Most of you are probably too young to remember this. Come sit on my knee and I'll tell you a story.

Back in the Old Days real men programmed computers by entering code using switches on the front panel of the computer itself. Then someone invented paper tape. Then someone invented magnetic tape and punch cards.

Then teletypes and glass teletypes. And floppy disks, Winchester disks, hard disks so small you could fit 70 gigabytes of data in the palm of your hand.

At the same time, someone thought of assembly language, then BASIC and Fortran and COBOL and C.

At every step, a well-meaning person would say "What do I need that for, I like entering my programs on front-panel switches. What does this do that I can't do with switches?"

It's the longest-running debate in software.

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Tomorrow is the official last day of the millenium. But then who cares. Why did we make such a big deal about it last year at this time? Glad the computers didn't screw up. Who would have guessed that the Y2K meltdown would come in the US political system? Glad that's over too.

Positive note: Now I know how to spell millenium.

Jason Robards, the actor who played Washington Post editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men, died this week.

"Thanks for everything you did for our country," random people would say to him in airports and supermarkets. Rather than respond "I'm just an actor," he accepted the praise. "Thanks," he would say. Keep it simple.

For some reason I have the blues this afternoon. No special reason, just body chemistry I imagine. Maybe it's an end of the year thing. Or perhaps it's the horrendous electric bill. (I went out to get a new space heater, no more $950 monthly gas and electric bills.)

Anyway you can cheer me up by pressing the Hi Dave button.

(It's the only choice. Heh heh.)

Hey I just got an email from Eric Kidd saying that his open source XML-RPC-in-C stuff is starting to work. Yahoo!

Sheila Simmons wrote a Frontier macro. Holy guacamole!

Joel took pics of the snow in NY. Now I know why I'm bummed. I'm not there! Snow is so cool.

Joel has a picture of a Library Lion covered in snow. Hey we're using the lion in one of our new sites. How did he know??

(Do they save these things for when I get the blues? What's coming next??)

Another good tool for the blues is music, and vice versa.

Here's what I'm listening to this evening.

Another tool is my Things of Beauty channel. When I spot a news item that inspires me I route it to this channel. I knew it would come in handy!

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