the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be

Between 1988 and 1997, the golden age of the MS-DOS operating system, I became an expert at writing boot menus. Various boot configurations were necessary in those days to run certain programs, because they all had different memory requirements, CD driver requirements (when CD-ROM's became available), and sound card interrupt and DMA settings. It was a complete pain in the ass. Usually after purchasing a new game, an entire day was needed just to figure out how the system needed to be tweaked in order to get it to run--and remember, this was before the Internet made it easy to just google an answer. Research by reading, trial and error, and plain old fashioned person-to-person communication was needed. I was such a PC gaming junkie in those days, and had become so good at doing this, that I actually parlayed the skill into a job, for a time anyway. Every PC at Cyberjocks, a local multiplayer gaming establishment, used a special version of my boot menu from 1996 to 1997.

During this same group of years, I became intensely interested in home theater, specifically multi-channel surround sound systems. There was something about high fidelity audio playback systems that fascinated me. Of course, back then home theater was sufficiently esoteric as to be out of the price range of most people, and the best a student with relatively small amounts of disposable income could do was voraciously devour every bit of information available on the subject. Of course, I fortified this with sporadic purchases of very well-researched, relatively inexpensive yet highly regarded pieces of home theater electronics. The true fuel to my passion, however, was the project of building the ultimate subwoofer with my good friend, Aaron Kondziela. Over a period of at least two or three months, we acquired the various components necessary for the project, took over his parents basement (which was delightfully full of useful tools and gadgetry), and constructed a beautifully proportioned (from the perspective of audio design, anyway), gargantuan 30 cubic-foot box. It was a ported design that required a design modification of intuitive ingenuity of which I am still proud. So exacting and fastidious were we in our construction efforts that the final product was able to move enough air to blow shut a door 50 feet away, and shake the foundation of my parents very old, very large and very brick house. I still remember the first sound produced by that behemoth: track 6 of Harry Connick Jr.'s "She:" "Follow the Music," which has an initial bass note so deep and strong that you need a good sub just to hear it properly.

So, what's the point? Well, I still enjoy video games. I still enjoy home theater. But now, I have a PS3, and Xbox360, a Wii, and a relatively capable gaming PC. Over the years I've acquired so many games that I probably wouldn't recognize them all if you laid them out in front of me. I have a dedicated home theater room with a 100" screen, a 1080p projector, and a high end multichannel surround-sound system capable of playing high-resolution audio. I have reclining leather theater seats, and about 5 gagillion movies. In short, if between 1989 and 1997 I had made a list of all the things I could possibly want, the list would be an inventory of my current home (ok, and few other things that I haven't quite been able to take care of...yet). The funny thing is that while I still enjoy all of these things, something is lost now that I own all this stuff. There is no challenge, no work in it. I didn't have to design anything, write any code, or even break a sweat for any of it. Of course, I worked to earn the money needed to buy all this stuff, but that's not really the same thing, is it? I guess that what I'm trying to say is that after acquiring all this stuff, I've never been less interested in it. The irony is not lost on me.