Back in 1976, I wanted to send Diane some flowers for her birthday. She was still living in Valley Stream, NY, at the time, and I was already in Boca Raton, FL. Most people would have used FTD, but I was worried that the order wouldn’t get there in time (since it was New Year’s Eve), so I went to the library, which had a huge collection of Yellow Pages, found a florist in Valley Stream, and splurged on a long distance call so I could order directly from them. And they came through.

Last week, I wanted to thank a colleague for help above and beyond the call of duty by sending her some wine. She lives just outside Des Moines, Iowa; fortunately, Iowa is a reasonable state as far as wine shipping laws go, but I thought I could do better than picking a big Internet wine merchant. I Googled and found Ingersoll Wine and Spirits, (who had a better selection of California and Oregon Pinot Gris on their Web site than either BevMo or Wine.com!). And they delivered in one day, far faster than I could have gotten delivery from a Web giant.

I’m glad that the Internet hasn’t quite managed to kill local merchants.

The news, once more, came in a phone call.

Even though I’d decided not to look for a new full-time position in IBM, there was one project that had recently heated up where I would be able to make a significant dent in a short time. So I asked my management to investigate extending my departure date for a month or two so I could attack that problem.

They investigated, but the answer was, as I expected, “no.” My manager gave me the word during our regular call today.

Even though I’d been expecting the news, hearing the final answer was still daunting.

So now I have a date certain for my retirement from IBM – March 31, 2010. My retirement celebration (my word, not IBM’s) will be a bit later. And I can turn my full attention to figuring out what comes next.