1-2-3 - 26 January 2022 - Plague Journal Day 685

Micah 6:8
Job 40:15-24
Yes, your life matters.

Some of you are still sheltering in place, but fear not: I'm here to keep you sane and entertained.
One could hardly ask for much more than that, now could one?

Ah, the wonders of electronic spreadsheets. I'm fairly certain there are plenty of folks out there who would think that phrase a bit redundant. Having never encountered a non-electronic spreadsheet, they have no idea of the volume of columnar pads of paper we used to consume back before the advent of Visicalc and then the mighty Lotus 1-2-3. In fact, today is actually Lotus 1-2-3 Day, so please celebrate responsibly.
I never did use Visicalc on any computer (unless Dad's Apple IIe had it and I looked at it sometime - if so I do not remember it at all), so Lotus 1-2-3 was my introduction to the wonders of electronic calculation.

Oddly, I actually had experience with dBase II before I used Lotus 1-2-3, based on having used a proprietary dBase application our agency had commissioned. Pretty much as soon as I was proficient with it, I ended up moving to another company and didn't see dBase-type stuff for a couple years. However, I was deeply immersed in the world of Lotus and its very straightforward and powerful way of doing macros. We macroed the crap out of a lot of stuff back then.

Later we moved to a spectacular integrated piece of software called Enable which had a DBMS, Spreadsheet, Word Processor, Graphics, and Communications all in one nicely designed package. I wish they had managed to survive MicroSoft's "help" in moving into the world of Windows. That reminded me of the nurse who "helped" her patients to shuffle off their mortal coil with off-the-records injections of meds. Thanks, Bill Gates.

Today is also Library Shelfie Day. We're supposed to post pictures of ourselves in front of our bookshelves or in the local library. Instead of that, I'm posting a picture of a couple of my books sitting on an actual public library shelf. I'm not exactly following directions, but I think this qualifies.
Now go read a good book!


Keep Calm and Don't Stay Away.
I'll be back tomorrow.
The mental health issues related to our insane lockdown and the pandemic are especially hard for people with depression. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, has a 24 hour helpline: 800-950-6264.

Go for it - 26 January 2021 - Plague Journal Day 320

Micah 6:8
1 Corinthians 10:11
Yes, your life matters.

We all are still sheltering in place, but I'm here to keep you sane and entertained.
One could hardly ask for much more than that, now could one?
 

Today is Toad Hollow Day of Encouragement. This is based on a series of stories set in the at-least-semi-fictional town of Toad Hollow. In addition to the stories, a reenactment park was created so folks could visit the "actual" site of the stories. It seems to me that the best way to celebrate this day would be by reenacting fictional historical events. Not only is it in the spirit of the founding, it's actually pretty much what they did. I'm off to throw a ring in a pool of lava - or maybe I'll head out the back of my closet into a snowy world.

It's also Lotus 1-2-3 Day, so whatever you do in a spreadsheet today, do it without a mouse - just use your keyboard for everything. You may find you like it better that way!

Keep Calm and Stay Away.
I'll be back tomorrow.
The mental health issues related to our lockdown and the pandemic are especially hard for people with depression. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, has a 24 hour helpline: 800-950-6264.

Is Ballmer Balmy?

The Guardian reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claims that Google's culture isn't responsible for its success, but rather that it's based on their incumbency in the search arena.

Faced with Google's rampant success and dominance of the online world, legions of experts have tried over the years to dissect what makes it such a unique and powerful company.

Is it because its engineers famously get 20% of their time to develop their own projects? Is it the influence of the 'triumvirate' of top executives? Or is it that Google simply understands the future better than the rest of the world?

Ask Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer why he thinks Google is the internet's most powerful company, however, and he'll offer a straightforward alternative: it got there first.
Speaking at the SMX West conference in California on Tuesday, the man in charge of rival search engine Bing said that Google's success today was not tangibly linked to the company's culture, but simply spun out of the fact that it became successful in web search before its rivals.

"The number one thing that Google benefits from in search is that they did it right, first," he said. "There's a value to incumbency." "You can ascribe these things to things like culture, but it's never clear which came first - incumbency or culture," he added. [emphasis added]

Playing up Microsoft's own culture and staff, Ballmer admitted that the software giant was late to produce a mature, usable search engine technology - despite launching the first MSN Search website as long ago as 1998. But with Bing slowly growing market share in the United States, he said that his eventual goal was to become the dominant engine.

"We've got great long-term optimism," he said. "Tomorrow's goal is to gain a few points, a tenth here, a tenth there - just keep working and working."

His comments about culture will be seen as a sideswipe at Google, which has built a reputation based in part on its attempt to build a culture diametrically opposed to Microsoft's.

Let's take Mr. Ballmer's statements at face value. Google's being first with a good product in the search category is the reason that other search engines have been unable to wrest that top spot from them.
I get it. That explains why Lotus and WordPerfect are the dominant entries in their segments, I suppose. Oh. Wait. Reverse that, as Willy Wonka might say.

More likely, this is Steve's attempt to explain away Bing's lack of a knockout punch. It seems that this doesn't happen to Microsoft very often - Quicken, anyone? - so they're not terribly adept at explaining it away.