[Coco] Old techies

[brjeremy at juno.com]

55. Although as Allan noted at the Fest last year my serving as chaplain to 55 British Choir Boys in the UK made me seem 10 years younger, or it may have taken ten years off of my life :-) Even my littlest lads (the eight year olds) are very computer literate. Even the family that I roomed with, the Wilkes' littlest one Michael learned how to use Skype. I still remember, that they had to coax little nearly four old lad to the computer. I wish you could have heard him "No, I'm nah-a lowed. But when we coaxed him a bit further that historic moment occured when Michael looked in to the camera, saw his image on the screen and proclaimed in his first transatlantic, international, halfway around the world telephone call, and I quote "I've got Batman on me underpants." His eleven year old brother Cedric was mortified by that and proclaime, Michael, no one cares what you got on your blinking undies. To which Michael announced, "And Cedric's got Superman on his. Cedric looked directly into the camera and told me, "This is my life Brother Jeremy, this is what I have to put up with all the time. A quick "Thats enough of you Ceddie" from his dad put a stop to that. Then Michael announced that Cedric hated him. Even though quickly reminded that it was no in fact the case, Michael stated, "Oh yes he does, but over the years I've learne to live with it." I loved thwt. You've learned to live with it, youre four years old Michael
I can't help but wonder how different some of our lifes would have been if we had been able to have usage of computers at that age, which for me was 47 yers ago. That always gets a Gaw Brother Jeremy, you're as old as my granny you are. Now don't take this wrong and get any false notions among you, but as ones perspective changes the once old lady who was your grandmother and seemed so ancient at age 55 now is a pretty attractive youngish 50 something. Now after all, I am celibate, not blind, and I do note tht the Almighty does fine work.

I'm not at the monastery today so exact models are sketchie, but it first a CoCo 2. Next a COCO 3 upraded first to 512 k and then to 2 megs at just $80.00 per meg. I 20 meg and one 40 meg scsi hard drives running on a SCC2 by Disto. The dot matrix printer used an addon interface to give better speed. Does anyone remember spraying the ribbon with WD-40 to get more life out of it. My lads were used to ink-jets and lasers and when I demo'd that trick on an old dotmatrix printer they all ask, "brother, how'd ya knew you coulda do that." I would usually replie, "I'm a monk, we know these things."

Text based adventure games : "Pick up the book...." "Enter the room"...when way do you turn? England has gotten very interested in RETRO styles and other things. Some on my older really got interested in games such a Rescue on Fractalus. At first they thought that 8-bit graphics were so primitive but Miss Simmonton had then do an art project that helped them understand the concepts. We actually had them learn some simple game programming. I knew that we had achieved success for the lads had gravitated away from the X boxes, etc and were playing on a UK CoCo model.  

If you have never seen them before I will bring a collection of pre-production CoCo3 prototypes with unusual GIME chips which have been entruste to a strange monk who in the moonlight is seen wandering the british country side with a strange artidfacts looking for a special machine in which to plug them in, and are only removed from the confines of the Cloister for two eveneings for the few who can truly appreciate the legend presented before them. 

I'm looking forward to being at the Fest. I have a few more stories to relate about my Lads. One or two may even make it into the sermon once again on Sunday morning.

With all wishes,
Brother Jeremy, CSJW

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