This is Part 3 of my interview with Steve Wozniak’s long-time friend, Dan Sokol. I definitely suggest reading Part 1 and Part 2 first. This part is nowhere near as long, so I will throw in several more examples of Dan’s photos over the years.
I explained that Part 2 was delayed because I was waiting to hear back from Woz about his memories of Dan. That was because when I told Woz I had interviewed Dan and was going to write from the position that Dan was “a forgotten figure in early computing, and I’d like to be part of changing that,” Woz had responded, “Dan is extremely deserving of this. I will get back to you with lots of input. I’m busy right at this moment though.”
Clearly Woz has been busy, I went on, as I knew he had been traveling quite a bit. When Part 2 was published, Woz dashed off a quick note to expand on his busyness: “I spoke yesterday to 5,000 in SF. I flew immediately to Orlando where I had 4 speeches today, 3 to large audiences in separate locations. In a couple of days I have another all-day speaking event in NC. I’ll get home for 2 days and then it’s off to México. I don’t have enough time to keep up with life right now. It’s a busy time and I hope you understand. Still ahead I have multiple events from a studio in Mt. View, Barcelona, Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Columbus, Phoenix, Tokyo, Orlando, Nashville, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, D.C., Moldova, Brazil…and more come in all the time.”
Yikes. Much worse than even I thought! Well, that gives Dan an upper hand in describing a prank exchange. 🙂
At some point Woz will have time to give his “lots of input” and there will be a Part 4. I suspect he will have a prank story or two himself.
More on Dan’s Time with Woz
Dan wasn’t just a tag-along: sometimes he and Woz worked together, such as on the CORE remote control project. It probably takes a pretty big Apple geek to already know that Woz invented the first “universal” user-programmable remote control. It was based on the MOS 6502 microprocessor, the same one he used in the Apple-1.
It featured an LCD display, and the bottom panel slides down to reveal programming buttons. It can ‘learn’ functions by recording the infrared signals from other remotes. It could also connect to a computer via a serial interface. It was marketed by CL 9, a company founded by Woz in 1985, and ran until he sold it to Celadon, which continued to market new versions under the names PIC-100 and PIC-200.
The original 188-page patent can be downloaded from Google Patents.
“And, you know,” Dan continued, he “worked for him when he was teaching all those kids and was— did many, many pranks. Some intentional, some not. Helped him do helped him do amazing stuff. We had a lot of fun.” [Once he exited CL-9 — he originally wanted to call the company Cloud 9, but that name was already taken — Woz completed a “life-long goal” to teach, in this case computer classes to children from the 5th through 9th grades, as well as teachers.]
A lot of fun and changing the world? Who could ask for much more than that?
Momma Woz Gets Involved
Dan Sokol: So many stories. So, did I tell you about the time Steve and I, and a bunch of reporters, are around a table at an awards ceremony before the, this is during the dinner, the awards ceremony is going to take place later and I have to give the award to Steve.
It’s, I don’t know what it was for, which is fine. I had a very short speech because I don’t do that sort of thing, and Steve and I are joking, telling these [reporters] these horrible stories, the pranks we pulled on people. And they’re in shock. And at the table is Steve’s mom [Margaret] and she suddenly gets up. By the way, the very next day, Steve and I are going to the Soviet Union because he has funded a concert there. Peace concert. She comes behind us and does the Vulcan neck pitch on both of us at the same time and says, “You both hereby agree: no more pranks on each other!”
“Yes ma’am! Yes ma’am!” And so we agreed no more pranks… on each other.
So now I’m going to tell you of the best prank that Steve ever pulled on me.
Randy Cassingham: All right!
And the Timing was Perfect
DS: All right. So, the year is some year in the mid-1980s. I am in Dallas, Texas, running a video post-production company with my cousin.
We have a piece of equipment called a Rank Cintel. Rank Cintel converts film, 16 and 35 millimeter, into NTSC video. This machine was a nightmare. It wasn’t that it was badly designed. It was that it was terribly manufactured British engineering. Shorts everywhere, solder joints that they forgot to solder so that they’re intermittent, and instead of shrink wrap on exposed wires and connectors, they use rubber, which, of course, deteriorated rapidly and under the machine. There would always be these little pieces of rubber from the, from the insulation falling off. And the machine was constantly failing.
I spent a year of weekends underneath that machine repairing it. There are some funny stories where there’s a chip that they used in their video buffer made by National, that was so flaky that they would just burn out regularly. And you had to buy the chips from Rank — at a premium, and they would only sell you two at a time — a month. Because they were short and the chip was being redesigned, but wasn’t ready, and I had enough of that and I called a friend who used to work for me at AMI who was now at National. Told him what was going on. He said, “Oh, I’ve got like 50 of those that were used for characterization. You want ’em?” I said, “FedEx!”
And I got them, put them in, and because they had been used for characterization, they had been temp cycled, and they never failed.
And my cousin was, “Where did you get those?” Not talking.
RC: Yeah, “Get what?” (laughs)
DS: “Get what,” right? “Why do they have numbers written on the top?” Don’t worry, doesn’t mean anything.
Anyway, we like I said, right? Rank owed me a year of Sundays, but this one particular day, there were storms in Dallas. Now, now the company was at Love Field, it was a great, great location because our clients from all over the southwest could fly in, and write-off the trip, if they had their own plane, it was great. They could park right outside our company. And many did. But this day, there were thunderstorms, the building took a hit, our phone system went out.
And so our, our, the girl at the front desk….
Kit: Receptionist.
