More past finds

Wow, it's been a while since I did this. Probably because I figured I'd mined Google Groups as much as I could at this point. This is a quintet of posts about finds I made from 1997 to 2010.

It occurred to me the other day that I no longer remember how I acquired my Supercharger. Or is it Superchargers? I can't remember now whether I have just one or two. Anyway, I started searching old e-mail files to see if I could find mention of them. No luck so far, but I rediscovered two Usenet archives of the rec.games.video.classic newsgroup I had sitting on the desktop of one of our computers that I'd downloaded from the Internet Archive.

So I loaded the first one up and searched for "Seitz". Then I searched for "Supercharger." Then I copied the results for each of those, pasted them into the same file, and sorted by the line number of the results. Unfortunately that didn't reveal much. (Or I wasn't diligent enough to finish the process. I forget already.) So then I substituted "brag" for "Supercharger" and started going through them.

That led me to these (plus some that were already on this blog).

• 5 August 1997: Supercharger Tapes Brag
• 14 September 1998: Atypical brag
• 29 December 1999: End of Year Brag
• 21 August 2000: Brag: Spacemaster X-7 and CV games
• 13 October 2010: eBay brag?

You'd think that first post from 1997 would answer the question, but no. I found several tapes, but only one was one I didn't have. In fact, I already had the Stella Gets a New Brain Supercharger compilation CD by then. I found an old e-mail saying I got some of those tapes for free from someone because I'd gotten a Supercharger but didn't have a way to test it.

So the search for how I got the Supercharger(s) continues, but it's looking like I may not find the answer. At least I know how I acquired the games now.

My Time as Suite 101's Classic Home Video Games Editor

In mid-1996, I was contacted by Julie Bradshaw to become an "editor" for a new web site called Suite 101. They were seeking people for a variety of topics who would maintain a top 5 list of sites related to the topic and write a weekly article about it. I wasn't sure if I could commit to writing one article a week, so I hemmed and hawed with myself. Months of indecisiveness paid off when they announced the creation of part-time editors. I then quickly put in my application as the "classic home video games" editor. I figured I could handle one article a month. And I did…until my wife got pregnant. I managed to continue my duties for a time, but finally I missed an entire month. I realized I had to resign, perhaps just temporarily, so I did so in February 1998.

In case you haven't guessed, I never went back. It's all rather fuzzy now, but a review of my e-mails helped refresh my memory a bit. I never got much in the way of feedback from Suite 101 users, although the management told me at one point my topic ranked "around 55 out of 205 topics," putting me just out of the top 25%.  I enjoyed the writing and later wrote a regular column for Classic Gamer Magazine, but that's a story for another time. A little extra cash never hurts, either.

As I said above, editors also picked a "top 5" sites related to their topic.  I was running the Classic Video Games Nexus at the time, so the hard part wasn't finding five sites, but figuring out which five to link to.  I no longer have records of that, but I seem to remember including the Nexus as one of the links.  Nobody ever said I had to be completely unbiased.

When I was involved, Suite 101 was owned by i5ive communications inc., a Canadian company. (Yes, they used the name in all lower case.) That's pronounced "I-five" (or "eye five"). I don't know what's happened with it since I left, but Suite 101 still exists today with no mention of that company. (i5ive's old domain now belongs to i5ive Affordable Online Insurance.) While my work for i5ive was work for hire, under the terms of my contract I was free to reproduce the editorials on my own web site, so I'm going to assume that also applies to my blog, a concept that didn't exist back then. Furthermore, Suite 101 removed all the articles I wrote some time after I resigned. That kept stale topics from polluting the ones that were still updated regularly. So given the changes that have happened in the 15 years since I wrote these, I doubt Suite 101 has any record of me working for them any more anyway. Here, then, are my bio and the 16 articles I wrote for Suite 101 on Classic Home Video Games.

• c. late 1996: Autobiography
• November 1996: Classic Home Video Games: An Introduction
• December 2, 1996: How to Start A Classic Video Game Collection Part 1: Picking a System
• December 27, 1996: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 2: The System Choices - The Atari Trio
• January 17, 1997: The November 1996 editorial was repeated for Suite 101's grand opening.
• February 1, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 3: The System Choices - Non-Atari
• February 28, 1997: How to Start a Classic Video Game Collection Part 4: Where to Find Classics
• April 4, 1997: New Games for Classic Systems
• May 2, 1997: Atari 2600 Technical Spotlight
• June 6, 1997: Electronicon is Coming!: Would I Con You?
• July 4, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 1: Shareware and Freeware Emulators
• July 18, 1997: Is It Live or Is It Emulated? - Part 2: Commercial and Upcoming Emulators
• August 15, 1997: Thrifting: A Definition
• September 5, 1997: Preview: Atari Gaming HQ
• October 7, 1997: System Spotlight: Magnavox Odyssey
• November 14, 1997: Book Review: Phoenix (2nd Edition)
• December 12, 1997: When is a Combat not a Combat?
• February 13, 1998: Piracy: Collectors' Friend or Foe

A quintet of naughts video game finds

I finally posted the last of the the old video game posts I promised over a year ago.

