Humanizing Technology via B2B Mascots

Calling all design and brand mascot nerds that were around in the 90s! We sat down with one of the original creators of Clippy (and the suite of Microsoft Office Assistants) and we got really deep in the lore of the tech mascot universe.

Focus Lab CEO and Monte Atherton, founder of Astonishing Work design studio, hit on so many fantastic topics such as:

• How Clippy (and friends) came to be Office Assistants
• Using mascots to humanize technology in the 90s (and today)
• Clippy walked so AI could run
• Monte's advice for developing a B2B mascot
• And so much more!

Episode Resources

• The Media Equation by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass
• Monte Atherton’s Design Studio, Astonishing Work

Full Transcript

[Bill Kenney]

Remember Clippy? Microsoft's most hated mascot of all time. Working within B2B branding, I was compelled to write a post about mascots within the B2B technology landscape, and I couldn't help but feature Clippy as a prominent point that I was making throughout the post.

Now, as the universe would have it, somebody commented on that post. His name is Monte. Monte worked on the Clippy team. This guy was like part of the creation of Clippy. You know, I had to jump all over that. I mean, how freaking cool is that? We started chatting there. I'm like, dude, can we just have a call? This is so interesting. I just want to chat with you. Won't this be fun? And after we chatted, I was like, we got to record, we got to record an episode, right? Like. We have to. So this is the episode. This is me and Monte talking about Clippy.

It was like 30 years ago, right? Such an interesting conversation. Thank you, Monte, for going deep and just sharing the backstory. I learned things in this episode that I'm like, wow, this is wild.

That actually Clippy and all these mascots were built for something completely different. They were not even supposed to be a part of Microsoft Word.

Hint, that's part of the reason why it didn't work. But, uh, I'll save all that stuff for you to hear from Monte and myself talking about Clippy.

[Bill Kenney]

Mr. Monte, welcome to the show. Uh, typically I'm speaking with past customers of ours and reliving branding experiences, their experience of working with us and the challenges that come with a big rebrand, if you will.

But we've got a special episode today. Uh, you and I found ourselves in a conversation on LinkedIn, and all of its glory connecting us two crazy cats because I posted about Clippy, Microsoft Clippy. There's going to be people watching this that are probably like, what is Clippy?

I hope that's not the case. Maybe we're aging ourselves already. We're going to do a lot of aging ourselves in this episode. I already know that to be true. Uh, so I'm really excited to talk to you about these early years, let's call it 1995, 96, I'm guessing in there somewhere. But before we go there and talk about brand mascots from the olden days. Can you just introduce yourself, tell people what you're, what you're doing, what you're building, who you are.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah. Um, I'm Monte Atherton and I have a small graphic design studio here in Santa Cruz, California. Um, we do branding projects, for a variety of different types of clients. Um, we also do packaging, websites, um, some trade show booths, that type of stuff. In my free time, I like to surf, mountain bike, and take full advantage of everything we have here in Santa Cruz.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Hell yeah. You're in the right spot for that.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

But originally back in the day at some point, which I was really excited to learn through that LinkedIn post, which is now why we're talking. You were part of the team that worked on Clippy, the mascot for Microsoft Office.

[Monte Atherton]

That's right. Yeah, that was a very long time ago. Um, I think what we figured is like 30 years ago, which, you know, in, in work years, I mean, that must blow away dog years by a max of, you know, 10X or something. I don't know. Um, But yeah, I, you know, I was brought into Microsoft actually as a temporary employee to work on a piece of software called Microsoft Bob, which most nobody has ever heard of.

It was a graphic user interface with the idea of creating real world, graphic images or interfaces like, a real life desktop with a Rolodex and a checkbook on it for, uh, to help bring in folks like your mom or your grandma, give them the ability to use the computer and understand it more.

Um, and we had originally started building those characters, um, for Microsoft Bob, um, long before Microsoft office had even thought about using us, uh, or those characters. So it, you know, it started on another, another piece of software and it drifted over into Microsoft Office. Microsoft Bob actually, uh, it was, I think, two weeks away from code complete and they pulled the project entirely.

There was some interesting stuff going on. The Internet was becoming hot at the time.

