Michael,

> well, this is the problem: this does not work. one can specify ascending or
> descending only at the beginning like in:
> create descending index myindex on people (first_name, birthday)

Exactly right.
Must have beeen working with too many different databases lately. I'm
sorry.
Then I'd try with separate indexes (as others have suggested)
optionally adding a column to improve selectivity (like in first_name,
my_id).
Ciao
--
____
_/\/ando