• 5 Jun 2000: Brag: Weekend Intelly finds
• 29 Jun 2000: Finds: Tandyvision & ... Yars' Revenge?
• 25 Feb 2002: Today's finds (books)
• 15 Aug 2003: Weekend Colecovision finds
• 1 May 2007: Re: Any good finds lately?

This is the last of my old "video game find" posts that I have for now, so I don't know if there will be more "pre-blog" posts in the future or not.

A sextet of 1999 classic video game posts

I've posted six more old rec.games.video.classic posts to the blog, all from 1999. These are some of the ones I promised in "a day or three" over a month ago. Oops.

• 5 April 1999: Re: Is there a classic system you really DON'T like?
• 9 April 1999: Minor finds & unrelated grouse [Stop Thief, blue label Pitfall!]
  
• 29 April 1999: Today's finds [2600 Racquetball, Colecovision Spy Hunter & Spectron, Comp IV]
• 14 May 1999: This Week's Finds [Mattel Baseball, Lost Luggage, catalogs]
• 3 June 1999: Last week's finds [joysticks]
• 19 June 1999: Today's finds (future classics?) [N64 clock, strategy guides, Stop Thief]

There's at least five more to come, but this time I know better than to promise how soon they'll be posted.

More 1990s video game finds

I've been searching the Google Groups archives again to find past posts to rec.games.video.classic. Here's what you can now find in the blog.

• 14 March 1995: Another week's finds [Compuvision, James Bond 007, Microsoft Arcade, & Space Jockey]
• 29 July 1995: Weekday Finds [2600 games in Birmingham, plus meeting Ralph]
  
• 3 July 1996: June's Finds [heavy sixer, Chuck Norris, H.E.R.O., blue 2600 catalog, original Odyssey games, Pong coin-op, Scramble handheld, Vectrex]
• 27 March 1997: Re: Finds that made you feel like a moron.
• 3 December 1997: Re: What was your last thrift purchase??
  
• 30 July 1999: Brag: Hardware for $0.10 each (& More finds today) - An additional post added to the end.

I've got several more to add, but it's late, so look for them in a day or three.

Video game brags and a disaster

I've posted the tales of several good classic video game finds I originally posted to the rec.games.video.classic Usenet group. Back then we called them "brags". I also dug up the tale of my phone call with Billy Mitchell shortly after his perfect Pac-Man game. Finally, I posted the story of the first time our house flooded from a burst washing machine hose. (The second time was two days later, believe it or not.)

• 14 May 1996: Flood
• 29 July 1997: Finally, a brag!
• 12 Feb 1998: $50 Brag
• 10 August 1998: Re: Stop me before I buy again!!!!
• 10 March 1999: Brag, anti-brag, and book
• 5 April 1999: Small brag & Wico info
• 16 April 1999: First good 2600 brag in a while
• 19 April 1999: Hardly a brag
• 4 May 1999: Today's finds
• 30 July 1999: Brag: Hardware for $0.10 each
• 14 July 1999: Re: Someone got Perfect Pacman Score????
• 3 May 2000: Brag: Instant Astrocade collection & more
• 30 May 2000: Brag: NES Arkanoid controller
• 17 July 2000: Brag: 2600, 7800 games and more
• 26 May 2006: Brag: INTV games
• 28 May 2006: Re: Just a small brag
• 14 April 2007: Brag: Turbo board game

1995 classic video games quartet

I've just added four back-dated blog posts about classic video games from 1995.

• 28 Feb 1995: Joypads found in Australia!
• 28 Feb 1995: Interesting find in Oz
• 4 Mar 1995: This week's finds
• 5 Nov 1995: Good find spoiled by being PAL

Comments for the individual posts are disabled, but you can talk about them here if you want.

Purpose of the blog revisited

You might have noticed a dearth of family related stories lately. That's because, as mentioned earlier, I'm on Facebook now. I was iffy about publicly posting so much information about my family in the first place. Now Facebook has become the default place to post photos and keep people updated. This is because 1) I (theoretically) control who sees the information and 2) it's been much easier to get people to look at things there than to coax them to my blog. I'm still considering whether I should cross-post the blog to Facebook.