[Bill Kenney]

Oh, right. You're talking like mid nineties, right? So this is this big bull run of the internet.

[Monte Atherton]

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of like news feeds online and I can't even remember the name of the product at the time, but it was like there was a product that was now for the first time ever kind of live news feeds coming through it. And, uh, and it was, it was pretty hot.

And, and I think that they saw that from the Microsoft Bob team's perspective, like. We're not doing this internet thing and we're blowing it.

[Bill Kenney]

It was the early AI race.

[Monte Atherton]

Exactly.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Monte Atherton]

And it's kind of sad because there were a lot of redeeming qualities, I think, to, um, to the Bob product. Um, but you know, uh, it got axed.

So, our team was kind of in this weird state of what are we going to do and then the Office team swooped in and was like, we have this, um, new help system we're building into Microsoft Office. Um, and we want to try to port the characters into that help system and have them become our sort of help agents.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. So let's talk about some of those characters. Um, let's bring some real life examples to this. You shared some visuals, which might now kind of make their way into the edit of this video, but you shared some visuals in the LinkedIn post too. What were the variety of characters? Cause Clippy was not kind of the token character.

There was a whole cast.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah, there was a whole cast of characters. It's interesting because a lot of people don't know that there were a variety of characters. You know, I think, um, I don't remember the exact install protocol, but it wasn't straightforward, like, you know, pick your favorite character and get, get going with Office or anything.

It was like, it defaulted to Clippy. Um, but there were a variety of characters in there. Um, we had a cartoon cat that was over the top and super fun. It was more of the Warner Brothers, you know, slapstick version of a character. We had, like a little help robot that zoomed around.

There's a variety of them, but the sort of hit character I felt from the whole crew was an Einstein lookalike. We called him the genius because, well, we didn't license the Einstein name and, and you don't, you can't really use the name without the licensing. So, um, that was kind of the cast that we had lined up.

[Bill Kenney]

Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah, really cool to see that old school kind of art come through. So, Microsoft Bob. So I was digging around trying to get even my bearings on that time period. And I was curious, like, what other companies, now this is 1997, that was the timestamp that I found that Clippy like debuted in the Office suite.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

So around that time, I was curious, what other software companies were trying to leverage what I'm now calling mascots, right? Was that term even used at that point? They were not calling that a mascot. It wasn't necessarily a mascot. It was a help agent to use your word, I think.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah, I mean, they were officially Office Assistants. That, that was what they were coined as, as assistants. I don't remember any other mascots, especially for Microsoft at the time, um, and we never really spoke about them as mascots. There was an opportunity for Microsoft to license the name rights to Einstein and use his name and likeness and have him be, essentially a default character for Microsoft Office.

But Microsoft didn't want to pay the money to do the licensing deal at the time. You know, and it's, it's really sad, like, that they ended up just kind of defaulting back to, like, something you find in your office drawer as the character.

I mean, Clippy's fine and all, but, um, you know, I don't know. It's one of those things where companies go for the safest play, and I don't know what the decision making was behind that. I was far away from that, so I can't even speak to that, honestly. But, um, you know, Clippy it is! And, sadly it wasn't Einstein or Earl the Cat who was, you know, doing all sorts of crazy, wacky, slapstick fun.

Um, but that's where they landed was Clippy.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. The Einstein one is interesting and we'll come back around to this modern day. More mascots, um, appropriately used up word, uh, Einstein now being a big part seemingly of, uh, the Salesforce kind of character set.

But things I found that were of the same time period, this was a really fun kind of transport back for me. These don't really count, but they're as close as I could find: the Apple smiley face as you load into the computer, not a mascot, not an assistant or helper, but it is part of this theme, which I'm going to plug here in a second.

Um, AOL had the running man, guy, person, man, woman. So that was like a humanized personification within a tech company of that time period. AOL was obviously a big one. And I found this other one. I actually never knew the name of it—Bonzi buddy. Do you remember this one?

[Monte Atherton]

Bonzi buddy.

[Bill Kenney]

I think you're going to remember when I tell you what it was, and I didn't know the name, this purple, like, uh, ape, this like purple gorilla, it was strictly a software to do essentially what Clippy was doing, but at the like, at the whole computer level.

