As the entire world prepares for armageddon, the Y2K disaster, civil unrest, terrorism, war, rumors of war, outbreaks of diseases, political campaigns, antitrust rebuttals, corporate mergers, downsizing, upsizing, outsourcing, and a really bad hangover come 1 Jan 2000, we give you our December issue... late, but just under the wire.

Running a week or two behind schedule, but not quite out of the race, and a few days more than a year ahead of the new millennium, I am pleased to give you the December 1999 issue of OS/2 e-Zine! In only a few days we'll learn whether or not civilization as we know it will end. I'm not counting on it, mind you, but there's always a little part of me that wonders if we'll wake up on 1 January 2000 to the sound of no electricity whatsoever.

The response I received from the November 1999 issue was overwhelming. I can't tell you how many messages I received welcoming us back, and letting us know that we've been missed. Which makes it that much more embarrassing that this issue is late -- and is a bit light in comparison. It's entirely my fault. When I should have been following up on my duties as Interim Editor-in-Chief, I was instead distracted by the whole holiday environment: buying gifts, decorating trees, hoarding canned goods and stockpiling gasoline in my underground bunker. Ok, not the last part, but for some reason -- be it all the Y2K doomsaying, the economic boom, or just the fact that I'm easily distracted by flashing lights, it's been very hard for me to concentrate this month.

We do have some articles that should interest you, however. Simon Gronlund gives us his third "Into Java" column, and Pete Grubs continues his series of interviews with more "20 Questions at Warpstock." I review some hardware, some software, and of course do my obligatory rant in my "Wright's View" column. Finally, we kick off a brand spanking new series of articles at OS/2 e-Zine!, "These are the Web Sites in Your Neighborhood." In the following months we'll try to cover as much of the OS/2 online community we can find by interviewing the people who work on those sites, or inviting them to contribute articles to OS/2 e-Zine! describing what they do. This month, Pete Grubbs interviews Loren Bandiera from the OS/2 News and Rumors site, and Adrian Gschwend tells us about the birth of the OS/2 Netlabs.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays (choose any that apply), and enjoy our latest issue!

Chris Wright (wrightc@dtcweb.com)
Interim Editor-in-Chief