At some point (probably 1990), video games passed me by

Good old Atari 2600 "Combat."

Back in The Day™ (1982-85), I played a lot of video games.

Arcade games, Atari games, Commodore 64 games, etc. The term "gamer" didn't exist back then, but I was one.

We always knew that computer technology was going to advance and that the games we played would soon seem primitive compared with what was to come. But that didn't make them any less fun.

Once gaming systems and the games themselves started taking their expected quantum leaps forward in terms of graphics, sound and general sophistication, that's when I fell off the cutting edge.

Soon, I feel behind even the trailing edge.

After not too many years, I couldn't even see the edge.

It's not that I didn't like video games anymore. It's just that school, marriage, my career, kids and a host of other things got in the way. The spare time I once had available for gaming simply evaporated.

I never realized how behind the times I was until my kids started getting older and we bought them Xboxes.

The games were amazingly realistic. And often (to me, anyway) confusing.

The controllers went from the simple one joystick, one button approach of the Atari 2600 to the sort of thing you would use to pilot an F-16. One button? Try six. Or eight. And two joystick-like thumb controllers.

Then they all became multi-player games in which you wear a headset and talk to your friends (and total strangers) in the middle of the game.

That's when I knew I would never, ever catch up.

One of my favorite things to do on the laptop Terry got me for Christmas is play many of my old, classic games. You can download emulators that allow you to play the arcade and home video games of your youth, which is wonderful.

These aren't reproductions or close facsimiles of the games I loved in the 80s. These are the actual games. The ROMs (as they're called) for each one contain the exact computer code as the originals. There's no difference at all between the Ms. Pac-Man I play on my laptop and the Ms. Pac-Man I played at Galaxy Gardens game room in 1983.

It's mind blowing. And fun.

It also, like so many things these days, reminds me of a simpler time. I am an early GenXer, born in 1969. We are Baby Boomers in all but birth year. We straddled the analog and digital ages. We know what it's like to have one corded telephone in the house AND for everyone in the family to have their own phones, own numbers, etc.

We've seen both sides of the revolution. Some of us are equally adept living in either time period. I like to think of myself that way, but when it comes to video games, I am irrevocably stuck in the 80s.

And I like it that way.

This Commodore 64 Christmas program brings back all the feels

 

I have mentioned before that the greatest Christmas gift of my childhood was a Commodore 64 computer, which my parents gave me in 1982. The C64 taught me to write basic code, gave me hours of gaming enjoyment, and was the machine I first used to go online.

That same year, the Commodore folks created and released the Christmas demo shown in the video above. More than once in '82 I remember walking into a store, going to the Commodore display, and seeing this demo playing. It was the perfect way to showcase the computer's then-powerful video and sound capabilities.

I offer you the chance to watch and listen to it now as a sort of holiday gift. For those my age who remember it, it's a wonderful bit of nostalgia. For those who have never seen it, it's a history lesson in early-80s home computing technology.

Either way, I hope it brightens what is already a bright Christmas Day for you. Thank you for reading this blog, and Merry Christmas!

My dad would have loved (and maybe occasionally hated) 2023

This was our living room tech set-up in the 80s, featuring a big old Curtis Mathis VCR and a cable box resting on top of a wood cabinet RCA TV. Displayed on the screen is the 24-hour weather data feed Continental Cablevision used to broadcast. It was a hot, hot day in Wickliffe by the looks of it.

My father was a gadget guy.

He embraced technology, particularly in his later years. Thus, we were fairly early adopters of everything from VCRs to home computers.

Dad hoped to live well into the 21st century, if only to be there for The Next Big Tech Development, whatever that turned out to be. Unfortunately, he died in October 1999, just a little shy of the digital revolution that has irrevocably changed all of our lives.

He would have given almost anything to have witnessed it, I'm sure.

On the other hand, being politically somewhere just to the right of Archie Bunker, I don't know that he would have been thrilled with everything that has happened in the world socially over the last quarter century. And I don't say that judgmentally – positive or negative – but simply as an observation with which anyone who knew him would very likely agree.

As I've mentioned before, we were among the first people in our town to get cable TV in 1980. As I recall, Dad walked a couple of streets over to talk with the Continental Cablevision work crew and find out when they would make it to Harding Drive and what day was the absolute earliest he could sign up.

He bought us a VCR around that same time, and I'm not talking about one of the lightweight, sleek units that would be in vogue a decade later. I mean a big, heavy-duty Curtis Mathis job that could be used equally to watch a movie, record an episode of "M*A*S*H*," or throw at a would-be intruder as a show of deadly force.

