Having the Atari 2600 back in my life has been a game changer

 

It felt like they were several years late to the party, but in 2023, Atari released an updated version of the 2600 system that revolutionized home video gaming back in the late 70s and early 80s.

The Atari 2600+ looks just like the original console that occupied so many living rooms, dens and basements 40+ years ago. And that is of course by design. Nostalgia is a big part of the way they market products like this.

I, like many others my age, purchased the 2600+ based solely on fond memories of playing the original when I was a kid. I didn't have to test it out to know whether it would be worth it.

I just knew I had to have one.

The new 2600+ makes a few necessary concessions to the modern world of home entertainment. Rather than having the old-fashioned "Game/TV" switcher box on the back of your television, for example, you just connect it to your flatscreen with a standard HDMI cable.

As you might suspect, it looks beautiful on a 65-inch high-def TV.

In terms of power, it doesn't come with anything you can plug into the wall. Instead you're given a USB cable, and it's assumed you have a wall plate or something similar into which you can plug the cable to draw electricity.

But the rest of it is essentially the same as it was when I got my first Atari 2600 for Christmas 1980. It has the same switches on the console, the same joystick and paddle controllers (the paddles had to be purchased separately), and the same cartridge slot, though this one accepts both 2600 and Atari 7800 games.

Actually, the cartridge experience itself is a bit different from what it used to be. The system comes with 10 original Atari 2600 games, but rather than giving you 10 different cartridges, they put everything onto one cartridge. You then access the different games by setting a series of DIP switches on the cartridge case.

It's a little clumsy, but it works. (Original cartridges from the early 80s still work on it, as well. I just bought a set of eight old-school Activision games like Freeway and Kaboom off of eBay and have been having a ball with those.)

One of the first things I did when I set up the system was to engage my son Jack in various games of Combat. Combat was the cartridge that came with most Atari 2600s back in the day, and it is extremely primitive by any modern video gaming standard.

Still, while the graphics and sound are sometimes awkward, there's no denying that Combat (like so many Atari games) is fun. Jack and I engaged in a few tank-to-tank battles, then we switched to controlling little airplanes that flew in and out of blocky, pixelated onscreen "clouds" while we tried to shoot each other out of the sky.

We had a blast. It was especially great playing with Jack, a typical 19-year-old XBox gamer for whom advanced gameplay and design are just expected. If he can enjoy Atari games that are nearly half a century old, anyone can.

Among the games I've been playing a lot myself are Adventure, Missile Command, Yar's Revenge, RealSports Baseball, and Breakout. All are testaments to the talents of old school Atari programmers who were challenged with making fun cartridges within the rigid confines of a low-power system like the 2600.

My skills aren't what they used to be, given how long it has been since I first played these games and the fact that maybe my reflexes aren't (and never can be) what they once were.

But that doesn't matter. Having an Atari again, so many years later, is a wonderful experience. Win or lose, I'm loving everything about it.

Some things are universally fun, regardless of the era in which they originated.

I'm thinking of taking up a new hobby: Napping

From early December through mid-February, I worked five days a week from home while my company's headquarters building underwent some long-overdue renovations.

I wrote here about the ups and downs of that experience. For me, someone who normally goes into the office every day regardless of company policy, it was mostly about the downs. I generally found myself too distracted to be as productive as I am when in the office.

But there was one thing I did enjoy about working from my upstairs office every day, and that was the opportunity to take 10- or 15 minute power naps.

I haven't been much of a napper since I was 3 years old, but I've come to appreciate the value of an occasional mid-afternoon snooze.

More than once during my extended work-from-home experience, I would walk away from my laptop and go straight into our spare room, where I would lay down on the bed and catch a little shuteye.

Invariably I would wake up refreshed and go right back to working, feeling much better for having grabbed those 40 winks.

I don't generally get enough sleep in the first place, especially on days when I go to the gym. If I get more than 7 hours in a given night, that's a rare treat.

The result is occasional mid-day fatigue that is best remedied with a nap.

The problem is that I don't usually want to nap, even when my body needs it. Being a task-driven, goal-oriented individual, I'm more about getting things done than I am about sleeping. Given the choice, I would rather knock something off my to-do list than nap.

But sometimes the temptation is too great, and like I said, I now understand the pleasures of a quick 2pm doze to energize myself for the rest of the work day.

Now that I'm back in the office full time, though, it simply doesn't happen like it did before. At least not on weekdays.

Thus, I'm going to make playing the saxophone and napping my official weekend hobbies.

Eventually I hope to get good enough to do both at the same time.

Yes, Ring camera, I know there's a person at my back door because it's me...again

Do you have one of those Ring doorbell camera thingies? The ones that show you who's at your door or walking up your driveway?

