Clifford Stoll Quotes

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

Technical problems are like gremlins. They come and go.

I don't need to waste my time with a computer just because I am a computer scientist.

It will take you less time and effort to do a thing the difficult way than it will to buy, try and discard all the shortcuts.

If my people look as if they're in a dreadful fix, it's because I can't get them out of a technical dilemma.

Whether you're a programmer or a seamstress, it's all about new techniques, simplifying old techniques, and consolidating steps. Making things go faster - but not worse.

I've learned over decades of building that a deadline is a potent tool for problem-solving.

It sucked to make my own CDs. I'm bad at that. It sucks to figure out how to power my amp. I don't know that stuff.

I have the Internet, but the first that happens with it is my machine will crash. I get by when it's operating. What would I know about updating?

Give me a user manual, and I'm happy for hours.

Everyone has technical issues - you have them until you die - but you have to be aware of them in a certain way.

When somebody is describing their job as fixing problems for someone, that usually does not suggest that they're dealing with their tax returns.

If you see something that doesn't make sense, ask. Change it. Think about dollars, think about your soldiers' time, think about efficiency.

One thing I like to do is visit technical forums and ask for help regarding an entirely fictitious problem I'm having with my software. When I receive help, I say, 'Nope. Didn't work.' If they guide me to a button to click, I say, 'Nope. Can't see it.' Sometimes I just reply with nothing but 'Nope,' and it drives them up the wall.

I don't like doing things badly, that just feels like a waste of a day.

By helping us to be more productive, technology lets us to spend less time focusing on survival, and more on solving other challenges.

I'm 45 and I don't have time to spend two years of my life bringing in producers and dragging the record around the planet.

Don't agonize, organize.

It isn't working that's so hard, it's getting ready to work.

Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.

Everything takes me forever. It's all lurch, flail. I hope that is good news to you writers.

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.

I have made decisions that turned out to be wrong, and went back and did it another way, and still took less time than many who procrastinated over the original decision. Your brain is capable of handling 140, 000 million bits of information in one second, and if you take hours or days or weeks to reach a vital decision, you are short-circuiting your most valuable property.

Life is too short to wonder where you hid your waffle maker.