As frustrated as I was, I would grow to understand what he meant. My ego got ahead of me - I wanted to be the focus of a lot of praise and good attention. Like any young kid out of college, I thought I had all the answers, I was certain of it, and I was equally certain everyone else would know it too. I was wrong.

I can't help but look at the two situations - Radiohead's In Rainbows launch and my floundering website launch - and see something similar. Radiohead kept details about the album quiet because it made it more exciting and mysterious that way - much as I hoped it would with my coworkers - and that mystery would drive people into a frenzy, wanting the album so bad they couldn't wait to pay something, whatever amount, even if it was some piddling amount, just to be a part of it.

And it worked for them - people talked, people speculated, and the news certainly paid attention. Of course, the band revealed a day before the downloads were to begin more details, and many of us balked. It wasn't the hope-for, speculated, hyped-up, paradigm shift we'd wanted - it was just some middlin' quality mp3s, not the higher-bitrates we'd hoped to see. Oh well. The revolution may have to wait a little longer - maybe someone else sat up and took notice of what happened here and will take that next, big step soon.

Expectation is a prison. It holds us back and prevents us from truly seeing what can be. It goes both ways when it comes to music, however. As fans, we can't expect our favorite artists to turn out exactly what we want, and the artists can't expect that we're going to understand or agree with their every move or decision.

Obviously, I, just a young web designer at the time, simply didn't have the notoriety or fame to pull off something big like Radiohead can. Fans are eating up the new music, and, based on the music alone, we should. In Rainbows is a great album, and it'll be in heavy rotation for me, and for many of you, for ages.

When the CD inevitably comes out next year sometime, the question will have to arise: just what did they accomplish, besides beating the leak and making some money off of it? I know I learned from my experience a decade ago, but will anyone be able to say we gained something particularly special from this?