We had a home video game system as far back as 1977, when he sprang for a black-and-white Radio Shack Pong console. We also got an Atari 2600 before almost any of my friends. Same with the Commodore 64 and my green-screen IBM XT computer.

The man loved new hardware, and I benefitted from it all as an equally tech-crazy teenage boy.

The first time I used a cell phone was when Terry was pregnant with Elissa in 1994 and I had to be reachable at a moment's notice in case she went into labor. I received the phone on a day I was covering a wrestling match a half-hour's drive away for my then-employer, The News-Herald (which as I recall lent me the phone).

I got into my car, and the first person I called was my dad.

He and I were amazed that we could carry on a conversation while one of us was driving and no CB radio was involved.

Now cell phones are everywhere, and it's sometimes difficult to tell how much of a good thing that really is.

Regardless, if my dad was still around, he would probably own both an iPhone AND an Android.

You know, just in case.

All these years later, I still miss the guy.

Don't forget that printers are miracles

Every now and then I'll write a post about the good/bad old days in which we lacked certain technology that is now commonplace, and how none of us should ever take it for granted.

This is one of those posts.

I am of sufficient age to appreciate how amazing it is to have a desktop printer, because I grew up at a time when no one had them.

All of your school reports back then were handwritten or, if you were fancy, produced on a typewriter.

We had a typewriter in my house, and I remember using it to write reports on Theodore Roosevelt (when we had to pick a president to write about), Iceland (when we had to pick a country to write about), and Vermont (when we had to pick a state to write about). This involved setting margins and manual carriage returns, and if God forbid you made a mistake, reaching for the foul-smelling White Out to correct it.

It was cumbersome, but the final product always looked nice.

Like a lot of people, the first printer I owned was of the dot matrix variety, and much like a typewriter, it required changing out the ink ribbon every so often.

It only printed in black and white, of course, but that didn't matter. The fact was, it printed! I would create something on my Commodore 64, and a couple of minutes later, there it was on paper, looking all professional (or so it seemed).

You have to understand, this was a revelation. Then they came out with Print Shop software and you could create banners and flyers and all sorts of things that previously could only be handled by a graphic designer and a printing service.

In retrospect, it all looks pretty bland and cheesy. But to say that is to ignore how transformative portable printers really were. What had before involved a large investment of time and money could now be done in an instant at home. Mind blowing.

The next time I want to complain about my Epson printer, I'm going to stop for a second and appreciate the fact it exists it all.

Getting emotional over a phone number

I have had the same cell phone number (as has my wife) since 2000. Number portability is a huge advantage that saves you the hassle of updating your entire network every time you switch wireless carriers.

Still, I can't say I have much of an emotional attachment to my cell number.

The same, however, cannot be said of our home phone number.

Yes, we still have a home phone number because we still have a land line. That is going to change soon, however, as we'll finally be dropping traditional cable and phone service. I realize we're a few years behind the times there, but this is probably a better-late-than-never type of situation.

We hardly ever receive any important calls on the home phone anymore, so it's kind of pointless to have it.

The only thing I'll regret is losing the number. Terry and I got married in 1992 and have had it as our home number ever since. But I actually owned the number for six years prior to that.

As I've mentioned before, I got online via my Commodore 64 in 1985. This involved tying up our home phone line every time I would call a local bulletin board system (BBS) and use my stolen 300 baud modem so that my computer could "talk" to a computer on the other end of the line.

That meant no one could call our house as long as I was online. You quickly learned how to disable your call waiting so that, if someone did call while you were surfing the pre-Internet digital world, you wouldn't have your connection broken.

After several months of this, I talked to my dad and he agreed we could get a separate phone line just for me that I could use for computer purposes. I paid the bill for the line myself, to the tune of $18 per month. It was money well spent, and for a time I even ran my own BBS on it.

Once Terry and I married and moved into our own house, the easiest thing to do was just to bring that existing line with me, so that it became "our" number instead of "my" number.

And now, once we cut the cord, it will be going away after 35 years in my/our possession. It's a silly thing to be sad over, but I associate a lot of great conversations and important memories with that phone number.

It also comes at a time when we're adjusting to having sold my mom's house recently, and for the first time in my life not being able to drive over there and just walk in.

These things happen to everybody, and they happen every day.

Time goes on, whether we like it or not.

But I guarantee that, no matter how old and senile I become, those seven digits will be absolutely seared into my brain forever.

The best Christmas gift I got as a kid? That's easy.

I spent 1982 longing after a Commodore 64 computer.

