Funny what one remembers

Only pecunium may fully appreciate this, but there it is.

I just wrote the following earlier tonight to James Fallows (longtime editor at The Atlantic, and author of many books, including National Defense, Breaking the News, and Looking At the Sun):

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I was recently writing a letter to the editor of my local paper. Like many papers, they have a word limit -- 200 words. In the past, I'd used Microsoft Word's Word Count feature off whichever menu. But this time I was using Word 2007, and I noticed a dynamic word count ticking away on the left-hand side of the status bar. I thought to myself, "That's a handy feature for a working writer---"

Which is when I caught myself short, and was reminded of your piece in The Atlantic years ago about working for Microsoft on Word. Specifically, about you trying to add in features you thought would be useful to writers.

So, I have to ask -- Was this one of yours? Did it really take that long to make it into a released product?

Congratulations, if so.

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Jim wrote back right away, and was kind enough to confirm that, yes, that was one of his features. Also, he's working on a piece for The Atlantic on the Giant Panda reserve in Wolong.

But this is about as cool as when I put together the meaning of the reference in The West Wing where someone from Indonesia was a Portuguese speaker.