Gannett News is running a story about David Bradley, the IBM engineer who, in 1980, coined Ctrl-Alt-Del.

The original idea was simply to reset early PCs without turning them off. Microsoft adopted control-alt-delete to help ensure people powered down correctly, then to handle “administrative functions” such as the vital “end task” feature for computer software that crashes or otherwise gets stuck.

Bradley chose the control and alt keys because he needed two shift keys to make the operation work, and he chose the delete key because it was on the opposite side of the keyboard. He didn’t want people to hit control-alt-delete by accident.

Link courtesy Slashdot.

Game log

AP Wrapup

Jason Schmidt pitched a brilliant complete-game shutout, and the Marlins paid for walking Bonds when Alfonzo doubled him home on the bottom of the 8th. Alfonzo, who looks to be the perfect player to hit after Bonds, actually got both RBIs and also caught the final out of the game.

Series: 1-0 San Francisco

The Betting Fool rants about stupid postseason baseball scheduling.

Thank you, Major League Baseball, for ruining my week.

I spend thousands of dollars on tickets, invest hundreds of hours at the ballpark, listen to a month of games that don’t mean a thing and now I can’t go see the Giants in the playoffs.

Some pinhead, suck-up, yes-man TV moron in a bad suit decides that the Giants-Marlins series is the least interesting of them all and so we get day baseball in San Francisco this week.

As noted below, I am working from home this week and probably next, depending on what games are scheduled for daylight hours. It seems odd to me that a newspaper columnist couldn’t write from anywhere he happens to be.

Two to go to catch Willie Mays. Today is the last day of the regular season, and as I write this it’s 7-3 Giants over LA in the bottom of the 4th. Do post-season home runs count towards a lifetime total?
Update, five minutes later: Bonds has left the game.

Trillian‘s connector to Yahoo messenger is currently broken. That means if you use Yahoo and are waiting for me to come online to IM me, you’ll be waiting until Trillian fixes the problem. Use my AIM name instead, or just email me.

Note: This post is from September, 2003. For current updates on making Trillian work with Yahoo, go to Cerulean Studios.