Retro Saturday, April 12, 2008

I remember the very first game system I had way back when in the 1980's. No it wasn't an Atari. I bought the Magnavox Odyssey system. Mainly because it was the system that my brother, Lance bought. My wife and I lived in the Dallas area at the time and it seemed that the only place you could get games for this system was at a chain of local electronics stores that were in the malls. I can't even remember the name of the store anymore. In the 80's the Odyssey was great fun and the height of technology. I could sit forever, at least a couple of hours playing the silly game. I searched this AM for a commercial for the Odyssey game system. Here it is.This was not the exact system that I had. This was the first one that was released in the late 1970's. Mine came along later. Here is a Japanese commercial for the game system that was similar to mine.Interesting fact: Atari released the first arcade game, Pong, in 1972. Before Atari could copyright the game other companies rushed their versions to market under various iterations. Soon Magnavox noticed what was going on and got very interested in the game also. But for a different reason. It seems that Atari Pong was very, very, very similar to a new game that Magnavox had demonstrated a few months earlier, The Odyssey. The guys over in legal began doing some snooping. Guess what they found out? Yep. Right there in the guest book was the signature of Nolan Bushnell, the owner of Atari at the time. It was time to for someone to strike a deal and they did. The rest is history. I got this information from turbotommyturbinado on YouTube. Here is his video of the arcade game Pong.Wasn't that exciting?

I had that game system for a few years. Then when Woolcostarted closing stores in 1983 I bought the Atari system and started scouring the DFW area for Woolco's and closeout prices on games. I bought several. You know, it always seemed that Woolco marked up all their prices just so they could mark them down again during the closing process. Emphasis on "seemed". I don't really know. After all I was much younger and slightly less knowledgeable then.

I put the Odyssey up and I don't really remember that much about after that. I played the Atari for some time but the interest slowly waned. I eventually put it away only to take it out some time later and introducing it to my son and daughter. They thought it was great and have been playing games ever since in most of the game systems known to man. I know. I fell asleep last night watching Julie play Lego Star Wars on her Wii.

If you like to play the classic arcade games try Neaves Games and play online. You can play Space Invaders, N-Blox, Asteroids, Snake, Simon, Tic-Tac-Toe, Hexxagon, and Frogger.© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

The $20 Free $40 Coupon

Coupons are good. Saving is good. Saving $40.00 is even better. One problem though. The $40.00 coupon ended up costing me close to $20.00. Go figure! I guess coupons are just like that.

My $40.00 coupons for the digital-to-analog converter box came in yesterday. It was really interesting. They actually look like credit cards; although they take great pains to stress that they are not credit, debit, or gift cards and you can not get cash for them. The card comes with a list of qualifying converters and the locations and names of local stores where the consumer can purchase the boxes. I did some checking and I found that most boxes cost $59.95 and the coupon is for $40.00. I did find boxes at Wal-Mart though that cost $52.97 and $49.87. I endedup getting mine at Radio Shack. I had to get a cell phone charger for the truck anyway and thought that I would "kill two birds with one stone", so to speak. I could have gone to Best Buy or Circuit City also. The converter box at Best Buy was the store brand, Insignia. The others I looked at were Magnavox, RCA, Zenith, and DigitalStream.

Important note: The receipt from Radio Shack reminds you that if you return the box you can't get the full amount back; only the actual amount you paid. Tough luck if you buy one and then don't like it and want to get a different brand.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Zoo or Zew

Not much of a post today. I've been busy with school stuff, lesson plans and such. We will be going on a field trip to the Cameron Park Zoo next week. So I was assigned the task of doing the lesson plans for handwriting. We decided that our writing for the week should center on doing research and writing about the zoo animals. FUN!

In the process of doing research I ran across something interesting. I was checking out the Cameron Park Zoo website. Looking at the General Information page I was reading about The Weather Factor. It was describing which animals may not be on display under various weather circumstances. As I read through this I came to a highly unusual weather phenomenon. Are you ready for this---"Lightening". That's it. "Lightening". Could it be that this is the phenomenon that causes the animals to suddenly become lighter and float away???

