{"id":1806,"date":"2013-11-22T23:30:27","date_gmt":"2013-11-22T23:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodsoul.us\/?p=1806"},"modified":"2013-11-22T23:30:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-22T23:30:27","slug":"an-unexpected-ass-kicking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodsoul.us\/?p=1806","title":{"rendered":"An Unexpected Ass Kicking"},"content":{"rendered":"

IMPOSSIBLE HQ<\/a><\/p>\n

August 2, 2012 By Joel Runyon<\/a><\/p>\n

I sat down at yet-another coffee shop in Portland determined to get some work done, catch up on some emails\u00a0and write another blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

About 30 minutes into my working, an elderly gentleman at least 80 years old sat down next to me with a hot coffee and a pastry. I smiled at him and nodded and looked back at my computer as I continued to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you like Apple?<\/em>\u00a0As he gestured to the new Macbook Air I had picked up a few days prior.<\/p>\n

\u201cYea, I\u2019ve been using them for a while.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Wondering if I was going to get suckered into a mac vs. pc debate in a portland coffee shop with an elderly stranger.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you program on them?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I don\u2019t really know how to code, but I write quite a bit and\u00a0spend a lot of time creating online projects<\/a>\u00a0and helping clients run their businesses.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been against Macintosh company lately. They\u2019re trying to get everyone to use iPads and\u00a0when people use iPads they end up just using technology to consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make things. You can code, you can make things and create things that have never before existed and do things that have never been done before.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the problem with a lot of people\u201d, he continued, \u201cthey don\u2019t try to do stuff that\u2019s never been done before, so they never do anything,\u00a0but if they try to do it, they find out there\u2019s lots of things they can do that have never been done before.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I nodded my head in agreement and laughed to myself \u2013 thinking that would be something that I would say and the coincidence that out of all the people in the coffee shop I ended up talking to, it was this guy. What a way to open a conversation.<\/p>\n

The old man turned back at his coffee, took a sip, and then looked back at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, I\u2019ve done lots of things that haven\u2019t been done before\u201d, he said half-smiling.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not sure if he was simply toying with me or not, my curiousity got the better of me.<\/p>\n

Oh really? Like what types of things?,\u00a0<\/em>All the while, half-thinking he was going to make up something fairly non-impressive.<\/p>\n

I invented the first computer.<\/em><\/p>\n

Um, Excuse me?<\/em><\/p>\n

I created the world\u2019s first internally programmable computer. It used to take up a space about as big as this whole room and my wife and I used to walk into it to program it.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s your name?\u201d. I asked, thinking that this guy is either another crazy homeless person in Portland or legitimately who he said he was.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussell Kirsch\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Sure enough,\u00a0after .29 seconds<\/a>, I found out he wasn\u2019t lying to my face. Russell Kirsch indeed invented\u00a0the world\u2019s first internally programmable computer<\/a>\u00a0and as well as a bunch of other things and definitely lives in Portland. As he talked, I began googling him, he read my mind and volunteered:<\/p>\n

Here, I\u2019ll show you<\/em><\/p>\n

He stood up and directed me to a variety of websites and showed me through the archives of what he\u2019d created while every once in a while dropping some minor detail like:<\/p>\n

I also created the first digital image. It was a photo of my son.<\/em><\/p>\n

At this point, I learned better than to call Russell\u2019s bluff, but sure enough,\u00a0a few more google searches showed that he did just that.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Russell<\/a><\/p>\n

(Photo by Joel Runyon, licensed CC-BY-3.0<\/a>)
\nWant to mess with your mind? Without the man in the photo, the photo of this man wouldn\u2019t exist. *mind blown*<\/em><\/p>\n

As he started showing me\u00a0through\u00a0the old history archives of what he did<\/a>\u00a0while any hope of productivity vacated my mind as I listened to his stories and picked his brain about what he had done.<\/p>\n

At some point in the conversation, I mentioned to him:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know Russell, that\u2019s really impressive.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI guess, I\u2019ve always believed that nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do. Most people think the opposite \u2013 that all things are withheld from them which they have conceived to do and they end up doing nothing.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWait\u201d<\/em>, I said, pausing at his last sentence\u00a0\u201dWhat was that quote again?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>That\u2019s good, who said that?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>God did.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>What?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>God said it and there were only two people who believed it, you know who?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Nope, who?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>God and me, so I went out and did it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well then, I thought \u2013 as he finished showing me through the archives \u2013 I\u2019m not going to argue with the guy who invented the computer. After about 20 minutes of walking me through his contributions to technology, he sat down, finished his coffee, \u00a0glanced at his half-eaten pastry now-cold, checked his watch and announced:<\/p>\n

Well, I have to go now.<\/em><\/p>\n

With that, we shook hands, he got up, walked to his car and drove off as I just sat there trying to figure out what exactly\u00a0had just happened. As I sat there thinking: two things he said reverberated in the back of my mind:<\/p>\n