Nicholas Pike

This weekend was Brickcity (Homecoming) at RIT - I’ve never really participated in any of the Brickcity events in the past 4-5 years, but this year Steve Wozniak was the distinguished speaker.  For those of you who don’t know, Steve Wozniak is the cofounder of apple.

Co-Founder of Apple Computer, a Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist, Steve Wozniak is best known for revolutionizing the personal computer industry. Wozniak helped develop more “user-friendly” personal computers such as the Apple I, Apple II, and influenced the popular Macintosh. His honors and awards include the National Medal of Technology, the nation’s highest honor for innovators, being inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, and the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment. Wozniak is also a published author with the release of his autobiography in 2006, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon. Wozniak is currently Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer and Chief Visionary Officer for Jazz Technologies, Inc.

The lecture was supposed to last an hour, but unfortunately RIT had to mess that up - with a 15 minute speech from the SG President and the new RIT Presiden Dr.Destler.

Woz got to about 1983 in his lecture - the point where he and Steve Jobs were located in his garage building Apple II’s with color screens - and then the SG President walked onto the stage and just stood there…

I wanted to scream - let the man talk!  You brought the Woz, and Howie Mandel - It’s RIT, all we really care about is the Woz!  We paid good money to hear him, do not cut him off!

But of course they did, but he opened it up to a quick Q&A session.

The first kid to talk actually hit Woz up for mentoring of his Student Club… way to put ‘em on the spot!

The last person though - an editor at The Reporter - did the unthinkable - one of those questions that makes me absolutely hate RIT.

“As you well know Steve, one of our freshmen this year is the kid who hacked the iPhone [waits for applause] - what do you think about that?”

He waited for applause - yes he did.  He brought it up with the biggest smirk on his face.  Who cares what Woz thinks of that?  Woz doesn’t even work for Apple anymore.

Anyway, it really makes me want to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley again… maybe tonight, or some other afternoon this week.

My life will be complete tomorrow

Half-life Orange box will be released tomorrow for the Xbox 360 and PC.  Included in this one box is:

• Half-life 2
• Half-life 2 : Episode 1
• Half-life 2 : Episode 2
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2

For those few uninformed, for a brief time I played Team Fortress Classic (for Half-Life 1) competitively, and still belong to the retired clan TheServerAdmins.

My class of choice is the Pyro.  I started playing and creating Half-life maps with SA when I was 14 or 16 (it was a long time ago!).  During that time SA has maintained a NeoTFC server and several Natural Selection servers.  A few times we entertained the idea of professional/competitive NS - but the team was just not ready for it.

So Valve is finally releasing Team Fortress 2 - which is more or less TFC on the Source engine, with new models and stylization.  I will be picking this up for both the Xbox and the PC (once I can get just TF2 for the PC - as I already have HL2).

I will be one happy man come Tuesday afternoon.