It started as a way to blow off a little steam during a late night in the lab. I was a mere graduate student in 1992, doing what I was told, probing the GenBank DNA database for conserved promoter sequences. I was still learning, and after days of searching (which never yielded any significant results), I started tinkering with software. I found a protein database that also could be searched by using a tool called BLAST. I knew nothing of BLAST, but it was late and I wanted to hunt for something fun, something different. So, I turned on the radio, which was banned during the day but could be blasted (forgive me) in the wee hours.