My first hard drive was for my Atari Mega 2 ST. It was a whopping 10MB (megs! not gigs!) in size. It cost a stupid amount of money back then, too.

It occured to me, today, that even if I had a modest sized USB key of 1GB, I could put an Atari ST emulator on it and a bunch of games and applications and it would still be bigger than anything I had when I had my Atari working. For what? $9.99? Somewhere around there?

That’s the beauty of technology. What would be nifty would be a way of booting an Atari (or Amiga or whatever) from a key straight into an emulator. The bad thing is that, for the most part, you’d need Windows. That wouldn’t fit on a 1GB stick very well. Maybe you could do it with a bootable Linux distro but I’m not sure how much space they take up.

But booting up off a USB key and having a menu of which computer you’d like to use? That would be pretty cool.

   There was a long period of time in my life when I was a computer hardware repairman.  I started as a simple printer repairman and worked my way up.

     Along the way up that ladder I encountered many strange people who had many strange problems, some of which were computer related.  I sometimes pull out these stories while sitting around the fire on cold winter nights to amuse the children. 

     The anecdotes you are about to read are all true.  I know they’re true because they happened to me and now, for the first time, I will document them on my blog.

     Gather around now and listen to…

Tales of the Computer Hardware Repairman

     During my time of being a printer repairman I was going to begin work on a new (yes, new) dot matrix printer.  The first thing I had to do was remove the power supply.

     I touched the screwdriver to the screw and sparks flew, a loud bang was heard, and the lights went out.  My boss stormed into the work room demanding to know what happened.  I explained that I touched a screw with a screwdriver.  He looked at the printer and saw that it was still plugged in; a stupid mistake on my part, to be sure.

     After yelling at me and flipping the circuit breaker (or possibly changing the fuse) he came back and loudly explained that one has to be very careful when working with electricity and power supplies.  One must always make sure a unit is not plugged in before working on it.  He grabbed the screwdriver from me so he could properly remove the power supply.

     He touched the screwdriver to the screw and sparks flew everywhere, a loud bang was heard, and the lights went out.  The tip of the screwdriver was also melted.  My boss had forgotten to check to make sure the printer was unplugged.

     The woman explained that when she tried to print the printer would feed in part way and then jam.  She showed me; it did jam.  I got down on the floor and opened up the lid and pulled the paper out and started digging around to see if I could find the problem. 

     “By the way,” I said, “Did you ever find your other earring?”

     She looked at me oddly because, at this point, she had never seen me before.  “What?” she asked.

     “You lost an earring.  Gold with a pearl?”

     She just looked at me.  I could tell she was trying to figure out when she had told me even though she knew she couldn’t have.  Perhaps she thought I was psychic.  I lifted my hand and showed her the gold earring with a pearl I had pulled out from between the broken transfer wires.

     She was overjoyed; a working printer and a recovered earring.

     When I arrived I looked at the keyboard.  It looked fine.  I picked it up from the desk, keeping it horizontal. 

     I looked at the woman who made the call.  She was very pretty; nearly model material.  She had a big blog of cream cheese on her cheek and she was unaware of it.  “Did you get any coffee in here?” I asked.  It wouldn’t have mattered if she did or not because everyone got the same level of service from me regardless of what happened.

     “No,” she said.  “It just stopped working.” 

     I tilted the keyboard so I could wrap the cord around it and about half a cup of coffee came pouring out of it and onto the carpet.

     “Maybe I spilled a little bit in there,” she said sheepishly.

     I did not tell her about the cream cheese on her cheek because she was untruthful to me.

     I stood at the edge of the man’s cubicle, my boss behind me.  The man gestured at his wildly flickering monitor and explained that sometimes it did that and sometimes it didn’t.  Sometimes it flickered badly, and sometimes it was not so bad.

     Without moving I asked the man to turn off the little fan he had sitting on top of the monitor.

     “Sure,” he said.  He turned the fan off.  “Hey!” he exclaimed, “It’s working again!” 

     I took the time to explain that the magnet in the fan messed up the electronics in the monitor.  The faster the fan was set to, the worse the flickering would be.

     The man was happy; my boss was pleased.

     The woman who entered the call gestured to her monitor and said, “See how it flickers?”

