Luckily, I got a job at the Faculty Research Center of University Computing Services, and was at ground zero of a high-tech lab that was allowed to try anything new. Anything. And this WWW stuff was really new, and really exciting.

Gopher was cool, but Mosaic was cooler.

Dr. Rashidi mentored me through the next few years as we embarked upon a fantastic journey of web servers, httpd, Mosaic web browsers, Marc Andreeson, NCSA, Netscape web browsers, Sun Sparc 5 Workstations, Winsock protocols, Solaris, NeXT, and a whole host of other highly technical things that 99.99% of people dismissed.

This was when Yahoo was still a project at Stanford. Google (Googol) was still a word that meant (1) followed by (100) zeroes. Mark Zuckerberg was only 8 years old.

The "world wide what?" people would say as I told them what I was working on. Ha! Boy I wish I had those conversations video taped.

But three years later, in 1995, people like Jeff Bezos realized it was going to be big. Really big.

Perhaps so did Phil Alden Robinson, a writer/director who released a fairly obscure 1992 movie called Sneakers. It's one of my very favorite films, especially for this line of dialog:

The world isn't run by weapons any more, or energy or money. It's run by little ones and zeros, little bits of data - it's all just electrons. There's a war out there old friend, a world war. And its not about who's got the most bullets, it's about who controls the information, what we see and hear, how we work, how we think. It's all about the information.

While he could be talking about media, he's actually talking about computer networks. Email. Web. Facebook. Google. Twitter.

As you can imagine, Phil's prediction turned to be quite correct. Eerily correct. It's all about who controls the information.

In this clip from Sneakers, Robert Redford (Marty) finds an experimental electronic device that can hack into any system by quickly rendering any encryption useless. Ben Kingsley (Cosmo) wants the device for himself. They then discuss the power of who controls the information...

I picked up this Conair Travel Smart LadderKart the other day from B&H Photo Video for about $50 bucks and man, do I love this thing!

You can carry all your gear to a shoot, then use the cart you brought all your gear on as stepladder at the shoot. If you never plan on using it as a cart or never plan on using it as a stepladder, it functions perfectly as either.

It's extremely durable and heavy duty, but doesn't weigh a ton. It's pretty light (18lbs) for how rigid it is. Supporting 300lbs as a stepladder and 250lbs as a cart requires significant strength.

As a stepladder, the top step is 30" off the ground. Any higher and you've got a full fledged ladder, which is too bulky for travel. I can toss this in the back of a cab easy.

The foam padded handle is really thick - this is a real padded handle not just a thin covering. It makes pulling and maneuvering the cart a breeze, and gives you great leverage. I used to work in warehouses and our high-end premium push carts had the same kind of padded handles.

Just the kind of over-engineering I love!

When you want to use this as a cart, just flip the bottom part down and it locks into place. Rolling it around is a breeze. The large 4" wheels will get you over all sorts of curbs, bumps, and obstacles. When you're done, the bottom flips and secures quickly.

The Conair Travel Smart LadderKart feels balanced, well-built, and I could have paid 5x what I did and still felt I got a great deal.

At $60 this thing is not only a no-brainer, it's essential.

The Shadow Man (Part 1)

The Shadow Man (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7