Obsession!

 First published on Column 8 on 25^th Sept, 1991 

I spent the better part of a wet Saturday afternoon last weekend at the Computer Expo being held in the chandelier-lit Southern Cross Hotel.

Computers intrigue me, though not to the extent that I’ll discuss them from dawn to dusk. But there was a particular Point of Sale set-up on display which impressed me as being of possible value for my shop. In fact, so impressed was I that I lay awake till 2 am thinking about the possibilities.

Computers have this tendency to make me become obsessive.

(I might have been awake till two anyway. We had three extra boys in the house because of a birthday party, and it was only in the wee small hours that I finally managed to command them to stop talking, whispering, giggling and occasionally exploding in the room next to mine.)

The first computer I owned, a little hand-holdable PB100, bought for the budget-wrecking sum of $199, had the capacity to keep me awake until the stars packed it in and went back to bed. Especially when we went on holiday one Christmas.

In those days, after long hours at the beach, the kids were asleep by nine. I had ‘a little time’ to become better acquainted with my new toy.

The LCD screen was so small it could only display one line, and in that line there were only about 12 characters visible. By the early hours of the morning, I felt as though I had as many eyes as the average housefly.

The miniature keyboard was worse: after a session on it I had less use of my fingers than the Incredible Hulk would have had picking up a split tin of pins out of a shaggy pile carpet. You couldn’t type on it – put more than two fingers near it and you rendered it invisible.

But I couldn’t leave the computer alone. Only sheer exhaustion made me drop into bed, and even then my mind continued to solve problems set in motion, with frazzled brain cells wearing themselves out before their time and sending manic messages flickering across the cerebellum.

I can understand how inventors feel when they’ve stumbled across something undiscovered. The obsession with getting the thing right takes precedence over all social concerns and bodily needs, so that to the rest of the human race it seems as though they hardly belong on the planet.

Three years ago we bought a decent-sized computer, with a normal screen and keyboard. One of the first games we had was Emerald Mine, and in the month or so that it survived before the disk collapsed from almost permanent use, normal life ceased.

Everyone had their own score registered and an unofficial competition began to see who could get through the 90-odd (!) levels first. Meals were delayed, home-work undone, patterns of sleep disrupted.

My wife was one of the worst. The determined streak that comes with her side of the family carried her through countless obstacles and setbacks. Every so often (usually while I was getting the tea), there would be a heart-stopping cry of triumph as another level was conquered. There were more cries of anguish, however, as the computer conquered the player.

These days we’re wiser. We tackle games that don’t insist we die seventy times seven before we learn how to stay alive.

In our household obsession with things computerised is fortunately not a permanent problem. What might be is the loss of a large number of brain cells when, burning the midnight 30/40, my upper storey goes into overdrive.

PB100 - courtesy Tourdion

As for obsession with computers, my older son became so focused on the desktop model that he would type entire programmes into it from a library book, and would have to go back through pages if it turned out he’d made a mistake in the input. When the Internet arrived in its earliest stages, he would sit for up to an hour trying to get online while the modem wheezed and gurgled as it tried to connect. Usually this would be first thing in the morning before we were awake – and the computer was in our bedroom.

His brain cells didn’t collapse or disintegrate: instead he grew up to be a software developer with considerable skills.

The PB100 was very frustrating: if you made a mistake on it, you had to start all over from the beginning. Admittedly there were only a very limited number of bytes available on it – a piece of history on the Net says: ‘For programming, the built-in memory of 1 kB leaves 544 programming steps and 26 memories.’ Apparently you could by a pack that gave you an extra kilobyte of memory!

The 30/40 (actually 30w/40) referred to at the end is a make of engine oil produced in the 1990s.