Or, depending on how you have it set and the direction it's pointing, when a squirrel runs by or a bee lands on a flower 100 yards away?

We just got a Ring last month. Actually we've had it for quite a while, but it was only recently that my daughter Elissa and her boyfriend Mark came over and installed it for us.

It's not that the Ring is especially difficult to set up, but there was some mechanical work involved, and well...as we've established, it's better if you don't give me tools of any kind.

It helps, too, that Mark is very mechanically inclined. I wasn't there when he got the Ring doorbells mounted outside our front and back doors, but he probably did it in less time than it would have taken me to pull everything out of the package.

He also cooks well and is generous with his time when it comes to helping others. It's disgusting.

Anyway, the Ring has worked out fine, but at first it was more of an annoyance than anything else. It's designed to detect motion and to tell you when a person is approaching your home or a package has been dropped on your porch.

Which sounds great except for the fact that, 99% of the time, the people approaching (or leaving) our house are us.

For days after the Rings went up, this sequence repeated itself:

I would walk out the door, my Apple Watch would vibrate, and I would immediately look at it, only to find a small photo of myself with a notification reading, "There is a Person at your Back Door."

YES, I KNOW, THAT PERSON IS ME.

If I was headed to, say, our mailbox, my watch would again vibrate seconds later. And I would again check it, forgetting that it was going to be another Ring notification, this one telling me, "There is a Person at your Front Door" as I came into range of the front camera.

This has happened over and over, and I have yet to try and figure out how to change the motion sensitivity of the cameras. Eventually I might just turn off the notifications altogether.

Which largely defeats the purpose of having a Ring camera.

But at least I will maintain my sanity.

ATTENTION POTENTIAL INTRUDERS: Yes, there's a Ring camera there, but trust me: I'm not checking it. You're free to enter our home as you please. And don't hesitate to rip the Ring camera off the door frame and take it with you.

Having the "mean" teacher can sometimes be the best thing

 

The woman pictured above is Ruth Schwarzenberg, my teacher for both 2nd and 6th grades at Mapledale Elementary School.

Having a teacher twice in the elementary grades is probably not uncommon. But having the same teacher four years apart (especially after those highly transformative years between 2nd and 6th grade) likely is.

The first time I had Mrs. Schwarzenberg in 2nd grade was, quite frankly, a jarring experience. To that point, my school teachers had been easygoing women, both of whom were commonly described as "nice." Mrs. Janes (kindergarten) and Mrs. Lucci (1st grade) were big reasons why I had really grown to love school.

But then I got to 2nd grade with Mrs. Schwarzenberg, and let me tell you, the days of sunshine and roses ended in a hurry. Most kids described her as "mean," though in retrospect, she was really just strict.

And by that point (again, in retrospect), I needed a good dose of strict. I was used to getting top grades and being a high achiever, but somewhere along the way, you have to realize that you're not going to get rewarded and praised for absolutely everything.

And you have to be pushed to be even better.

Mrs. Schwarzenberg did that for me, but I didn't know how to deal with her at the time. I was honestly afraid of her, and it was a relief when I got sick and could stay home from school from time to time.

It was only later that I came to realize how much I learned in 2nd grade, and how much I gained in maturity that year. I would never have credited Mrs. Schwarzenberg with any of that, though now I do.

When I had her again in 6th grade, our relationship had changed. It felt like she wasn't as strict with us that year, but now I realize she probably was (maybe even more so). The difference was that I was older, at least a tad wiser, and much better positioned to engage with and learn from her.

For years I would tell people that Mrs. Schwarzenberg was better suited teaching older kids than younger ones, but now I think she was probably equally effective with both. I just hadn't encountered anything like her as a 7- and 8-year-old second-grader, and it took time to adjust.

You can only be the A+, never-get-in-trouble Golden Child for so long. Like I said, at some point, you need someone to push you to the next level.

And boy, did Mrs. Schwarzenberg push.

She passed away in 2012. The last time I talked with her was probably in 1988, my senior year of high school, when I performed with our jazz band for Wickliffe Elementary School students and she was still there teaching. I can't remember what I said to her, but I hope I thanked her for everything she had done for me.

Even at age 18 I realized the positive influence the "mean" teacher can have.

My family refers to me as the Noo Noo...and I'm not sure it's a compliment

(NOTE: This post originally appeared here on the blog nine years ago on February 12, 2016. I remain the family Noo Noo.)

I know a lot of people are weirded out by the Teletubbies, the British kids TV show starring Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po. And rightly so. They're creepy, no doubt about that. They're meant to be innocent and fun, but whoever created them was clearly under the influence of a substance of questionable legality.

