It'd be like my talking about how I almost destroyed Microsoft because I used to tease Gates about he was wasting his time programming those silly microcomputers, when he was hacking late at night on his 8080 assembler/linker/simulator in the PDP-10 machine room at the old Harvard CRCT. (Which happens to be true. ;-)
Damn, you beat me to it! I was going to say: Egotism masquerading as self-deprecation masquerading as egotism.
Edit: That's a pretty great story about Gates, and it got me curious, so I googled some other places where you mentioned him. This one was my favorite, because it confirms a belief I have about companies' personalities reflecting their founders':
http://caelumetterra.wordpress.com/2006/01/19/ceos-red-in-to...
It also makes a shrewd observation about Microsoft.
You found me off in some odd corners of the net, I see (Catholic agrarianism, in this case).