2013 was for the most part, a good year. Although the O’Haras had a typical number of hospital and emergency room visits this year (Susan had knee surgery, Mason thought he broke his knee, and Morgan cut her finger bad enough to require six stitches), everybody made it to the finish line. Another year down, with hopefully many more to go.
Mason and Morgan turned twelve and eight years old this year. Both of them are among the tallest in their classes and both of them signed up to play basketball at the YMCA this year. This is Mason’s second year to play and Morgan’s first. The kids got a new backboard for Christmas and have been shooting baskets in the driveway when it’s warm enough to do so.
Scrolling back through my list of resolutions for 2013 I see that I fell short on most of them. That’ll make creating a list for 2014 easier! As for 2013, I listed and grouped some of the highlights together below.
[Work]
The key words for work this year: Migration. Consolidation. Cost savings. Travel. Telework. Sequestration. Furlough. Re-org.
I’ll start with the travel. Off the top of my head, last year for work I visited Washington D.C. twice, Kansas City, Missouri twice, Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina, and Tempe, Arizona. I drove to all of those places. I only flew once, to Seattle. They lost my luggage.
In May of 2013 I was on placed on furlough leave without pay for one day, the irony being that I was out of town on travel — so while I didn’t get paid for the day away from work, I did get my hotel and per diem paid for. The furlough we received in October was less enjoyable. For sixteen days, Susan and I were prevented from reporting to work. Because we could have been called back at any time we were not able to stray too far away from home. The government decided to retroactively pay us for the time off, but we were unsure if that was going to happen during the time we were off to the point that we had withdrawn money from our savings, completely stopped eating out and began closely scrutinizing our spending. Ultimately we made it through, but we learned lessons about keeping more money in the bank and taking the threat of furloughs a bit more seriously.
I spent most of 2013 working on a couple of big-scale projects (domain migrations and email migrations) and lots of smaller ones. My role at work has been transitioning from job duties I know and understand to a new world I am less sure of. It has been a year of change and consolidation and uncertainty and not all of it has been fun.
One new thing Susan and I have both started is teleworking from home. Susan has a home office set up downstairs and I have one set up upstairs. Although it may sound ridiculous, on occasion we have both been working from home and not known the other one was in the house. (In fact, if we happen to telework on the same day, due to our schedules, we rarely even eat lunch together.) For the past several months I have been working from home up to three days a week. I enjoy being able to wear shorts and crank my music up as I write code and solve problems, but I won’t lie — some days it gets lonely and I miss the social interaction of being around people.
[Technical]
This year I cranked the “podcasting” knob up to 10. Not only did I release 28 episodes of You Don’t Know Flack, but I also launched a new Commodore game-related videocast called Sprite Castle, joined my friend Sean on Throwback Reviews as a full time host, and launched the retro podcasting portal Throwback Network as well. I also made appearances on several other podcasts including the Atari 2600 Game by Game Podcast, the Adventure Club Podcast, and the Retroist’s podcast. 2013 was a busy year for me behind the mic. Even more than all the shows I got to meet a lot of people and get to know a lot of people better. Thanks to Sean and Ferg and Vic and Doug and Guy and Door and Steve and everyone else who joined one of our shows or let me join one of theirs.
I continued to dabble with retro computers this year. I purchased and installed a CFFA-3000 for my Apple IIe (a USB-based disk loader), purchased a MiST computer (an FPGA-based machine that emulates both the Amiga and the Atari ST), and two Raspberry Pi computers. If you don’t know what most of those things are, don’t worry — just know I bought some old things and had a good time playing with them. Also, after making a pretty lame Poptart case for my Raspberry Pi, my friend Aardvark made and sent me this custom 1541 Pi case. I also got rid of the three monitors that my Amiga 1200, Commodore 64 and Apple IIe were hooked up to and replaced them all with one giant 42″ flat screen television.
In regards to retro arcades, I visited the Arkadia Retrocade in Arkansas, the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Chicago, the Lost Arkade in North Carolina, and Funspot in New Hampshire. I also attended the Kong Off 3 (Donkey Kong tournament) in Denver, and visited several arcades there including the 1-UP and the 2-UP. Although I parted with most of my own personal machines when we moved into our new home, I did drag my 60-in-1 multicade cabinet into the dining room for the kids to play during Thanksgiving, and it was such a hit with the kids (and me) that it’s still there.
Also this year I continued scanning and digitizing all of my media. I gave up on scanning books, but I did get quite a few cassettes, vinyl records, and VHS tapes converted to digital media.
[The Fun]
Our big family vacation this year took us from Oklahoma, by car, to Niagara Falls (the Canadian side) and eventually all the way to Porter’s Cove, Maine. Along the way we stopped at the Christmas Story Museum (the house from the film) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had buffalo wings in Buffalo, New York, played video games at Funspot in New Hampshire, and went on a lighthouse tour just off the coast of Maine. Because of this trip I was able to add several northeastern states to my list and I have now officially stepped foot in 43 of the 50 states.
Other Oklahoma-based trips this year included visiting the Great Salt Plains, attending the Oklahoma Video Game Expo in Tulsa, and staying at a local Bed and Breakfast in Edmond. Mason got to meet Weird Al at a book signing in Oklahoma City, and the following month all four of us got to see Weird Al perform live. It was my third time to see Al perform live, Mason’s second, and Morgan and Susan’s first.
Other random things: I visited a bunch of filming locations from Breaking Bad in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I got to visit my friend Jeff and his family in Atlanta, my friend Robb twice (once in Tulsa and once in his home state of Colorado), I got to eat my first garbage plate with my friend Aardvark in Rochester, and I got to meet my online friend Mikey for the first time in North Carolina.
Oh, and my wife bought me a new car.
[The Not So Fun]
On August 18th, 2013, my Uncle Joe unexpectedly passed away at the age of 58. His wake took place on August 21st and his funeral took place the following day on my 40th birthday. I served as a pallbearer at his funeral and I can honestly say that, as surreal as it was, it was a day that will be with me for the rest of my life. It still doesn’t seem real. Two weeks before he passed, by sheer coincidence, Mason went to Chicago and spent a week at Uncle Joe’s house. We are all grateful things worked out that way. I’ll never watch the Three Stooges again or see another Chicago calendar without thinking about him.
Brad Prillwitz, an online friend of mine, also passed away this year after being involved in an auto accident. Brad was 47. I used to see Brad every year at the Oklahoma Video Game Expo in Tulsa. Brad was a good guy and his presence was missed there this year. Gary McIninch, a co-worker, was killed in a boating accident on the 4th of July. Gary is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever worked with.
Two tornadoes a few weeks apart ripped through Oklahoma last May. The first ran through Moore, did a ton of damage and killed several people including many children seeking cover in an elementary school. The second tornado came through while we were out of town on vacation. Although all of my close friends and family were spared, we had several co-workers who sustained damage to their houses and at least one person who worked in my building was killed.
Finally, my little buddy Gage (our friends Tim and Dawn’s son) was diagnosed with Leukemia in 2013. The good news is that Gage has been responding well to treatments and, while he has a ways to go, is doing great. Go Gage Go!
[Parting Thoughts]
I typically write these year-end posts by skimming back through robohara.com and picking out the highlights. I made that more difficult on myself this year as I posted lots of things on Facebook and Twitter that never quite made it to the blog. I hope I hit all the big things. In 2014 I hope to keep better track of things.
Whether you had a good or bad 2013, here’s to making 2014 even brighter. See you all next year!
