80s – pacodotorg

And then all things changed

Posted on October 22, 2017 - February 8, 2022 by pacodotorg

(Somehow rearranged.) And it happened driving somewhere in somebody’s car, that the radio played the M/A/R/R/S mashup “Pump Up the Volume,” and music changed forever, all at once.

NOTE TO SELF: “… and then all things changed, somehow rearranged” are the lyrics I remember from the early 1980s HBO show “Remember When.” Dick Cavett hosted the series, which took on a topic and explored it for an hour, very much in the same way modern documentaries are done today, taking one topic, then exploring all branches that lead from it. The theme song:

Would you like to play a game?

Posted on September 29, 2016 by pacodotio

In this game of high adventure, your objective is to travel 200 miles across the great Gobi Desert while being chased by a tribe of knock-kneed pygmies. High adventure, indeed!

The intercom

Posted on July 27, 2013 - May 26, 2019 by pacodotio

300 baud modem? Check.
Compuserve? Check. Forget that — bulletin board services (BBSes)!
Watched Wargames at the theater? check. (Also Top Secret!, Real Genius, Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.)
Teenager in the 80s? Check.
Atari 2600, TRS-80 Model III, Commodore 64, Tron. Activision — for crying out loud!
Internet Relay Chat at the Tech library basement in 1987. Mac Plus at the Carpenter computer lab the same year.
Wasted youth, check.

Good grief, I’d do it all over again.

Twenty-thirteen

Posted on December 6, 2012 - May 26, 2019 by pacodotio

The first computer ID I was assigned was the number 2013 when I was 11 years old and enrolled in the gifted-and-talented program in my junior high school.

By gifted and talented, the school meant students should use computers to solve second-grade math problems. Luckily, the teachers in charge knew nothing about the system, and a couple of friends of mine and soon enough found the password to the system and made it our own.

I need to start preparing a list for things that need to happen in 2013. What kind of list? The answer to that will be the first bullet point.

This is what they mean when they say think outside the box

Posted on October 30, 2012 by pacodotio

Because even after reading the description and formulating what the song was going to sound like and how it was going to be played, I could still not register what was happening. But there it was… who you gonna call?

And furthermore, and what was going to be the original theme of this post, however did blogs ever exist without video embedding? Yes, I know, you’d just sit down and write. Have to remember that. Although I wish I had the kind of time needed to make 80s hardware play 80s music.