November 19, 2008 by avram miller
As I have often said, “Cancer saved my life”. When I was 51 years old, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Several months later I was treated with radiation therapy. It has now been almost 12 years and I seem to be fine. Many would say I was cured. But back in 1996 when I was learning about prostate cancer, I realized that while you can know you have prostate cancer you can never know that you do not. It can come back even 20 years later. I decided to make major changes in my life. At that time I was a Corp. Vice President at Intel, managed a multi billon dollar perfolilo venture capital investment perfolilo, was a key interface between Intel and the media industry as well as the communications industry. I was a major spokesperson for the company and keynoted lots of great conferences. I sat on the board of a few entertainment companies as well as a few non profit organizations. I was financially secure. But that was not enough. I was about to start an investment partnership with friend (he actually did it and that company become very successful). The cancer gave me a very different prospective on my life. I decided I would make every decision as if I only had ten years to live. So the first thing I did was to end my discussions about starting an investment company. Then I decided I would leave Intel not to retire per se but to explore the things I thought were interesting and to find out what I could do on my own so in 1999 I went out on my own. My balance had changed. I was exercising a lot, eating better, spending time with family and friends and continuing efforts to make the world better for others. So hat does this have to do with the world economic crises?
Over the last forty years the USA had become increasingly materialist. It was all about a bigger house, a better car, the rights schools and lately right technology. We no longer dreamed of sending people into space but instead we dreamed of larger flat panel TV’s. In the meantime the rest of the world was following our materialist lead. Probably because of the success of our media industry, billions of Chinese and Indians dreamed of owning a car for instance. One of the results of all this is our problems with climate change. Another is the transfer of wealth via oil purchases to countries that are not friendly or democratic. And we borrowed billions from the Chinese. Our life style was killing us and killing the world as well. The result of our greed is the financial mess. It was created in part by people that could not get enough material things. People that measure their success by the size of their private plans or their country homes. Even though we had the worse president maybe in all of our history, a man who may be a criminal if not a fool, Obama may have not been elected if the market crash did not happen. Now we have a leader I believe that can help us balance our country and can hopefully inspire other countries as well. And he can operate in a time when the crises has weakened other countries even more than it has weakened ours. Iran is weaker. Russia is weaker. China is weaker. The crises provides us with a historic moment in which to realign our priorities. And yes, it is very painful for all of us an especially painful to those that have lost their homes and their jobs. But out of all this may come great opportunities especially for our children and their children. I would be happy to give up a 60 inch flat panel for that.
Tags: economic crisis
Posted in World Situation | No Comments »
November 13, 2008 by avram miller
Chris Nolan who is the editor and founder of Spot On (www.spot-on.com). Interviewed me the recent presidential election and why I was such a strong supporter of Obama when I had been suggesting ten years earlier that the Internet was going to make Goverment and Politics less relivant. You can read her post here. But I thought I list some of the main points I think I made during a 30 minute conversation with Chris.
The internet and technology will reduce the importance and power of governments.
The structure we now have is a hold over from the beginnings of the industrial age and even before
One example of loss of control is the regulation of information. Even China is having difficulty controlling what their Citizens learn
We now have major corperations that are truely global and can move money and people etc around the world with limited interferance by any goverment
Good versus Evil
I believe that the Bush administration is evil. I don’t know if Bush is evil or easily manipulated but look at the actions of his admistrations.
Obama is a good. He cares about people and has demostrated that through his life choices
McCain and Palin seemed to be more of the same but maybe even worse. I am sure that McCain knew what he was doing and was willing to give up his principles for a win.
For me this is not about politics
I have no issue with having two parties that have different points of view and policies. But politicians have turned social issues into ways to win by taking away the rights of others.
Politicians seem to have one job these days and that is getting reelected.
Leadership
Leaders need the right circumstances but the right circumstances do not create leaders
We have not had inspiring leadership in the USA since JFK, RFK and King.
The world needs leadership but they do not have to be politicians
Finally, I should say that this election was very meaningful to me like it was to so many. In the 60s I was arrested for cilvil rights demonstrations. I did voter registration for Willie Brown’s for election. Frankly, I never thought I would see an african american president.