So, what will you find here? Well, it's still the home of the Rom blog. I'll also use it to rant on those rare occasions I feel something must be ranted about. And, as I said originally, I'll be going back and posting pre-blog items here.

And that's what I've spent this evening doing. First, there was the "thoughts and tips" section of my home page. That's now done, although I had to guess at some of the dates. Then there was a couple Usenet posts about collecting video games and a Weird Al concert I wanted to preserve. That's now done, too. The links to them can be found below. I've turned commenting off for these back-dated posts, so if you want to comment on them, do it here.

• 28 Nov 1994: Finally found my gold mine!
  
• 1 Jun 1995: Tip of the Moment (cat in bushes)
  
• 10 Jan 1996: Tip of the Moment (company in the red)
  
• 30 Jan 1996: Thought (blank disk)
  
• 10 Feb 1996: Thought (babies don't take holidays)
  
• 26 Feb 1996: Thought (fortune cookie)
  
• 13 Mar 1996: Thought (Bad Hair Day)
  
• 12 Apr 1996: Tip of the Moment (laser surgery)
  
• 20 Jun 1996: Tip of the Moment (washing machine hoses)
  
• 01 Aug 1996: Tip of the Moment (second opinion for cars)
  
• 2 Dec 1996: Thanksgiving finds (Goldmine lost)
  
• 15 Apr 1997: Tip of the Moment (tax withholding)
  
• 1 Sep 1997: Thought (leather leisure suit)
  
• 16 Mar 1998: Tip of the Moment (holes in walls)
  
• 25 Aug 2000: Weird Al concert report: Birmingham and Bermuda (LONG)
  
• 21 Feb 2001: Tip of the Moment (battery springs)

Purpose of the blog

I don't know that I have any real readers yet, but as I'm jut starting out I thought I'd go over the purpose of this blog. This is all as I see it right now and naturally I reserve the right to change my mind as the blog evolves.

First, you're unlikely to see much in the way of politics and religion. Or rather, you're unlikely to see much proselytizing on either subject. I hate conflict, so I tend to keep my opinions to myself. This probably forever dooms me with the label "boring," but I've (mostly) come to accept that.

You're also unlikely to hear much about sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Sex is private, I don't do drugs -- let me reiterate for any current or future employers doing Google searches on my name that I DON'T DO DRUGS -- and, okay, maybe I have experimented with rock & roll. Yeah, I take it back; you'll probably hear me talk about music. (For example, did you know Weird Al just released a new single?)

You're also unlikely to see many four letter words here because that's simply not how I usually express myself. Does this mean the blog will be kid-safe? Mostly, but I make no guarantees. I do find much naughty humor funny and I might find something too irresistible not to share.

So what will you find here? Mostly tidbits from my life. I'm hoping for more humorous photos like the one I started with. Unfortunately, those sometimes take time to produce, which is the one thing I don't seem to have a lot of right now.

Speaking of which, I make no promises for anything resembling a normal schedule of posting. I'll simply grab time where I can, so I encourage you to use the RSS feeds or to visit often. I'm hoping this will work out as a better way to keep my kids' grandparents, aunts, and uncles appraised of their activities, as I've proven hopeless at keeping their web pages up to date.

Another thing you'll find are updates on my interests, often related to web pages I "maintain." For example, I'm hoping the next post will be about the recent failure to return Rom, Spaceknight to comic books. If you've come here from one of these pages and aren't interested in, for example, how my kids are doing, note the labels at the bottom of each post. You might want to bookmark a single label rather than the whole blog.

Lastly, I've actually been doing something resembling blogging since before the WWW took off. (Remember, "blog" is short for "web log.") So over time, I plan to find old e-mails and Usenet posts that I think are worthy and post them with the original dates. Whenever I do this, I'll try to also post a new entry referring to the old one(s) so you don't miss anything. In fact, I've gone ahead and posted one from 1996.

Whew, and here I thought this would be a short little post. Sorry it seems to have turned into a manifesto.

And so it begins

I've toyed with doing a blog for a while. Unfortunately, I have little profound to say and little time to write it. However, I recently had my third child, a girl named Hannah. This is our first girl, so I was inspired to take (and caption) the below photo.

To clarify, those are cloth diaper covers hanging up to dry and the purple thing at the lower left is the diaper pail liner, also drying. No doubt there will be more photos in the future of this blog. In the meantime, welcome, friends.