Last night I spotted Jerry Pournelle across the table from me in a buffet line. Jerry is a small-time SF author who was (is?) famous in the computer world for a cantankerous column called Chaos Manor that he wrote for Byte Magazine. Jerry was a 'normal user' who distinguished himself by treating his column as a multi-page complaint form each month -- despite having the resources to purchase anything he wanted (or get it comped on demand as a 'journalist') and the ability to essentially call many industry CEOs on the phone and cajole them into sending someone over to his house to fix things, Jerry was never ever ever able to get any piece of hardware or software to work the way he wanted it to. (Kind of a forerunner to the modern blog, when you think about it.) In the late 90s, Byte folded,and Jerry transitioned over to his own Web site.
Appropriately, Jerry was complaining about the food.
Jerry's press name badge said "Byte/Nippon Byte", so whatever nostalgic soul resurrected the magazine saw fit to reinstate Jerry and his column there, too.
Posted by Kevin at September 14, 2005 12:28 PM