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October 12, 2008 by avram miller
My dad turned 85 in April. We were having lunch before he was going out on a date with a woman 14 years younger than him. My dad works out about three hours a day and can bench press abut 160 pounds. I was was telling him that I am planing t have a major medicare party in 2010 when I become 65 (just before I take a boat trip up the amazon). And realized that there is nothing you get or become after 65. I mean I already get senior discounts (l love getting carded again). So if I become a senior citizen than what is my dad. Hense the idea of supper senior. It is either that or I can be sub senior. My eldest son will be forty when I turn 65. Wonder if we can have three generations of old dudes at the same time?
Tags: life in the last third
Posted in About life in the last third | No Comments »
September 18, 2008 by avram miller
I was once quoted by USA Today calling Apple the Singapore of Technology. I like Singapore actually. It is very clean, very planed and very safe and very controlled. But I would never want to live there.
As readers of my blog will know I have been trying to move off of Microsoft to Apple. I wrote a 12 step program but am stuck on the last step. And frankly, I am not sure I can ever make it over to the Apple side.
One thing I have come to realize: The difference between Windows and Mac users are that the Mac users can’t remember when their computer crashes and they have to restart. I have to restart my Mac as often as I have had to restart my PC.
The Mac takes just as long to start up as a PC but Mac users don’t seem to mind or they do not notice. Maybe the difference between the PC and the Mac is not really the difference between the PC and the MAC but the difference between the people that prefer one over the other.
So here is maybe the final straw: I use an exchange server for my avram@avrammiller.com email account. I thought that I would use mobile me since it is positioned as the “exchange server for the rest of us”. But of course, I want to keep using my avram@avrammiller.com email address which many people know and has “brand equity”. Every email program and server I have ever used controlled the reply to address to be different than the receiving email address. So I assume me.com would do the same. I got the address avram@me.com (please do not use it). I forwarded my email from avram@avrammiller.com to avram@me.com. But then discovered that there was no way to use an reply to address that was not either mac.com or me.com. Steve Jobs strikes again!
Oh, with the Mac you have to choose between being comfortable inside jail or less comfortable outside jail.
I
Tags: PC to Mac
Posted in Technology | No Comments »
August 16, 2008 by avram miller
I was just looking for some old and important contacts and discovered that the man that gave me my first major chance in the computer industry had died recently (see). I wanted to remember him here and tell the story about how Roy opened the door to my future.
In 1979, my wife and I decided that we needed to leave Israel where we had been for the last five years. While we had a pretty comfortable life materially, there were a lot of emotional issues that I will not go into here. At that time, I was running a division of a medical electronics company called MG Electronics, located in Rehovot and also was an officer of the parent company, Mennen Greatbach of Clarence New York. My specialty was the use of computer in real time applications in cardiology (CCU monitoring, Catherization Lab). I also had an appointment as adjunct associate professor at the School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. I felt that I was overly specialized and wanted to either focus on medicine or on computers. If I was going to focus on medicine, I was going to go back to Holland where I had been living and was the country of my wife and where my sons had been born. But if I was going to work in the computer industry, I was going to go back to the USA. By the way, at that time my children spoke only Dutch and Hebrew and my wife had never lived in the USA.
Having a long standing relationship with Digital Equipment Company (the second largest computer company in the world at that time), I used my contacts there to get interviews with several groups. Some of the groups where in marketing but one group was part of central engineering. This group run by Dick Clayton (whom I knew) was responsible for a major part of the central engineering organization lead by Gordon Bell (now with Microsoft). One of the key people within Clayton’s organization was Roy Moffa. We hit it off pretty good. I decided that it was Roy’s dept. where I wanted to work. I knew to be successful at Digital I had to prove that I was a great engineer (of course I never studied engineering). I spent a few days with Roy and his group. My wife had come with me for this week of interviews at Digital and she and I had dinner at Roy’s house and meet his wife. And before I knew it, it was Friday late afternoon and Roy and I were going to meet at the bar of a restaurant in Maynard MA (where Digital had its headquarters). I fully expected to have Roy offer me a job. But instead he told me, he could not offer me a job although he really wanted to and though I could make major contributions to his group. But he wanted the other managers in his group to agree and one of them did not. This man whose initial’s were JC said he did not feel I would fit in to the group. I told Roy that this was a bad decision and that it was important for digital and important for me to join. I asked him if I could speak with JC. He said yes. I called JC and asked him to meet me at the bar. I then told him that I thought this was a mistake and asked him to reconsider his position. He backed down and said he was ok with my joining. About six months later, Roy moved to a new position starting up Digitals semi conductor business. I got a new boss, Herb Shanzer. Herb reorganized things and JC ended up working for me. I fired him soon after.
