Imagine our horror and surprise when we walked into the local mall the other day to find employees putting up the Christmas decorations. Blimey, it's November already! Time flies when you're producing a daily soap opera. Gone are those halcyon days when we'd do most of our holiday shopping a couple of days before Christmas, with the last few gifts being purchased on Christmas itself. (Tip for Chicago-area last-minute shoppers: unless things have changed, the Alley at Clark and Belmont is open 365 days a year. On Christmas morn it's just the place to get a bullet-riddled police jacket for that special someone, and green and red hair dye makes wonderful stocking stuffers.) Considering that in recent years our list of giftees has grown out of all proportion to reality, we're accustomed to starting the holiday consumer frenzy in, say, August. To find that we're so far behind is more than a little disconcerting.

But as usual, we digress-- before we even got to our point in the first place. We wanted to bring up the subject of New Year's Resolutions, those promises you make to yourselves that typically get forgotten on or about January 4th. Don't panic, they aren't due for a couple of months yet-- unless, of course, you happen to be a computer company whose fiscal year for 1999 started several weeks ago. In that case, you'd want to have those resolutions firmly in place by now. Good thing Apple's right on the stick; according to MacInTouch, they've got an internal "five-star" program that delineates five separate goals for 1999. Reportedly, Apple hopes to: sell 5 million computers; sell 5 million software packages; get back into the list of the top five computer sellers; grab 5% market share; and increase foreign sales to account for 50% of Apple's total sales. (Sure, that last goal's 5 theme is a little bit of a stretch, but hey, they can't all be gems.)

Sounds like a great set of resolutions. If Apple can keep the momentum it's built up over 1998, we're confident that each of these goals is attainable. In fact, when comparing Apple's resolutions to our own from last year, we feel a little inadequate. Especially since one of the biggies was "start the holiday shopping earlier." Hmmm, perhaps we'll just get everyone lawn ornaments and be done with it...