As I write this, news is up that Steve Jobs has passed away today. I am really not a Mac person. My first entry into the world of Apple was an iPod Shuffle (never bought the original). I really started to appreciate Apple when I got an iPod Touch (3G). Its ease of use totally got me addicted to the device and soon into designing my own apps. I later invested into a Mac Mini. I haven’t fully converted (my PC is still my main machine) but I really enjoy their products.

The whole story of Steve fighting cancer reminded me very much of what Jackson went through. He had successful victory of the disease in the beginning only to have cancer come back up. In both cases, they fought the disease with courage and try their very best to minimize the diseases’ effect on their life. In the back of people’s mind, I believe most people believe that they will fight and come back of any difficulties. 

Steve Jobs passed away when he was 56… Jackson Lan 55. Only a year apart.

In both cases, they are what defined their company. They are both very passionate about it and really care about the people who work for them. They both believe that good people is important for the company. When people can see this type of passion and determination, they really like working for the person. They were visionaries. Of course, Jackson isn’t Steve Jobs but I believe if they were to have met and talk about their respective philosophies, it would have been a very interesting conversation.

Will this be the demise of Apple? It takes a special skill to manage a finely tuned engine and not everyone is a visionary. Steve’s vision will start to be interpreted differently. Good people will start to leave the company. It isn’t like it never happened before just look at what happened to the company when Steve left in late 80’s…

RIP Steve Jobs

Just for the techies, it was running a modified version of FuseTalk for ColdFusion when they had the open sourced version available. Features such as rating and main site login integration was added in to better integrate the site to the store.

Any old forum members (or SML member) coming by this way, please give a shout out. Maybe if there is enough demand, we can revive it again.

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It looks like HQForum was just having a bad week (or so). Everything is back up. Go for a peek:
http://seniormemberslounge.hqforums.com/

For me a refurbished 150GB Western Digital Raptor hard drive bit the dust. It went from working fine, to terrible noises, and finally no access. I was able to get enough access to recover data, but it went completely dead not long after that. My old 40GB Raptor is still working. It goes to show that for some components, don’t buy refurbished.

My old trusty Linksys Wireless G router gone to cyber heaven. Can’t blame it as I had flashed the ROM to make it a wireless bridge after I upgraded to a Wireless N router (also Linksys). I had it working for 24/7 for over 4 years. Recently, it worked fine and then soon afterwards, I can’t ping it anymore. Bye-bye… you have served me well.

I am still using a 17″ RealSync LCD monitor (full-screen not letter box). It has dual inputs which is great. My main system is a PC built with all PC Club parts. My media center PC contains all PC Club components.

What do you still have that was purchased at PC Club?

Well to make it up… sort of… here’s a little goodie from something I worked on before for PC Club.

Background: We were going head to head with this company called “NewEgg” and the web team brainstormed this interesting campaign called “It’s ALL THAT and a bag of CHIPS”. Chips being both computer chips and potato chips. The goal is to be a bit agressive and poke fun at our competitors. Given a small budget and some magazine space, we created some interesting ads for the online site.

This ad was placed in PC Magazine sometime in 2004.

Standing above the rest. We didn’t want to be too agressive and name competitors here. Can you identify who PC Club was standing above on the ad? (hint look at the table cloth patterns)

There were also some Flash banner ads that were created and placed on various tech sites. Here’s the story board for one of them.

Click on any of the above images to view an enlarged picture.

Overall, this was a fun project to work on. The click-through rates for the banner ads were higher then average, however the compaign was a bit too edgy to continue.

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Date: 09/19/2009 (Saturday, mark your calendar)
Time: 6:30 PM
Location:

Asia Buffet
18268 E Gale Ave
Rowland Heights, CA 91748
(626) 581-8292

Please email me back & # of person if you CAN make it (Friday is the due date), so I can forward this list for room reservation.

Sincerely,
Robin

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Pretty much employees in the LA regions are going. Have other reunion activities you want to announce for your region? Post them here.