Golden Anvil

Copying a meme started by Optiker, I poked around a little to see  what was the oldest thing I have still sitting around that wasn't just sitting in a box somewhere.

I think I've got five categories of such things.

1) Games (roleplaying and such mostly): I've got Car Wars stuff here that dates back to early highschool. Now technically, I haven't played it in a while, but I really want to. Doesn't that count for something? I also have some Lost Worlds stuff that dates back to highschool. I've played that more recently, but it's still been a while. I'm sure I've got a couple other games that date back to at least late highschool.

2) Books: I've actually got a pretty decent number of books that are probably early highschool or possibly even junior high. Just glancing at the shelves, I reasonably confident about the acquisition time period of Dune, Watership Down, Cities in Flight, Red Storm Rising, In Conquest Born, Ivanhoe, Splinter of the Mind's Eye, some books on magic, and others. Some of those I've read more recently than others, but I tend to reread books that I own, so most of those are probably considered still in use. Oh yeah, I've got a book about Houdini signed by Houdini. That was from grandma. I read it once, but prefer not to handle it, so I probably won't read it again.

3) Clothing: Typical male, I've got some t-shirts that just won't die. One from highschool when I went down to California one summer to help at a retreat center, and I ran in a 5K on the 4th of July. I can't think of others from the highschool era, but I'm sure there are a couple things.

4) Legos: Oh yeah... I've got all of my early Lego sets. The early stuff was all from the space theme. I don't know the exact date I got those, but it was likely in the early 80s. I wish I had more time to play with legos. This category is definitely the winner in terms of age. Yes, I do have legos sitting out in my computer room.

5) Programs: Yeah, that's kind of an odd category. Would you believe that I still have some of the programs I wrote back in 1994? I still have the source code, although good luck getting it to compile and run... A couple of the more interesting ones from then are Orbits. This was a planetary body/gravity simulator. I wrote it because I played around with a couple and wanted to do a better job. I actually uploaded a copy of the first version to a local BBS. Later versions went on my web site (although I doubt you would be able to find any trace of it anywhere). I also have a database program that a friend and I wrote for McDonalds. I think we got $150 each. It came to a little under $1 per hour I think. Looked good on the resume though. Yeah, I haven't run any of those in forever, but I spot them from time to time when I'm organizing my files. Good memories!