2 Jun
1997
2 Jun
'97
3:08 p.m.
On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, Paul E Coad wrote:
> It was me. My wife still thinks I am the only one who collects this kind
> of junk. She goes along with it because it is not very expensive and
> she gets to play games on some of the machines. (I think that she has
> logged more time on our vectrex than I have.)
Nope. There have to be more than a few out there. A few months to a
year ago I would see stuff at thrift shops and think about whether I
wanted it for a week or two before going back for it. Now it's gone
the next day. To tell you the truth, I think it's Kai running around
with his GPS tracking down 30 thrift stores in a weekend ;)
So far my wife has been supportive, but I've had
to come up with some
pretty clever white lies and quick thinking lately to explain away my
occasional ATM withdrawals (we're supposed to be saving money, and its
hard to explain to a woman that saving computers transcends the silly
concept of saving money).
I actually put $60 per month into my budget for old computers. I have
to because it would be far to easy to spend $200 a month!
The worst she has done is threatened to get a
public storage facility, which I am against because it would only cost
more money (money that can be spent saving more computers) and would mean
I'd have to go somewhere else to play with my machines. Plus they'd get
lonely. I'm having space problems myself. I built a 4 level, 5'x4'
shelf but it got used up right away. Now I'm going to build another
shelf along another wall in my garage which should tide me over for, oh,
maybe a month or two at the rate I'm going. I'm thinking about building
a nice storage shed in the back, complete with electrical outlets,
workbench and insulation to keep the babies nice and cozy.
Try this: For the last 8 months I've been living between here in the
Seattle area and Central California with no actual place of my own.
My computers have been in storage or in my car, or in my parents'
garage, friends' closets... What it comes down to is that I haven't
really had access to most of my computers for almost a year. I'll
actually have my own place again next week and it will have an unused
room. A big room. A room where I can hide my social problem from the
rest of the world ;).
One of my favorite computer stories: A couple years ago I was having
a party at my apartment with a bunch of my friends. One of them who
had not been over before asked where the bathroom was. I told him
back door on the right. A moment later from the back of the hall we
hear him yell, "Good God! You're a geek!". Funny enough, but everyone
else simultaneously yelled, "Wrong door!" in response.
Bill
----------------------------------------------------
Bill Whitson - Classic Computers ListOp
bill(a)booster.u.washinton.edu or bcw(a)u.washington.edu
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~bcw