05-11-2022, 05:05 PM
My mum and I had struck a pretty sweet deal after my computer broke in 2006/7.
We would absolutely NOT have that heap of junk fixed, because it was a lot more money than it was worth it and we couldn't even print reliably with it anymore... but I was allowed to go to the local Internet Cafe thrice a week over the Summer and once a week during the school year.
That last day of Summer, I still had one "go" left and I convinced her to let me use it, even though a storm was brewing and the sky had been roaring since very early on. I went off to the street and already you could see that it was a pretty stupid idea... the wind blew so hard, it could cut you in half if it wanted to and all vehicles just rushed past, often disregarding the traffic lights. A downpour started as soon as I reached the Internet Cafe proper.
I paid for two hours and did my usual shtick, narrowly forgetting about the storm outside. I posted on forums, I chatted on MSN Messenger and I downloaded some Abandonware games, spread over five floppy disks. The game I had chosen to devote my last day of "freedom" to was no other than Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a game previously mentioned one of my oldest AZ-Diez magazines and often quoted as "a game so hard, only experts could beat it without hints". Since the Cafe's broadband speeds were laughable by today's standard, it took me some ten minutes to download all the different parts of that six megabytes game and then I had to copy every single file onto the different floppy disks, never to be sure if they had copied themselves correctly (or if the discs were still on working condition, for I used them a lot). I downloaded the hint book as well and then killed some time by running people over on GTA: Vice City before heading out to a surprisingly dark afternoon.
The rain and the wind were just as bad as ever, but then the entire street had gotten flooded and I literally couldn't make it back home. I saw people taking shelter under every conceivable place and then I saw cars and taxis rushing out on all directions, because there was no way anyone would want to stick around for what was essentially a tornado raging past.
What did I do, then? What every dumbwitted twelve-year-old would have done: I waded.
The distance between the Café and my house wasn't long, but it sure felt like an eternal walk at that time. More than once I had to grab trees and poles just to avoid being swept away and a lot of times I sank my foot in what I thought were swallow waters, just to find that my ankle had disappeared under the water and that my feet weren't making contact with the pavement beneath at all. I would be lying if I said that this was a time of great reflection, but I definitely kicked myself over this incident later... and I still do, to some extent.
When I reached the wider part of main street, I was soaked and my knees were featuring some pretty nasty reminders of what had just transpired: I had grass, mud and dirt stuck to my pants and my shoes were now about thrice as heavy, due to all the water intake they had withstood. You can just imagine what kind of mood my mum had when wet, cold and shaky me had made it back home. Still, I only had one thing on my mind: the game I had downloaded.
I went over to our freshly-repaired computer (turns out, my mum found someone willing to work on it for free, because it was such an experimental case for them as well) and I inserted the disks... floppies 1-thru-4 worked flawlessly, but freaking Disk 5 had taken in water and gave me reading error after reading error. And that was it, my game was ruined and all I had gone through that day was for absolutely nothing.
I actually went and fixed that a few days later, but maaaan... I almost can't believe the stupidity of it all.
At least it made for a pretty good story and it got me through the dreaded "What I Did Last Summer" section of the first day of school
We would absolutely NOT have that heap of junk fixed, because it was a lot more money than it was worth it and we couldn't even print reliably with it anymore... but I was allowed to go to the local Internet Cafe thrice a week over the Summer and once a week during the school year.
That last day of Summer, I still had one "go" left and I convinced her to let me use it, even though a storm was brewing and the sky had been roaring since very early on. I went off to the street and already you could see that it was a pretty stupid idea... the wind blew so hard, it could cut you in half if it wanted to and all vehicles just rushed past, often disregarding the traffic lights. A downpour started as soon as I reached the Internet Cafe proper.
I paid for two hours and did my usual shtick, narrowly forgetting about the storm outside. I posted on forums, I chatted on MSN Messenger and I downloaded some Abandonware games, spread over five floppy disks. The game I had chosen to devote my last day of "freedom" to was no other than Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a game previously mentioned one of my oldest AZ-Diez magazines and often quoted as "a game so hard, only experts could beat it without hints". Since the Cafe's broadband speeds were laughable by today's standard, it took me some ten minutes to download all the different parts of that six megabytes game and then I had to copy every single file onto the different floppy disks, never to be sure if they had copied themselves correctly (or if the discs were still on working condition, for I used them a lot). I downloaded the hint book as well and then killed some time by running people over on GTA: Vice City before heading out to a surprisingly dark afternoon.
The rain and the wind were just as bad as ever, but then the entire street had gotten flooded and I literally couldn't make it back home. I saw people taking shelter under every conceivable place and then I saw cars and taxis rushing out on all directions, because there was no way anyone would want to stick around for what was essentially a tornado raging past.
What did I do, then? What every dumbwitted twelve-year-old would have done: I waded.
The distance between the Café and my house wasn't long, but it sure felt like an eternal walk at that time. More than once I had to grab trees and poles just to avoid being swept away and a lot of times I sank my foot in what I thought were swallow waters, just to find that my ankle had disappeared under the water and that my feet weren't making contact with the pavement beneath at all. I would be lying if I said that this was a time of great reflection, but I definitely kicked myself over this incident later... and I still do, to some extent.
When I reached the wider part of main street, I was soaked and my knees were featuring some pretty nasty reminders of what had just transpired: I had grass, mud and dirt stuck to my pants and my shoes were now about thrice as heavy, due to all the water intake they had withstood. You can just imagine what kind of mood my mum had when wet, cold and shaky me had made it back home. Still, I only had one thing on my mind: the game I had downloaded.
I went over to our freshly-repaired computer (turns out, my mum found someone willing to work on it for free, because it was such an experimental case for them as well) and I inserted the disks... floppies 1-thru-4 worked flawlessly, but freaking Disk 5 had taken in water and gave me reading error after reading error. And that was it, my game was ruined and all I had gone through that day was for absolutely nothing.
I actually went and fixed that a few days later, but maaaan... I almost can't believe the stupidity of it all.
At least it made for a pretty good story and it got me through the dreaded "What I Did Last Summer" section of the first day of school
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. But at least you got home safely... and you got the game working in the end ![[Image: Train_lover_userbar.png]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/441447382056697867/805553547861164092/Train_lover_userbar.png)
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