This was my last column, and the one I'm proudest of. I have a habit of trying to take lessons from the world around me. If I see a tree leaning against another tree I say, “What is that like? Well, if one person leans on another too long, they both end up falling down.” I always kept these little stories to myself, though.

For my last column, I decided to break out. By now I was fully confident in my ability to describe a technical situation. I'd never tried to describe something from the real world in a publication before. This was my first attempt.

Looking at it now, it looks clumsy, but I still really like the underlying story. I've probably told the parable of the woodpile twenty times in the year since I wrote it.

In a way, this column represents the shift that I had been undergoing all along. I got completely away from technical stuff and completely into people stuff, and I did it in people-y, proto-literate way.