     I looked at the monitor.  It wasn’t flickering.

     I looked at her.  “Um, no?” I said.

     She pointed at the monitor.  “You don’t see that flickering?” she demanded.

     I looked at the monitor again.  It looked fine.  I began to wonder if she was just very sensitive to the fluorescent lights.  I wondered how I was going to get out of this one.

     I looked at the woman and was about to mention the inherent flickering of fluorescent lighting and how she just might be really sensitive to it when I noticed she was chewing gum.

     “Could you stop chewing your gum for a moment,” I asked her.  She gave me a reproaching look, wondering why I would be that bold.  But she did stop.  I said, “Now look at your monitor and tell me what you see.”

     She turned to the monitor and said, “Hey! It’s not flickering anymore!”

     I tried to bump up the refresh rate on the monitor but it was already as high as it would go.  I explained to her that her jaw movements were in sync with the refresh rate of the monitor and that’s why it was flickering.

     I arrived at the desk expecting to clean the ball and rollers.  I tried out the mouse; it worked fine.

     “Ugh,” she said.  “It never works for me.

     “Well, show me how it doesn’t work for you.” I said cheerily.

     She furiously tapped the right mouse button with her index finger.  The mouse pointer drunkenly travelled to the right.  Then she furiously tapped the left mouse button with her index finger and the mouse pointer drifted erratically to the left.  “See?” she asked.

     For a fleeting moment I thought about the story of the person who had thought a mouse was supposed to work as a foot pedal (yes, that story is that old).

     I patiently, and kindly, explained to her how to use the mouse and she was satisfied.

     I arrived at the trouble spot.  A trader greeted me by complaining about how loud his computer was and that he was afraid the hard drive was going to crash.

     Getting close to the computer I listened for any unusual loudness and, perhaps, some weird hard drive grinding.  I heard nothing unusual.

     “I came in early today to get some work done,” he agitatedly explained.  “Now, I can’t do anything because my computer is really loud and you’re telling me it’s fine.  It never sounded like this before!”  He was angry.

     It was early.  Early enough that the floor was fairly empty and the usual trading floor hubbub  hadn’t started up yet.

     “What time do you normally come in?” I asked. 

     He had no idea why I asked that.  He probably didn’t think it was relevant but he answered anyway.  His normal working time was close to when the trading floor opened.  When the noise level of the trading floor was pretty high.

     “You never heard it before because when you normally come in everyone is already making a lot of background noise.  Your computer just blends in with it.”

     He started to protest.  He stopped.  He thought about it.  Traders are not dumb people, for the most part.  His face turned a slight shade of red.  I started the computer back up.

     In a last ditch effort he said, “Do you see how long it’s taking to load up?  Do you have any idea of how much money I’m losing?”

     I didn’t know.  More importantly, I didn’t care.  “That’s NT, sir.  It takes a while to load up.”  He waved me away.

     I turned around and saw my boss standing behind me.  He gave me a smile and a wink and we walked back together.  Again, he was pleased.

     Showing up at a desk responding to a trouble ticket I was asked, “Are you the computer guy?”  one too many times.

     “Negative, human!  I am as human as you are!”

     “Yes,” I said.

     “My laptop modem stopped working.  Could you look at it for me, please?” he asked.

     “Sure,” I said.  “Tell me where you sit and I’ll come by when I’m done with this call.”

     “Could you look at mine first?  We’re going to the same floor.”

     “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment to keep.  I can come by as soon as I’m done, but I can’t miss this appointment.”

     He begged for a bit more, but I wouldn’t budge.  I explained that if he had sent up an appointment then I would not miss it by going to someone else’s desk either.  Finally, he relented and gave me his location.

     When I finished with my appointment I found the man’s office.  It was larger than my apartment.  His modem was a Megahertz PCMCIA card with the X-Jack.  The two wires in the jack were mangled.  Carefully, with the help of a flat bladed screwdriver, I straightened the wires out.  Then I scolded him because he would just yank the phone cord out when he was done with it.  I showed him the wires and how fragile they were.  He thanked me.

     I went back to my desk and told my boss the entire story.  He asked for the fellows name  and I told him.  His face blanched.  He went totally white.  Evidently the man was very high up the managerial food chain.  Very high up.

