Joseph,

> 1) What is the significance of the use of >> in many of your emails? Is 
> this a SmallTalkism that I missed somewhere or is this a convention 
> used to tie a Class name and a method name together in discussions?

  I am by no mean an old timer, but I think the original convention
was to write:

  (Class name)>(method category name)>(method name)

but the method category name is not necessary to specify unique method
so people omit it and write:

  (Class name)>>(method name)

.  Interestingly, Smalltalk can have '>>' (or we usually write #>> to
signify it is a Symbol), as a method selector.  For example, if you
evaluate a line like:

  Class>>#name

in a workspace, you'll get an instance of CompileMethod that is bound
to the #name method of Class.

-- Yoshiki