Dad Is Dying Blog Response

October 28, 2017 / spatel / 0 Comments

I think that Sam’s lie positively impacts those around him in the story “Dad is Dying” because when everybody thinks that Dave is dying, they give him compliments and make him feel good, and so he stops worrying about wrinkles and heart rate all the time. Another benefit it made was that it made his dad more cheerful and so Dave and Morley got along much better than before. I don’t think the benefits outweigh the issue of the lie itself, because there was a lot of things that happened that were funny for the reader but would be very embarrassing for Sam and his family, like when Morley said they weren’t going to waste money on a funeral and just dump the body in the backyard. This would be pretty shocking to anyone if they thought Morley was talking about Dave Another example is the time when she said that they were just going to “put him down” and when Bruce stated that it would be mostly Dave’s decision, she said that she could choose for herself and that men didn’t have all the right, to Bruce’s astonishment. This is horrifying to Bruce because he thinks Morley’s talking about putting Dave down without his permission, which would be quite shocking- if I was Bruce I may have even told the police. Also, I think that when everybody really does find out about the lie, they will be very mad at Sam for doing this, and especially the ice cream girl who had been giving him giant ice cream cones. If she found out she would probably want money for the giant cones she had given for free, and she would be pretty mad. I’d be mad if I was her. After all, Sam did use her to get free ice cream. All in all, I don’t think the benefits of the lie outweigh the issue of the lie itself.

Steve Jobs- An Introduction

October 21, 2017 / spatel / 0 Comments

iPhones, iPads, iPods, iMacs, MacBooks, and Apple Watches. Who do we thank for all these amazing prized items? That would be Steve Jobs, one of the most creative, visionary entrepreneurs we have seen.

For my grade 9 Eminent project, I have selected Steve Jobs as my eminent person. Those of you that don’t know him, he is the man that co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak. He was adopted as an infant by Clara and Paul Jobs and lived in Mountain View, California- which would later turn into Silicon Valley. When he was young, Steve and his foster father Paul constructed electronics in the garage, and Paul taught Steve how to take apart and reconstruct electronics- much to Steve’s interest. Jobs was a very intelligent and innovative child, but was frustrated over how boring school was. In fact, he scored so well on his testing that he was offered to skip ahead to high school, but his parents didn’t accept the offer.

Later when Steve was in Homestead High School, he met his future partner Steve Wozniak who was attending the University of California, Berkeley. After high school, Steve Jobs went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon but dropped out after only 6 months due to lack of direction. The for the next 18 months he dropped in on creative classes at the school.

In 1974, Jobs took the job of a video game designer with Atari. Around 2 years later when Jobs was only 21, he started the company Apple Computer with Wozniak in Jobs’ family garage. After that, the duo had lots of success, and in 1980 they became a publicly traded company with a market value of 1.2 billion at the end of it’s first day of trading. Now Steve Jobs wanted for the marketing expert John Sculley to take over as CEO of Apple.

Over the next little period of time, Apple’s products suffered severe design flaws, and consumers were very disappointed. They were soon surpassed by IBM, and despite the release of the Macintosh in 1984, but although it had positive sales, it still wasn’t IBM level. Sculley began to think Jobs was hurting Apple, and the company’s executives began to cross him out. Jobs left Apple in 1985 to start a new company called NeXT Inc. The year after that Jobs bought an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios.

The following year when Apple wasn’t doing so great, Jobs returned as the CEO and put Apple back on its successful track, with ingenious products such as the iMac, that caught the eyes of consumers once more.

Jobs discovered he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer- a neuroendocrine tumor., which was quite rare but operable. Instead of immediately treating the cancer, Jobs altered his pescetarian diet- which is vegetarian but with seafood. Jobs postponed surgery for 9 months, and then in 2004 he had a successful surgery to remove the tumor. After that Jobs launched revolutionary products such as the Macbook Air, the iPad, the iPod, etc.

Unfortunately Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011 due to a relapse of his previously treated pancreatic cancer, and the world lost a great man.

I hope to learn a lot more about Steve Jobs from this in-depth eminent project, and to dive into the deeps of his lie rather than wade around in the shallows. We both have shared an interest in technology and programming, although I am definitely not as skilled as Steve Jobs is. I have been interested in Jobs’ life for quite a while now, and how he was fired from Apple, but returned as the CEO to bring the company back on track. I am a big fan of Apple products, and I feel excited to get to know more about Jobs. Honestly, I don’t see myself following a similar path because I think there’s no way I’m going to be that successful in my life, and I don’t think I’m going to make a company that sells devices in the future either, but I think I will dig deeper into the area of technology and attempt to create something new. I don’t really see obstacles that block me from achieving such eminence, it’s just the immense amount of work it would take. This study will give me a greater insight on how Jobs went through all of this and came out so successful.