I know — who doesn’t?

We just watched the season premiere of Monk, and afterwards, Diane asked, “wasn’t there another episode where someone was cheating?” I couldn’t remember, but since I was standing next to the laptop, I typed “monk cheating” into the search bar, hit Enter, and about 0.13 seconds later (plus whatever time it took me to read the second result), I had the answer: Mr. Monk and the Game Show. Of course, Google’s search history doesn’t know that this was a successful search, because I didn’t need to click through — everything I needed was on the result page.

So my privacy is safe. Or it would be, if I hadn’t written this blog entry.

They’re cleaning out an office down the hall from me, and I’ve been passing the big waste bin all week. I don’t know whose office it was, but the person obviously hadn’t weeded his or her collection for a long time.

I restrained myself from taking the Token-Ring card (in its original box), even though it was one of the fancy 4/16 Mb models. I even passed up the copy of Lotus Notes 4 for Dummies. But when I saw two classic James Martin books, I couldn’t resist.

So now I’m the proud “owner” of Security, Accuracy, and Privacy in Computer Systems and Design of Man-Computer Dialogues, both from 1973, part of the comprehensive James Martin collection.

It should be interesting comparing what Martin was saying in 1973 with today’s practice.