Friday, December 01, 2006

More bits and pieces floating in my muddled mind.

Environmental turmoil. (That sounds like it would be a good Warren Zevon song title.)

This morning I woke up and went to my car to go to work. Outside temperature? About 68° Farenheit. I arrived at the client office I needed to visit this morning. The client was experiencing HVAC problems. Inside temperature ? I don't know, but it had to be below 60°. I, and everybody else in the office, was absolutely freezing. I went to my car and got my jacket on, and was still very cold.

Around 12:30 or 1:00pm I left the client and returned to my office. First stop, the cafeteria. Leaving the cafe with my lunch, I notice the cafe's background music - Sister Christian, by Night Ranger. Stepping through the cafe doors, into the hallway of the office building proper, I then hear the office building's Muzak - I don't recall the exact song, but it was something in the same vein as, but slightly schmaltzier than, Do You Know The Way To San Jose. Talk about a segue!

Continuing my walk, I see a man talking to the guard at the front desk. The man looks like Donald Rumsfeld. A second later I see a Rich Hall lookalike entering the building.

I think I need sleep, badly. My senses are out of control here.

One other item I forgot to mention in my previous post - The Odyssey². This old videogame gets little loving from most folks, myself included. From all I've been able to gather through years of videogame collecting and online reading, while the O² was a pretty mediocre machine in many respects, in most people's opinions (again, myself included), it wasn't for lack of heart. The few fans of the system (one big fan, and a nice guy to boot, is online here) do think highly of it, and apparently the creators and designers that brought the system into being weren't slacking off, and did in fact put forth a valiant effort. Nevertheless, the system wasn't much of a competitor to the Atari VCS, Intellivision, etc... But this is all just background information.

During high school I was friends with a guy named Alex. He knew I was into videogame collecting, and when he moved across the country at the end of high school in 1986, he found his old Odyssey² system while packing up, and gave it to me. I was happy to add it to my collection, but was so uninterested in actually using the system I never bothered to hook it up and test it out.

A few weeks ago something made me think of the old game K.C. Munchkin. I'd never read anything but good things about the game, and thought it would be worthwhile to get the game, hook up the O², and play it with Nate. I visited my friend Joe at his store, Digital Press, and bought the game (in the original box, no less!) for about $4, I think. I went home, hooked up the system, and only then learned the O² controllers didn't work.

Now, this was disappointing, but was also an opportunity to make a run to Radio Shack (blechh!) and get the very-cool new, instant-on / instant-off, cool to the touch, soldering iron they sell. I purchased the soldering iron, some D-Shell connectors, and a couple of other odds and ends, and went home to add standard Atari style connectors on the O² so i could hook up trusty CX40s to the unit. I got as far as disassembling the system, before life took over and I haven't returned to the project since.

Sooner or later I'll get the project finished, and learn how fun K.C. Munchkin truly is.




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