NO! They just misspelled the word "Lightning". Here's the link, check it out. This misspelling was current as of the date of this post. They may change it later; like after I e-mail them about it. And just think, the Cameron Park Zoo paid a company good money to misspell the word. I suppose they don't have a dictionary, or at least a book about weather.

UPDATED 6 July 2011: I checked the above link at the zoo and it now leads to a page that is no longer there.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

New Season of "The Tutors" Begin

We started tutoring with the Kindergarten students last Thursday. We tutor on Tuesdays and Thursdays with different groups on alternate days. One of my students absolutely, positively did not want to stay for tutoring last Thursday. Yesterday the same student was begging to stay. It seems that he has decided that it is fun to stay. I like the way the kids think it is great to stay for tutoring because to them they get to stay longer and play more games. They also get to spend extra time with the teacher when there are fewer students to demand attention. The students still don't realize that they have to stay because they are having difficulty acquiring reading skills. It also helps that the students get snacks each day that they stay.

The students were selected for inclusion in the tutoring program based on Middle of the Year (MOY) results on the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI) and the Universal Literacy Voyager program. Based on the results for my class I selected 9 students to divide across the two days of tutoring. With 4 or 5 students each afternoon it is much easier to focus on needs of the individual than it is when there are 19 at once. These tutoring sessions will help to prepare the students for a successful 1st grade experience.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Hey Brother, Can you Spare a Gallon, or Two?

I've been watching the price of gasoline go up again. Last Wednesday I went to work and noticed that unleaded regular was selling at $3.129 per gallon at the nearby truck stop. A mere 10 hours later I drove by and the price jumped 17 cents to $3.299. I was shocked! I had checked the futures earlier in the day and had not seen anything peculiar. I went ahead and went the the Shell station across the interstate. They were selling for $3.159, a bargain considering. I asked the clerk if he knew what happened. I expected him to say that a pipeline had ruptured or someone had slipped and fallen in the largest US refinery prompting a shutdown for months to allow for an extensive safety investigation. He didn't know about anything. All he knew was that his station was cheaper than the others in the area and felt like that would be rectified by the next morning.

It was, to the tune of $3.299 a gallon. The truck stop lowered their price to $3.199 a gallon.

Since then prices have dropped a little and have now stabilized. There is a little bad news though. I noticed yesterday that gasoline futures closed at $2.79 a gallon. By the time you add on taxes and profit we're going to be back at the $3.30+ area. Not good.

If gas continues to go up like this I will have to start cutting back. Lets see, I think the first thing to go is the lawn mower. I'll just let the oppressive Texas heat take care of it. I used to use gasoline to kill fire ants. That will have to stop too. Probably for the best though. That will give my hair a chance to grow back. (Not really! Just sounded good.)

My Brother-in-law borrowed the truck yesterday. When he brought it back he told me that he "...put a couple of gallons of gold in it." I said, "Just two? You could have filled it up!" Didn't work. He didn't offer to add any more.Oh well, I guess I shouldn't complain. By this time next week $3.309 for gas may be cheap.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, April 7, 2008

I noticed last week that the Bluebonnets were beginning to bloom here again. In honor of this eagerly anticipated occurrence I found a picture I took several years ago. This is a picture of Julie sitting among some Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush. It is probably around 1993.

While looking for the Bluebonnet picture I came across several pictures of some of our cats and dogs. The first picture is a picture of Boomer, our dog that was a bundle of energy, and Tigger. It is from around 1984. The next picture is a picture of Aslan and Tigger from 1988. This is a different Tigger from the other picture. Aslan is the bigger of the cats.

Here is another picture of little Tigger from 1989. It looks like this is how we kept her little. The next picture is of Aslan pressing my pants the old fashioned way in 1990.

Finally, we have a picture of Tigger in 1990. She's not so little anymore. I guess she is doing the wash so Aslan can do the pressing later.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.