It was an assistant, to help people navigate technology and its demise, funny enough, was very similar, which was very intrusive. It tried to help with everything and non helpful ways it popped up all the damn time.

So it kind of fell victim the same way that I think Clippy ended up falling. So I guess my point there is like, there were not many examples of anybody doing this well, but what I was able to determine and started to realize for myself in this kind of internet boom through the nineties, there's this term that came out, the humanization of technology.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Where now computers were moving from these giant mainframe, like take up a whole room, super intimidating to, Oh, now it's in my house and I'm supposed to plug away at it and interact with it.

So how do we bridge those two worlds? And I think these were really early attempts, Clippy, even Apple's little smiley face trying to say, this is safe. This is comfortable. You can do this. Even Apple's whole mantra of just making things super easy to use for the modern everyday person, right? It's all built off of this, like humanizing technology.

And then to fast forward, interestingly enough, I think some of that is like rebirthing itself today. We see it a lot in B2B technology companies where they don't want to feel super intimidating tech as a brand, they want to feel approachable. That word's thrown out a lot

So I think technology seems to always be battling this.

How do we make it feel more human? So, um, yeah, I just thought that was interesting that that time period they were trying to kind of shift what technology meant. And it's kind of a first man through the door kind of effect, like maybe those early years weren't going to work, right? It was too early.

[Monte Atherton]

It was yeah, it was too early. I mean, there are a lot of things that we take for granted now because of the power of licensing. The machines we have in our pockets, essentially, um, but at the time, you know, when we were trying to develop these characters, part of it was just optimizing file size.

Where at the time modern resolution for things that you would watch was like 32 frames per second. So you go to a movie, it's 32 frames a second, and that's kind of what animation was being created at at the time. And, uh, you know, we had to build into a custom tool that Microsoft had developed for us, um, an internal team just for that tool.

Um, and we animated at about 12 frames per second. And we're talking about 12 frames per second. These are optimized, you know, gifs. They were pixelated and you know, it just, I like when I look back at them in the shots, I'm just like, man, they looked horrible as far as quality, because we just didn't have any option, it was very, very constrained. And you're right, like the whole idea of human computer interaction and humanizing that experience was just starting to happen.

So our team, um, at Microsoft was actually working with a duo at Stanford, the two professors had done all these studies and written a book on the human computer interaction and how we respond to computers and technology the same way you and I do, Bill, like there's, a lot of social nuance, a lot of just ingrained, uh, ways we act as humans that we port over to our technologies.

So like when your computer, like you lose a file and you're like, it's a stupid computer and you get angry, like get this computer off. And it's, it's like, you know, blame that you're giving to a machine that has no feelings. It does what you tell it to do.

Sometimes it crashes. Yeah, I mean, we all do, right?

But the computer's no more stupid from that crash than anything else it does. It's just a matter of its functions. Uh, so Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves were the two professors from Stanford. And they were part of the roadshow and talking about how this computer human interaction affected technology and how building personas and characters on top of these interactions made it more human and made it more relatable as people.

And that's why Microsoft Bob was going the direction it was going because they knew that if we can humanize this experience that the people using the technology, the people on the computers, are actually gonna have a better experience. They're going to relate more.

I mean, it's just like all of the benefits just stack right up to like more and more close to a human interaction or human relationship. Um, and that was what drove a lot of the thinking and those technologies at Microsoft, why they were pushing for characters and stuff. And you see it now where it's developed into Siri and Alexa.

I mean, they've taken the face off, right? They've gotten rid of the visual character because now we can just speak to the device, but you know, long after we had left Microsoft, we had spun off and started our own company working on what we called social user interfaces like the next level up from graphic user interfaces, right?

Um, and our goal was to build more help systems or create more agents that could solve problems for other companies beyond Microsoft Office assistants. And at one point a guy came in that was like an advanced technology, he was like a thinker in the cloud, right?

He just dreamed up stuff and he had like a prototype of a tablet computer. And it was like serial number 004 or something. And I think Bill Gates had 001. So that's how close this guy was to the top of this advanced technologies group. And he was talking to us about characters and stuff. But again, he wanted to talk to us about how we would get this tablet with a new interface where you just drew right on the screen.

