After 22 years of tech, I'm letting my columns' subjects have last laugh

0 Comments | USA TODAY, March, 2007 | by Kevin Maney

It was going to be way too hard to write my final USA TODAY column after 22 years here.

So I cooked up a way to get the very people I've been writing about all these years to do this last column for me.

I sent e-mail to dozens of tech industry characters in my contact list, asking for recollections about a time when I wrote about them. I added: "Just don't be too nice. It would actually be more fun to run comments that give me some of the tongue-in-cheek treatment I've probably given you."

Oompah Loompa land

Well, within, like, two minutes, Intel legend Andy Grove wrote back. "You almost got me lynched when you quoted, for reasons incomprehensible to me to this day(!), my comment likening PR people to Oompah Loompas. The only reason I'm...