Latest update September 30, 2010

Interviews, Sponsors and Teasers. Oh MY!

This last week of September has been a bit on the crazy side. I have been fighting some VERY nasty virus on a few client's machines. Sunday, Obsolete Gamer did a interview with me about the lounge. You can read about it here.

Last week, I let some information about the RV Road Trip leak to a few places, in the hopes of getting some response, and drumming up a bit of interest. After I met with a few experts with the proposal, it looks like a very feasible venture, and now it is begining to take shape. The web site will be up an a few weeks, and we are starting the documentary NOW, so we will have the complete journey from Crazy Idea to completed trip. If you wish to donate a buck or two for the trip, feel free to do so. We are going to be posting the names of "Big" donators on the site, and I am looking into a "thank-you" gift for donations of over $50. Probably the normal Tour T-shirt, and going up from there. If All goes well, we will be raffling the RV of for charity once the tour is over.

This week, we had our first potential corporate sponsor e-mail me. I don't know anymore than that at this time.

 

 

September 16, 2010

Over the hill, and back from Camping...

Well, the camping trip was almost perfect. The weather was not too hot, and not too cold. I would say it got up to about 20C during the day, dipping down to about 5C at night.
I went with Corey. He just got a fantastic deal on a used class "C" Motor home and we had to try it out. Corey took his 2 sons, aged 6 months and 4 years old and gave mama a weekend off. I slept in the bottom "kids" bunk at the back of the unit. even though it was a full size twin bed, it still felt like a coffin. LOL.

We left on Thursday afternoon, and by thursday night we had Wi-Fi set up, and 3 laptops all connected to the internet, tethered through Corey's 3G Iphone.
Corey forgot the axe and just brought an old wedge and sledge hammer. Have you ever tried to make kindling out of that. It's impossible!
Luckily, I had tons of old newspaper and the wood was very dry. We had a good fire within minutes.
Corey's son Adeon, had probably never seen a campfire before, and was fascinated by it. He began throwing things in it right away, even after being warned not to. I had my coffee and smokes right by my lawn chair, and turned my back for a minute, and he tossed the smokes into the fire along with everything else he could get his little hands on. It didn't mater, if he could have thrown the lawn chairs in he would have. I then went for a walk to the little store they had at the office, to see if they sold Cigarettes. They did not, but they had an Axe there I bought. Although the Axe was dull as a butter knife, it was better than what we had. I had to wait unit friday, when we packed everything up and went for a drive down the highway to the nearest Gas Station.
Saturday, was my 40'th Birthday, although I invited a lot of people, only my parents and Brant from the Amiga club, and our friend Mike B and his wife came out. I have way too many friends named Mike. What was memorable, was a few minutes after Mom and Dad left, They came back with a Cake, they had forgot to give me. It was a triple chocolate, with chocolate Icing. I am not a big chocolate fan, but Corey is. I put it on the picnic table for later, as wee had a big meal, and Corey son Adeon, tried to dive into it twice, (at four, they just don't understand the meaning of wait abit) then Corey dove into it. He has video of that!

Sunday was the Amiga day, I took out my CDTV and pro ceded to swap out the power supply. Corey has a macro lens on his good camera, but I didn't get any good shots. no tripod, and I am way too shaky to take close ups. Corey had never seen a CDTV before and was impressed. Too bad, it didn't boot with the new power supply, so I will have to get Craig to check it out. The rest of Sunday was a dreary, lazy cloudy and cold. I read my C128 System guide and we put on Dave Haynie's "the Death Bed Vigil" . We had run out of diapers for the little one, and Sunday night, it started to rain, so we headed back a bit early.
Corey has tons of pictures and Video, that I am waiting to get back from him. I will post them when they come in.

 

 

Last Update September 8,2010

An Apology to A-Eon....
In last night's blog, I kind of went on a bit of a rant about A-Eon and the Amiga X1000. It was late and I was kind of harsh on them. I understand, that they are not a big company, and can not afford to sell their products at a decent, normal price compared to a regular computer company like Asus and such. They can't afford to take a loss on hardware and hope to make it up in software sales, like an app store model (IE: Apple). I wish them all the best for this extremely niche market Item. I, myself, am more than happy to play with my "classic" hardware. Maybe one day, I will be lucky enough to get a PPC card for my tower and put OS 4 classic on it, but for now, OS 3.9 is fine with me.

 

 

Last Update September 7,2010
The big weekend is almost here!!!

But first the news: In the last blog, I was talking about "poor" Mark Hurd. Well, it looks like "poor" Mark is going over to head Oracle! Gee, tough luck for Mark :) He will never be "Poor" Mark.

On the Amiga front (what? SOMETHING about Amiga on an Amiga site???) This week I saw that A-eon was looking for some beta testers for the new (WAAAAAYYYY overpriced) Amiga one X1000 computer. You only had until September 10 to apply, and it was limited to 100 people (They may extend it to 150), so I thought I would give it a shot .I sent off an E-mail, and Trevor (Dickinson) got back to me right away, with a few documents, NDA's and such. Well, after going through it all, they want YOU to PAY them to test and develop for you. I will not reveal the actual price they wanted for the beta testing boards, but it was WAY out of my price range. In fact, For what they wanted, I could fully upgrade my A3000 tower and buy a NEW A4000 tower from Soft Hut and have some money left over!!!! AND your didn't even get the whole Computer, but a CHANCE to by the case and other bits from AMIGAKIT when they came out! Needless to say, I wrote Trevor back, and politely thanked him for the opportunity, but it just wasn't going to happen.

I just wonder how the HECK they EVER mean to sell this computer to the mainstream, or even get developers to actually make programs for this thing, if no one can afford to get their hands on one?
Come on Trevor and guys, if you are reading this, this is going to FAIL even worse than the sam 440. Only a few people will ever buy it. It is just much easier for us to stick to "classic" hardware, then to justify the cost of this thing. This is not just my opinion, but its all over the internet on Amiga forums everywhere. For example on the English Amiga Board, there is a bunch of threads asking if ANYBODY will buy one, the vast majority screams "NO!!!". Even good old Dave Haynie has come out and said the exact same thing.
Too Expensive
No Programs,NO applications,NO games etc,
Verdict: only a few hundred (MAYBE) will be sold world wide. You would think they would have learned the lessons from the Amiga one, Pegasus, Sam 440 and others . I beg to question, if any hardware will ever be released for the X-slot? I can almost put money down that New Tek will not make a toaster card for this....

If you have been following my blog, you know that September 11 is my birthday. This year its the big "40". I am going to spend it CAMPING!! Yes, instead of the big bash, I am going to the lake with Corey and his kids, and I invited everyone out on Saturday. I will be filming it folks. Also, Sunday, is an Amiga day. I am taking out my CDTV and changing the power supply. I will be filming it for my Sunday projects, so stay tuned for that. Yes, I am getting old, and this week, I started a second job, so I can start paying off my bills and hopefully get some more stuff in from Amigakit soon. I hope AmigaKit starts catering to the A3000 more. I would love to order the Mediator PCI 3/4000T or the ZorRam. There is just so much I wish to get for the tower, but they will have to wait.