Dayton Ohio

I mentioned that the acquisition of the Amiga 500 was the start of a never ending upgrade path, I also mentioned that a new fiscal responsibility was seeping into the household.

Often the two things didn't go hand in hand, however, with the recommendations of my accountant, it seemed like the tactical application of money for technology was a very good offset to taxes, a legitimate expense that was coincidentally my biggest interest.

In a previous post I had said it briefly, but at the end of April we journeyed down to Dayton in Ohio with our good friends Jim and Sarah Collins, the venue was the annual Hamvention, a massive, football field sized fleamarket dedicated to to Ham radio enthusiasts and the rapidly expanding computer hobbyist.

A nerd show.

The late night trip down on a filled coach was around twelve hours, lots of fun, we all had breakfast at a Cracker Barrel at the break of day, then threw our stuff into a Motel 6 - we either did this early or our bags sat on the coach for six hours or so when we went off for the morning Hamvention session.

It was an amazing day, the sun was "cracking the flags" and we walked for miles through all the various tables at the show, I picked up a few bargains, including that faster modem. Then later, we went to an impressive WalMart (they were impressive back then, believe it or not) and bought Karen a typewriter for her evolving home office and a bottle of Southern Comfort for the ridiculous price of $5.29

I'm sure we kept all the receipts...

I bought a Radio Shack mini amplifier, a Zoom 2400 baud modem, some other bits and pieces of random computer hardware for projects, all in all, a fantastic trip and we enjoyed the company of the people on the coach incredibly.

I think the 2400 baud modem was replaced within six months, such was the pace of affordable computer stuff, the little amplifier was used (on my computer setups) for a decade or more.

The Southern Comfort probably did not make it back to Canada.