Rebecca Heineman has died

"Burger Becky" did a lot of great games, first at Interplay (Bard's Tale, Wasteland), then later at Logicware, where she and others did some great Mac ports including Jazz Jackrabbit and their Half-Life MacOS port which never actually saw the light of day, the infamous 3DO port of Doom, and of course the initial work on the IIgs version of Wolfenstein 3D. Naturally these are just the highlights that come to mind of a very long tenure in the computer gaming world. She was very complimentary of TenFourFox back in the day when I was still developing that, and I'd long hoped she would release Mac Half-Life like she did 3DO Doom for the archivists to pick over. Sadly, word has come out that she has finally succumbed to some sort of aggressive form of pulmonary adenocarcinoma. It's not a good way to go, and I hope her last moments were at peace.

When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

I try not to write anything even vaguely political on this blog because we have a variety of views on a variety of subjects and no one is here for that. We can all enjoy our geriatric little silicon artifacts together regardless of your electoral persuasion. But I was hopping mad this week, and the reason is actually on-topic, because I got hit with US Customs tariffs close to double the cost of the vintage items I was ordering and more than the items were worth. This eventually got straightened out, but it wouldn't have happened without my complaint and some time on the phone.

They call it Mister Pibb (again)

As Pibb is the official beverage of Old Vintage Computing Research, no doubt to the profound chagrin of the Coca-Cola Company, I feel compelled to offer a public service announcement.

Old and busted:

New hotness:

Yes, Mr Pibb (technically mr P!BB, though Coca-Cola is inconsistent on their own brand name) is back and Pibb Xtra, the face of Pibb since 2001, is relegated to the dust heap with Peppo. This explains why I had been unable to buy any more Pibb Xtra for the past month or so — Coke was probably depleting their stocks for the switchback. Since Old VCR's northern HQ is relatively close to a Coke bottling plant, I was able to pick up two fridge packs at Safeway today, though not exactly what I was expecting!