[Bill Kenney]

Oh, yes.

[Monte Atherton]

Crazy new ways of thinking about computing, maybe we need a character or persona that helps guide someone through this new computing experience.

So a lot of people were thinking about this, like, what is the next move? Like what's. The next way to interact and connect with our technology that's more human-like and that feels less like, you know, programming a computer, you know, to get stuff done.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. It definitely highlights that even Microsoft Bob was like it was ahead of its time. It was trying to tackle the big problem.

[Monte Atherton]

It was.

[Bill Kenney]

And Clippy, you know, now maybe there's maybe people listening. People that watch this are going to have a little bit of empathy and sympathy for like, Oh, Clippy wasn't necessarily meant to be that.

And there was a bigger vision. And it actually was a valuable vision, a vision worth having. It's just ultimately the time period, the execution, the product, all of those things didn't match up in a way that it was a wild success, but it was the early days of trying to crack this nut where, like I said, I think people are still trying to crack it now with AI.

How do we make AI feel less scary? And like it's going to take over the world and humanize it to a point where it is helpful in what we're trying to accomplish. Same problem, but I think the world is probably more ready.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah. And the ability to create solutions for those problems, like there's so many more tools, um, at our fingertips, you know, the computing power to do this stuff is there now. The technology was a huge, huge constraint back then, um, and, you know, did that make or break it? I don't, I don't think so.

I think, you know, what really made the Microsoft Office Assistant so annoying, um, was, well, there's, there's a few reasons. One, we had designed and animated these characters around a completely different product. Like we didn't even build these for Microsoft Office. So, so, I mean, you know, from branding, like we want to know who our audience is, who are we talking to, right?

Like if we don't talk to the right person, the message gets missed and the brand fails. It's pretty simple, right? And that's kind of what happened with the Microsoft Office Assistants. We built characters and a cast meant to help your grandmother write checks through her computer. And now we're getting put into a product that is people doing business tasks all day long.

And the tasks are much broader than what we had tried to cover some of them being way more complicated, you know, like, I mean, having an assistant wave its finger and like, are you sure, like, are you trying to create a pivot table right now? Well, nobody knows what a pivot table is.

Like, why would the character ask me that? Like, I'm writing a proposal for some business development. It's like, you know, it's, it's those, those misses.

[Bill Kenney]

Really great points on the misalignment of the execution of intended audiences and how that ties back to brand and all those things is a really. Great points there. Next question.

Do you feel like the verdict was out on Clippy really quickly? Like when we all look back when, especially when I look back now, I'm kind of like, Oh, I don't know that there was ever a shining moment like Clippy was always just annoying, but was there a period of time where it had a moment to stick or was the verdict out pretty quick of like, what is this?

This is annoying. And, and I guess maybe additional questions. Were you as one of the creators on the creative team kind of like, damn, everybody hates it.

[Monte Atherton]

That's a great question. Um, I mean, a little perspective, you know, no matter how much people hate something, when they release that version of Office that had the Office Assistants. You know, I was told at the time, it's like, just imagine that tomorrow when this product releases, 93 million people will open up your product and see work you've done.

I don't even know how to get my head around that today. Like it, and it's not something that makes you rich or famous or any of that, but it's like a different level of like, Holy shit, man, that's a lot of people seeing your work. So in that sense. It's, you know, it's like, wow, whether it becomes a meme or not, it's an honor and interesting to have worked on a product, um, that's that big and that widely viewed and known about. It's an interesting thing to hear. Um, what was the other part about your question?

[Bill Kenney]

I like the perspective. I mean, I was asking the question basically, like, Do you feel like the verdict was out really quick that it was yes or not?

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah. So as far as when the product first dropped, I think there were a lot of reviews of the product and, um, people kind of like, Hey, what's this help thing, this agent, this office assistant, you know, there's a lot of snubbing of it, but we went into it knowing that it certainly was not a great implementation of what we had built.

Um, we ourselves were critical of it. We're also sad that it wasn't in the product it was developed for. So we are, we already had this behind the scenes relationship, but that we're, so when people are like, yeah, it's not great, we're like, yeah, no kidding.

