobs.

Who the news says has passed away tonight. At age 56. He ought to have been just taking another time out while getting ready to do more great things. But gone? Can't be; too much to do yet.

But clearly with the pancreatic cancer, liver transplant and all, he was dealing with suppressed anger issues, very intense. He probably did not know how to cope with anger issues; he was just an achiever, getting on with things despite opposition. Opposition that just seemed to be opposition, instead of an offerer of constructive alternatives.

I resist calling such "opposition" some bad names here.

Yet competition is said to drive new achievements otherwise not of interest; Apple was in competition with IBM. The monster huge invincible IBM.

I take another sip of my evening's ethanol beverage, no food in sight nor of interest. When the potential rescuer of America has - ceased - it is too much.

Lots of folks would be glad of this. They have harassed me for decades, too. (More suppression of calling bad names here.)

For my own part, I had neglected to keep Steve Jobs in my prayers lately. And I was focusing on minor irritations re my computer acting weird and obnoxious, clearly a virus had gotten in, probably with my trying to run old DOS stuff programs in an emulator. No good energy to Steve Jobs.

I had realized in recent months that Steve Jobs was the probable only person who could implement, in the private sector, the "Internet connected home manufacturing-education workstation" concept, often mentioned in this blog. A way to get all Americans back into contributing to the GDP while also expanding their skill sets, using computer technology.

(But no, some power-crazed folks want to rule America dividing it up into their own petty feudalistic kingdoms, protected by the nation's Cold War leftover nukes.)

I had also considered him potentially able to get Pixar to create an envisionary animated movie about my KESTS to GEO concept to save civilization.

But I had no way to contact him. And I now suspect - dimly - that he did not want to take on all the opposition, the foot-dragging and sabotage, all over again - of opponents who want to continue to do things the same old way, despite those ways don't work in the long run, but they provide wealth in the short term.

Could be, he had just said he wants out. Enough is enough. People did not give him enough appreciation energy, and instead focused on the fringe small problems. Myself among them, too often.

Nevertheless, I have a MacBook here in front of me that holds another sci fi novel book I have been writing, and is almost ready for self-publishing, thanks to the technology that Steve Jobs & Co made possible for me to do here on my home personal computer despite living in retirement poverty. I'd better keep it rolling. Lest more be wasted. And, my MacBook is enabling me to explore my tiny step improvement in an electronics-related technology that I dreamed that could save Steve Job's life - along with countless others - if only there were a way to get around the obstacles put there by those who gain great wealth from others illness misfortune. On to make another tiny step and see what results.

You can't get there from here? Steve Jobs proved that you can. Almost.