Archive for the ‘.cfg’ Category

The Arcade Safari – Part 1

Published by ConfigSys.boy! on July 16th, 2011

Perhaps the one universal law of nature is that everything dies.  Eventually everything – plants, animals, energy, businesses and movements – must endure the ignominy of decay and dissolution.  Knowing this we set out to find what might remain of an increasingly rare breed of animal: the pure Video Game Arcade.

Like any other hunters seeking rare prey we marshaled powerful equipment to serve our purposes and steeled ourselves for the journey.  With smart phones and starred navigation maps in hand we set out to find and photograph our elusive quarry.  As might be expected our party met with almost immediate danger and discomfort.

Our first venue billed itself as an inviting bay where treasure might be acquired.  You might expect this sort of place to be guarded by dragons, or pirates, or at least a mad scientist with legions of robot servants.  The dessicated, hollow eyed creature attending the entrance however proved much more daunting.  It became clear rather quickly that she was a freelance ‘entertainment specialist’ offering services her dusty shell was well past being able to satisfactorily perform.As she interrogated each of the wizened old figures who shambled up to the entry, with their Social Security checks clutched tightly in hand, awareness dawned on us.

Not only was this no sort of Arcade in the sense that we had in mind, it wasn’t even something we were interested in cataloguing.  Indeed it would have proved quite impossible to proceed further as my trusty companion (we will call him ‘Chinstrap’ for now) refused to leave our transport for fear of the whithered guardian perched outside.

Sensing the futility of a deeper examination, I led our party onward.  The next stop was actually supposed to be guarded by pirates – and that seemed a preferable danger to the one we were leaving behind.  Indeed it would prove to be a much more fruitful – albeit disheartening and melancholy experience…


On Safari

Published by ConfigSys.boy! on July 14th, 2011
I spent this past week trekking around the wilderness regions of North Florida, beyond the comfortable sub-urbanite boundaries of my natural habitat.  During this excursion I had some serious time to ponder my next project.  I also had time to rack up over 2400 unread items in my News Reader.  These two facts are related in that they both had their genesis in the same set of circumstances.Rather than lamenting the locations in my daily life where I experience limited or no connectivity, this trip to the Floridian interior afforded me the opportunity to instead be frustrated by the finite windows of connectivity I fleetingly enjoyed while in transit between the hardened bunker where I was laboring and the pre-historic cave we bivouacked in.  There was no high speed internet.  No WiFi.  No 4G.  No 3G.  There was in fact a distinct lack of G’s.

So in the sparse leisure time afforded me between the whip crack of our rising and our slumbering collapse at day’s end I read ancient lore burned into the skin of dead trees and stared skyward in thought.  The product of this pondering is what I hope will be a series of articles on the things we as Geeks are passionate about;  The cultural distinctives that unite and identify us.

The first piece I’m working on is about The Arcade – that hallowed sanctuary of coin-operated bliss that so many of us grew up sheltering, and losing many quarters (and afternoons!) in.  Arcades are on the decline in America, their pay-for-play experience having been largely supplanted by personal gaming devices in our living rooms, backpacks and even our pockets.  Their joystick adorned altars have mostly been absorbed into other entertainment venues to become part of larger smorgasbord-style playground experiences.

Over the next little while I and some companions will be taking a few field trips to re-capture the past glories of the Golden Age of the video game arcade, to get the creative juices flowing, and to find out just how much life our old gaming temples have left in them.  Stay tuned for photos, comments, and more.

And as always, I welcome your feedback.  Do you have a favorite memory from the Arcade?  What are your memories of the golden age like?  What did you love about escaping to these temples of neon, plastic and pixels?  Hit the comment links, or throw me a trackback and let me know!

Geek Out.


I’m Moving

Published by ConfigSys.boy! on July 7th, 2011

I’m moving.

Not out of state, mind you. Not even to a different municipality. Less than ten miles actually. I am moving however, out of the house I’ve inhabited for the last decade. I am also moving out of the classroom I’ve been employed in for the last six years. These are non-trivial changes in my life, both happening at the same time, and neither is really quite comfortable for me.

(more…)


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