Tilting at Windmills

Time for another late update… no progress as yet to report on the game.

In other CRPG news on the TI front, Dream Codex’s “Tunnels of Doom Reboot” is complete and available for download. And it’s quite awesome. Check it out, whether you’re a fan of the original or a newcomer!

And now for some personal stuff… it relates to the TI eventually, so be patient.

A few weeks ago I was between jobs, taking a week off. I decided for the first time to head back up to my old home town, Sedro Woolley. I hadn’t been back there in 18 years, and I wanted to see how the old place had changed. I’d had some inklings based on some bird’s eye shots from Windows Live Search, but I wanted to see it for myself.

In those times now lost to memory, Sedro Woolley and Skagit County was, for the most part, backwater areas. For those of you unfamiliar with Washington state, the only real cosmopolitan region is Seattle; the rest of it is provincial. Put it this way; all the “cool” kids chewed tobacco in high school.

Well, Sedro Woolley hasn’t changed much. The main town’s been remodeled a bit to try and draw in more tourism, but it’s a work in progress still, and it’s pretty clear the local economy is fairly sluggish. In fact, Sedro Woolley was most known for the large mental hospital that lay east of the town; it was still active when I was a kid. It closed in 1990 and the grounds are off-limits to visitors. In fact, it’s said there’s a lot of paranormal activity in the old grounds.

The picture above is of our old house, which was a few miles out of town. I was quite surprised when I visited it because it wasn’t actually occupied… the owners had rented it out, and the renters had abandoned it, so it was in a state of interior remodeling. This let me walk around and take photos freely, but was a bit distressing to see the old place neglected. (Renters rarely take care of grounds.)

As a kid with an orphaned computer system, I had to rely on mail order for most of my software. I remember the first real order I placed from the Triton catalog was for Wizard’s Lair from Rainbow Software, on cassette. I waited and watched for the mail every day from that front window… I remember letting out a whoop when it arrived at last. Another time we went to a store in Lynnwood (near Everett) called Bits N’ Chips, which also sold TI stuff. I actually got my first copy of Legends there, although later I realized to my horror the owners were just letting us copy it like freeware software for a few dollars.

Actually, I was very fortunate indeed, because I discovered soon after we had a local computer store in downtown Mount Vernon that sold TI equipment. The owner, who’s name I regretfully have forgotten, was an avid 99′er; I met him for the last time at the Tacoma 1993 TI Faire. I bought my Peripheral Expansion Box in his store around 1987 with birthday money, and continued to buy books and software through him. I even got a Corcomp DSDD controller card through him after I moved by having him ship it to me. Unfortunately, my investigations in Mount Vernon found that his store had long since closed. I expected as much, but it would have been nice to say hello again.

Actually, on that subject, Mount Vernon and Burlington have REALLY changed. When I was a kid, there were only two malls in the area, both in Mount Vernon on the College Way road. An outlet mall opened in Burlington not long after we moved, but I was unprepared for the sprawl of mall complexes that have grown there since. I don’t think I could FIND the original town anymore. It’s nice to have those services available, but it felt rather like a SimCity game gone overboard to me, and I wasn’t unhappy to leave.

My little nostalgia trip was interesting and I had a good time, despite the sadness at seeing things change. Or not change, in some cases. I was also checking the region out to see if I thought buying property or a home there in the near future was possible… I don’t think so. The house values are not going to gain enough to justify a murderous commute back to Bellevue/Redmond for work each day.