1982

Daily writing prompt

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

I’ve lived without a computer before. It actually wasn’t terrible. Yes, I’m now spoiled. Personal computers have been life changing.

But jump back to 1982. I was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, an island that belongs to Japan. Commodore’s VIC 20 had us abuzz about computers. While we could easily see how it would make many things easier, shopping wasn’t yet on the menu. Nor was getting news updates. It was only toward the end of 1983 that I began learning about the concepts of ‘bulletin boards’, the Internet, and the worldwide web.

So back then, we watched television. Movies were watched via VHS tapes. That was the latest, greatest tech move for us, and such devices were still running close to $1,000. But we had one to help us weather the lack of entertainment inherent in being overseas. Remember, this was before satellite TV, too, for all practical purposes. All that stuff was just coming out, as were microwave ovens. They were also huge, bulky, expensive machines, but we purchased on of those, as well.

It’s hard to believe how fast everything changed. In late 1983, I bought my first CD player. It played one CD at a time. Returning to the U.S. from Japan, we gave our VHS player to my wife’s parents, and bought ourselves a new, smaller one with more features, including a remote control. That was the same year that I bought my first computer, a small but heavy Kaypro. Running at 4.77 megahertz, with a tiny green screen, it ran on CP/M and offered minimal RAM and two floppy drives that used 5 1/4 inch disks. It was a wild scene. We learned how to add RAM, make things faster, and double our floppy disks’ storage. Ten megahertz machines were being touted as possibilities, along with 64K of RAM and a 5-meg hard drive and 16 color monitors! Wow!

Back before that, we read. A lot. Books were checked out from the library, and research was done at the library. I subscribed to multiple magazines, such as Writer’s Digest, Autoweek, and Road & Track. Went for walks, played sports, read newspapers, which were delivered daily. When I lived in San Antonio, Texas, I subscribed to both the San Antonio Light and the Wall Street Journal. Even with the computer and VHS player coming along, and the CD player, and DVD players, most of that didn’t change. We still visited malls to shop, and used Sears and Spiegel catalogues to make orders, calling in to toll free numbers to put the order in. Board games like Risk, Life, and Monopoly were popular with us, along with Trivial Pursuit, and card games like Tripoli and King on the Corner, and Solitaire.

No, the big change came when the Internet finally fired up. My experience with it began in 1991, when I came back from Germany. Slow as hell, to be sure. Connections through modems which had to be hooked up. LOL. That changed fast, too, as built-in modems came along. I was both a Compuserve and AOL subscriber. Email was a new, exciting idea.

Then, suddenly we went to 256 colors and beyond on our monitors. The mouse became popular. 100 megahertz machines were being sold. I remembered buying and installing a 100-meg hard drive, and laughing. How was I ever going to use that much storage? It seemed so excessive. By then, our floppy drives were down to three-inch little colorful things. Now, we’re like, floppy drive? What the heck is that?

Going online was a wild scene back in the mid 1990s. Weren’t many websites in those early days. The games were something else. Research, news, and sports all became much more accessible. Then, boom…social media. That’s when things really flipped.

I’ve gone a few days in 2025 without my computer and without the Internet. Like before, we read, played games, and went for walks.

Just like it was 1982, just forty years ago, when I was younger, and so was the personal computer.

October 2, 2025 9

Multiple Dreams

I had multiple dreams last night. Most remain in pieces in my mind like debris after a storm. The essences:

I was plotting a murder and intent on carrying it out. I don’t know who I was killing or my motive.
A cat was the size of an American nickel. A happy little animal, he was kept in a jar. I watched over him, ensuring he wasn’t lost or injured, and played with him.
The third dream found me playing a game that may have been a show on television. I was winning by answering questions and advancing through levels. It seemed to combine physical prowess and the ability to answer questions.

Not much further information is available on the murder dream. Awakening and thinking about it, I attribute it more to my writing muses than an intention to kill another person. I’m always thinking about escaping, surviving, killing, investigating, flying, traveling, exploring, and robbing places. They’re exercises for my imagination, IMO.

