I look back fondly at my time at Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s.   We built products I remain very proud of — Windows95 and Internet Explorer right at the top.  We had great people and great teams.  I made some lifelong friends there.   And the company had great ambition.  We

You don’t win points in pickleball so much as you lose them.   And the dumbest way to lose them is to not be ready for the ball. I’ll hit a beautiful shot, right to my opponent’s feet, or maybe hard down the line.  And then I stand

I just finished This Is Where the Serpent Lives, the story of a young man in modern-day Pakistan who tries to climb the ladder but is ultimately crushed by corruption and his own ambition and ego.  The story of corruption is both enlightening and concerning here in the US,

Seattle The Seattle area has its share of problems.  High cost of living.  A moribund downtown.  Homelessness.  High government spending with insufficient results.  The Mariners.  As the fall rains start to arrive, it is easy to become grumpy. But then this study comes out — Seattle Ranks 4th in Oxford Economics

I’m cranky this week.  Everything I read is irritating me.  First up, Amazon and Muse. I’ve been an Amazon.com customer since they launched in 1995.  Initially I loved Amazon.com — the early experience as an online book store was fantastic and gave me access to books I

This university has made a Faustian bargain with Silicon Valley, one that has enabled its meteoric ascent and allowed for its corruption. – Theo Baker, How to Rule the World I’ve been reading How to Rule the World, the inside story of power and networking at Stanford in the past

I was in a high-end retail store recently, and there, next to the checkout counter, I saw a floor outlet with an absolute mess of plugs, chargers, Ethernet connectors, and the like.  It was shocking to see it in an otherwise thoughtfully designed and expensive retail space.   We all

We are awash in maximalist thinking and news.  Token maxxing.  Billion-dollar valuation rounds.  TAMs larger than the entire tech sector.  Hyperscalers.  Trillion-parameter models.  AI that is going to change every job or eliminate every job.  National government involvement.  Everything is big, has massive impact, is changing everything.   And