I think the subhead here should be "When Will I Ever Learn To Say No." This last Wednesday, out of the blue, Matt Bromberg, the publisher of the Business Technology Group at CMP Media (now a unit of Miller Freeman, a subsidiary of United News and Media of London) called. He asked me if I would be willing to take on the job of editor of Winmag.com, while continuing as editor of Byte.com.

I asked him for some time to think and to talk it over with my wife and family. Vicki, Marlow and Rae were all worried about the extra work and the stress. And I admit, those things worry me as well. But instead of viewing this as a negative, I view it as a challenge; my Byte.com job was stressing me. I need to learn to control stress, to relax effectively, to budget my time. I must learn to do those things now for sure, or I will fail at this new endeavor. And I have no intention of failing.

The new job is quite a challenge. CMP shut down WINDOWS Magazine last month. I once worked there (see the details of my resume on my home page), and still had many friends among the laid off. There were 11 people kept on board to run the web site. For several weeks, there was no designated leader. This was not a good thing. I lobbied for some friends of mine to get the job. Instead, the management asked me to take it.

I am honored, flattered–and scared half witless. I guess if I was scared witless, I wouldn't have anything left to do the job with. But half witless–that may be enough.

With Byte.com, I had to take a dead site and breathe life into it. With Winmag.com, I have a live site (more than 6 million -page views a month) I have to endeavor not to mess it up.

It is the biggest challenge of my career, but they say you're at your intellectual peak in your late 40s and early 50s. I'll be 47 on Sept. 17. So, while part of me wanted to say no, I said yes.