The final note today is that September 19th marks the birthday of what I think you can fairly call the scourge of electronic communications in the modern age.

September 19, 1982 is when a guy named Scott Fahlman in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University first typed a colon, a dash, and a right parentheses and said:

“Hey, look at what this looks like sideways.”

The emoticon turns 30 years old today.

… 🙂