DS: Receptionist is sitting there with the phone to her ear, “Hello hello. Hello! Hello!” Trying to intercept an incoming call because the lights aren’t working on the four incoming lines. I felt so sorry for her. Meanwhile, the Rank went dead. The EMP from the lightning strike took something out and I was working on that machine until like two o’clock in the morning.
I finally got home. Walked in the door and the light on my answering machine, the red light and the yellow light are both blinking. The whole tape is in use. What the hell? I started playing them back in the first message is, “We’re at the airport. There are four of us, we need a ride to the hotel.” What? Click click. Hi. “You got any openings? We’re going to be in town for four days.” Click click. Then the whole tape was like that. I erased the tape, went to bed.
The phone rings. “I’m at to the airport, we need a pickup to the hotel.” Uh, what airport are you in? “The only one fucking airport!” and they hang up. OK. So now I know that there’s something really wrong because there’s two airports in Dallas. And I figured so this is not something that has gone wrong with the phone company, this is something that has gone wrong somewhere else.
Next call. I answer, “Hi, Central clearing. How can I help you?” “We’re at the airport.” I said that’s nice. I need to know what airport you’re at. “Oh we’re at the Reno Airport.” I said thank you and I hung up, disconnected all the phones in the house. Went to the answering machine, left the following message: “Hi, thank you for calling. You have called a private number in Dallas, Texas. Something has gone wrong with the phone system at your end. Please make sure to tell the people at the hotel to get somebody to fix it. Thank you very much.” And I kept talking until I ran out of tape, the full two and a half minutes because this was the 1980s and that was a long distance call, and somebody was going to get a bill. That way I knew eventually it would get fixed.
So I turned the sound off, and went to bed. Got up the next morning, went to work. Called Woz.
RC: (laughs) You were suspicious, were you? (laughs)
DS: Right? I was very suspicious at this point: Woz didn’t take the call, his secretary picked up, “He’s really busy Danny, can’t talk to you.” Really, this is the first time…. at this in point in time it would have been 20 years since I’d known him, that he would not pick up the phone. All right. I tried again, the next day, and the next, finally by accident, I caught him. And he answered the phone. And I said, that was a great prank. And he said, “What are you talking about?”
And I said, “Woz, there are three billion people on this planet. I know about a hundred of them? Of that 100, there are probably four who could do this, but only one who would.” And then he laughed. And I laughed, and that ended.
RC: So what he had done was reprogrammed one of those “Courtesy Phone” dialers.
DS: He reprogrammed the one at the Reno airport, there was this big display, so you pick up the phone and you push the Hilton button, but it was the same kind of phone he had at home. So he pried up the plastic, pushed the program button, and put [in] my phone number.
RC: That’s what I was thinking he did, OK.
DS: So, this is one of the stories that we told the newspaper guys. They thought that was just shocking, and then I said, “Here’s how I got even!”
RC: (laughs)
Getting Even
DS: The Woz was still going to [University of California at] Berkeley. He was going to Berkeley as Rocky Raccoon. Rocky Clark. [He’s right about both the name variants: Woz’s diploma actually shows his name as Rocky Racoon Clark.] Rocky was his dog’s name, Clark was his wife’s maiden name. He graduated, and I went to the graduation. Now, my girlfriend at the time, turns out, she knew Woz without knowing Woz! When Woz was a kid and she was a kid, she would go to work with her dad on Saturday and type up his memos.
Woz — his dad worked at the same place, and he’d go with [his] Dad to play with all the high-tech toys, but he [Woz] caught wind of her being there and went to the typewriter she was using and swapped some type around, because it was one of those clever typewriters where two or three of the characters could be swapped for a different font, then you just swapped them around so she’d get typos and couldn’t understand what was wrong.
But it was Woz, she knew it was Woz. So, she agreed to throw a pie in his face!
RC: (laughs)
DS: And I agreed to photograph it. So at his graduation party, in the basement of the pizza place, where all the people were. She filled up a paper plate with whipped cream, walked around behind him, and he, he’s looking at me and I had a shit-eating grin on my face and my camera in my hand. He knew something was up, and she smacked him on the side of the head. Whipped cream everywhere, he’s smiling. And I got the picture. And he thought that was the prank.
It wasn’t. I printed those pictures in 8×10 color with the caption: “Apple π in ear.” And passed it around to all the people he knew at Apple.
RC: (laughs)
DS: That was my revenge and that’s why his mother chose to use the Vulcan neck pinch on the two of us and telling us, we should not play pranks on each other anymore. But that did not keep us from pulling pranks on third parties, of which we did lots of.
RC: Excellent.
Kit: Combining forces. I presume.
DS: Yes!
Kit: Excellent.
RC: All right, I’m going to use that as a place to stop. Thanks so much, Dan.
DS: It was my pleasure. Let’s go to dinner!
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29 June 2007: Woz stood in line with everyone else buying iPhones at an Apple Store on the first day they were sold. In one of these two frames you can see Woz has his wallet and credit card out, buying what looks like two phones and related accessories. (Dan Sokol) |
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I did ask Dan later if he wanted to share any other pranks. “Just go with those,” he replied. “Nobody will get sued. 😉 ”
A Rare Breed
I am so privileged to have such an interesting and diverse readership, “celebrities” and otherwise. I’m grateful that Dan, who has been a Premium subscriber since 1999, reached out, and trusted me enough to say yes to my proposal that I interview him with my recorder running. His stories were at least as interesting as I had hoped. To be given the keys to his photo vault was icing on the cake.
Part 4 coming …someday. Probably!
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