Searching — Archives and Buttons September 18, 2000February 15, 2017 Andy Fisher: “When someone wanted advice on how to tell her husband nicely that buying whole life insurance was a bad idea, I went to Google to search your archives. I clicked on advanced search, typed in what I was searching for, and then told it to include only hits from your site: “www.andrewtobias.com.” I got better results than with most sites’ built-in search engines, and I didn’t have to wait for you to get your act together.” Google is terrific. I hope soon to put the Google search capability right on the archive page, but in the meantime, this works great. Thanks, Andy. And speaking of searching, there I was trying to get big buttons made up with the slogan IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT?, and there I was, frustrated. I had been asked at the last minute to put together a cocktail party honoring a certain candidate’s running mate and his wife, and I just thought it would be neat to make that the “theme” of the party, and to have buttons. Well, there just wasn’t time, I was told (it took several days to find that out, by which time there wasn’t much time) and it would cost $600, I was told (which even I had to admit began to run into real money), but I really wanted these buttons, so before giving up, I clicked GoTo.com — a great search engine if you’re out to buy something. I entered “buttons” and all but instantly found this delightful little outfit, which delivered my buttons, exactly as I had envisioned them (3 inches in diameter, gray background, dark blue lettering), in time for the party, all for $160 including shipping. Is this a great Internet, or what? Almost all the guests were happy to wear their buttons — there was a sea of them — and when the running mate arrived and saw them, he smiled broadly. “I love these buttons,” he said more than once as he walked through the crowd.