Today’s connection

I was writing a column, and the next thing I knew, I was researching the history of nursery rhymes. How’d that happen? Well, I was writing about how to be prepared for hardware or software failures: keep your product keys handy, make sure you know where your support contracts are, and so forth. I included the well-known rhyme “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe, the horse was lost…” My editor asked for a citation, and the best I could find was that it was attributed to Ben Franklin because he published it in the first edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac. Who knows what bizarre connection will arise from my current work on the Orapig?