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The Best Christmas Gifts I Ever Received
By Chilly Seventeen
The Christmas season of 1982 was one to remember in the Seventeen household. My parents were trying to convince me that a move from the big city of Tulsa, OK to a small town in Arkansas was somehow going to be beneficial to my burgeoning social life. I grudgingly accepted the move, with the unspoken condition that I better score some sweet gear for Christmas that year (despite the fact that I had zero leverage in those particular negotiations). This would be the first time that the Seventeen parents would exceed expectations (also the last - the yellow IROC-Z never materialized, either). I had some serious loot under the tree, the standard socks, track suit, shirts, etc but also the Big Kahuna: a computer. It wasn't just any computer, it was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A - exactly the computer I wanted! It had a little more firepower than a Commodore VIC-20, sprite graphics, an Extended BASIC cartridge (sold separately) that would allow me to type in games from Games magazine. I was pumped, eventually spending hundreds of hours fooling around with BASIC, including writing a memorable program about planets for a science project. While not the greatest computer, it was okay for a thirteen year kid at the time, and I recall it fondly. But back to December 1982, I assumed that the computer was the coup de grace of the holiday, and was more than happy with how things worked out. But then my parents ushered me to the shed out back, and wheeled out the shiny green []Murray Moped! I was now mobile - the world was mine! This was a legitimate moped, you could pedal it in a pinch, and had to pedal to start it. Somewhere along the way, mopeds lost their sense of James Dean coolness. But for a thirteen year old who could suddenly now go to the arcade by himself, it was a portal to a new lifestyle. Eventually the muffler broke and a plume of smoke started trailing me all over the place, but it served a very useful purpose for two or three years. The gift-receiving satisfaction of Christmas 1982 was never matched, but my fond memories of the highlight gifts endures.
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A true chick magnet
The future of computing (in 1982)
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