Remembering my first computer

The Atari 400

Image: Evan-Amos CC BY-SA 3.0

Once upon a time, in the late 1970s, Atari was a dominant player in the video game industry, but they had aspirations to expand beyond just gaming. They wanted to create a personal computer that could compete with the likes of Apple and Commodore.

In 1979, Atari introduced the Atari 400, their first attempt at a personal computer. The Atari 400 was a sleek and compact machine with a unique design that set it apart from its competitors. It had a built-in keyboard and a cartridge slot for games and other software.

The Atari 400 was powered by a custom 6502 processor and had 8 kilobytes of RAM. It also had a built-in graphics and sound chip that allowed it to display colorful graphics and produce high-quality sound.

Despite its impressive features, the Atari 400 was not a commercial success. One of the main reasons for this was its membrane keyboard, which was not very responsive and made typing a frustrating experience. In addition, the computer was marketed mainly as a gaming machine, which limited its appeal to a broader audience.

Despite its limited success, the Atari 400 paved the way for Atari's later personal computers, such as the Atari 800 and the Atari ST. These machines were more powerful and more successful than the Atari 400, but they owe their existence to the pioneering work done by the Atari 400 team.

Today, the Atari 400 is a cherished artifact of computing history, and many enthusiasts still enjoy tinkering with and collecting these early machines. They serve as a reminder of the early days of personal computing and the pioneering work done by companies like Atari to bring computers into the mainstream.

I am in the wrong business

TL;DR - wherein the Fortnite fiasco teaches me how much my marketing sucks.

That whole Fortnite black hole experience was a bit disheartening.

I felt bad for the people like Rowan, Adrian, and Shae that were waiting for the new season and having to sit through all of that, of course. However, I'm not that into the game, so that was not what was on my mind during a lot of it.

We were all sitting there in the living room, watching the black hole on the PS4/television, or playing the mini-game that came up with the use of the Konami code. Meanwhile, during a large part of the outage, Shae and Rowan were on their phones, trying to get more information about what was going on and following the streams of various YouTubers.

Holy Crap. I'm mostly following the ones that Shae is watching because I'm sitting by her on the love seat and massaging her feet. This one that she is watching is getting many hundreds of thousands of views, a quarter-million likes, and a metric shit-ton of new subscribers - all things that that particular YouTuber said was totally unusual, and that he normally got a few hundred to a few thousand viewers during his streams.

All of this for, in essence, nothing. He was streaming the exact same thing that was on our TV, with a four to five-second delay to boot. No new information, no details of what was going on. He was passing on some miscellaneous information that people chatting on his channel were saying, but that was about it. There was a small skit or two. He was also updating the info on his screen for newcomers to his channel, so that was nice.

Yet there he was having almost constant donations of $4, $10, and $25 streaming across his feed. There was even one for $500. All for basically giving

us the same available information that we were getting by having the PS4 turned on in our living room. Just to be clear, this isn't a dig at him. He was very entertaining, did the best that he could with the information that was available, and toughed things out for many hours.

It did, however; make me realize how much I suck at marketing. Shae and I both have stores where various things that we have personally designed are available. Tee shirts, mugs, hoodies, leggings, wall art, pillows, etc.

We have my fixed income from the military disability to rely on for our monthly expenses. With the bankruptcy, there is pretty much no discretionary income. This is bad in most months, but even worse the last two months, where due to broken air-conditioning and extremely hot weather here in South Texas, our power bill has totaled more than $800 over the two month period.

So we have these stores, and even though I get hundreds of likes, favorites, pins, and comments or whatnot per month, we struggle to come up with one sale per month. Considering the fact that I only make about $4-$6 in profit per sale, that doesn't even pay for the cost of keeping my store open, which is $30 per month for the website.

Ah well. It's been like this for years, and I don't see it changing in the future. I just wanted to rant for a little bit after watching someone bringing in many thousands of dollars streaming something I was watching on my own television.

Christians are whining about all the pro-choice posts

I've not really brought religion into this whole anti-abortion legislation commentary, although it needs to be brought up, since it is the conservative Christians that are trying to force their strictures onto the American people as a whole.

You can keep quoting chapter and verse from your book of near-infinite contradictions written by bronze age goatherds if that is your wont. That is your prerogative, and no one is trying to stop you. However, you do not get to decide how other American citizens run their life or make their decisions. Take some time and learn how things actually work. A zygote is not a human being.

Listen, your holy book has a significant proportion of its adherents believing that the Earth is flat, and that somehow the belief that it is a globe is a conspiracy by organizations like NASA, when globes have been in existence for centuries.

Your holy book has a significant proportion of it's adherents believing that the Earth is 6,000-10,000 years old. That is as large of an error as telling people that the distance across the United States is 17 feet.  Not even 6 yards across the entire contiguous United States.

Believe what you want, when you want, but do not attempt to force your beliefs on other people that know better.

Find Your Option at The Wits End

Things I have learned

Creating a multi-segment gradient in GIMP

What happened to the 'Melting Pot?'

Back when I was a kid.

You know, I'm not naïve, this country has never been anywhere near perfect. The United States was faced with a metric shit-ton of problems during the period of my childhood.

Protesting the Vietnam War.
Public Domain: Protesting the Vietnam War by Frank Wolfe, October 21, 1967 (NARA)

As some examples, there was the Vietnam War, the lack of civil, gay, and women's rights, the United States riding roughshod over third world countries, the destruction of the environment and the depletion of the world's resources. The list goes on and on.

There were, of course, many attempts to correct these problems.  People actually tried hard to make a difference for the future and in many cases made some progress. Unfortunately, many of those attempts also failed, and others - those that we had made progress on in the sixties, have since been rescinded by reactionary right-wingers.

The thing is though, even with all of that - when I was a kid Americans as a whole were proud of the diversity that had helped build the country.  We were taught in school, and told nightly on the news, about how this whole 'Melting Pot' (some would call it more of a stew pot) that was the makeup of United States is what made it exceptional. While we may not have valued the ethnicities themselves, we valued the different viewpoints and ways of accomplishing things that came along with them.

Melting Pot
Melting Pot with stroke, by GD, openclipart.org

I haven't heard anything about a Melting Pot in years.  These days, if you are not a fair-skinned northern European immigrant, you are automatically assumed by many to be dangerous, lazy, and in essence, crap. 

So what happened to this? As I said, I can't remember hearing anything about a Melting Pot in years.  I understand that many Americans are afraid of people that are 'different.' They always have been though.  The events such as 9/11 just amplified the fears and xenophobia that were already there.  Surely something that the majority of Americans used to crow about endlessly can't have just disappeared from their consciousness?