Sara made me go to Ocean Beach this afternoon. Fiancee's orders. No laptop, no Palm. She let me keep the pager "for emergencies." We walked south from the Cliff House toward where the fog starts, which in June is right away.

She said, "You're here, but you're not here." She wasn't angry. That was the scary part. She said it like a weather report.

I told her it's just until the next round. Then I heard myself add: then just until launch, then just until we're profitable. I sounded like the guy in a movie you're supposed to not like.

The pager went off twice. The second time, I looked. She saw me look.

We got clam chowder in bread bowls on the way home and talked about her sister's baby, and it was nice, and I think we both knew we were being careful.

Star Wars opened today. Half the office called in with what Dana, our office manager, is logging as "the Phantom Flu." I stayed. Somebody had to keep the servers up, and honestly I wanted the quiet.

Sara and I set a date tonight: June 11, 2000. She already has a bridal magazine the size of a phone book. She read me parts of it on the couch at midnight while I answered e-mail on the laptop, and I said "mm-hm" in the right places, and then she said, "Josh, what did I just say?" and I didn't know.

She laughed about it. Then she put the magazine down and went to bed, and I stayed up another hour, and now I'm writing this instead of going in there to apologize. Which I'm noticing.

Numbers: 14 employees. 40,000 books listed. One date.

Took the whole team, nine of us now, to The Matrix, opening night, the 10 o'clock show. We came out at midnight and nobody said anything for a block. Then Kevin, our first engineer, said, "So we're definitely in a simulation," and we stood on the corner arguing until two about whether it matters if you are.

I say it doesn't. If the coffee tastes like coffee and the person next to you laughs at your jokes, that's real enough. Ask me again in a month.

Got home at 2:40. Sara had left the hall light on. She always leaves the hall light on.

» Link: our own site, which went live Monday at 11:02 p.m. after a 36-hour push. I'm not putting the address here, because this is my diary and not a press release. But if you're a college student about to sell your organic chemistry book back to the bookstore for eight dollars: please don't.

We have an office. A real one, if you define "real" generously: the second floor of an old warehouse South of Market, above a shop that makes restaurant signs. Exposed brick, which the landlord mentioned four times, as though it were a feature and not the absence of walls. The heat works from ten to four. We work from nine to two in the morning. You see the problem.

Hired our first two people who aren't founders. Kevin, who can write database code in his sleep and, I've since learned, actually does. And Dana, who will run the office and has already bought a fire extinguisher, which none of the four founders thought of, which tells you something.

Sara came by at nine tonight with a pot of soup from home and six bowls. She stood in the middle of the room in her coat and said, "It's freezing in here, you idiots," and we all loved her a little.

» Link: somebody's page of all 216 browser-safe colors, laid out in a grid. I've had it open all week. Our logo is going to be #FF6600 and I don't want to hear about it.

First entry. A few people I respect keep weblogs: a page of links they found, a line or two about each, newest on top, updated more or less daily. I've been reading them at 2 a.m. for a year. Time to stop lurking.

Who I am: 28, programmer, one of four people who incorporated a company in November to sell used college textbooks online. Students list their old books, other students buy them for less than the bookstore charges, we take a small cut. That's the whole idea. It's so simple I wake up afraid somebody already did it.

We're working out of Ravi's apartment in the Mission for now: four guys, a card table, and a lot of phone cord. Sara says it smells like pizza and ambition. She gave me a PalmPilot for Hanukkah with her birthday already entered, in capital letters, with three alarms.

Resolutions for 1999:
1. Ship.
2. Raise money.
3. Don't forget Sara's birthday (see alarms).
4. Sleep.

» Link of the day: a page somebody made listing every Web startup that died in 1998, each with a little cartoon tombstone. It's very funny. I bookmarked it under "Motivation."

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