Way back in 1981, when I got my first Unix system to administer, there was a section of the manual for us SysAdmins to learn from: Section 8. One page titled 'CRASH' contained distilled, helpful advice on what to do when a system crashes. One paragraph addressed 'Repairing Disks' and had the sentence "This is an area where experience and informed courage count for much." I though that was a nice turn of phrase and remarked to my co-worker, Danny Cox, that I'd love to have that on a t-shirt. The years marched by, the computer was sold as scrap, and even the building it was in was torn down. But I kept the manuals. I looked that page up the other day to see if it was as I remembered. Sure enough, my memory ran true. So I finally broke down, went to cafepress.com and constructed my t-shirt. It arrived this week and here's the photo. Yes, I tried to take a photo of me wearing it in the mirror, but I ended up looking like a MySpace refugee.

Moral of the story? I dunno. Maybe that in the Internet age of instant gratification, that waiting 30 years for a t-shirt I wanted shows delayed gratification? or extreme laziness?

More practical moral: the cafepress process is pretty nice, and when you're done with making something for yourself, you can easily set up an onlike 'shop' and offer it to your friends so they can buy one as well.