One of life's trials (Patreon)

I've been mostly offline for the last couple weeks as my mother passed on Monday, January 29th. I don't want to bring everyone down with that news, just to acknowledge her contribution to all this. 

Like most from her generation, she did not embrace the personal computer age, but made sure I had every opportunity. As an elementary teacher, she gave me my first exposure to a computer by bringing the school's Commodore PET 4016 home for a weekend in 1982. This was allowed presumably so she would learn computer technology, but instead let my sister and I loose on that magical interactive screen. 

She later got my Dad on-board to buy the family a TI99/4A computer in the early 80's, video camera in the mid-80's and the Macintosh SE a couple years later, which, together, set me on this path.

She still had fun with computers. Her and her older sister would sit at the TI99 with joysticks playing A-MAZE-ING and laughing like kids. She once decided that her and my Dad would try a computer game on the new IMac G3. Unfortunately they chose Marathon. They didn't get past the first green Fighter, but laughed and laughed about it. So, I got Elf Bowling running on Virtual PC (Win98) and that was a huge hit with her and her friends for weeks. And let's not forget way too many games of Eric's Solitaire Sampler.

She will be deeply missed.