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Back in the mid 80s, my Uncle Roger won a Commodore 128 in a contest. He used it for a few years before passing it on to my Uncle Jimmy. I was really close to Jimmy back then, and I would often hang out with him while he used the computer. I remember one time, he explained to me how he could connect to other computers over the phone line, which was a novel concept to me at the time. He had a huge collection of games for the computer (all technically Commodore 64 games), and occasionally I would play them - but I spent a lot more time watching him play, particularly Zork and Zork II. When Jimmy moved on to a Windows 95 machine, he passed the Commodore 128 on to me. I was really grateful for the gift, but I didn't get nearly as much use out of it as its' previous owners. I wasn't in the habit of writing on the computer yet, I didn't have a clue how to go online with it and wasn't really all that interested in figuring it out, and I had a NES and a Super NES so most of the C64 games seemed pretty simple and boring by comparison. (For some reason, I never really made a serious attempt at the Zork series; I probably should have, as they at least would have had depth equal or greater to the games I was used to by that point.) I played some of the games occasionally, but mostly the machine just sat around collecting dust until we finally boxed it up and put it in storage. Despite that, I still look back on that computer fondly.

Never leave a lady waiting for you in bed.

Explorer the Cat trying to lure The Human back into bed. It might be working, got to think about that.

Explorer the Cat is fully charged now.

You are reminding me that my dad was interested in and intimidated by personal computers. We were on our nth one, and he used to quiz us about it, so one time, mid 80s as well, the TI home system was being dumped cheap, we bought him one for Christmas, thinking it would satisfy his curiosity. It sat in his closet for a decade, then he re-gifted it to our kids, who wouldn't touch it, because by then it was lame. But it did curtail his interest. My mom had been a secretary in the days of manual typewriters; she had no interest in electric typewriters, let alone a computer. But one day, seeing her grand kids enthusiastically playing on one, she got interested, and asked them to explain. They did, then sat her down to play. "Click the mouse here, Grandma." She picked up the mouse, and tapped the base against the glass CRT. "It didn't do anything." Yes, my mom was one of those people, the "my cup holder broke off" folks. They were not stupid people, my dad spoke a couple of languages, had started at Lehigh in electrical engineering before WW II broke out and he had joined the Army Air Corp, was a sales engineer afterward, an taught a lighting segment at professional engineers training. Mom was a native Spanish speaker, moved to the US in her 20s, was a successful secretary in her non native language for years, and had a larger vocabulary in English than anyone else I've ever met. They used to do the NY Times crossword every week, and played fierce Scrabble. Something about this was a generational gap, they just didn't get it. I see some of that in myself. I am comfortable using a workstation, but a quirky interface makes me cringe inside. I can get to be more focused on, "What kind of idiot designed this?" than on getting my task done. And I am aware of security and privacy issues, because of which, I am reluctant to do some things other might take for granted. I don't like Cortana, I will never own an Alexa, I am reluctant to use Facebook, even though most of my family is on daily. I find data mining efforts that want to offer me 'tailored products' to be intrusive, shallow, and way off the mark. I am more likely to stop dealing with a company that uses them than I am to by their product. Case in point, I wanted one of Amazon's free Kindle books the other day. In the process of getting this, Amazon offered some browser insert. It appears that this had nothing to do with Kindle, nor delivery, but let them track what I browsed. Within a couple of hours, a window popped open that I had not opened. I ripped that $#!% right out. And that is a common theme, isn't it; that lack of candor about what the offered software is intended to do? Bullshit has a distinct odor, and no matter how much you try to pretty it up, it's still bullshit. But the fact that it bothers me appears to be generational. I don't get if thiose around me are resigned to their digital environment, or if they see some benefit that I don't.

Weather underground says that I should expect rain until 5:00 to 6:00 tomorrow morning, granted with out thunder. EtC is sleeping on my hip and is currently not freaking out due to the weather.

The storm has been going on for a while. EtC has calmed down a little bit but she still is hanging around next to me.

Explorer the Cat just seconds before she jumped of the bookcase and started bolting around the house.

Ah. the beauty of emergent behavior. Somewhere they must have done something to allow it to consider non-direct pathways.