Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

I was such a geek that I skipped the whole parade
April 29, 2005

Every summer when I was a kid, we used to go to my aunt and uncle’s house for the annual TroutFest parade. (Yes, you read that correctly) The highlight of this parade was typically the town’s ChamberMaids – members of the chamber of commerce who would dress in drag, march and play bad polka music.

Since my aunt and uncle lived on the parade route, this was always a fun family event – I always thought it was cool that we got to park on their back lawn. Given that this particular uncle was an engineer by trade, he always had cool electronic stuff. This one particular year, that cool new electronic toy was a Radio Shack TR-80 Color computer (I might have the specific model wrong).

IBM
April 29, 2005

My first computer experience, that I remember, was with this old IBM of my mom’s. She’d originally bought that thing for work (she was a court reporter) and it was HUGE. Of course, I remember the disks it took, actual floppies. Those large disks of which I saw a number melted from the sun or warped because a child grabbed them one time.

I remember three things about this computer: word processing, the draw feature of word processing, and my game.

INPUT A$ : PRINT A$
April 29, 2005

I have had my hands on a keyboard since high school. Has anyone ever heard of a Commodore Vic20? That was my first computer. I think I hooked it up to a TV for video. I can hardly remember. That was back in the early 80s. It had a whopping 5K RAM and operated at 1MHz. I ran out of memory writing my very first program on it. Initially sold for around $300! Once I outgrew the VIC20, I upgraded to the C64 and an external tape drive. The tape drive actually used regular cassette tapes! In high school, my teacher for our business classes hated me because I knew more about computers than he did. It probably didn’t help that I would goof off in class all of the time because I was so bored.

~ Bonnie

Tom Calls Katie "Holmes"
April 29, 2005

That was a terrible title, I admit, but this is crucially important entertainment news. Tom Cruise is dating Katie Holmes. Forget the fact that he is old enough to be her father. Forget the fact that she is an avowed virgin. This is crazy because I really thought that he and Penelope Cruz were going to make it. I mean, c’mon, THEY HAVE THE SAME LAST NAME (practically). I guess I’m going to have to watch Vanilla Sky tonight and mourn the end of their relationship.

Sniff.