Here’s my Steve Ballmer Story.

It’s a small story but of interest, I think, because of what came after.

In 1995 I worked as a freelance writer and print designer and I had just made up my mind to put more of my time and attention into designing and building websites, something I had started doing the year before. Pitching web work back then meant selling clients on why they needed a web site at all – sometimes even selling them on what the World Wide Web was and why it mattered to their business -- and most still preferred the familiar comfort of a (paper-bound) marketing brochure. I was nervous about my decision then, but can happily report in hindsight that I bet on the right horse.

In August of that year I took a two-week contract to do some technical writing for the Excel product group, and spent my two weeks on Microsoft’s Redmond campus in, as it turned out, the same hallway occupied by Steve Ballmer.

I was warned that Ballmer had a scaled down Louisville Slugger baseball bat that he liked to carry and thwack into his hand, repeatedly, when he had a point to make. I was told it was unlikely that I would encounter him while I was there.

And then I did.

Or rather: I heard him. One afternoon, shortly after the launch party for Office 95 (remember those halcyon days? That was 18 years ago today.) I heard a strange muttering in the hallway. And a loud thwack. And then another thwack. A steady thwacking cadence emerged accompanied by a persistent, angry mantra. My office door was open just a crack so I could see his burly mass as it passed by my door, paced the hallway to its end and then back again, repeatedly.

I don’t imagine he paced for long, but the fear it struck in my heart made it feel like an eternity. The mantra he was repeating?

Screw the Internet.

And that’s my story. It’s a small story but of interest, I think, because of what came after that.

@ the AIC

@ the AIC, a photo by suttonhoo on Flickr.

consuming spirits

CONSUMING SPIRITS (trailer) by Chris Sullivan from chris sullivan animation on Vimeo.

You have never seen anything like it.

Film critic AO Scott in the New York Times on Chris Sullivan's animated feature Consuming Spirits.

arch(itect)

auditorium, a photo by jovivebo on Flickr.

I am not attracted by the angles or the hard and inflexible straight lines created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve, the curve which I find in the mountains of my country, in the flow of its rivers, in the waves of the ocean, in the body of a woman.

The architect Oscar Niemeyer to the Spanish newspaper ABC. Niemeyer died last week a few days shy of his 105th birthday.

batem-bia

Des Moines, Iowa
State Capitol Building

a passionate and gentle voice

Whatever contact I have with hope

Is clear to me on certain mornings

When a voice slips

Into my mind like a shy

Suggestion of love

That nothing will deny.

It is a passionate and gentle voice

Authentic as a patch of sunlight 

On a floor inside a window

And it has always spoken the same words:

'I live in the stripped branch,

Dying flowers on the kitchen table,

Pools of water after a storm

Uncomprehending as children

Strayed from their parents in a crowded town.

You understand I do not exhort.

My state is one of waiting

For you, for the most part,

And I am helpless till you observe me

With your electric blood

And your eyes

Redeemed from the tedium by the desire

To know

Why something begins to stir

In utter stillness like a memory

That will not let you sleep at night

But takes possession of you

And absorbs you into itself.

So I await that morning

When you emerge

From the tired night as from a mist

Into a decision of sunlight

Where I exist.'

~ Brendan Kennelly

all the books I have convinced myself I will read during the course of my brief trip to London

It's not true, of course. If I'm lucky I'll complete one. But the sad truth is: in the age before e-books I would have actually packed them all.

what lies beneath

What several designers noted, though, were the crazy-quilt lines of what the publicity materials refer to as the “grand manor roof.” “With most houses, they could be colonial or modern, the roof line is so clear that you can see that underneath there is some kind of rational flow and layout,” said Mr. Hayes, author of “The Tailored Interior.” “With this, they’re unresolved and a bit messed up. You know that what’s underneath is not a lot of clarity.”

Hayes was speaking of Michelle Bachmann's Minnesota home in The Houses of the Hopefuls in today's New York Times.

