Byte McSoft: hard-boiled technology reporter

I couldn't keep a story tip alive longer than a phone call.

After a couple of news-weaseling days, I still had nothing on the big Microsoft wireless announcement coming up. Panic was setting in, even though I still had time left to figure out the hubbub.

My only clue came from Microsoft's rep, who had called a few days ago to discuss an upcoming "wireless" announcement. Trouble was "wireless" is a loaded word: it's can mean a cell phone, or the WiFi antenna in a laptop, WiMax, MIMO; anyway, it's a lot of damned things.

I was making a mess lighting a Lucky when the phone rang. "Hey there. I'm just checking in." Her icy-cool voice stiffened my neck hair.

It was her, that Microsoft rep, asking again if I would put my free will on hold. She politely reminded me I could have the story straight from them, but only if Microsoft called all the shots, including when I could publish.

Sure, let the folks in Redmond, Wash. gain control of something else. I told her I had a problem with authority.

"Anyway, I don't cover Wi-Fi. So you might have the wrong reporter," I added. It was a pathetic trick to get some idea of what she meant by "wireless."

She didn't take the bait. "We think you'd be very interested," she answered back. "A lot of people would."

"This isn't about 'people', or being a man or a woman," I roared. "It's about me hunting you down and snatching what you got. That's what I do: stalk prey, then pick and pick and pick. Now stash that rotten carrot you've got dangling there in front of my nose."

She said "I'm sorry you feel that way," told me her telephone number and then hung up.

My stomach seized up on me over the next few days of fruitless reporting on the story. I decided to hunker down at Red's, a San Francisco Chinatown bar, in the hours before the announcement. It had the right combination of filthy glasses, moldy hard liquor and cigarette smoke to unknot my abdomen.

I left word I was out on a "rumpus." It was an afterthought to bring my cell phone, but it was the best thing I did in days.