The Legal Underground

Favorite Things: Computers

It was back in grade school, sometime in the early 1970s, that the principal informed us over the intercom that the district had obtained a "computer," which was going to tour from school to school so that everyone would have a chance to see it. My school had the computer for just a week, and we were ushered into the principal's office only once. There, we were trained to excel in a game called "Moon Lander." Do you remember it?

There were no graphics, of course, but only text--mostly numbers. All my classmates crashed into the moon. Later, in high school, we would play Star Trek over the district's time-sharing network. Old-timers will remember how you connected the local teletype machine to the distant mainframe by inserting a telephone into a tight-fitting rubber device.

Star Trek was text-based, too, although the text printed out into arrays that suggested graphics. On a shelf behind my desk, I actually have the code to Star Trek, written in Basic: it's on page 157 of Basic Computer Games, by David H. Ahl, copyright 1978. I once typed it into my first "microcomputer"--the Amstrad PC6400 shown in the picture. I bought the Amstrad when I was in law school. It had "dual floppies"--that is, no hard drive--and it came with three operating systems: MS-DOS, Digital Research's DOS-Plus, and CP/M. It's still in the basement, and I still boot it up from time to time.

In 1990, when I started working at a law firm, I took my Amstrad with me and set it on my desk. Many of the partners were openly derisive: if I insisted on typing, which was a secretary's job, I must remember to keep the door shut. Within two years, however, all of those partners had PCs on their desks, and were attending mandatory classes on how to turn them on.

Although my story is not unique to anyone near my age who was a hobbyist (see this short article, for example, which I just found), I'd like to write a long essay someday about my lifelong attachment to computers, interspersed with the stories that are told in the advertisements contained in the stacks of Computer Shopper magazines I have stored in the basement, just in case I ever need them.

Maybe I'll write the essay on the Amstrad.

[Below the Fold: Other "favorite things" posts]

Favorite Things: Drinking, Smoking & Screwing

Don't be put off by the title of this book of selections by famous writers.  It's actually quite a literary piece of work, and I found it in the "essays" section of Borders.    It was back in the days when I was slaving away as a defense lawyer.  I added it to my bookshelf at work, just above the hornbooks and treatises, where it was supposed to remind me that I was more than just a finely-tuned billing machine.

How can you go wrong with a book that contains thoughts on some favorite vices from the likes of H.L. Mencken, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Spalding Gray, and Dorothy Parker?  It sat on the part of my bookshelf that I would consult during lunch, since I generally preferred staying in to going out.  Going out was too expensive.  When my day was halfway over, the book allowed me to get my mind off of the unreasonable demands of the partners by spending a little time with the likes of Charles Bukowski, James Thurber and Erica Jong, who were much more fun to be around.

Was I risking censure by placing such a risque publication in a place where it might be seen by clients?  Defintely not.  Clients were never invited into an associate's office.  Only the conference rooms or, very occasionally, the partners' offices would do.  And no one ever looked at the books on my bookshelf anyway, as I mentioned once in a post about my gambling days.  I could have kept a loaded gun on those shelves, or a stack of Playboy magazines.  It didn't matter.

I take it back.  The Playboys would not have gone unnoticed.  But Drinking, Smoking & Screwing did, and that's the way I wanted it, just as long as I could keep my eye on it from my desk.

Favorite Things: The Fender Jaguar Electric Guitar

It can shatter windows or render old people completely deaf with one screaming, extended solo in a minor key.  It was Kurt Cobain's prize guitar, the one he carried from concert to concert and never smashed onstage.  His was a 1966 model.   Mine's a 1965 with sunburst coloring, just like the one in the picture. 

I bought my Fender Jaguar when I was a high-school junior, after having played guitar since second grade.   That was in 1980.  It was years before the grunge rockers "rediscovered" the Fender Jaguar.  But its unpopularity didn't matter to me.  It didn't matter that my friends gave my guitar funny looks and asked me why I hadn't bought a Les Paul or a Stratocaster.    I liked it and it sounded good, even if I wasn't a virtuoso.

It cost $350, several months of working as a restaurant cook at $3/hour.  It replaced a Gretsch 12-string that was on loan from a friend of my sister who one day, out of the blue, demanded it back.  I didn't want a 12-string electric guitar anyway.

Since 1980, I've lived in a lot of places, but I've always found a place for my Fender Jaguar.  I've changed amps, and I've played with lots of different people, but I've never changed guitars.

During the days when Kurt Cobain and others were repopularizing the Fender Jaguar, I saw the value of mine triple, then quadruple.  It didn't matter, of course, because I wasn't selling.  Too bad those high-school friends of mine had all scattered to the winds--I didn't get a chance to tell them I told you so.

It's also too bad I became a lawyer and not a rock musician.  But sometimes these things don't work out exactly like we want them to.  I can still pretend I'm a rock musician.  I do it sometimes late in the evening when no one's around, and I'm on my third beer, and the amp's turned up as loud as it will go.  Mine goes all the way to 11.