[Bill Kenney]

No shit.

[Monte Atherton]

We could have made it a lot better if, if the opportunities were different.

And then also there are a lot of people that actually do love Clippy and do love the assistants, you know, that have actually benefited from using the product and, you know, Oh, I think he's cute or whatever. Like people do have a relationship with him. And that, that is cool that it wasn't a full failure.

Um, you know, when you're building something like a help system, you have to just assume the people that are reviewing those products, they're like way up here on the sort of technology, understanding, they’re advanced level tech people, they’re early adopters. They're, they're doing that thing, but then you have, um, everybody else and, and there are big parts of everybody else.

You know, there's like a big category of folks that just go to the office and use this thing, use Office because they have to. They're not trying to be tech elites or anything. They just have to get a task done. And I do think that humanizing the help system, even with all its warts that it had, um, I do think that that was a good step forward in how we thought about our tech products, right?

Help at your fingertips. Like, assisting people in a more humanized way to get a task done. Um, and to make it feel less like just searching technical books or documents, how to write a pivot table, whatever that is. So it's, um, you know, it's mixed feelings, for, I think probably for all of us on the team.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. It's as you're speaking and I'm realizing, you know, it's fun to poke fun at Clippy to some degree. And I think we can all do that with kind of open hearts and open arms, like no harm intended, but what a powerful movement that created. It makes me think that AI is just a super powered Clippy.

It's still trying, largely, everyone's incorporating AI into all their products, to ultimately do what Clippy was trying to do, make things faster, make things easier to be there to support somebody and what they're trying to build. That the essence of the goal is the same.

Clippy had to pave the way.

[Monte Atherton]

Totally.

[Bill Kenney]

It had to be the one that's like, I guess I'll go out there and start this whole thing and I'll, I'll take the bullet for everybody else because I'm not supposed to be in this platform and I'm going to do the best I can.

Um, but definitely set the stage and then yeah, 30 years later, people are still trying to build that capability into their products still.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah. AI built on the shoulders of Clippy. That's a hilarious image in my head.

[Bill Kenney]

It's like the, you know, it's, um, uh, the Scooby doo meme, you know, where you'd like. You take off the mask of the bad guy and it's like, who is it? And it's like AI, but you take the mask off and it's just Clippy. It's just Clippy underneath. You're like, Holy shit. It was Clippy the whole time.

[Monte Atherton]

Oh, that's too funny. Yeah. It's, you know, it, it's one of those things too, like it's reached pop culture in a way that is unexpected, you know, that, that he's been on the Simpsons and the Family Guy and, you know, like it keeps getting mentioned 30 years later, um, and, you know, whether that impact is good or not, either way, I don't really care.

It's fun seeing your work pop back up and you're like, wow, we are a cultural thing. You know, um, even if people are laughing at it, uh, it's still like, well, Clippy made it.

[Bill Kenney]

It’s a cultural timestamp. It really is a cultural timestamp. And I think that even comes back to the point of the value of a mascot or personifying anything, whether it's called a mascot or not. We can all identify, remember it, relate to, hate, et cetera. We can't necessarily do that with software. Not, not to the same degree.

Cause it's not personified in a way that a mascot might be. Um. Let's go to the final question then. Because there are some brands doing this well. Now, top of mind for me are Salesforce with their Astro character. Um, it's not, it's not a kind of a help agent necessarily, but it is a personification within their company to kind of offset just tech, tech, tech.

Uh, I think Freddie for MailChimp is a really big one.

Making email newsletters fun. Um, that's not how they would pitch Freddy. Uh, OctoCat, OctoCat is another big one from GitHub, right? So that basically personifies the community, the developer community, and they kind of hold true to the OctoCat as a kind of tokenization of that community.

Um, and then there are brands like Intercom. I don't know if this is a great example, but these are closer examples of amorphous personification. It's not a being, it's not an animal, it's not a human. But it is a thing, a bot in intercoms example that tries to act in human type ways there to help.

So I might, that's a long way to lead into my final question. If a brand is thinking about some type of mascot, do you think it is most important for them to understand about it? We've covered a lot of topics, but if there were one thing that you like, and this is why they're valuable, or this is what you should take seriously or avoid.

