Checking out the past....

I'm still working hard on cleaning out my office, which had more than a year of neglect with me just dumping stuff into interesting piles and mounds of potential future projects.  Today was a minor victory when I got my desk cleaned off.  By cleaned off I don't mean that I simply cleared stuff of and put into other piles.

Once my desk is squared away I could start using it again.  My wireless printer wasn't working for me very well.  It prints great for my wife, but when I try to print, the printer spits out my job anytime from 1 to 23 hours later.  Now that my desk was clear I could place the printer there and wire it in to the network.

I also thought that maybe I'd try to re-purpose my ancient Dell 2100, maybe install Ubuntu on it.  I'm having problems with the install due to an uncooperative DVD drive, but that is a problem for another day.  Before I started messing with the computer though, I figured I should take a second glance at my files and make sure I'm not missing anything.  Most of my files were already migrated through several computers to my current laptop, but I did find a few orphans.

One interesting set of files I found was my very first website.  Somehow I used PowerPoint to create a website for my HackMaster game and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the heck I was doing back then.  My site had multiple pages, but all I can manage to bring up is the index page.  The other eighteen pages....well, maybe I could salvage something, but it isn't worth the effort.

I did also find a small scribble from the first time I got to meet a friend of mine.  Granted, he wasn't a friend at the time.....I was more of just a fanboy back then.  Carolyn and I traveled down to Ghengis Con in Denver back in 2003, where Jolly Blackburn and David Kenzer were the Guests of Honor.  A couple months earlier I had managed to snag a copy of Knights of the Dinner Table #1 off of eBay...for $20!  I brought it there for Jolly to sign and he did a little doodle on the back of the comic backer board.

A little fact/tip about Jolly....if you have a valuable piece of paper, do not let him hold it in his hands for more than a few seconds.  Anything longer than that and he will be either doodling on it, rolling it up in his hands, crumpling it up, or all of the above.  I have some evidence that will have to wait for another post.

Until then, here is a cute little doodle from Jolly.