Dreams Can Come True

Saturday, April 1, 1995 by Dave Winer.

One of the angels said "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it." I never held to this belief. Quite the opposite! I make a practice of asking myself what I would request if an angel tapped me on the shoulder and said I could have anything I wanted.

It's a longterm conversation I have with myself. I feel lucky if I have an answer. What would make me happy? Sometimes I don't know! At least if you ask the question, and know the answer, you won't hesitate to grab it when it shows up. Whatever it may be...

I telegraph some of these wishes thru DaveNet. And sometimes a wish comes true. And sometimes *all* of them come true... Like today.

In my mailbox this morning, from the lead development guy at major web browser vendor: "As a matter of philosophy and practice I'd like to make it as easy as possible for people to plug in or augment functionality in all of our products in as flexible a manner as we can pull off, and conversely to be able to use our programs' functionality as a set of services for other applications, and I think you can help us a lot in this space -- I'd like to both talk to you about it and make sure you're in direct contact with our internal developers. What would be fun is someday reading that you think our APIs are perfect -- tell us what we have to do and we'll do our damndest."

Well, ok. Errr...

I mean OK!

Yes SIR!

Then, shortly after that, the phone rings. It's one of the most unsung superstars of the net, a man who can make tens of thousands of people show up at your website just cause he feels like it. Let's rock and roll. We plan the ultimate net prank. Can we get it done today? Not sure. But it'll be fun whenever it happens! Yeah.

I mean YEAH!

Down to the grocery store, pick up some lunch stuff. Run into a top exec from Apple. "Oh Dave! I've been meaning to call you. Did I tell you that we've decided to de-emphasize AppleScript, and want to standardize on Frontier? How much for a site license? Would you consider letting us bundle Frontier Runtime?"

Gulllp.

This is spooky!

I check my email. There's a message from the web guy at a major online service. He says: "This stuff is GREAT!!! I am in the process of setting up Web sites for EVERYBODY IN THE COMPANY with AutoWeb!"

Uh huh. Like, WOW! Man. [Or as Maynard G. Krebbs used to say, surely you jest!]

I go out to do some gardening. Gorgeous spring day. Take off my shirt to work on the tan. Dig little trenches so the water flows right. The ground is still soft. Reminds me of digging little trenches in snowbanks growing up in NY. Dave's little farm. Hmmm.

Humming along. Back to the house, check my email, nothing there. Pick up the phone. There's a message waiting. Punch the numbers, a soft sweet voice, a girl I dated last week says...

Well, I can't tell you what she said!

Great hair!

Dave

PS: Have a great weekend!