So here I am in Cubicleville, trying to write a press release about a product of ours that was designed the year I was born. (The fact that my birth year is considered a long time ago is not lost on me, by the way.) Why am I doing this, trying to get PR for a little tiny box that's hardly the company's mainstay? Because it's the owner's pet project, his electrical engineering 'wubby', that's why. I'm trying to use the phrase "outstanding in the field", so when I design the ad, I can put a cow in it. Much more eye-catching then a tiny gray box, but if my little creative impulse gets the ka-bosh, I still get paid. Fortunately I have other creative outlets.

This is the second company I have worked for that was founded in the same year in which I was born. The first one had stickers printed every year bearing their logo and their number of years in business, along with, for example, 1967-1995, and I every time I saw one of them I thought of it as my secret obituary. It might not have been so bad if it had been a more pleasant place to work.