Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 5, 2004.

Yeah, the old man/baby New Year is a cliché. But when your deadline is Christmas Eve and you're facing a night of assembling an air hockey table, a ping-pong table, and a stick-hockey table, you embrace the cliché.... And I added to it the notion that the year 2003 had many elements (war, terrorism, unemployment, the Detroit Tigers) that had many of us wanting to go cower in a spider hole.