The cat dream was a simple anxiety dream. Quinn hasn’t been well. His breathing bothered us. We’d endured a summer of wildfire smoke and hazardous air, so I put his breathing problems down to that. We’d been keeping him inside and addressing his breathing issues. When he didn’t improve after the air improved, I thought I’d take him in for an antibiotic shot.

But the vet found a lump on Quinn’s neck, so we’re going through the challenge of treating him, keeping him hydrated, and feeding him. We’re not certain of his issue, yet. Never a large cat, he dropped two pounds and now weighs just five. He’s mostly perky, though, but not eating and drinking enough on his own. I take comfort and hope in signs like him rubbing up against me, jumping on my lap, stretching, trying to claw furniture, and yawning.

Meanwhile, I’m going through the process of letting him go. I’ve endured this with other pets, so I understand some of the emotional, physical, and intellectual dynamics. It’s always different, of course, and it’s never easy.

I enjoyed the game show dream. First, you’d press a button to start the big wheel spinning, and press the button again to stop it. The big wheel had activities and numbers. If it landed on the activity, you did it. Doing the activity, such as twenty push-ups, authorized you to rob a competitor by taking a token or moving them back by a spin on the punishing wheel.

If the big wheel landed on a number, that was the number of spaces you’d move. Climbing, crawling, jumping, and swinging on ropes were required to move along squares. After moving forward and stopping on a square, you were asked a question. Fall to answer it correctly — it was timed, but you had three chances — meant you faced the punishment wheel.

Come to think of it, there was a television audience cheering us on. Writing about it today prompts comparisons to an updated game of Life combined with Trival Pursuit, which sums up my writing life, I think.

Spinning wheels, killing time, chasing trivia, and hoping to advance, it’s a writer’s life.

September 13, 2018 2

Pocket Change

Some loose thoughts rattling around in my mind’s pocket.

Trivial Pursuit was released on this day in 1979. My wife and I love the game. We eat at Brothers, where old cards are on the table so we can ask and answer the questions. Trivial Pursuit replaced Risk as my preferred game. My friends and I used to have monstrous Risk parties when I was stationed at Kadena AB. Empire became my favorite computer. It ruled for a few years during my Germany tour.
The Risk and Empire parties always featured beer, wine and cigars. Risk was an iffier proposition where beer was considered. We were on Okinawa. This was the early 1980s. There weren’t many great beer offerings. My friends drank Miller Lite. Gads. I was always searching for something. We didn’t have this problem in Germany, where plenty of decent beers of all preferences were available.
I was a great cigar smoker back in those days. Churchills were favorites but I liked Madura wraps.
My beer group met last night. We collect money from our weekly meetings to donate to local STEM efforts. Last night, two representatives from Southern Oregon Area Robotics came and collected $500 from us and give us an update about their progress, victories, plans and losses. This money helps them with material and transportation costs as they compete in robot competition.
One of the SOAR students last night is graduating high school this year and will be attending design schools. She loves designing cars. I love car designs and my friends do not, so it was terrific to discuss the Ferrari J50, BMW i8 and other designs with her.

You always need to figure out how they like it. Maybe it’s just me, as a buddy at Onizuka Air Station used to say, but cats don’t all like to be petted the same way. Tucker enjoys a good belly stroke but you must first follow certain protocols to be permitted belly access. Deviations can be dangerous. Whereas DO NOT TOUCH BOO ON THE BELLY. I repeat, DO NOT TOUCH BOO ON THE BELLY. Don’t attempt to scratch his chin, either. We don’t know what happened in Boo’s past life, but he’s tremendously leery of being touched and he will attack you without any warning, so I’m warning you. Yet, someone will always try.
Quinn, on the other hand, is a little love bug, throwing himself down at your feet, visiting with strangers on the street, whatever. He’s a happy little loving cat.
A decent dark beer remains absent from our beer offerings where we meet each week. The porter on hand has a cream soda flavor that we detest. Enduring wasn’t a problem, as we imbibed the most excellent Ashland Amber Ale from Caldera and Ninkasi Tricerahops DIPA. As always, the conversation was interesting and the time was gone as fast as the beer.

December 15, 2016 8

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