One of the minor characters on the Teletubbies is a little thing called Noo Noo. Or "The" Noo Noo. I'm not sure which. And I do mean "thing," by the way, because that's what Noo Noo is. It's a little living vacuum cleaner that goes around cleaning up messes. The Teletubbies at least speak, even though it's gibberish. Noo Noo just rolls around making sucking and slurping noises.

Noo Noo's sole purpose in life is to clean, but he/she/it sometimes takes things too far, as in this video:

This, I freely admit, is me. I am Noo Noo, and Noo Noo is me. When I am home, I take it on myself to clean up anything and everything: Stuff on the floor, the dishes, various messes, etc.

I will also freely admit that sometimes I clean up stuff that is not at all intended to be cleaned up.

Like, for example, there will be a glass of water on the kitchen table, and my instinct is to remove it before one of the cats knocks it over. But the person who owns the glass of water has just stepped out of the room and their cold beverage has been dumped in the sink and the glass deposited in the dishwasher. All in the space of 17 seconds while they were gone.

My bad.

On Christmas morning, I have one primary job: I walk around with a garbage bag and collect all wrapping paper, discarded bows, tissue, packaging, etc. If you don't proactively give me the paper you tear off a gift, I will come over to you and snatch it. THERE WILL BE NO MESSES ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO MESSES!

I don't mean to annoy anyone, but I really, really prefer having a clean house whenever I can. It makes me happier. And if you're someone whose mess-making detracts from the cleanliness of the house, I will rectify the situation post-haste.

Compare me to a Teletubbies character if you must. I proudly wear the Noo Noo badge.`

For someone who grew up in a family of card players, I don't play a lot of card games

Image downloaded from Wikipedia. By J Wynia from Minneapolis, United States - Afternoon cribbage on the patio., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102255562

When I was a kid, any time we held a Tennant family reunion, my dad would inevitably end up at a table with some combination of his brothers (he had a bunch of them) playing a game called Oh Hell.

Oh Hell was/is one of the large genre of trick-taking card games in which you look at your hand and decide how many "tricks" you can take based on the strength of your cards. In that sense, I think it's a lot like Euchre or Whist.

I never understand the game when I was little, but even I could see how much fun the brothers would have playing, talking, making fun of one another, and generally enjoying each other's company.

When he wasn't playing Oh Hell, my dad would sit in our kitchen for hours on end playing solitaire. As I've mentioned before, the sound of Dad shuffling the cards on a Saturday morning was in some ways the soundtrack of my youth.

It's not that I dislike card games – far from it – but I don't think I got the card playing gene. I'm not a poker guy, and I've never once played any sort of card-based table game in a casino.

We do play cribbage in our family, though, which I like a lot. I don't win all that often, but it's fun. If you don't know cribbage, it's the game pictured in the image at the top of today's post.

When my kids were little, I also played a lot of War and Go Fish with them.

And that's about it. I never learned Gin Rummy, Pinochle, Bridge, Hearts, Spades or any of the countless other games of which Americans (particularly of my generation and before) seem to be so fond. Or if I did learn any of them, I don't remember.

I have a feeling card games may eventually go the way of the horse and buggy, or at least "manual" card games will. Digital versions are likely to live on on our phones and other devices.

But even I (a playing card dabbler at best) know there's no cyber equivalent of a freshly opened pack of cards dealt around a table of friends and family intent on beating one another...and loving one another just the same.

Here's what I will tell you about my wife after 39 years of being together

For the record, those are shadows behind my head. I did not in fact have a mullet for our wedding. Or any time before or since.

Some years ago, I remember being in our kitchen with Terry and an older woman who was at our house for some sort of business reason. Maybe something to do with insurance? Or a mortgage refinance? I can't recall, but I know she was there because we had to sign some papers.

Anyway, at one point, this woman said to me, "Your wife has left the room twice, and both times when she came back, your eyes lit up. When she talks, you look right at her. I thought that was lovely."

I didn't realize I did either of those things, but I suppose she was right. The fact is, I really, really like being around Mrs. Terry Tennant. I always have.

Well, since 1986, anyway. That's when we first started dating.

When you're in a relationship that's pushing four decades (or five, six, seven or more), you don't spend every day telling the other person how wonderful they are. It's just kind of understood.

Truth be told, our days are spent laughing and making fun of each other more than anything else. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And that's all you need to know. I could go on and on here telling you all of the great things about Terry, but that's enough right there. I love that she's there when I wake up in the morning and there when I go to bed at night.

And all of the in between, of course.

It's a bonus that she tolerates me.

Happy Valentine's Day to Terry T., and to everyone out there who is blessed to have a Someone in their lives.

Whether or not we feel we deserve it.