Well, Last weekend was certainly interesting.
Probably the least interesting bit was going to lunch with Dad on Sunday. We wandered down Mission street and ended up getting pizza. It was kind of odd, since Dad doesn't really like pizza. Still, he said he hadn't had it for a while, so we had pizza.
On the way back, we stopped for ice cream. Dad got New York blueberry cheesecake on a regular cone, another departure from the norm. Usually, he goes for Strawberry. (Hmmm... note to self: Take Dad to Nation's for a strawberry tart one of these days.) Anyway, as we were heading back to the Jewish home, I realized that he couldn't bring it into the building -- it was passover and outside bread and grain products were strictly verboten.
So he ate the ice cream and we dumped the cone in a garbage bag in the car, along with the sandwich I had picked up for Rachel. I, meanwhile, had had a Kona coffee milkshake, but I think the milk had started to turn, as it had a bit of that sour tang that milk gets on its way to yogurt (a hungarian (iirc) word for "sour milk".)
Other interesting bits of the weekend: I picked up an Outbound Laptop from one of the guys down in the valley. I dropped off an HP 86b, but that was hardly a fair trade since the Outbound is so much cooler. Still, he didn't seem to mind the difference.
Rachel and I also stopped at Fry's looking for hard drives (13GB Maxtor for $109!) and Mac-compatible printers. The only ones we found of the latter were Epsons, which is what we were having so much trouble with to begin with. So we passed, although we did look at a new Mac for Rachel. She decided she would rather make do with what she has and put the money into the house, but she will have a new one by her birthday or I'm not the most conceited person on the planet.
We also picked up an Atari Mega ST 4 earlier in the afternoon. It wasn't really my cup of tea, but I figured someone in ABACUS would want it. It also has one of the early PC Emulators, which is actually quite interesting.
We also got out to see Fantasia 2000, finally. We took Cassie and Dad downtown to the Metreon to see it on the Imax screen -- the only way to see it, if you ask me. We got there a little late, so I ended up having to hold Cassie on my lap in order to be next to Dad, but that was okay. Everyone agreed that it was an excellent experience. Rachel actually picked up the soundtrack at Fry's, she liked it so much.
Friday night, Cassie said that she had a little cough, so Gemma said she shouldn't go swimming. So we went to Castle Golf and Games to play some video games. Cassie didn't do very good at the Skeeball, simply because she wasn't strong enough to get the balls all the way up the ramp and into a scoring hole, but we told her the tickets coming out of the machine next to her were hers. She asked about the few on her left, at the end of the row, and we told her those were bonus tickets for her. She was pretty smart to figure out that the ones on the end ought to be for the last machine, meaning that the ones we claimed were hers really weren't, but she's also only 5, so she accepted our explanation.
After playing Skeeball for a while, we found a game called Wheel of Fortune (after the TV show) where you rolled a token down a tube to stop a spinning wheel (actually, a series of sequentially lit lights behind a translucent display.) Prizes ranged from 0 tickets to around 12 tickets, but if you hit the letter space, you got 50 tickets and you filled in a letter towards the word jackpot. If you got all the letters of the word lit, you got extra tickets.
In any case, Cassie was doing extremely well, racking up an awful lot of tickets. This, of course, boosted her confidence and made her feel good, something she really needs right now -- they're being kicked out of their Sunset rental house because the landlord's brother is going to move in. Of course, that's why the previous two tenants had to move out as well...
So Cassie ended up with 1429 tickets at the end of the evening. She was able to get a small pool table and a some bubbles with a pink bear that says "Bonk" when you pop a bubble with its head. She was, needless to say, quite happy. And it only cost us $40.
Speaking of Cassie, on the way back from the South bay, we stopped at not one, but two Targets to pick up Easter candy and toys. We spent about $100 on baskets for Cassie and Jake. We got some other stuff as well, but mostly it was stuff for the kids. And they're not even ours. Go figure.
Anyway, the big happening of the weekend was the film session. I am going to be famous. Or rather, more famous than I already am. I was contacted by the producers of a local technology show, Digital West, about appearing on their show in regards to my computer collection.
So the film crew showed up at about 10:30am. There was Sean, the Associate Producer and Host; Lila, who seemed to be the director; Fawn, who handled the camera; and Steve who did the sound and seemed to take care of the technical side of things. We started off by looking around the house, and they decided to start the shooting in the attic.
I have to say I was glad that Rachel and I (well, mostly Rachel) had spent several hours the night before cleaning and clearing the attic as best we could. The first bit was to be a shot of the computers in my storage room, with Sean and myself then walking past the camera into the room and talking about the collection. We did that a few times, then they filmed me "working" in front of the computer. Actually, it was mostly just me moving the mouse around, opening and closing some windows, and typing meaningless sentences into an editor.
After that, they got some footage of the rat's nest of wires that adorns the stairs leading upstairs, and we went down to the living room. The night before, Rachel and I had set up the two folding tables I had picked up for the poker game a couple of weeks ago and put out a smattering of computers from my collection. They were:
In addition, Rachel scattered some of my classic computer related books in with the computers. We also snuck in a couple of Donald Ducks -- A tall one on the floor by the entertainment center and her favorite little rubber one on the the STM PC. Sean thought it would be great to have some more ducks around, so Rachel brought down a few of the latest acquisitions and put them on top of the entertainment center.
Oh, and two of the crew commented on the nice floors, which made Rachel happy.
Anyway, downstairs, they filmed the computers on their own, then filmed Sean and me entering the room and walking around talking about the various computers. We started with the STM PC, then went to the Model 100. After that, we went to the other table and talked about the Nixdorf and the Atari, and ended up in front of the Osborne.
I talked about how the Model 100 was the ancestor of the Palm Pilot, and how it is still heavily sought after by journalists, and how I used it to take notes last semester. I told Sean how I still use the Portfolio to keep track of christmas gifts at the end of the year. And I told him yes, that the Osborne could indeed be used to connect to the internet.
At one point, Lila started putting make-up on Sean, and I was worried that I might have to wear some. Luckily, my natural beauty shone through on camera, and I escaped unscathed.
After all was said and done, Sean asked about the one hour parking on the street in front of the house. It turned out that they were heading south to do some more filming, and didn't want to take three cars. We told them to go ahead and put the other two in the backyard.
It was a fun experience overall. I would, of course, gladly do it again. I just wish my Dad could have been there too. Still, he'll get to see it on Friday, April 28 at 9pm and Sunday, April 30 at 5:30pm. I'll be taping it as well, of course.
The other thing that happened this weekend was that Mike and company finished hooking up the electricity in the living room (after the filming, of course) and putting in the stairs in my new office. That's pretty exciting as well -- I'm looking forward to moving in there.
In addition to better power and an actual (well, sort of an actual) server closet, it's a chance to reorganize and re-evaluate my office set-up. A time to clear out the old, the unused, the unneeded. A time of renewal, if you will. A fresh start.
Hmmm... I think that that narrative is a little convoluted, temporally, so I'll recap, in order of occurence (in realtime, not narrative.) First was the cleaning of the attic, followed the next morning by the TV show filming. Then we went to see Fantasia that afternoon, while Mike and George and Co. hooked up the power and worked on my new office.
That evening, we took Cassie out, followed the next day by our excursion to the south bay. We hit the teacher store, the thrift shop, picked up the Atari, picked up the Outbound, went to Fry's, had dinner at CoCo's, and went to Target for easter baskets. Sunday was spent sleeping in, followed by lunch with Dad. Sunday evening was spent checking out Digital West, the show I'm going to be on, and going to GrilleyVille to bring over the easter baskets.
A full weekend indeed.