A confession: I have been ego-googling to see what people are saying about my book. It feels odd to type castrate “dave hitz” into the search box. Even more disconcerting is that Google shows 40,500 web pages in apparent support of the idea.
My favorite article so far—perhaps because of the headline—is this one: Bull castration, snake eaters, opium and a whorehouse: the life of storage guru Dave Hitz. It’s like the author went through the whole book and pulled out the seamy bits. For the record, there is also serious stuff in the book about NetApp, management, and business.
My favorite comment was in response to a digg:
Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave. I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. Look here—my right hand has no index finger. Look here—through this gash in my cape you can see on my stomach a crimson tattoo—it is the second letter, Beth. On nights when the moon is full, this symbol gives me power over men with the mark of Gimel, but it subjects me to those with the Aleph, who on nights when there is no moon owe obedience to those marked with the Gimel.
In the half-light of dawn, in a cellar, standing before a black altar, I have slit the throats of sacred bulls. In a chamber of brass, as I faced the strangler's silent scarf, hope did not abandon me; in the river of delights, panic has not failed me.
I naively thought it was a compliment that my intro reminded someone of an awesome Borges story, The Lottery, but then he followed up with this explanation:
I couldn't resist pasting the 'Lottery' excerpt, to show the billionaire guy that his life experiences weren't as unique and, well, snowflake-like, as he thought. :) Anyone who isn't humbled by Borges is either an idiot or a god.
Between idiot and god, I know I must accept idiot, but still this is my favorite comment because it introduced me to a great story. (It’s true that I made a billion dollars, on paper, at the peak of the dot-com boom, but I also lost a billion dollars shortly after, so his description of me is, alas, not accurate.)
