You see, it's a personal point of pride to be able to get names like Howard Stern and Pauly Shore and characters like Dilbert, Dogbert, and Catbert into what would otherwise be a staid technical journal -- and to do so in a way that's considered legitimate and supportive of the story.

If you look at the recent two issues of DominoPower (at http://www.dominopower.com), we actually managed to mention Howard Stern and Pauly Shore, and keep them in context with a publication about Lotus Notes and Domino. If you want to see how we pulled that one off, you're going to have to go over to DominoPower and look in the archives.

But, in any case, I was reading Dilbert. And, somehow, that brought me to the concept of beige. Which will eventually bring me to the concept of product naming. But, for the moment, we're on the topic of beige.

I recently got a cute computer. In fact, I got two cute computers. The first one was a purple iMac. I knew I was doomed when the box came and all the people in the office (who are all women besides me) came in and said "Aw, what a cute computer!"

I'd never actually bought a cute computer before. I'd bought powerful computers. I'd bought extreme computers. I'd bought expensive computers. But I'd never bought a cute computer. This was a purple iMac. Or, in Apple parlance, Grape. You can get them in Strawberry and Tangerine and Lime and Lemon. But apparently you can't get them in normal colors, like black or beige. Nonetheless, I had bought a Grape iMac and everybody thought it was cute.

In fact, it was really disturbing because when I called the company to order the computer and they wanted to know what color I wanted, my reaction was "beige". All my other computers were beige. I didn't see any reason why this computer couldn't be beige. (Hang on with me, there may actually be some link to Windows CE if you read on.)

So there I was, on the phone to the PC Connection people, talking to some guy who really, really wanted to sell me a fruit-colored computer when I wanted beige. Now granted, I knew that iMacs came in fruity colors. But I also have a perverse streak and when he gave me the choice of colors I insisted on beige. Eventually I was transferred to a supervisor who told me not to harass his employees, and to pick a color or he'd pick one for me. Hence, we got a purple computer.