See? Isn’t that one of the problems? I have been a useful idiot for Apple products for several years- I think since I was working for IBM and discovered that Big Bluw was going to sell the ThinkPad lap-top line to the Chinese.
I always hated Microsoft products because the Government made us use them, and I am not completely comfortable with Mr. Bill Gates being involved in the various configurations of my life. The constant attacks by malware shard at the office was another constant irritant, and I drifted to the operating system that was (then) less targeted by the bad guys. Now, of course, Bill’s software made our personal information readily accessible to innumerable hackers, and a (small) part of my busy day is spent in dealing with some asshat in Ohio who stole my personal information from China or wherever and continues to claim he is “me” to a variety of credit-granters in the hopes of stealing my life.
So I went with a hybrid solution of Apple hardware and some Microsoft applications- mostly the hated Office suite for compatibility with the rest of the computing world. For the record, I also was not particularly enamored with the personality and management stylings of Mr. Steve Jobs, but you have to admit that his products were sleek and approachable and seemed to work much more intuitively. Plus, they shared Apple-unique features across a variety of platforms- iPod, iPad, MacBook Pro and so on.
Which was one of the problems I encountered when I began to get serious about putting the informal (very) biography of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers together.
My last iteration of laptop is a MacBook Pro- a nice portable piece of IT, but one that fell out of favor once I purchased a big-screen desk-top 27-inch iMac. It is wonderful for the capability to have more than one application open on the screen at a time, and the ability to rapidly switch things around.
That is also part of the problem: when I imported the contents of the second-to-last Mac laptop, I naturally labelled the contents of the old hard drive as “Mac Book.” Even though I knew I was actually writing something I was calling the “Mac Book.”
Doh!
Anyway, one of the fun things about interviewing Mac for that great decade we spent at Willow (and other places) was the fact that we could start anywhere, meander through anything and everything in his ten decades on the planet at the establishment and zenith of the American Century. We did not bother with any strict chronology. Naturally, the events that changed history so dramatically took center stage: the Battle of Midway first among them, and the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto. The Bomb and the Surrender. So that was covered first, but then came all the rest, some preceding the war, some long after it, personalities of the Government in the 1970s and 1980s and all the rest in no particular order.
I figured I could always unscramble the files later, and I had the amazing luxury of having Mac review the stories as they were created to ensure I did not get too far off the reservation.
It was an amazing romp through history. He had decided to stay in the Navy when most people who served could not get off to something else fast enough. Mac’s post-war career included the early Cold War in Europe; the intense planning required to train a force prepared to goto war with the Soviets; collection tactics, sources and methods.
Then Vietnam, in the same job his boss Eddie Layton had when the Japanese attacked.
Then all the rest: Director of Plans and Programs at the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring as the Chief of Staff at the ascendancy of the Zumwalt Whiz-kids. Then the ten years at CIA, or better said, the Intelligence Community Staff, the entity the Director of Central Intelligence used to deal with Congress and the fractious kittens who compose the Intelligence Community.
It was a brilliant career in Government- it almost reminds me of the Pug Henry character in Herman Wouk’s “Winds of War,” a charactr who was at every significant event of the Second World War. Except for Korea, that actually was Mac Shower’s life.
And there was much more. During the time he had to share with us, my folks were sliding from alert seniors to something much less. Mac had experienced the same thing when his beloved wife Billie was struck by dementia. He managed to be a caregiver for ten years, and then the decade that followed in which she needed more intense care than he could give. He was a mentor and counselor as I tried to come to grips with what was happening to my folks. Away from the Spook community, he organized support groups and served as a mentor to those who did not know what life was about to present them.
Anyway, I started bitching about computers, but it was my fault. I never should have named the whole contents of the hard drive as “The Mac Boo,” because they are two very different things and goodness knows what files wound up where.
I think we are about done with the first draft of the real Mac Book, which I think is going to be titled “Cocktails with the Admiral: The life and Times of Mac Showers at the Zenith of the American Century.” Of course the second part of the title will be in smaller font- there are standards, you know. The manuscript has become vast enough that it is broken up into )at least) three sprawling Word Documents. I think it is time to put them together and take a look at what we have got.
It is certainly better than listening to the politics in this town. Mac confronted two existential threats to America: the Empire of Japan, and the global ambitions of the Soviet Union. I prefer thinking about the part where Mac and his comrades actually beat them both.
The rest can wait.
Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com