I finally joined the Retrochallenge.

I've been following the Retrochallenge for a few years now.  Those familiar with me know that I am a nerd.  Timing seemed just right this year for me to take part in the winter warmup.  I'll be using my trusty Apple IIe to dink around in Apple Pascal.  I became quite familiar with Pascal while I was majoring in computer science, but as my college time fizzled out, so did most of my programming time, though I've always had a soft squishy part of my brain dedicated to the language.  Over the last several years I've been fortunate enough to build up my old computer collection to include a couple Apple IIe, an Apple IIc, Laser 128 and most recently a Franklin Ace 500.  Somewhere in there I won an ebay auction for a complete Apple Pascal box including all manuals, disks and even the sheet of "16" stickers.  I'm not quite sure what all I will do.  I had a lofty goal of writing a character generator for basic Dungeons & Dragons, but that may prove a bit too challenging for my rusty skills.  I was able to spend the last week re-familiarizing myself with the OS and did a little programming, so who knows, maybe something useful will come into being.  At any rate, I'm excited to be participating.  Future posts will have pictures, possibly some code and maybe even some audio recorded with the nifty TASCAM DR-08 audio recorder I got for Christmas.  For those who follow me on twitter (@Astro_Chicken), I'll try to announce blog updates when I can.  As far as tonight goes, I'm gonna get back to my gin and tonic and watch some cartoons with my kids.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!