The article features a run down of the architecture and interior design of the homes of the Republican presidential hopefuls.

soft, what light.

Morton Arboretum
Lisle, IL

fermi lab five ways

via cameraphone, of course.

how not to die

There is no difference between art and activism.

UCSD professor of visual arts Ricardo Dominguez cited in an EFE wire story and reported by Fox News Latino »

UCSD professor of visual arts Ricardo Dominguez was speaking about a smartphone application that he created using GPS technology to assist individuals cross the border from Mexico to the US illegally by sharing information about the location of aid stations where water, clothing and blankets are stockpiled.

Domingo spoke to cell phones as part of a "poetic system that can save lives."

theory of relativity

via @erinmckeown

In America, the top 1% earn more than $380,000 per year. We are, however, among the richest nations on Earth. How much do you need to earn to be among the top 1% of the world?

$34,000.

That was the finding World Bank economist Branko Milanovic presented in his 2010 book The Haves and the Have-Nots. Going down the distribution ladder may be just as surprising. To be in the top half of the globe, you need to earn just $1,225 a year. For the top 20%, it's $5,000 per year. Enter the top 10% with $12,000 a year. To be included in the top 0.1% requires an annual income of $70,000.

Morgan Housel in the Motley Fool

desire lines

Desire lines generally refer to worn paths where people naturally walk – the beaten path that trails off the sidewalk, usually as a shortcut to a destination – but can be applied more broadly to any signs or traces of user activity in an object or environment. The implicit claim of desire lines is that they represent an unbiased indication of how an object or environment is actually used by people.

From Universal Principles of Design: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design.

My grandfather introduced me to desire lines, but he didn’t call them by name. I can’t be sure that he knew what they were called. We were crossing the Quad at the University of Washington, cherry trees in bloom, and he pointed out the gentle ruts in the grass left by renegade feet in oblique purpose to the University’s imposed paths.

“Those are the paths they should pave,” he said, pointing out the bald earth. I think of him now whenever I see a transgressive groove slice through the corners of trim, paved plaza geometries.

Desire lines.

Rem Koolhaas oriented his IIT Student Center around the desire lines that students wore into the wasteland beneath the El tracks on their passage to class, long before the building was sited. In the belly of his building there’s a placard that maps the original paths so you can see at a macro level what you experience when you walk through the structure: his building breathes with a unique kind of respiration because it is so well-aligned with the passage of people through that place. It doesn’t obstruct their passage from point A to B: It shelters it.

I’m surprised that I’ve only just discovered this name for the thing. It startled me when I stumbled across it yesterday, and left me to wonder if maybe I knew it before but didn’t notice it; am noticing it now only because of these first tentative steps off my trim path; this early attempt at letting my feet find the way they would prefer to go.

on speaking to the dead

Skeleton Donut
Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk

The rabbi addresses the importance of talking to the dead. His premise is that we want to, need to, talk to the dead. It is an important, not a maudlin, thing to do. The rabbi suggests that we have four things to say to them: I'm sorry. Thank you. I forgive you. I love you. This is what makes us human, over time, over distance.

Sherry Turkle in Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other

profuse or perish

Tiny bubbles...
Originally uploaded by peater

You have to write as much as you can. People have studied these things.

Principal Jay Richard of Oyster River Middle School, speaking on strategies for passing the essay portion of standardized tests in America's schools in today's New York Times.

the intensity of strawberries

I remember

the intensity of strawberries
in a very, very narrow
band of time –

June, July
Wimbledon on TV

things like that

Simon Schama on strawberries and other edibles in the weekend edition of the Financial Times

art alone

All Passes -- Art Alone Endures
Fine Arts Building
Chicago, IL

more movies for you

more movies for you
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Downers Grove, IL

hello old friend

hello old friend
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Central Camera. Just now.
Chicago, IL

3.

3.
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

Lincoln Park
Chicago, IL