I tried to find ways of saving up for one, but for most of that year I was 12 years old and in no position to earn the hundreds of dollars it would take to buy a C-64 and a floppy disk drive.

I put it at the top of my Christmas wish list with no real expectation it was going to show up under the tree.

Until it did.

I was pretty sure my premiere gift was going to be The Generals, an admittedly cool electronic board game that had come out a couple of years earlier. And I would have been fine with it.

My mom and dad, tricky as they were, had me believing that was what I was getting while going out and secretly finding a Commodore 64 for me. I'm not even sure where they got it. I'm guessing Sears.

Anyway, that little computer (laughably slow and weak compared even to today's low-end smart phones) became a huge part of my life over the next few years. I played games with friends. I learned to program in BASIC. I procured a modem and got online for the first time ever in 1985.

Back then, going "online" meant calling local bulletin board systems (BBSs) and exchanging messages with other people. The Internet existed, but I sure had never heard of it.

I should note that saying I "procured" a modem for my Commodore is a little misleading. That 300-baud device was stolen from the local BEST store by a group of kids with whom I went to school who were known simply as "The Vandals." They weren't sure what to do with it, so one of them gave it to me.

I chose to remain officially ignorant of the modem's origins, but I had a sneaking suspicion where it had come from. The guy who gave it to me confirmed its status as stolen merchandise only years later.

My obsession with the Commodore faded once the late 80s arrived and I had bought an IBM XT. From there it was one step after another up the technology ladder...more processing power, more storage, more features. The Commodore was put back into its box and relegated to the attic.

I was reunited with it earlier this year when we were cleaning out my mom's house. It was fun to see it, and I could have taken it home, but I chose not to. For one thing, I have a full-fledged Commodore emulator on our home desktop computer that completely simulates the original C-64 experience. For another, I hadn't kept any software for it, so its features would be limited.

And then there's simply the fact that you can't ever really go home again. The Commodore and I had had our thing, and we had both moved on.

Or at least I did. I have a feeling it wouldn't have minded playing one more game of Jumpman or Law of the West with me.

I received a lot of great gifts as a spoiled youngest child growing up. But nothing ever beat the surprise and delight of that little computer.

Kids, there's nothing more I can do to increase the bandwidth in the house

My family has not been especially affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

None of us has (yet?) contracted the virus. I have been blessed to hold onto my job and continue earning an income. And the kids have had the opportunity to keep up with school online.

The worst things we have had to deal with are inconveniences that can only be described as first-world problems.

One of those is WiFi bandwidth.

On any given weekday, we have in our house two college kids and a high schooler in remote learning situations spending time in Zoom meetings.

Or maybe they're using Microsoft Teams. Or WebEx. Or Blue Jean. Or Google Meet. Or any of the 100 other virtual meeting platforms with which we're all becoming quite familiar these days.

The point is, there's a lot of video conferencing going on in our house, especially when you throw me into the mix. My job involves, on average, 6 to 8 WebEx meetings every day.

Three students + one Director of Communications = a strain on our WiFi capacity. Sometimes our home network runs a little slow or has hiccups.

I must say, though, that all things considered, our 1GB Internet service from WOW has held up fairly well under the strain. It's the highest level the company offers, and I'm sure it's the very least on which our family could function.

I sometimes have problems with WebEx crashing, though I'm not sure if that's a software/MacBook issue or a true bandwidth issue.

Either way, since our upgrade to WOW a couple of years ago, I can truly say I'm doing everything I can to provide the best Internet access (nowadays a basic commodity) for my family. WOW provided us with good routers and signal boosters, and the service itself is pretty reliable.

So stop bugging me, kids. Until someone lays ultra-fast fiber lines outside of our house, this is what you get.

Of course, back in my day, all I had was a 300-baud Commodore 64 modem. You could write faster than text could transmit over that piece of mid-80s technology.

And we were fascinated by it.

So stop complaining.

If I had to do it all over again...

Back in November 2015, I wrote about some things in my life I might have done differently if given the chance to go back. I'm not a person who has many regrets, but as Frank Sinatra once sang, I've had a few.

