When I was a much greener geek, I wrote for the Ziff Davis magazines. The book was called PC Computing, and I really loved doing it. There was a smell of everything new in the air back then, and a sense of amazement at what computers could do, an expanding consciousness that all kinds of stuff that used to be boring was suddenly exciting and cool. The greatest magazine in the field was not the one I was working for, however. It was its sister publication: PC Magazine.

PC Magazine ruled. It had John Dvorak, who extruded two terrific, high-energy columns in each issue, and a bunch of other guys who pretty much defined the interface between nerdy and awesome. And it was fat. Some issues were so fat they had to split them into two.

The PC business was exploding, and this was its bible.

Many of you may be too young to remember that there were once many, many beautiful charting programs, for instance, all of which have been replaced by the infinitely less lovely and more tedious PowerPoint. There was Harvard Graphics, and Persuasion, and many others. They came in big boxes with dozens of big floppy disks holding huge amounts of programming data you had to install over a period of hours. There were a lot of word processing programs, too, not just Word or Word Perfect, and a nice selection of spreadsheets. All we have now is Excel. It’s good. We use it. But some of the fun is gone.

Back then Macs were mostly for schools and spiky people. Real computer lovers were totally PC. We swapped cards in and out of the machine. We were unafraid of opening the box. We tweaked our software and knew which cables went to which arcane interface. It was the closest I ever got to feeling like one of the jocks with whom I went to high school, the guys who slicked their hair back and knew their way around a transmission.

Yesterday it was announced that the paper edition of PC Magazine would cease publication, and that the product would now be totally online. I’m sure they’ll do fine. It’s probably the right business decision. But it made me sad. Not because the magazine itself has been important to me recently, because it hasn’t. I own Apples now. PCs bore me completely. I haven’t installed a new video card in years.

But the idea of never holding that big fat paper dream machine in my hand again is a little hard to fathom. What’s next? No more General Motors?

I’ve got a song in my heart and a smile on my face today, and not just because it’s the end of the week in the middle of summer and all the big cheeses are melting at the beach.

I looked at the news line-up this morning and saw a trend I had not noticed in quite some time. Did you spot it, too? Happiness is busting out all over, surprising the guys who make gloom for a living.

… stocks were up at the opening of the market… well, that’s nice…

… new home sales were stronger than anticipated… of course they were. People are expecting nothing but downers right now. In spite of how much we read or download or link to, we’re always surprised because what we believe will happen next is always in line with what’s going on right now… and that’s not a fair assumption at all… so we’re always surprised, both on the downside, when it arrives and then by the upside, when it inevitably comes creeping in.

… hm… durable goods orders also are up, shocking those experts whose job it is, really, not to be shocked. Are we paying them to be shocked?

Oil prices declining! Gas prices slipping back to ONLY $4 bucks a gallon! Gas up the car, mom! 

There’s more! Cleaner, greener diesel? and Honda (HMC) reporting record profits, which means it still may be possible to be a car company if you know how to do things right?

And I don’t know about you, folks, but there’s part of me that just plain enjoys seeing guys whose business it is shorting stocks taking it in the, well, the shorts, you know? Bet against us, will ya?! Well, eat the hose, shorty!

See? Nothing but good stuff, all the time. Things are looking up. The sand is hot. The breeze is cool. The banks have hit bottom and are screaming back up the ramp. Our own auto makers are retooling their plants, getting ready to sell us a whole new generation of tin cans that get 30 mpg and better, and to sell those they’ll need to advertise, bringing up the whole media sector. And there’s a new iPhone, too! And a HUGE line around the block not far from here, loaded with happy consumers who can’t wait to ignore all the party poopers raining on the new gizmo. Go, Apple (AAPL)! Spread that sunshine, right? Sure!

Could it get any better? Well, okay, it could, I’ll grant you that. But I’ll take what we’ve got for now.

Monday will come soon enough.