|
Years later I was in that location after
MW had shut down. In it's place was
and indoor fleamarket and there was
almost 0 employees outside of the single
cashier. I noticed a ton of department
phone jacks on the columns of where
the aisles used to be. I remember
picking up an old Radio Shack landline
phone and began testing the jacks as I
would find them. My mom by this point
in my life had just accepted this is
what I do and probably always will
be this way.
I made it all the way back to the
abandon restroom and service area.
I leaned up over the service counter
and plugged in to the jack on the wall.
DIAL TONE! I immediately called home
and then spent the next 5 minutes
talking to myself. As I was talking
a very wirey looking man shot out of
the restroom and watched me talk.
Having now thoroughly lived life, that
guy was tweakin' HARD!. I started to feel
uneasy so I hung up and as I did he said,
"So Ummm do they let anyone use that phone?"
I informed him that I was the nephew of
the owner of the shopping mall and these
phones were for any one who wanted to use
them. "How about long distance?" I smiled
and said "Especially Long Distance!".
I went to move on and he scooped up the phone
and started dialing away. As I left and
turned the corner I heard the fading sound
of a conversation. "DON'T WORRY ABOUT
WHERE I'M CALLING FROM I'M GOING TO KICK
YOUR ASS!!"
God I love helping people!
|
|
15MAY24
Around the time of the Montgomery Ward
incident I met some one that is probably
most responsible for the direction my
interests and tastes took. We only spent
a couple years around eachother but the
talent and genuine interest he displayed
in/with electronics and microcomputers
left an impression that saw me carry
these interests into personal hobbies
and professional endeavors.
I was homeschooled. Up until High School
my curriculum and the work therein was
all produced by my mother. She had a real
interest in teaching but none of the
desire to go to school and do it
professioinally. I feel that the challenge
of educating two children she could
then see do things with that education
as adults was most of the motivation.
(Maybe I'm a result of experimental
dark psychology lol).
In 1991, computer labs were a new and
pretty hot topic in schools and in our
state there was discussion that maybe
the poor disadvantaged homeschoolers
may need to attend school at least
a few times a month so they don't
get left behind. This of course never
made it into reality but there was
fear (mostly drummed up by all of
the 'HomeSchool' Christrian Mom-Warrior
newletters my mother got) that the
satanic school system was working to
pull kids in using mandate requiring
their presence.
In response to this, my mother ran an
ad in our local paper searching for
a "Computer nerd that will teach a
hyper active 7 year old in exchange
for a daily lunch and gas money."
For weeks the phone didn't ring
(Well about the ad anyways). My mom
was sitting down to call in another
two weeks of space in the paper when
the phone rang, this time about the
ad. She talked to the person on the
other line for almost 45 minutes,
asking questions and qualifying the
responses. After the call she looked
back at her notes as I came up to
ask if I perhaps now had a computer
teacher.
"Well, he seemed to be more interested
in telling me about his Bulletine Board
System dedicated to his Dark Wing Duck
fan fiction then teaching computers.
When I asked him if he could show you
how to do things on your Commodore he
told me a 10 minute story about using
one to do something called Packet Radio.
When I asked about his schedule he told
me he couldn't garantee he'd be on time,
everytime because rides a 10 speed bike
that doubles as a crank for a generator
he's designing and he'll have to put the
wheels back on before he comes...
I think he's perfect!"
---More on this later
[[[
|
|
--------
20MAY24
It was HAMVENTION TIME! One of my favorite
times of the year!
Hamvention is a festival dedicated to being
around other ham radio operators and having
the opportunity to buy new and used equipment.
I personally am not and have never been a Ham
Radio operator. There has always been something
about the world festival in Ohio that transcends
the single theme of the event. Out in the open
air flea market is just a raw energy of discovery
and learning that I've always been drawn to. You
never know quite what you will find in the various
tents and down the muddy aisles.
Some of these events is where I experience many
firsts. I learned about reel to reel drives, pre
8bit IBM mainframes and so many other archaic
platforms.
Even when the world was going Pentium X and all I
had was a 286/386/486 I was still able to attend
and find equipment in excess for what I wanted.
Not only that, I was able to find people who were
knowledgeable about problems that at the time I
had no Internet to trouble shoot or diagnose.
There were things that I would wait a whole year
to get help with and would almost always be able
return home with the solution.
The excitement of being able to find 'new to me'
gear that I could afford was huge. I built my
first machine room off of the equipment I bought
there.
Nowadays I am a vendor and came to the realization
that experiencing the event in this capacity is
what I like the most. I love being the older one
with the mysterious ancient hardware that no one
seems to know much about. And with the hardware I
have a thousand crazy stories to tell with it.
I like to think of the whole experience as a bit
of performance art in some way.
I start the Friday with some fairly uniform
overstock with curiousities mixed in. By late
Saturday, I mix up my inventory with slightly
more bizarre and abstract devices right before
I put the entirety of my supply on display.
This year was one of my more successful events and
made enough to meet my financial requirements
while having fun and making special deals for
people that I know are going to go straight
home and try something new!
22OCT24
Recommitting to the SMOL-NET
I spent the late spring and summer doing lots of
little things. Tending to my house and getting
caught up on some much needed fixing of various
mechanical items such as cars, motor bikes. I also
put effort into making my garage a usable workshop.
I erected a new UHF repeater for my two way radios.
A few other fun side quests:
Made an Android powered pocket qwerty computer
Installed security cams
Bought buckets of cheap china trash for the winter
Battonned down my second house for the winter
I also acquired a few bad digital habits. Youtube 24/7
Twitter, Endless news scrolling. I found that getting
caught up in all of this, despite my warm weather
productivity, almost complete sapped my digital
creativeness. My gopher server had to be shut down
because of a really stupid security hole I opened with
a VOIP system. What should have been a shutdown,
reconfigure that would have been a day of downtime,
turned into months and months because something was
not inspiring me to create. I can't directly blame
my HTML excesses but I do feel they didn't particularly
help. I also was finding myself doing some pretty annoying
things such as keeping my phone on the nightstand and
using it without a preset purpose. Yes, it was out of
percieved bordom but that was something I didn't have
a concept of ever really.
My regular YouTube viewing also made me realize how much
of the original 'soul' so to speak has been lost from YT.
I found some decent content that I personally found
entertaining about dead malls, dead brands and retro tech
but was also disheartened to see the sheer over saturation
of the content because it's a popular topic with what seemed
to be many different YTers just slightly copying eachother
for the sake of creating content. YT memeing is all but dead
in this day in age and it all seems to be lifestyle feature
with dry and pointless sponsorship woven in.
Finally after the complaint rolling in my head enough, I
decided to root my smart TV so I could finally remove
many of the troublesome apps such as YT and all the other
things I don't use. I was able to find that Samsung has a
free 'linear' TV app and I decided to set that to open at
start. So now when I turn on the TV it just goes to the
last channel I was watching, much akin to old school cable.
There is something slightly comforting about that.
I guess this is all I really have to say right now.
|