     There were no negative repercussions.

     “We have a problem,” he said, seriously.  “There’s a guy on the Xth floor with a printer problem.  It keeps jamming.  I sent Joe Fakename up there last night but he didn’t fix the problem.  This guy is mad.”

     What better way to start the day could there be?  So we went to the Xth floor and my boss introduced me to the customer.  The man was annoyed and, after the initial pleasantries were done, informed me that, “You will not be leaving here until this printer is fixed.”

     I was introduced to the printer.  It was a rather large form feed dot-matrix job.  I knew Joe Fakename did good work; I learned a lot from him when I started out.  I trusted his work.  For the sake of appearances, though, I double checked everything that he would have done: cleaned the platen, made sure there were no paper bits laying around, the belt on the form feed mechanism.  Everything checked out, just as I thought it would.

     Many times people think I’m not doing anything because I’ll sit there and stare.  The truth is that I’m thinking.  Thinking has saved me, and a lot of other people, a lot of problems down the line.  So I sat there and I thought.  Also, I ran paper through the printer continuously.  It never jammed.

     I decided to look for a more mundane problem.  I investigated where the printer was.  It was sitting on a wireframe stand with the paper fed up from a box, behind the printer and up until it was threaded between two of the wires before entering the back of the printer.  There was nothing to block the paper’s path. 

     I went out to where the administrative assistant sat.  Joe Fakename had told me earlier that they were using a multipart form as paper.  They had given me standard paper to test with. 

     “Is this the paper you usually print with?” I asked her.

     “Oh, no, we use a form with carbons and everything.  But I can’t let you use it because it’s very expensive.”

     “Well, the printer isn’t jamming with this paper so I won’t be able to fix it unless I have the paper you’re using.  It could be that the printer isn’t set for the thickness or something.  I don’t need to print anything on it, just run it through the printer.”

     Finally she relented and gave me a box of the forms.  And it was really thick stuff.  It had about five copies with a carbon sheet between each one.  I began to think it really was a thickness problem.  I threaded the paper through the wire stand the way she had showed me and ran it through the printer.  The first few sheets went through okay, so I knew there was enough room between the platen and the print head. 

     Then, suddenly, it jammed.  Great.  I investigated the printer, looking to see if part of the form had become bent and was blocking the works.  No, that wasn’t it.  I re-adjusted the paper and started to feed it through again.  No more jam even though I hadn’t really done anything.

     I did this for a while.  Every once in a while it would jam.  I stopped, sat on the floor and did some more thinking. 

     It occurred to me that there seemed to be a set amount of time that it would feed properly until it jammed.  I tested this idea.  Sure enough, it would feed a certain amount of pages and then jam.  I let it jam again but didn’t touch the printer or the paper.  I followed the paper trail back out of the printer looking for something it may be stuck against.  Nothing appeared to be stopping the paper.

     I was stymied.  I followed the paper back further, intending to go all the way to the box looking for why it was stopping.  Gently I poked at the paper as I followed it back.  Then I realized that the paper didn’t move when  I poked it.  “Ahhhhhhh,” I thought.  There’s problem something on the wireframe that’s stopping it.  Maybe they printed labels, too, and some of the glue got on the stand and that was sticking the paper to it.  So I removed the paper and checked out the wire frame thing looking for old glue.

     There was nothing.  Now I was totally flummoxed.  I re-threaded the forms and started form feeding the pages through until it jammed again.  Then I got my face right up on the paper and tracked it back until I saw what the problem was.  After a certain amount of pages were fed through, and because of how the paper was threaded through the wires, at one certain point the fold between the forms would form a ‘V’ and hit one of the wires exactly in the middle.  Somehow the tension and thickness of the forms kept it wedged there, even against the force of the printer’s tractor motor.  Incredible.  I took the paper out and moved it one spot higher than where they were threading it.  I ran a bunch of forms through.  It didn’t jam.  I removed the forms from the printer and went and got the admin assistant.

     “Is it fixed?” she asked.

     “It sure is.  Now, thread those forms for me, please.”

     She set the paper up the same way she had shown me before.  I held down the Form Feed button on the printer.  After the first few pages went through it jammed.

     “You said it was fixed,” she told me.  “It still jams.”

