I passed.

Well, you ask yourself, where the ‘ell is ole Michael Jay?

Answer: I’ve been getting ready for my Ph.D. oral exam. You see, after about 20 years in the trade press, I woke up and realized that if I wrote one more article about disk drives, I was gonna kill somebody. So, I went back to school to get a degree or two in history.

The oral exam was in some ways the capstone of the whole effort. The dissertation is still out there to be written, of course, but, still, the exam was the real biggie. It was the thing which could have reduced all my efforts to naught in an afternoon.

The exam was last week.

To my surprise, I passed. The committee even said my answers almost made sense. Tragic, really. Clearly, the whole bunch must have been drinking heavily since breakfast. Remind me to send them those flyers from AA, won’t you?