Article 3C77Z After surgery, a visionary finally sneaks back to work

After surgery, a visionary finally sneaks back to work

by
Robert X. Cringely
from I, Cringely on (#3C77Z)

kaiserpic-300x225.jpgI'm sorry it has taken me so long to return to this page. My eye surgery is finally complete and I am more or less fully recovered. I can probably see better than at any other time in my life, though it is still far from perfect, but so what? I can see! I can drive! I can fly! Best of all, I am still alive.

During my first try at surgery in early November, they said my blood pressure was too high and sent me home with an extra pill (my fourth) to take for that condition. Two days later I was suffering horrible back pain and passed out. My kidneys had gone into overdrive and completely depleted my body of potassium, which you need to, you know, live. Six hours on an IV restored my potassium levels but my kidneys still hurt today (that was the back pain) and may be permanently damaged. And I came to a very useful realization: dying by lethal injection hurts like a son-of-a-bitch.

You see a key component of nearly all execution drugs is some form of potassium. I received a non-lethal dose that felt like acid was being pumped into my veins (by a nurse named Unique - watch out for her). A lethal dose would have to feel even worse. This, by the way, is the same stuff they give your dog when he's put down by a vet.

A month later, my BP in check with a completely different drug, I had the surgery which went off without a hitch, doing both eyes in less than an hour. My blindness was almost instantly gone and I had this stylish set of goggles.

But now it's time to finally get back to work. For six months I did almost nothing and earned almost nothing (only one speech - to the Business Council of Canada - saved my autumn).

So let's first address what my old friend Adam Dorell refers to as The Mineserver Jihad.

We built a four-man startup with no succession plan, which was stupid and all my fault. When I went blind it would have been nice if one of the boys had stepped-up but they didn't. And at 15, 13 and 11 why should they have, really? So the business ground to a halt. Then it literally BURNED DOWN. We lost about $20,000 in parts that were fortunately insured, but the State of California still thinks we might have sold them off the back of a truck, except the truck burned, too.

We're finally back at work, though, at Mineserver LLC and will have a revised design ready to go shortly. Our software will be the same but there is so much flux in the ARM board market that we'll probably be able to upgrade the specs to 64-bit. And this time we won't be building our own cases, which just wasn't either cost- or time-effective. Look for a spec update and a new shipping schedule in a couple more weeks, followed shortly by a clever marketing announcement you may enjoy (it's Fallon's idea).

We're also back at work with the team at WNET in New York on Startup America, which will air next season on PBS. This is familiar company for me because WNET's VP of Programming, Stephen Segaller, produced Triumph of the Nerds and both produced and directed Nerds 2.01. Startup America is being produced and directed by Josh Seftel, who is also very accomplished and goofy in just the right way (look him up). Our main underwriter is Salesforce.com but we have a couple more that are about to sign-up (the more underwriters the more episodes we can make). Four underwriters would be perfect, so if your organization would like to be involved in something that's real (unlike, say, Shark Tank) please get in touch with me.

And finally, given that this is now 2018, I owe you all my annual predictions column, which will appear later this week. This time I'll be doing fewer predictions but at greater length, so it may actually be as many as five columns in all. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Again, thanks for your patience.



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