While I did not work with Roy long, we stayed friends. I will always be grateful for the opportunity he gave me even if I had to take matters into my own hands a bit.
Posted in About life in the last third, Friends remembered | No Comments »
August 2, 2008 by avram miller
I have started to write music again. The last time, I composed was about twenty years ago. Then like now, I used a computer to help me although the technology has advanced so much during that time, it is hard to compare. I stop writing because it took more of a kind of concentration that I found difficult having a young family and a demanding job. So when I stopped, I made a promise to myself that someday when my life situation changed and I could put in the time and energy to compose, I would. For many years, I have been thinking of that promise and what my responsibilities are today to the person I was then. I guess that promise was not enough to get me back to writing or maybe it was the fear that even without the demands of a busy life, I still would not find the will and the talent. Now I have started maybe out of fear that the time is now. The time to explore the internal side of myself; to do things that do not involve effecting the actions of other either through power or influence. When I was a child, I was very ill with childhood asthma. At one time I was put into a covalence home for about a year. I was pretty much along most of the time and just seven years old. But I was not bored. I went into my own mind and created worlds there. In many ways it was an awesome experience. I guess people that meditate have such experiences. I am not sure. I do not meditate. Our minds are like the earth where all the action that we observe happen on the surface. When I write music or just improvise I get to go below the surface. It is sweet. You can listen to a bit of it here.
Posted in About life in the last third | 1 Comment »
June 27, 2008 by avram miller
As you probably know, Bill Gates is leaving the employment of Microsoft the company he founded in 1975. Bill and I have had overlapping lives. I actually started working on computers a few years before Bill (being 10 years older then Bill helped). And while I am not Bill Gates I can imagine what it must mean for him to leave the computer industry in which he was so much a part in shaping. While most of you are thinking of Gates the Billionaire, Gates the Entrepreneur, Gates the competitive businessperson etc, right now I am thinking of the Gates the boy programmer. A man that knew what a bit really was. Who could not only hold the code for a program in his head but the entire memory of the computer (the was not much difference then).
I first meet Bill Gates in 1981 when he visits Digital Computer (the then number two computer company) to meet with Ken Olsen, the CEO. The meeting was set up by Barry Folsom who was responsible for the Rainbow one of Digitals three failed attempts to enter what became the PC market. I was busy with my own failure, the Professional Series. By that time, Bill had pretty much figure out the business strategy of Microsoft (I wont explain here). A year later, I attended a speakers dinner at PC Forum (when Ben Rosen still ran it) with Bill, Steve Jobs, and many of the 20 something’s that would create the PC business ( I was 37 at the time and feeling pretty old). That was when I first learned about Compaq and Lotus and began to understand myself how the computer industry would develop.
Later in my role as Vice President Business Development at Intel, I would often attend meeting with Bill (quarterly executive meetings between Intel and Microsoft, other company meetings and industry events). Bill was not one of my favorite people. The company he built is not one of my favorite companies either. But the software they developed which at that time always needed more processor power did put my kids through school. Later when Bill set up his foundation, I was a bit conflicted. Now I had to admire someone I did not really like.
So Bill is now moving on or rather leaving something behind. But the foundation must be such a different experience for him for he will never be in the position he was when he first started programming computers.
I know myself that I never knew such joy in my professional life as when I would late a night, program my first computer bit by bit. I wonder as Bill get older, if he will miss those days more than his days at the helm of Microsoft and as the worlds richest man.
