Hold on, it'll come to me...

I've been thinking a lot lately.  I haven't really been thinking about anything of worldly importance, but thinking nonetheless.  This is a cyclical occurrence, by the way.  It doesn't follow any specific schedule, no truly predictable peaks and valleys on a perfectly crafted chart.  It just comes and goes.

Then I had this thought.  What if we only had a limited amount of resources for thought?  I'd be running out of CPU cycles long before my body reached its own limits and ceased to function.  I'm sure my autonomic functions would persist, but the rest of me would be a listless bag of meat and bones with an organic storage medium that had met its capacity with no room left to buffer or shift things around to make more efficient use of space.  That's a scary thought.

Imagine living in a world where we all know roughly how much free storage our brains had remaining, or at least had a way of guesstimating how much was left.  How many people would still go forward, eager to experience life to its fullest, knowing that at any point their capacity for retaining new knowledge could suddenly cease?  Would people be more careful about how much detail they exposed themselves to?  How would this effect the arts?  How many people would find themselves scrutinizing their choices for entertainment?  Would there be a home for people who can't take care of themselves because their brains are reliving seasons of Big Brother or Real Housewives?

I wonder how people would attempt to cope with this newly discovered reality.  Would people be trained at an early age how to filter input?  What do you remember and what do you forget?  Would there be people who, due to their self imposed criteria for data retention, simply choose to filter out color, brightness, or hue?  What about removing sounds from experiences all together?  Imagine a sector of the population that had been raised with a monochromatic filter, knowing only shades of gray and going to school to be mindless worker drones.  What about differences in tone?  Imagine the masses of people that avoid works of fiction, because it clogged the mind with artificial memories of events and places that never occurred.  I find that disturbing.

On the flip-side, though, if the human mind is able to delete items it sees as non-essential, I suppose that leaves a lot of wiggle room.  I'd like to think that all of those memory engrams are permanently stored, and that we just lose the little bits that tell which synapses to fire in order to follow the complex branches to reach minutiae like the color of the eyes of the checker at the grocery store, or that golden apple that is Junior's third word, rather than his first, which will hopefully always be a retrievable memory.

Well, screw it.  I'm just going to keep thinking.  I can't shut it off anyway.  Perhaps I have some sort of thought disorder.  Am I in a minority, a small percentage of people who are subject to thinking about things they don't want or need to?  I'm pretty sure most people I know just shift gears, but I find that difficult to do.  Hmm...  I should probably stop thinking about this so I can think of something else to post later.

If you have your own thought about this, or thoughts if you are more daring, feel free to share in the comments, even if it's just to tell me how crazy you think I am or to offer your mental health services.  Again, it's all just my random thoughts.

It's been a while...

Well, it certainly has been a while since I last made a blog entry.  Life is very full of, um, stuff right now.  I am hoping to start making more posts in the near future.  Since I have some varied interests, I've started a couple of other blogs.  None of them have any entries yet, but I am hoping to use them for more specific topics of discussion, mainly a retro-computing blog and one for traditional gaming, maybe some boardgames, but more of a focus on pencil and paper RPGs.  I'll still be using this blog for general topics, but anything in those areas of discussion will be on their own just to keep things less crowded.  So keep an eye out as I will be tweeting posts as they happen.  Oh, and one last thing, I'm going to be using my tablet to post from time to time, like right now, so please forgive any crude formatting or touch screen typos.  The Blogger app for Android is convenient, but not great. 

For now though, I need to get back to looking for a job and making sure the house is kept up.  You may now return to more interesting pursuits.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

In honor of Fat Tuesday, and since we will be fasting tomorrow for Ash Wednesday, tonight's dinner is what I am calling Joe-balaya. I don't use recipes and this is completely from scratch, so I'm hoping it turns out well. It's got clams, shrimp, sausage, tomatoes, peppers, chili powder, rice, kidney beans, black beans and some Louisiana hot sauce for kick. I have to keep it pretty mild for the rest of the family, so I'll be doctoring my bowl to taste. Happy Fat Tuesday!

Rant from the house of the sick...

I'm pretty sure Montana is a hot bed for strange germ mutations or something.  The kids have all been on a sickness rotation since we moved here and it doesn't seem to be letting up.  Some say it's the altitude, some say the wind, but I'm almost paranoid enough to believe in a government conspiracy theory.