What's your perspective now, 30 years later?

[Monte Atherton]

Hmm. That's a great, difficult question. Thanks for wrapping it up on that one.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah, I just figured I'd drop a bomb on you.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah, no it's an interesting challenge, I think, for any company to tie their brand image to, uh, a persona of any type, you know, whether it's a live person or an animated amorphous character, like whatever, you have to, I think, understand and try to connect to their audience through the character.

Um, you don't want to alienate them. It's got to fit in the sort of conversation the proper way. Right? Um, and, and that's why we built a cast of characters for, for the Office Assistants because, you know, Clippy wasn't right for everybody, but, there was a, a cat and a dog and, um, a robot and all these other things that might connect better to a person.

So, I think it's important for a brand to know who their consumer or their customers are and to try to find something that's going to win within that audience. Um, and. And, and you see a lot of this happening now, like we do work on food packaging. And so I'm always watching the food packaging market and there's a huge push for fun, loose characters on packaging now, which is, um, it's really fun to see.

It's like making food purchasing fun in just the smallest way, but it gives it a persona and it helps it stand out from other things on the shelf. So, it really depends on what you're trying to do with that character. Are they just on the sidelines? Are they really in your face?

Are they a spokesperson? Um, or are they just a part of the logo? And it was cute that we, Oh, we, you know, part of our company values is. Um, that human to human connection. And so we want to show that in our logo. So we found a way to make a face. Hello, Amazon logo, right? So like there's, there's sort of the subtle all the way to like the very interactive.

And you have to just find what works for your brand, your company, your product, because not all characters are going to work well in all situations.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Well said. Yeah, it's not, it's not that mascot is the solution. Nothing is necessarily the silver bullet solution for anybody of any part of a brand identity. You have to figure out what is authentic to you and what will relate to your customer, like you said, very well said. But if you can find that it does give you another tool in your tool belt.

[Monte Atherton]

Definitely, definitely. You know, I feel like, um, Mailchimp is a very interesting example because I feel like they're going away from their mascot. You know, they're kind of like, you know, Intuit now owns them and so they're slowly shaving off the personality and they're slowly making it just, you know, strictly a work tool and you know, I got on MailChimp early and so I'm like really invested in this persona that they've created through, through their character and it's sad to see him kind of getting sidelined. So it's a really interesting point for them, I think in their branding, like, well, how do you let go of a persona that you've had for years and years and years.

Like, and how does that make your customer base feel? Because now I have emotional attachment to a company in a way that never would have happened if they didn't have that character to begin with. But now, they're talking about letting it go. Like, how does that affect the customer base?

On an emotional level and how will they react? I mean, who knows? I mean, there's obviously big agency people thinking this through or not, but it's something that's happening. And it'll be interesting to see, I don't think there'll be a big blow back, but I think there's probably going to be some disappointment.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. It's an interesting point. I'm glad you brought that up and it could be that Intuit has decided we're going more enterprise. It fits better into our suite, if it is less of that. Okay. That's a business decision. Um, and maybe they're okay with that business decision, but it is happening in real time.

Yeah. That's a great example and really good point on the, it has created an emotional connection that otherwise would not be there.

If that's not the asterisk or the kind of the checkbox for the episode here, which is just like the power that an element like that can bring to a brand is, I think is maybe unknown to most how powerful that can be.

Like you said, we're still talking about Clippy 30 years later, call it a success, a failure, whatever it doesn't sound like it's all of those things really to a bunch of different people. But without that, we're not even talking about anything 30 years ago, right? So it has an effect that is probably the big takeaway.

Monte. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is going to be a nerdtastic episode for people that are either in design and mascot and all this stuff.

Um, thanks for joining the show. I look forward to staying connected with you, sir.

[Monte Atherton]

Sounds good, man. I had a great time. It was fun to talk about times of yore.

[Bill Kenney]

Abacuses and those types of tools that we used back in the day.

[Monte Atherton]

Yeah. Drawing in stones with chisels.

[Bill Kenney]

Oh man, we old men, we're still here. We're doing it. All right, buddy. Thank you.

[Monte Atherton]

Thank you, Bill.