A story in honor of Katie Couric’s final day at the Today show. Last month I happened to run into a former member of the shell team who worked on the Windows XP Welcome screen. He told me a story from CES 2001, where Windows XP’s interface (code-named Luna) was unveiled. There was going to be a segment on the Today show, and the Welcome screen was going to make an appearance, but the designers wanted to make one last tweak before it showed up on national television. Two hours before air time. So with a hard deadline of two hours, my colleague connected back to the computer at the office, made the requested changes, compiled a new binary, transferred it back to Las Vegas, installed it onto a laptop, and handed it over to the production crew. Everybody crossed their fingers. It worked.

They did it for Katie.