In addition to the ones I mentioned in that post of 17 months ago, I can think of a few others:

1. I should have taken piano lessons.
2. I would have learned to program in machine language on my Commodore 64 computer instead of just playing a series of pirated software games.
3. I would have lost weight after my senior season of football so that my last year of high school track wasn't such a..."disappointment" isn't the word, but 190-pound me simply couldn't long jump or run as fast as 170-pound me.
4. I would been a much better class officer, speaking of high school. (Apologies to Brian Fabo, who shouldered much of the load and rightly pointed out that I wasn't shouldering mine.)
5. I shouldn't have quit after one night of washing dishes at The Bright Spot restaurant in order to take a job at Wendy's that paid me a dime per hour more. (Hey, I was 16, had a girlfriend and needed the money. Those dimes really did count! But still...)
6. I should have treated college as something more than just an academic formality that had to be completed before I could become a sports writer and, of course, stay in the business for 40 years covering Cleveland professional teams until my retirement.
7. I wouldn't have been such a smart aleck from, oh, 6th grade through...well, now. Remind me to stop doing that.
8. I would have taken our dog Jesse for more walks. He was such a good boy.
9. I would have made sure my shorts (and their contents) were secure before sliding down that rope in 6th-grade gym class. Yikes.
10. I should have made a point of telling my coaches and teachers how much I learned from them and how much I appreciated them. The list is too long, but apologies to the likes of Mrs. Schwarzenberg, Mrs. Grabner, Mrs. Feltham, Miss Yeager, Mr. Thomas, Mrs. Crow, Mrs. Coil, Ms. Capasso, Mr. Kondrich, Mr. Duricy, Mr. Kendra, Mr. Ranallo, Mr. Mazer, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Bezjak, Madame Whitehorn, Mr. Elias, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Kowalski, and Coaches Benz, Magill, Knapp, Rosneck, Nackley, Smith, Wolfgram, Kowalski (again), D'Amore, and countless others I've neglected to mention. You were all wonderfully patient with me and incredibly influential in my life. Thank you.

10 things I miss from the 1980s

(1) Parachute Pants
I never wore them myself. But I liked the fact they even existed. Here's a photo:

How many times in the 80s did I say to myself, "It would be perfect if I had a zippered pocket just above my right knee to carry this object around, but darn it, these stupid Bugle Boy jeans just don't offer what I need!" (The answer, by the way, is zero. I never said that to myself. Nor did any other sane person. By the way, nice white socks, Mr. Model.)


(2) The Music
You actually can't classify every piece of popular music released from 1980 through 1989 as "80s Music," because it's all so different. (The same is probably true for any decade.) There was late-era disco, New Wave, hair metal, second-generation punk, etc. I liked almost all of it.


(3) The Hair
We rocked us some pretty rad hair in the 80s. Most guys I knew favored the parted-in-the-middle-and-feathered-back style. Early in the decade, girls used their curling irons to dangerous extremes. Later in the decade, they just teased up their 'do to record heights. Then there was the Flock of Seagulls guy:

That's Mike Score. He's bald now. So it goes...


(4) The Blatant Disregard for Anything But Making Money
This is not the most socially redeeming feature of the decade, but it was pretty funny to watch. No one even tried to pretend they had anything resembling altruistic motives (see Gecko, Gordon).


(5) The Ties
For whatever reason, we in the 80s decided that neckties should be no more than about 2 inches across. Which isn't necessarily a bad look. Except if you take it in this direction:

In which case, it probably doesn't work. (I also never liked tying those things. I like the appearance of a wide-tie knot much better. I was either ahead of or behind my time, depending on how you look at it.)


(6) Young Mike Tyson
Before the prison term. And the ear biting. And the face tattoo. Before all of that, there was just Iron Mike. And he was fearsome, both as a boxer and as a human being. Will Smith even did a five-minute rap about him that white people loved. Mike not only beat people, he destroyed them.

I miss that Mike. He was fun to watch. As long as you weren't the poor guy he was punching in the head.

(7) 80s Malls

There are still malls, of course, but they're different now. 80s malls had their own hip aura. They were the place to be, socially. And they had Chess King. And Spencer's Gifts back before it got scary. And Orange Julius (it was required by law in the 80s that all malls must have at least one Orange Julius store.) My daughter works in a mall now and I don't enjoy going there nearly as much as I used to. Maybe because malls also lost their bookstores. I could spend hours in a mall bookstore.

(8) David Hasselhoff

The Hoff is still around, I know. But he doesn't look like this anymore:

Simply put to all of you kids out there, our Hoff was way better than your Hoff.

(9) The Commodore 64

The Commodore was my first computer. I got it for Christmas 1983. In the following five years, I amassed an impressive collection of pirated software. And I met a kid online who, weeks after my friend Kevin and I went to his house, was arrested for running some sort of credit card scam using his Commodore. Cyber crime didn't originate in 2002!

I'm including a picture of a Commodore 64 only because it makes me happy just to look at it:

(10) Having This Much Hair