Today, the services don't waste people to train them or wash them out, and neither should today's companies. Especially in today's world, where mental nimbleness is needed, in both the military and business, the old top-down management style is bad, bad, bad.

Personally, most of the great programmers that I know (the few and far between) would not survive the Jobs treatment. And that's both a waste and a crying shame.

You see, my father grew up with many siblings in the Bronx, and went out to Minnesota for graduate school, and married a local girl. Although he took the family out to New York once to visit, I was very young (four) and don't remember it.

Also, my mother was an only child (her mother died in childbirth), so I grew up not knowing any aunts, uncles or cousins. That would change when I went off to college, in upstate NY.

That first year, 1980, my Uncle Al invited me down to the city (well, actually his condo in Yonkers) to celebrate Thanksgiving. So I boarded a chartered bus from Ithaca to Penn Station.

Imagine: a kid from Minneapolis arriving at the Penn Station of the 80s. The era of city bankruptcy was not in the best of conditions back then, and made quite an impression. Uncle Al and Aunt Kay picked me up and drove me back to Yonkers in the Volvo, built like a tank (which, if you knew how Aunt Kay drove, was a good thing; Uncle Al couldn't drive).

The Thanksgiving, the whole family came over for dinner. (Well, the majority that wasn't mad at the rest, but that's another story.) I still remember sitting with wide-eyed wonder as talked to each other just as they when they were kids. ("Albie did" this and "Tommy did" that and "Jimmie is" something or other.)

Then there was Chinatown. You have to remember, the Minneapolis my youth was an ethnic backwater. (Yes, it's positively cosmopolitan these days.) The number of chinese restaurants could be counted on one hand. Well, Uncle Al corrected that.

He taught me how to identify a good restaurant, that beer is good to cut the grease, and introduced me to Duck's feet (good), Chicken's feet (great), Sea Cucumbers (don't have much texture or flavor), thousand year old eggs (sometimes I like them and sometimes they're too strong), and jook (yum).

He took me to off-Broadway plays and the New York public library, they had an exhibition on the Chinese in America; that's where I first learned about the Chinese exclusionary laws.

But, most importantly, Uncle Al taught me about himself, Uncle Tom, Bob, Aunt Mary, Helen, cousin Margie, Andy (who's blog this is), Peter and John. These are the most lasting lessons my uncle gave me.

I will miss him very much.