Once again it's time to write about moments that signal the end of the year in the Pacific Northwest. The choking Seattle sports teams, the freezing rain, the Christmas special peppermint lattés and, of course, my favorite hair-cutting place.

One of the more humorous moments of the '04 Christmas season was the girl coming out of the funny salon where I get my hair done: her T-shirt read, "I not love you long time." While she may not, those cutting my hair certainly did - complete with head whacks and the Jimmy Buffet Christmas album. The occasional lapses into French and English lend a strange other-worldly mysticism to "Jingle Bell Rock." I don't know if it's the gaudy Christmas lights hung from every available space or just the singing, but I always come back for a winter cut.

With the wind and rain picking up and the Christmas decorations coming out in Seattle, I find myself debugging PowerBuilder script again. After a two- and-a-half year venture into scheduling and management logistics (call it a programming hiatus, perhaps even a sabbatical), an opportunity opened up with the Department of Transportation.

During the interview process it became clear that having actual PowerBuilder experience set me apart from the majority of interviewees, so I brushed up for my technical interview, running through one of my old CPD prep books and a copy of PB7 Unleashed. And yeah, when I was last programming that book was an excellent reference and quite current.

Some of the questions stumped me, not that I didn't know what they were talking about - I could have looked up the answer - I just couldn't remember off the top of my head, and some questions I aced. I did end up with a job offer and, then, more important, a letter of appointment from the State of Washington.

I remember interviewing COBOL programmers during the Y2K projects that I led and finding that those with specific skillsets were invaluable. Interestingly enough, the applications that I supported from 1995-2002 that were written in COBOL, and fed information into and out of PowerBuilder and Oracle Databases, are still in use today, still in COBOL, and still running smoothly and efficiently.

Regarding the language that you write your apps in, the more deeply complex the application, the more likely it will remain as it stands - particularly if it's a stable and smooth-running application.

It was also made clear to me during the interview process that in the long term the state would be going with .NET as their framework of choice.

The truth is our applications will probably remain intact and PowerBuilder-rich for some time to come. A rewrite would mean expenses and that would mean budgetary approval and where I work now that would be a big deal.

Several years ago "Saturday Night Live" did one of their fake commercials - an advertisement for ChristmaSoft. The idea was that Microsoft has sooooo much money and so much time on their hands that they managed to acquire Christmas. Of course with a Microsoft-driven Christmas, it was driven forward by mechanical voices, machine-like efficiency, and a Terminator feel. While there is a certain reverence for Microsoft to be found around Seattle, it isn't all "feel good flicks and champagne."

The PB programs up here are stable, and if the COBOL and JCL programs that are also still supported up here are any indication of the rocklike flow of data and ideas, then those things that have been built will endure for generations to come, ChristmaSoft or no ChristmaSoft.