     “Right.  See here, where the paper is hitting this part of the printer stand?  Take the paper out and re-thread it so it’s one spot higher,” I told her.

     She did it and I held down the Form Feed button.  Pages passed through without jamming.  She was ecstatic.  She went to tell her boss.  He came back and we demonstrated how the printer was working.  He was very pleased and promised me that when he needed his HP LaserJet Classic fixed, he would call me personally.  I didn’t know why I was being punished for doing a good job.

     This guy was the highest up the manager chain that you could get.  The high muckity-muck.  The software techs had gone over it several times in the last week and now, as a last ditch effort, they brought me in to change the hardware in order to please him.

     He wasn’t in that day, which is good because I generally don’t like working on people’s systems when they’re around.  My methods could be a little unorthodox and it made people nervous.

     I rarely trust what I’m told so I took out my video card test program and booted it up.  Then I ran a full suite of tests on the card.  Everything passed.

     I booted up the computer.  Everything went fine until Windows 98 started, then the video became seriously messed up.  “How odd,” I thought.

     I went through the boot up files and started commenting things out and gave it another reboot.  It was fine, except for missing everything I took out.  I knew it wasn’t a hardware problem.

     A few minutes later I had narrowed it down and had a fully working, booting system with the correct video. 

     I went to my supervisor.

     “Did you replace the video card already?” she asked.  She was used to me having to order hardware and waiting a couple of days.

     “I didn’t have to.  The problem was a VESA driver that his golf game installed.  I just took it out and now it works fine.  I don’t know if he’ll be able to play the golf game, though.”

     She was impressed.

     I realize that instant coffee isn’t necessarily a junk food, but I’m going to label it as one anyway.

     In retrospect, instead of dunking my Candy Cane Oreos in milk, I should have been dunking them in this stuff, General Foods International’s Peppermint Mocha coffee. 

     This coffee doesn’t have much scent, but does have a strong peppermint flavor.  Luckily, the chocolate flavor is also pretty strong so eventually they balance out. 

     If you’re not a big peppermint fan, though, I’d probably skip on this one.  It’s good, but you’re sure to be turned off by the strong flavor.

     It’s been a while since I’ve had some limited edition junk food, but now I’m back with the Oreo Candy Cane flavored cookies.  I suppose these are a limited edition due to the holidays, what with candy canes being fairly popular this time of year. 

     Upon opening the packaging, the first thing I noticed was the  scent of peppermint.  It wasn’t overpowering, but it was strong.  At this point I began to fear for the worst: a sickly sweet, very strong peppermint flavor.  MrEntropy is not a fan of peppermint, really.

     The second thing I noticed was that the cookies don’t look any different from a regular Oreo cookie.  I was expecting a red and white striped thing, but it’s the usual black and white. 

     As far as taste went, they weren’t bad.  The scent of peppermint

was stronger than the actual taste.  Seeing as how I don’t care for peppermint it’s a good sign that I polished off the bag in short order.  They don’t, however, mix well with milk if you’re a dunker.

  At least, I didn’t think so.  It didn’t stop me from doing it anyway.

Hang on.  I’ll be back soon.

     Some of you may remember that I was lamenting the lack of a Dunkin’ Donuts in my area.  That situation has now been remedied with the arrival of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Round Rock, TX.

     Personally, I’m ecstatic.  Even though I won’t get there very often it’s nice to know that the option is there if I ever feel like going.  The store is pretty nice and it has places to sit at.  It’s different than the one I used to go to in Parsippany, NJ, in that you can’t sit at the counter.  That’s kind of a bummer, but I suppose it’s the way it is here in the 21st century.

     I did get a donut, though.  I had to.  And it’s just as good as I remembered them being.  I’m not a big fan of Krispy Kreme (and their close-by store has shut down), and the donuts at my grocery store are pretty horrendous when compared to a DD.

     Some other changes, since the last time I was at one, are the inclusion of “value meals.”  When I went to DD the only value meal they had was, “bowl bread donut.”  Or, a bowl of soup, a piece of bread, and a donut of your choice.  Also, there’s specialty coffee (even though I think their coffee is good enough that they don’t need them).

     Now I have my pizza place, and my donut place.  Wicked.

