PC World is running an article about the 10 Worst PCs of All Time and as a whole the artcle is a refreshing trip down nostalgia lane. However I must strongly disagree with their top third choice, we had one of these Coleco Adam computers when I was a kid and it totally ruled. We never had any of the problems mentioned in the article and that Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom game was sooo rad. I mean after you beat the game once; you got to flip the cassette tape over and play the game all over again. Only on the second time through, you got a different color spaceship. Beating it a second time got you back to your original ship. Beating it repeatedly let you keep switching between the two colors of ship. I wasted spent hours of my youth playing that game and I don’t consider one minute of it wasted. So if Dan Tynan keeps spouting all this nonense of the Adam being a crappy computer; he’s going to get his arsed kick something fierce! :p

Note: The image used in this article was found under the Coleco Adam article on Wikipedia and was released under a Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike 2.0 license by Andrew Lih.

Coleco Adam © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

• Erotic images can turn you blind
• A World of Warcraft World
• Monkey Business: Keith Chen’s Monkey Research
• The family that plays together.… grounds their kids for staying up late!
• Things That Only Happen In Movies
• The Caffeine Database [Editor] Even better than the caffeine database’ on the same site is the Death by Caffeine calculator. Apparently, it would take nearly 185 shots of espresso to be the death of me. Hmmm… The Terrapin has a Ghengis Kahn which is 4 shots of straight espresso that’s means it would take about 46 Ghengis Kahns to take me out. Heh.

Not from Pukka:

• Office Guns
• The Elizabethan Costumer’s Guide To Home Depot
• Canon s400: Awesome Moon!
• Christopher Walken for President in 2008 [Editor] I’ve no idea if this is legit.
• View the Earth from various satellites [Editor] This link was sent in by Pukka’s wife.
• Lego Lovers Unite in Arlington
• Man builds Viking longboat from 15 million lolly stick
• Kittens Start Fire After Using Fax
• Is Your Boss a Psychopath? The same site also has a short quiz to determine if your boss really is a psychopath.

Pukka’s Links of the Week © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Teacher: Mark keeps talking during class and it’s very disruptive.
Mom: When is he doing all this talking?
Teacher: After he finishes his assignment.
Mom: Did you give him something to read?
Teacher: Yes, but he finished that book.
Mom: Did you try giving him another one?
Teacher: Yes, but he finished that one too.
Mom: *glare*
Teacher: In fact, he’s already read all the books in the room.
Mom: Why don’t you get him another one from the library then?
Teacher: I did but he finished it already.
Mom: *glare* Then why don’t you let him go to the library and get another one?
Teacher: Wha.… I can’t do that!?! He could get into all sorts of trouble walking down the hallway.
Mom: *glare* If you let him go to the library; he’ll stop talking in class.

Eventually, I was allowed to walk those halls, wander the shelves of the library and seek out new books to read. As Mom predicted, once I had something to read; I was quiet in class. This is a habit that has stuck with me over the years and I ended up spending much of my youth in school & public libraries. I bring this up today because for the first time in a long time; I went down to CPL and checked out some books. This sudden trip to my local public library was prompted by their advertising of an adult summer reading program. The basic idea is you have to read 6 books, turn in a log and then you’ll be entered to win a gift certificate to a book store. I never could turn down free books; so I decided to go sign up².

As I wandered around the library looking for some books to read; I felt a sense of nostalgia and loss. There were entire summers in my youth were I barely went anywhere else besides the library. These days, the rarity is when I do go. I miss those fabled days of yesteryear when life was simple and I could relax with a book in my hand all summer long. *sigh*

So why haven’t I been going? Partly because I’m an ornery cuss who doesn’t like having to wait and if the library doesn’t have the next book in a series I’m reading; it irks me. Partly because I can afford to buy more books for myself than I could when I was younger. Having my own copy of a book means I can read it whenever I like 24/7/365³ and the copy of the book I’m reading is likely to be in better condition (plus it’ll stay that way). *shrug* Not sure what else I have to say, except that I hope to be making visits to my public library more often. It’ll let me relive parts of my past (and beat some of this summer heat).

¹ For some reason, employers don’t like it when you read books all day instead of testing their software.
² Besides, money has been a bit tighter of late and borrowing books from the library is cheap entertainment. :D
³ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year (366 in a leap year).

Public Library © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.