Дуглас Коупленд - Microserfs

Ethan: President, CEO, and Director of Operations. His job is to find investors to fund us, find a company to publish and distribute our products, and to run the business day-to-day. Most companies have a CFO, but we can't afford one, so Ethan does the bill-paying, accounting, taxes, equipment-buying, and all that stuff.

Bug: In charge of database and file IO (Input/Output). It's how Oop! stores information to and from the hard drive; it's really complicated, and the kind of thing Bug loves.

Todd: He is "Ditherman" – working on the graphics engine and printer driver. All of the graphics need to be converted into an output format in order to be printed by a printer.

Me and Karla: We're working on the cross-platform class library so Oop! will run on both Mac and Windows. I'm Windows lead, she's the Mac lead.

Susan: She's the User-Interface Designer; in charge of the look-and-feel, the graphics, all that. She's the U-I police keeping me and Karla's code in sync.

Mom has a collection of rocks. This sounds weird, and it really is weird. She has this small pile of rocks on the patio that just sits there. I ask Mom why she likes them, and she says, "I don't know, they just seem special."

So is this something that might lead to her requiring medication? I mean, they're not even nice-looking rocks. I keep looking at them and try and see what she sees, and I can't.

As stated, Karla and I are working on the same things, just in different formats. She's Mac, I'm Windows.

"Entirely appropriate," says Karla, "because Windows is more male, and Mac is more female."

I felt defensive. "How so?"

"Well, Windows is nonintuitive ... counterintuitive, sometimes. But it's so MALE to just go buy a Windows PC system and waste a bunch of time learning bogus commands and reading a thousand dialog boxes every time you want to change a point size or whatever ... MEN are just used to sitting there, taking orders, executing needless commands, and feeling like they got such a good deal because they saved $200. WOMEN crave efficiency, elegance ... the Mac lets them move within their digital universe exactly as they'd like, without cluttering up their human memory banks. I think the reason why so many women used to feel like they didn't "understand computers" was because PCs are so brain-dead ... the Macintosh is responsible for upping not only the earning potential of women but also the feeling of mastering technology, which they get told is impossible for them. I was always told that."

Remember at the very end of Soylent Green where Charlton Heston screams, "Soylent Green is people!!!!"! Well, I had that same sort of feeling today when Anatole began telling us about working life down at Apple ... "Apple is Microsoft!!!" He told us that the moods on the two "campuses" are almost exactly the same, and that the two corporate cultures, although they purport to be the opposite of each other, are actually about as different as Tide and Oxydol.

Anatole was hanging around all day today and on the drywall he made this big list of similarities and differences between Apple and Microsoft. Herewith:

Microsoft

Apple

waiting for stock to vest

trying to get laid off

"the Campus"

"the Campus"

make money

"1.0" sensibility

Microsoft Way

Infinite Loop

Bill

(no longer any equivalent)

Apple envy

Microsoft envy

boring buildings/good art

good buildings/art a sideline only

better cafeterias

better nerd toys

soccer field

s culpture garden

1-520

1-280

Intel

Motorola

average age: 31.2

average age: 31.9

gray Lexus

white Ford Explorer

not wild at creating new things but good on follow-through

good at creating new things but not wild on follow-through

no one ever gets fired

no one ever got fired ... until the layoffs started

wacky titles on business cards

wacky titles on business cards

eerie, Lagan's Run-like atmosphere

eerie, Lagan's Run-like atmosphere

uneasy IBM symbiosis

uneasy IBM fusion

13,200 employees

14,500 employees

people hired in 1991-92 being shuffled around

people hired from colleges in 1988-89 being turfed

stock set to split

stock price at cash liquidation value of company; now's the time to buy!

Still no tour of the Apple facilities, I note.

Today was one of those days where it was warm if you were standing in the sunlight, but the moment you left it, you froze.

Down at the library, Mom made up a list of "deer-proof" plants for Ethan. She got it from Sunset's Western Garden Book. Mom loves Ethan. He's a go-getter.

During lunch, as Ethan, Todd, and I drove in Karla's Carp through the Carl's Jr. drive-thru, Ethan gave us an inspirational chat. "Guys, the last thing we want," he said, "is to seem to be hurting for money. Venture capitalists like to see stability first. Only then will they come in with cash."

Todd expressed some disappointment that Oop! was, in fact, quite desperate for money, in spite of Michael's and Susan's infusions.

He replied, "Todd: fate hands you opportunities for a while, and if you don't take them, Fate says to itself, 'Oh I see – this person doesn't like opportunities,' and stops giving them to you."

I notice that I had to pay for the Western Burgers and fries and diet Cokes.

"Think of money this way," he went on, "take an initial sum and teach it to multiply itself, the way you copy-and-paste text to multiply it. Never think of money in terms of numbers. Only think of money in terms of other things. For example: two weeks of bug-checking equals a Y-class ticket to Boston. That sort of thing. If you think of money simply as numbers then you're doomed."

Ethan then fed a used Band-Aid from his index finger to a seagull squatted on a landscaped berm beside the road, and Todd and I lost our appetites. We gave Ethan our meals and dropped him off at his dermatologist's office.

Melrose Place night. One hour of work-free bliss and catcalls as the six of us monopolize the living room TV. It's better than the Academy Awards – and every week, too. Added bonus: 90210 as an hors d'oeuvre .

Susan noted tonight that the computers in Billy's office aren't connected to, or plugged into, anything. But this just made the show even better.

Todd chugged Snapples. He calls them, "Workahol."

We all made fun of the commercial for Mentos mints, saying "Mentos" all night with a goofy European accent. "Mentos." It's so dumb.

This is embarrassing to admit, but I still don't really know what Dad does for Michael. I am amazed that I can be this clueless, but all either of them will say is that he's working on our final corporate space in downtown Palo Alto. But can we afford this? I thought we were hurting for money. I am going to try and sleuth out what he's doing. Whatever it is, it's totally sucked up all of his model train-making energy. He doesn't go near the garage anymore.

I told Karla what Ethan said at lunch, about teaching money to multiply itself. She said Ethan's talking "bollocks." I asked her what that word meant, and she said she wasn't sure – it was a term from the punk rock era. "Something to do with anarchy and safety pins." We're going to e-mail someone in England and find out what it means.