In the four months we've been here we've had probably about four weeks of school missed between two kids.  That's not good.  Most of it is just cold symptoms.  Some of it may be psychological, just a case of the kids getting used to a new environment, but last week was serious.  Two ruptured eardrums in the same week!  First our fourteen year old had a ruptured eardrum last Monday, then his four year old brother had a ruptured eardrum in the same ear on Friday.  While at the ER, my wife was told that they have seen quite a few ruptured eardrums in the last couple of months.  What is going on here?  Is there some mutant strain of germs that is rampaging through Great Falls, MT?  Our oldest is no stranger to ear infections as he got them somewhat often as a little one, and the doctor at the time said it was probably better to let it heal on it's own as he hadn't been exposed to antibiotics yet, and he never had a ruptured eardrum then.  So what is happening here?  Is it the fluctuating weather?  The wind?  The elevation?  Whatever it is, it can leave us alone.  We've had more than our fair share.

And my next question is why can't antibiotics be purchased over the counter?  I would assume most of us are only going to buy them if we are familiar with the symptoms of an infection.  Why are they treated on par with narcotics?  Is there some nefarious way to misuse antibiotics that I am unaware of?  Do weird people take them for the diarrhea rush they can potentially cause?  Are they a popular recreational drug among the colitis crowd?  I have a sinus infection right now.  I haven't gone to the doctor because I know how my body reacts.  It hurts.  My sinuses fill, creating tremendous pressure.  So I usually take something like ibuprofen for pain and swelling and something else to help my sinuses drain.  It's effective somewhat long term, but I think it would probably be a bit easier if I could just throw some antibiotics at it, but I tend to avoid going to the doctor unless I have to.  Most of my immediate family is prone to sinus infections.  I've grown up dealing with this.  Why do I need to pay a co-pay for insurance, plus my deductible, just so a doctor can confirm what I said when I went in and write me a prescription?

The healthcare system in the US is obviously not efficient.  I don't need all my favorite drugs available over the counter, but I would like to avoid having to go to urgent care in order to get medication I know I need.  Why isn't there a more immediate level of healthcare that we can have access to?  The health care laws passed requiring all of us to buy health insurance is a joke.  Perhaps some of our tax money could go instead to immediate care facilities that can confirm the more simple ailments and dispense medications for them.  I don't want a free clinic necessarily, but why can't a nurse practitioner who works at the pharmacy swab someone's throat to test for strep or give me antibiotics for my sinus infection or dispense drops for my child's pink-eye?  All of these are pretty minor ailments that if we could avoid an $85-$115 office visit would make life a little less complex.  I'll quit whining now and get back to blowing my nose.

Throw the towel!!!

If the Retrochallenge were compared to boxing, my entry would be considered as lively as Apollo Creed in Rocky IV, after Drago beat him into a limp mass of convulsion.  I feel like I should have thrown in the towel a while ago.  I had such lofty goals, and looking back on the month, I should have been able to do this, but I'll take this opportunity to cop-out as much as I can.

This month was not a fun one, for the most part.  Not only have I been looking for a job, and dealing with various other normal adult obligations, but I have been trying to keep the fence from falling apart.  The wind here...  CURSE YOU WIND!!!  At least one section of the fence has been repaired more than once.  Several other sections blew down during the 74mph gusts we had a week or two ago.  Some of them are now so rotted and falling apart from multiple repair attempts that I am going to have to start adding new wood.  And the newer section of fence, well, it's crap too.  It looked pretty when we moved in, but it apparently wasn't built well enough to withstand the high winds in this area.

Back to my project.  This shouldn't have been a hard one, if I were a kid still living in my parents' house and hiding in my room, coding until the wee hours of the morning, just because I wanted to and could.  Being a father, husband, responsible adult, what have you, I have decided that my time is not my time.  Oh, there was plenty of down time in which I could have added up to a decent amount of project work, but I don't work that way.  My brain won't let me switch gears very well, especially on intellectual projects such as this.  However, I also think I could have planned this a lot better.  I didn't even pick up my Apple II from the old house until a week before starting on the Retrochallenge, and didn't give it much thought before starting except for, "Wow, this is gonna be so cool."  I'm still hoping to finish this project eventually.  I did a fair amount of planning on paper, figuring out what functions and procedures I would need to write, which were necessary and which seemed like extra fluff to make it more cool, and even wrote some pseudo-code.

Will I take part in the Summer Retrochallenge?  I would like to say yes, given the right amount of time and planning correctly, I would love to, but I may not do a programming project.  I'm starting to like the idea of playing through some games on the Genesis, or maybe documenting helping my kids play through an Infocom game or something like that.  I also have a couple ideas for implementing alternate storage methods on an older system, but I don't want to say too much on that until it looks like I may go that route.

Until the Summer Retrochallenge, I will continue to be my nerdy self and play with old hardware and software.  I may even mess a little with programming in Pascal, since I do enjoy the creative process with programming on older systems, but I don't see myself doing anything crazy cool, unless the stars align and "The Old Ones" return or something like that.