I come from New Jersey.  That may not mean much to you, but it means something to me.  It means that since I am transplanted certain things that I have gotten used to are denied to me.  That’s right, I said “denied.”

When you live in New Jersey you’re never more than 20 feet from a pizzeria.  Austinites may be thinking, “So what?  We have plenty of pizza places here, too.”  But that’s a lie.

Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa Johns, Cici’s, Little Ceaser’s, and all those places that sell frozen pizza that they shove in the microwave for three minutes are not pizza places.  Real pizza’s do not have pineapple, or eggplant, or other weird and exotic ingredients.

A real pizza has a somewhat thin crust, but not thin and crispy like a cracker.  It’s thin and floppy.  You fold the slice so you can eat it, but first you hold it over your paper plate and let the grease just drip off, but make sure the molten cheese doesn’t slide off with it.  If you don’t get that grease drip, it isn’t a real pizza.  And if it ain’t floppy and foldable then you’re not holding a real pizza.

I found another pizza place in Austin that makes pizza similar to what I’m used to.  The only downside is that it’s New York style pizza, not New Jersey.  There is a difference.  However, Nikki’s Pizza is quite passable.  I don’t care for the crust at the edge because it’s too thin for me, but the sauce is spot on.  It’s not made with a ton of sugar and way too sweet to eat.  And that’s important to me.  I’m so sick of this sugary crap that all these other places throw on their pizza.  I hate sweet tomato sauce.

The only other problem I found was that their sausage pizza used some crumbled sausage meat.  That’s a shame, but I can live with it.

So now I have two pizza places I can order from and get an almost authentic NJ pizza.  Nikki’s Pizza and The Original Brooklyn Pie Company.

By the way, size does matter.  Most of the chain places have small pizzas and they try and make it look like they’re normal by calling them “large.”  They’re not.

For instance, Dominos sizes are thus: Small (10”), Medium (12”), Large (14”), and Extra-Large (16”).

Nikki’s sizes go this way: Individual (10”), Small (12”), Medium (14”), Large (16”).

Brooklyn Pie Company? They are: Small (10”), Medium (14”), and Large (18”).

See that?  Domino’s (and probably Papa John’s and the rest of them) “large” is the East Coast equivalent of “medium.”  Brooklyn’s 18” large makes Domino’s Extra-Large look like a Personal Pan Pizza.

And finally, price.  A Domino’s X-Large (16”) Cheese pizza with the “Brooklyn” crust?  $17.99.  This is according to their website, by the way.  Which is a major pain in the ass to use when you just want to find out the cost and size of a pizza.

A large cheese pie from Nikki’s?  $9.25.  And their large is 16”, the same as Domino’s extra-large.  And Brooklyn Pie Company?  The largest large with 18” will cost you $14.95.

I’m not sure what the point of all this is anymore, but I feel better for ranting.

     So, you’re sitting around one day with your friends, maybe.  Then some old clunker goes driving by.  Maybe it’s an old Cadillac.  One of those tan ones, with the rusted panels.  The trunk lock is missing, along with a headlight.  It bangs down the street past you, backfiring and spitting out brown exhaust. 

     You and your friends watch it, amused by the sight of such an old, dilapidated piece of crap rumbling along and you wonder how it manages to keep running because, let’s be honest, it’s almost 40 years old now.  Forty years old.  Wait, a minute, you think, I’m 40 years old!

     And your mind casts back to the things that are breaking down in your house.  The toaster is dead, at five years.  The curtains are ten years old and your wife is sure it’s time to replace them.  You have a 20 year old computer that your kids routinely laugh at.  All these things are crap now, garbage.  And the oldest thing is half your age!  And it’s considered ancient!  A car is generally considered a “classic” at 25 years.  Oh, me oh my!  Time for you to putter around the house shooting out exhaust.

     Today, November 2nd, is my birthday.  I was born in the year 1968, 40 years ago.  Four decades ago, I was brought forth unto the world.  Ten years shy of half a century.

     The world has gone through a lot of changes in forty years.  Computers have gone from the size of a warehouse building, completing calculations in days or weeks, down to being in tiny MP3 players and decompressing Britney Spears songs on the fly.  Televisions have become to dump the tube and gone LCD or plasma.  Cars have gone from being complex mechanical objects to hyper-complex mechanical objects with computer controlled bits.  Airplane travel has turned from a semi-enjoyable experience to the worst method of travel next to the bus.

