Chris Meller

I was checking out the new K2 style that I just activated, scrolling through some archives, and stumbled upon Go Flock Yourself from just shy of a year ago.

In it, I link to what I thought was a very funny post over at Flock Sucks. I clicked on the link, hoping to relive some of the funny memories, and was greeted with an unfortunate realization: not only has Wordpress.com made it incredibly easy for users to create their own blogs, but they’ve also made it unfortunately easy for them to delete them as well…

That’s too bad. I mean, the last time I stopped by (quite some time ago) they’d transitioned into some randomly meaningless blog shouting profanity and doing some kind of weird story-log concept. Still, there was some good content back there at the beginning, and now it’s all gone…

It was four months ago, almost to the day that I first found and read the 2005 Commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave to Stanford University, but the words still echo in my mind on a regular basis. When I wrote that post, I was trying to help out a friend who was having trouble seeing the path life was mysteriously supposed to take, and yet it now seems that I’m the one finding comfort and meaning in those words.

On a whim, I thought I’d see if I could track down an audio version of the speech and hear this magnificent and heartfelt advice given in Mr. Jobs’ own voice. Surprisingly, I found it. Not surprisingly, you can get it on the iTunes Music Store in the Stanford section, along with a video version.

For those who may have missed it the first time, here’s the entire speech, directly from the Stanford News Service, along with an MP3 version for live streaming. Feel free to follow along as you listen. Hopefully Steve can help a few more people find what they love in life…

[audio:http://chrismeller.com/user/files/steve_jobs-stanford_commencement_2005.mp3]

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5

Well, I actually started a post about this over a week ago, but it looks like the day actually managed to sneak up on me…

My first blog entry was posted one year ago today. I didn’t really start posting on anything resembling a regular basis until about February of 2005, but today still bears note as a very significant day: the day that everything Incoherent Babble has become was started.

I’d like to once again thank you, my readers, for actually wasting a few minutes of your day to read the random goodness that is my blog. There are around 400 of you out there checking back on a regular basis, which is honestly way more than I ever expected. It’s nothing less than amazing to me that there are 400 people out there in the world that would give a damn about my daily life and the totally random stuff I decide to talk about. You guys will always be special to me, you the few that I started with. I’d love to hear from everyone reading this, if you’ve got a minute. Drop me an email, or drop a comment on this post. I’m really interested to know why you keep reading… What is it that I talk about that keeps you interested? Is there anything I should focus on more often? Would you rather hear me bitch about marketing people more often? Just let me know, it’d mean a lot to me…

Here’s to 12 good months, and looking forward to years to come! Bill, you’re the only one in the area I know that reads… Drop me an email next week and I’ll buy you lunch to celebrate!

Alright, this is kinda cool. I logged in to my admin area tonight to make some theme and plugin changes, and I was surprised to find a new “Incoming Link” through Technorati listed…

At first I thought it was a SPAM link, since it didn’t seem to be legible from the portion I saw in my dashboard, but I was soon much more surprised to find that it was in fact in German…

You can check out the original post, and for those of us who are uni-lingual (and not in German), you can view the Yahoo! translation.

The machine translation is pretty brutal, but the jist of it is essentially:

If life is truly like a Meg Ryan movie, then this fits perfectly. Everyone at once now: *awwww*

I’m really touched and amazed that anyone else would be able to connect with my story like that. In years past, I’d have kept everything to myself and never would have been able to get this kind of emotional support and understanding from people obviously around the world. Blogs are truly changing the world, one post at a time…

To the author of that post, I’m truly touched. I still think about Alecia nearly every day, even now, more than 5 months after we realized she was engaged and more than 3 months since I last saw her. Sometimes things like this make you wonder if there really is one true love for you out there, and what happens if you miss that opportunity?

It’s with great sadness that we today bid goodbye to our second Star Trek: The Original Series cast member. First DeForest Kelley (January 20, 1920 - June 11, 1999), and now James Doohan (March 3, 1920 - July 20, 2005), our beloved Montgomery Scott.

As Scotty you gave millions of loyal fans a reason to tune in week after week for the adventures Kirk and crew. I can’t think of a more appropriate day for you to leave us than the anniversary of Man’s first landing on the moon (July 20, 1969)… You will definitely be missed!

A moment of silence during final transport, please…

Links:
Associated Press Obituary (CNN)
Yahoo! News
Planet Xpo
San Francisco Chronicle
Fox News
Wikipedia
Slashdot
Fark