In the meantime, I look forward to making some more random blog entries, taking note of oddities I see, commenting on life after moving two states away, or just mentioning how cool my kids are from time to time.  I'm also going to try to make a more dedicated approach to my writing.  I've got several really nice story ideas that I've had back-burnered for quite some time, and I'm hoping to revisit those soon and hopefully make some progress on them.  I may try my hand at podcasting too, not because the world needs another nerdy podcast, but because I think it would be fun.  But right now, I'm gonna finish eating my chili.

Epic fail...

Sure, I know there's still a few days left, and I'll possibly still get a chance to tinker on my Retrochallenge project, but the last several days in particular have been rough to say the least. We had record high wind gusts the other day and lost several sections of fence. I almost got my hand torn off trying to brace it during the wind and decided to let it fall. We've had more wind since and some of the fence I had already repaired already has started to fail again, plus a couple more sections fell. Perhaps I'll do better during the summer Retrochallenge, but I'm thinking I'd need to prepare better and judge my available time better. As the RC comes to a close I'll try to give a full rundown of the lack of progress I made, which hopefully will at least help me plan better for the next challenge.

Montana is cold, and snowy...

It was -18f yesterday morning.  The day before that was -13 or so.  And yesterday we finally got the snow they were talking about.  I cleared the driveway twice before the Mrs. got home from work, then had to clear the driveway again this morning.  It looked like another 3 inches, maybe less.  My 7 year old missed the bus yesterday morning and I found out the hard way that your car can overheat in sub-freezing temperatures.  I think the thermostat froze.  Probably too much water in the coolant mixture.  Gonna add some antifreeze when it warms up a bit.  I was hoping to actually make some progress on my Retrochallenge project, but with missing busses, walking to and from bus stops in this weather, trying to keep the house warm and taking care of a 14 year old who refuses to get un-sick, I'm finding little time for anything else than chores and staring at my keyboard wishing I was smarter.  But, there is still time.  Maybe I can pull this project out of the dumper before the end of the month.

Pretty much the stupidest RC project ever...

I'm really hoping that I can somehow pull this project out of the crapper over the next couple weeks and accomplish something.  The last couple weeks have been a little more complicated than I had anticipated for fitting in work on the RC.  But on the bright side, I did reset the workspace file and started one line of code:

PROGRAM MOLDVAYCHARGEN;

I'm hoping this weekend I can finally dive into the Basic D&D rule book and plan some modularity and get an idea of the procedures I'll need to write.  It's been a looooong time since I've actually worked with Pascal so I'm hoping I can just dive into this and recall enough to salvage this project.  I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into a steaming heap of black and green poo.

Wishing I had more time - RC Update

Unfortunately, I haven't made much progress on my Retrochallenge project.  Between watching the kids, keeping house and still having to unpack, get a new driver's license and look for a job since we moved, I'm finding it hard to find motivation or devote a decent chunk of time to what I wanted to do.  But I'm not giving up!  Hopefully tomorrow or this weekend I will be able to make some significant progress.  It's been years since I did any real programming, and then only for school, so I think over the next couple days I'm going to do a bit of reading and catch up variables, types, constants, procedures, etc.  Plus, I've never really read the Apple Pascal OS manual, so this would be a good time to hit that and maybe post some ideas on it.

Retrochallenge Update

Since I haven't had actual time to work on anything, I thought I would at least post some pictures and provide some details on my Retrochallenge project.  I'll be using an Apple IIe with two Disk II drives and a Zenith Data Systems monochrome monitor.  I never had a chance to test the second drive out which was acquired in an ebay auction after I got the IIe and a Disk II with it from a friend at work a few years ago who picked it up at a recycler for me, but luckily I was able to test it when I picked it all up in Spokane, WA for a family visit last week and all seems to be nominal.

The Apple Pascal box I acquired from an ebay auction a couple years ago and I was excited to find it was complete, including the sheet of "16" stickers, manuals and disks.

The copy of "Apple Pascal: a hands-on approach" actually came with the box set. Not sure if that was standard with the set or if the ebay seller just included it with the rest of the set.  I'm looking forward to using the "Pascal and Precalculus" book.  It looks to have a bunch of interesting exercises in it.

The last two items we're looking at tonight are "A Primer On Pascal" and the "Pascal User Manual and Report" which is actually by Kathleen Jensen and Niklaus Wirth, both acquired in ebay auctions.

Hopefully I'll actually have time to work on something useful, but as time is kind of precious lately, I'll be trying to fit in chunks of code or learning here and there and small points in between.  And of course, everyone can read all about our family's experiences having just moved to Montana, so there should at least be stuff to read about.

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!