Posted in About life in the last third, Avram's Past, The Post PC Period | 2 Comments »
June 11, 2008 by avram miller
My great grandmother’s family lived in a small town in the Ukraine call Priluki for a very long time. I was able to trace my family back to about 1760 but they could have been there for hundreds of year before. My great great grandfather was a butcher. He was born in 1830. He died in 1890 when my great grandmother was 13 years old. Her mother had died in 1880 when my great grandmother was just three. Soon after, her sister Rosa left for San Francisco where her older half sister lived. A second sister also immigrated to San Francisco. My great grandmother, Basya followed in 1897. She married in 1898 and had the first of her three children in 1899. I knew Basya well. She lived to be almost a 100 years old and even held my son on her lap. She would tell me stories of Priluki including descriptions of the family’s home, the river she swam in and most importantly about her older brother Aron-Movsha Borodinsky. She always said that I reminded her of him. He was an actor in the local Yiddish Theatre. He also took over the family butcher business. Aron-Movsha for reasons I do not know decided to stay in Priluki. A few days ago, I saw the face of Aron-Movsha for the first time when his granddaughter visited me at my home in San Francisco. She is living in the bay area now. As I wrote earlier the great grandson of Aron-Movsha found me from Israel via the internet. So after a 111 years, the decedents of Basya (my sister and a cousin where here as well) meet the descendent of her brother Aron-Movsha. I learned about what happened to my family in Priluki. How they continued to live in the home where Basya was born. About the children of Aron-Movsha and their children. About how they continued to communicate with the family in San Francisco until the Communist Authorities told them in 1938 that they could no longer answer the mail from San Francisco. About how they fled from the Nazis to Kazakhstan where Aron-Movsha died. About how his daughter Miriam return to Priluki after the war and had a child, the woman that visited my home. I learned about how she with her children left Priluki in 1991 and went to live for a short time in Israel before going to Canada. Eventually she got a green card and moved to the New York. After living there for a long time she decided to move to the bay area even though she knew no one. I wonder if at some level she knew she would find her family. And then her son, who lives in Israel and is currently not allowed to live in the USA found me. And there we were. There we are a family reunited after 111 years.
Here is the photo of Aron-Movsha Borodinsky. His granddaughter made it to San Francisco and now he has made it to the Internet.
Posted in Avram's Past, Genealogy | No Comments »
May 28, 2008 by avram miller
I am on step 11.
Step 1: Buy vista an become convinced that not only will things not get better but they will only get worse.
Step 2: Stop thinking that your Mac friends are delusional and imagine that they might be on to something
Step 3: Stop thinking about all the problems you might have in moving over to the Mac and start thinking about how much fun you will have
Step 4: Realize that your relationship with Microsoft is like a bad marriage. That you have grown apart and have different objectives.
Step 5: Go to the Apple Store and get that “feel good” experience/ Like being in love again.
Step 6: But Mac magazines to read on airplanes and notice all the people that become friendly
Step 7: Start hanging out at Apple Stores and also going to the Apple web site. Download iTunes you do not already have it and maybe also try Safari.
Step 8: Stare at a photo of Bill Gates for a longtime and then at a photo of Steve Ballmer for even longer.
Step 9: Start figuring out which Mac you will buy/
Step 10: Do the deed. Buy your Mac
Step 11: Have doubts and uncertainty as you try to make the Mac act like a PC
Step 12: Surrender to bliss
Posted in About life in the last third, Technology | 1 Comment »
May 11, 2008 by avram miller
I am actually in pretty good shape. I work out about 10 hours a week (weight training two hours, Pilates, 3 hours, yoga 1 hour, four hours of aerobics). My resting heart rate is 60 or under and max is almost 180 (remember I am 63) RealAge thinks I am in my mid 40s but I do carry about 15 pounds too much (if I could only give up cocktails). However, I do not drink enough water an I am working on this. It is just a question of developing awareness. Maybe I need to couple it to my piano playing. In my early 20s (before I became a father), I smoked 2 1/2 packs a day. I stop when I as 26. Before I stopped, I could not imagine how I could play piano without a lit cigarette. Since I now play about ten hours a week, if I drank a glass every 15 minutes while playing, I could meet my objective.
Posted in About life in the last third | 1 Comment »
