¶ Bill Gates Posted 21 years, 10 months ago on February 26, 2004
Bill Gates gave a talk today. I had totally forgotten about it until angelina reminded me, so I was 20 minutes late. Don't really remember much about his talk, it was all PR material. The whole time, my thought train was like, "haha, this guy has a super dorky voice!" ... "holy shit this guy is rich!" ... "dork" ... "#$^&@ rich!" ... "dork" ... "this guy could buy canada" ...

Overall it was interesting, if not just to see the guy. He made a lot of jokes (indirect references) about how he never graduated from college, and how rich he is. I got in line to ask a question, but I was too slow, and they ended Q&A before it was my turn.

In high school, I had this totally unjustified hatred for the man. In retrospect, it was just the geeky thing to do, like macintosh bashing. I would listen to other people say why they didn't like him, and then repeat what I heard, without really checking anything myself. Now it's different, but it's interesting to look back and realize that my opinions weren't really my own at the time.

It was interesting to hear him mention his philanthropic efforts. He said at one point, (paraphrased) "It's a little strange, spending some days trying to make a lot of money, and then other days trying to give it away". Glancing at the website, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has an endowment of $26 billion. That's an incredible amount of money for a charitable foundation. If nothing else, that's definitely the power to effect change.

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