     But, that’s all right, people tell me.  40 is the new 30!  According to who?  And how does that make much of a difference?

     Although, to be frank, I don’t feel forty.  I make goofy sounds to my bird.  I talk to my cats and believe they understand me.  I like most of the music my kids listen to.  And, in a little while, I’ll be booting the kids off my computer so I can play Fallout 3 (which I got as a gift from my mom; thanks mom!).  I don’t have aches and pains when I get up in the morning.  I could run down the street if I were chased by a dog.  Meh.  I don’t see much of a difference yet.  Inside, I’m still the young guy who wants to do a lot of stupid stuff.  The only difference is that I’ve been on this planet going around the sun 40 times.

     So, maybe it’s not so bad.

     Halloween was my second favorite holiday when I was growing up.  Halloween meant being able to dress up as your favorite hero (or villain) and not having to worry about people thinking you were nuts.  It meant eating as much candy as you could cram into your gullet.  It meant being able to walk around at night, in the dark. 

     A Halloween night in New Jersey was generally quite chilly.  Breezes caused the fallen leaves to rustle and fly around.  Wood smoke from fireplaces lent a certain taste in the air.

     It was a magical night.

     It also occurred two days before my birthday.  By the time I was over being sick on candy it was time to be sick on cake and ice cream.  But that was all right, because I’d have plenty of new stuff to be sick playing with.

     Back then, having a costume that was made was bette

r than a

store-bought costume.  It showed ingenuity, intelligence, craftiness, and creativity.  To buy a costume was a cop-out.  Of course, most purchased kids costumes consisted of a mask of some characters face and a plastic smock that announced who you were supposed to be, as if Casper the Friendly Ghost actually had his name printed on his chest.

     And it didn’t matter if the costume wasn’t an exact replica of whoever you were supposed to be.  Imagination filled in the gaps.  That Boba Fett rocket pack was a shoe box and a red “L’eggs” top, but to everyone that knew who Boba Fett was, it was a rocket pack.  Kids who had

parents that were really good had a problem.  While their costumes were wonders to behold, and everyone would admit that the costume was awesome, there would still be a hint of resentment in there.  It could be too good. 

     Why did it matter?  Because in the 1980’s and before, you were allowed to go to school in a costume.  You were expected to show up in costume.  Complete with mask, if necessary.  And everyone had fun, and there would be a parade so that the parents could see how cute everyone looked (God knows why, though; those same kids would be knocking on your door in a few hours anyway).

     Now, it seems that if you don’t buy a costume then you suck.

If you try and make one then you’re too poor to buy one.  And if your pre-teen daughter doesn’t look like a prostitute then you’ve got problems. 

     Does it matter, though?  To me, it looks like less and less kids go trick-or-treating every year.  Even in neighborhoods where kids are abundant, nobody seems to walk around that much.  Even to me, an adult who does nothing but pass out candy, Halloween has turned into a disappointment.

     So, what happened?  I would say fear got the better of everyone.  Schools don’t want costumes or masks in school in case someone goes nuts and shoots the place up.  We’ve all lived with the Halloween candy scares: apples filled with razor blades, candy corn and other candies injected with drugs.  Don’t eat anything home made, like popcorn balls or candied apples because you never know what’s inside of it.  Trust only candy that’s still in a big company wrapper.  And even then, inspect it for tampering. 

     But now we’ve reached a whole new level of fear.  Kids being abducted, kids shooting other kids, and other horrors that we’re inundated with throughout the years that just builds, and builds, and builds.  Maybe our communities aren’t as close knit as they used to be.  Do you know your neighbors?  Do you see them often?  Is the limit of your interaction a half-hearted wave while you’re mowing the lawn?

     It’s another piece of Americana that has slowly eroded.  Or maybe it never really was that way in the first place.  The problem with history is that the more you know, the less different everything seems to be.

     It looks like I’ve been a bad boy this month.  I’ve hardly done any blogging at all.  I’ve done even less writing.  So, you’re probably wondering, “What’s he been up to, anyway?”  At least, I hope that’s what you’ve been wondering.  So, let’s go down and see what I’ve been doing.

