Sloe Times

I happened to be cleaning my office (or as my wife refers to it, the guest bedroom where I keep my computers) to spruce it up a bit before her friend comes to visit this weekend. Normally this type of activity is done at gunpoint, this time was no exception. The problem is that it's not that I'm a messy person from my perspective, it's just that the things I need "ready" access to start to sprawl as that list gets longer. Eventually there's only this pathway to show the carpet on the floor and it's generally considered a hazerdous work zone for anyone but me.

Anyway, so here I am cleaning up my office. I've been at it for four hours and I'm finally done. Or at least done to the standards required for guests. Anyway, while I was doing this cleaning I happened to notice that my file drawer has papers in it that are arguably as old as I am and honestly there's really no good reason why I still have some (all?) of them. Let's take an inventory shall we?

Manuals to household equipment (TVs, stereos, etc) that I no longer own. Ok, so that one is a no brainer, but the garbage is full so they'll sit until I have a "clean out the file cabinet day."

Dragon Magazine, Issue #80. Oh, now here is some fine history. This issue was published in December of 1983. It featured lots of things, but for the budding young computerist that I was, it also featured a AD&D character generater written in BASIC. Well, it published the program listing, you had to type it in without errors and save it to cassette tape (TRS-80 color computer 3 at the time). What fun what fun. How could I ever throw this away?

Speaking of AD&D the next folder contains old character sheets and laminated hex and grid paper for mapping. Can't have a real game without proper supplies. Never mind that most of the stuff dates back to first edition AD&D and the game has recently published the 3.5e rules which may as well be a different game if you try to compare the two.

Moving on, we have "The World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting." Hmm, more 1st Ed. AD&D stuff. Next.

Ahhh, "The Rules of Warfare" a quick and dirty rule book for playing Battletech that I put together for playing at gaming conventions. Too bad those rules have changed in the last 15 years as well.

Maps to the computer game "Wizardry" (Moved up to the Tandy 1000 which was an 8088 with 2 5.25" floppy drives by this point). Did you know that if you cut a divot in the other side of the floppy disk you could flip it over and have double the storage?

Maps and a guide to playing Baulder's Gate. At least this one is within 10 years but probably greater than 4 years old.

A strategy guide to playing Masters of Orion 2. Hmm, somewhere on floppys (3.5") I have the original MOO. Probably in a different drawer desperatly needing some attention.

This next one requires a little background. Back in the before time (that would be the time before the greater population knew anything about the Internet), BBSs were all the rage. A buddy (in the virtual sense) ran a BBS on his Atari ST and it had what I would call the "All Time Greatest Door Game" named "Space Empire Elite" or SEE for short. This had to be around the early to mid 80s. Anyway the point of the game was to trade, occupy, and conquer. Not only your local galaxy on the BBS but using FidoNET other galaxies on other BBSs. Ah, the good old days. If you're as nostalgic as me, I believe someone has written a clone for the web called Black Nova Traders. They've done some things to it that I don't like (I'm a traditionalist when it comes to some things) but there it is.

Last file worth mentioning tonight. So it's getting on to the late 80s and anybody who is anybody is on the Internet. Not like those posers on The Well or CompuSERV, the real deal, pre World Wide Web. I'm talking WAIS, gopher, and MUDs baby. Writing C code to extend and mutilate the TinyMUD server, writing pseudo C code to build dungeons and play environments for other players to explore. Too damn much effort and things just were not stable enough (giant resource hogs on machines that my p3 1Ghz system in the corner could crush without computing too hard) so lo and behold there's MUSH. MUSHes (Multi-User Shared Hallucinations) were a nice change of pace because they used a LISP like programing language for building and some clever hackery within the framework that didn't require much of any tinkering with the source code. Life is good. So in my drawer is the complete printout of all of the MUSH commands for version 2.2.1 (I think) and also the "MUSH Manual" written by Lydia Leong back in 1995.

How can you possibly get rid of such rich history? I am not a pack rat, I'm an archivist. :)

posted by Andres Silva  # 1/06/2005 03:26:00 AM