Technology. I suppose I could spend the next ten minutes expounding upon how much of a nerd I am, because every time a new gadget comes out, I get tech-envy. Bill Cochran has called me “part-Asian” because I love to noodle with electronic things and have shiny new toys. Ladybug thinks I am a moron for drooling over the iPod Nano commercials when I already have a perfectly servicable 20 GB that I am in love with.

I think my love of technology comes from my dad, who has always had a bedside table full of wires, unused gadgets, lame stuff, but electronic nonetheless. I remember many Saturdays when I was growing up when we would wander into the Sharper Image and just look at all of the completely useless but still somewhat awe-inspiring gadgets. This was before the digital age really kicked up in the early 90’s, and gadgets got good.

Our first computer was intended, I think, to be my mom and dad’s productivity tool. This was around 1985, and we had a dope 640k PC with two floppy drives. I mean, it was the height of excellent. We ordered away for a shit-ton of free/shareware on floppy so I had all of the BASIC games I could possibly want and even a couple of .exe games. One of my favorites was a game called “International Bridge Contractors,” which would allow you to bid on bridges and then build them. The higher the bid, the higher the profit. Iplayed it so much that I was able to learn the algorithm behind the game– just how much you could mark up each type of bridge in each type of situation. Then, when friends would come over, we’d play in two-player mode. I would destroy them.

I also had “The Bard’s Tale” for PC, which my friend Chris had for his Apple II. If you don’t remember The Bard’s Tale, you are missing out on perhaps the greatest RPG ever– turn-based, series of text and static pictures (the PC version was a little bit animated, but pretty lame). But it was hella-well designed. We spent almost a year of weekends in Chris’s basement trying to beat that damn game. And then we did. When The Bard’s Tale II and III came out for Apple (to my knowledge, they were never released for PC), we won each of those with relative quickness. But the original… well, the original was difficult. We spent hours upon hours just teleporting up to fight the 4 groups of 99 berserkers. (I still remember the coordinates you used to get up there– 5, 12, 2.)

Thanks to Dr. Wade for today’s suggestion.