     First, if you’ve ever read my blog before you know that I’m stuck in some melancholy loop that revolves around the 1980’s and the computers of yesteryear.  Well, I dusted off the old Atari 8-bit emulator and thought I could finish some games that I never finished before.  Then I remembered just how many games that I started that I never did finish.  And that’s a lot of them.

Dunzhin – By Screenplay

     I am one of the few people I know that bought Dunzhin.  All right, I’m the only person I know that bought it.  I loved role playing games and the idea of running around a dark dungeon with a sword.  The graphics are, um, functional.  Even for the Atari 8-bit, they were a bit lacking.  But that’s not the important part when it comes to RPG’s.

     The premise of Dunzhin is that you’re sent into the Dunzhin to find an object and then bring it back.  An awful lot like the games Nethack, Moria, Rogue, and a few dozen others.  While searching different rooms for your quest object, which I must add was a randomly chosen thing with ridiculous names like “The Screaming Hand of Obyxx,” you could run into a variety of trouble.  Pits could open beneath your feet, you could fall flat on your face tripping on a trip wire, noxious gas could fill the room, or you could be attacked by enemies.

     Ten minutes after starting Dunzhin I remembered why I never finished it.  It’s insanely hard.  Your character is very weak when you start and, unlike many games, you have different body parts that can be attacked and each part has its own health.  While, overall, you may have 35 hit points, your right arm may only have two.  So, if you were unlucky enough to get scratched on your right arm, well, then it’s game over.  And that happens a lot.  If that weren’t bad enough you frequently get teleported all over the place.  Some disembodied women decides she doesn’t like you and bam!, you’re off somewhere else.  Usually deeper in the

dungeon where you don’t stand a chance of surviving.  And just when you think you’re getting a handle on all of it, bopping dwarves on the head, lopping off zombie arms, and whatever, you wade into battle and have your sword bust on you.  And that happens a lot, too.

     Don’t get me wrong, though.  Dunzhin really is a good game.  In battle you can target different body parts of the enemy, and some enemies have some nasty weak spots.  For instance, a zombie won’t have any armor on his right arm, so if you start fighting one that’s where you want to aim.  But if it wasn’t for the “Save State” feature of Atari800win Plus or Atari800 I think I would have given up a long time ago.  Again.

     Perfect example.  I just started it up so I could get a screen shot.  I walked about ten steps before being attacked by four zombies.  My first attack missed.  A zombie’s first attack hit my neck.  Whoops!  Game over.  Total time spent in game before dying?  One minute.

Kaiv – By Screenplay

     Dunzhin was the first game in the “Warrior of RAS” series.  Kaiv was the second.  Since I actually did like Dunzhin, despite keeling over dead the moment I walked into it, I picked up Kaiv as well. 

     Kaiv is similar to Dunzhin in that the game play is nearly identical.  Some differences are that instead of walking through a dark dungeon, you’re walking through a dark cave.  The graphics for the walls are different, too.

     But it does have some interesting points that make it an evolution over Dunzhin.  For one, you can buy more than one sword.  So, when your sword breaks you can switch to a back up.  You also have to buy your own armor.  And, unlike Dunzhin, you need to buy torches.  You can probably guess that your torches have a tendency to be blown out frequently.

     There were two other games in the “Warrior of RAS” series: Wylde and Ziggurat.  I’ve never seen them for sale, though, or else I would have bought them also. 

     There are a couple of other games, but I’ll get to them later because they’re much bigger and grander.

     Joost.com has a bunch of episodes of the television show, “Have Gun – Will Travel” starring Richard Boone.  I’ve been watching a lot of these and, despite the fact that I don’t care for Westerns all that much, I have to say that I consider this one of the best shows ever written.  The character of Paladin is just amazing: part scoundrel, part nobleman, part Robin Hood.  Some people may be surprised to know that Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) was one of the writers for this show.

     The stories aren’t just “gun slinger kills guy” stories, either.  There’s a lot of subtlety in how he goes about his business.  They’re old, from the 1950’s, but I highly recommend them.

     So, there you go.  A minor update into what I’ve been doing lately.