Today I Learned (TIL)

Wozniak is one of the old school turbo nerds. Watch one of his interviews sometime; it's wild. Random things I remember:

• He had a super high quality color printer before they were popular, and he used it to make himself a fake ID that said "Department of Defiance" and used it to travel everywhere. He explained that it said his job was "Laser Operator" because he owned a laser pointer, and he operated it. His logic was that because it wasn't claiming to be anything in particular, it was perfectly legal, although I don't think that's actually how it works. He said he had to stop after 9/11.
• He requested from the US mint un-separated print sheets of $2 bills, and then would craft them into tear-off perforated sheets with an adhesive at one side. Like a stack of post-it notes. Then, to pay for stuff, he would separate however many sheets and then rip off whatever number was required and see whether people would accept it. Basically it was as far away from realistic-looking currency as he could get while still being 100% legal tender.
• He had -- and as far as I know still has -- the phone number 888-888-8888. It took him a decent amount of work to get it.
• Steve Jobs lied to some employees about whether they would get stock, and then took it back and gave them nothing. When Wozniak found out, he gave them everything they'd been promised out of his personal money (which, he wasn't short of, but still it's a pretty unusual thing to do).
• He started talking about having trouble making a change to his cell phone service and the interviewer got all surprised... like, aren't you a special person to them? Don't they make sure you're taking care of, since you are largely responsible for the little magic things they sell so many of? And he said, no. I talk to the call center just like you do. You would think they'd treat me different, but they don't.

He's type a type of individual that doesn't get made all that often. And, of course, he did almost all the engineering from the early-early-early days of Apple; there's a reason they got famous.

Electrocution is fatal.

Woz might also be the only person who did not become a markedly worse person when he became a billionaire.

I used to make stupid shit in my 70s elementary school that would have me up on terrorism charges in the 20s. 2 come to mind:

Battery bombs: I thought if you crossed the poles on an alkaline battery it would explode. Wired up AA and 9-volts with switches, told the other kids they were bombs.

KDAK: Killer Diller Acid Killer. Yeah. I'd take a 2L bottle, fill it with leaves, dirt and water, chunk it under a bush to rot for a couple of weeks. Told kids they could take a vial to sniff and it would make them temporarily sick to get out of school. I think I actually sold some.

I'm sure there was dumber stuff I'm forgetting. I seem to remember a "bomb" I made out of a fire alarm or some such. Dad was always giving me broken electronics and a trip to Radio Shack was like Christmas. I'd wear the catalog down to shreds until the next year's came out. "What's a MOSFET? Do I need one?"

Try to do that in high school now without getting shot.

Did the guards die?

Lived on to create Apple simply because he’s white.