ADAMCON 09
By Joseph Alford

     Thursday Reception.  There is no room 175 at the Midway 
Hotel.  The reception was in room 157.  We were in room 131, 
half a corridor away, because we were the next-to-last 
people to pre-register.  Procrastination wins again:  Many 
ADAMites were on the second floor.  The early bird gets the worm, 
but who wants to eat worms?  In fairness to the hotel, they 
were told to expect about 20 people and over 30 showed up.
     The people in the two rooms directly across from the 
hospitality suite (room 157) were not ADAMites and were not 
impressed with our 8-11 pm party.  As for the party itself, I 
have never understood the fascination some people have for 
alcohol.  I like who I am.  The idea of "loosening up" is frankly 
terrifying.  My wife, who doesn't drink either, thinks I 
could use a little (just a little) loosening up.  She is, of 
course, too polite to describe me as a Puritan, a person who 
suffers continuously from the suspicion that someone, somewhere 
is having fun.
     The convention began for me with Ron Mitchell's address 
on Friday morning.  At one time the ADAM community had the 
attitude that anything worth doing could (and should) be done 
on the ADAM.  (Dare I say we had a chip on our shoulder?)  
Ron Mitchell and Richard Clee (Saturday's speaker) sang a 
different tune at this convention.  Many things can be done on the 
ADAM, an amazing number, in fact, but as other machines get 
bigger and faster there are more and more tasks for which the 
ADAM is no longer the best tool.  There are still tasks for 
which it is the best tool, but it now shares the choir box 
with other voices and the harmony is good indeed.
     By the way, in this era of shared desk tops I can now 
admit that I have always addressed envelopes with the best 
tool for the job:  a BIC pen.
     Frances Clee talked about ADAMCalc.  I was very pleased 
until I realized that meant no one was going to talk about 
SmartLOGO which is one of my favorite topics.  Guess I should 
have volunteered myself.  I did not offer to do anything for 
AC09 because I was not sure I would be able to go.
     I stated in print several months ago that I would be 
ending a consulting job and that I am good enough at what I do 
that I would be able to dictate to my new employer when I 
would take my vacation.  My wife suggests gently that I am a bit 
(just a bit) egotistical.  As the old sage says drily:  "The 
boy values himself rather highly."
     My own point of view is that I look at my 
accomplishments and don't value them highly at all.  But I also look 
around at the vast majority who accomplish nothing at all.  My 
head is one of those that sticks up out of the swamp, and if 
that makes me egotistical, then so be it.  I got my vacation 
(two weeks back-to-back and only a month from hire date) from 
the new employer when I requested it.
     ADAMcon is an interesting experience for me.  Almost 
everyone knows more about something than I do, and several 
people know more about everything than I do.  I feel like a nine 
year old at the circus and love every minute.  Maybe that's 
why the reception bothers me so much.
     Meanwhile, Frances Clee has been waiting patiently for 
me to quit talking about me and start talking about her 
ADAMCalc presentation.  Every time I have seen Frances speak she 
has expressed concern over the presence of the experts.  They 
make her nervous.  I tried at the reception to explain to her 
that she has no need to be nervous.  I am a professional 
programmer with fifteen years of experience.  I know a lot about 
what I do, but I love watching other programmers work.  It 
never fails:  Within a few minutes I'm saying, "Hey, wait a 
minute.  What did you just do?  I didn't know you could do 
that.  Wow!"  There are many solutions to every programming 
problem and experts watch each other in hopes of learning a new 
one.
     Frances gave a very basic presentation showing how to 
enter and sum a column of numbers.  That is exactly the 
approach one should take for a talk at ADAMcon.  Show new users 
something they can do.  Remove the mystery and get them started.
     One of the newcomers this year was my wife, Helen.  She 
ran the computer and loved every minute of it.  Yes, I have 
tried to explain spreadsheets to her.  Yes, ADAMCalc was the 
spreadsheet I used.  Yes, I was a teacher for 12 years before 
I became a programmer.  The experience was hard on me, the 
wife, the computer and the couch.
     Frances was not a threat.  Helen could ask questions - 
and did.  She felt free to make mistakes - and did.  Mistakes 
are how you learn.  Helen learned a lot from Frances Clee's 
ADAMCalc session.  Now she wants us to take a programming 
class together.
     And yes, I did learn a few things myself.  I had never 
before blanked a block from a spreadsheet.  I had never 
noticed the printer bug that appears in large spreadsheets.  I 
don't use large spreadsheets.  Believe it or not, I do my taxes 
with a word-processor (SmartWriter), making lists and adding 
the columns with a hand calculator.  I even wrote a program 
one time that would let me go through my checkbook and keep 
running totals of several categories at the same time.  Sound 
familiar?  That is exactly what a spreadsheet does!
     Gene Welch spoke next.  He talked about building an 
ADAMnet clock and about setting up a Hard-Drive cheaply.  At 
least I think that is what he talked about.  The last thing I 
remember is watching him take a pair of clippers and rip one of 
those multi-leg bugs off a circuit board.  I'm sure he knew 
what he was doing.  I'm sure the final result was more 
valuable than what he started with.  But when hardware experts go 
to work my mind shuts down and I have nightmares of Dr. 
Frankenstein.  Lunch was a relief.
     Ron Mitchell talked about the ADAM and the Internet.  
Graphics are out and a special text browser is needed, but 
such things do exist and it is indeed possible to do credible 
research on the Net.  There is even an advantage:  most of the 
advertising is graphics based.
     When I was first on Compuserve it was with the ADAM 
using ADAMLink V.  I did not have an 80-column board, but I was 
able to do some useful work, especially email.  Mitchell says 
ADAMLink V is not so good for Net-surfing.  He suggests 
using the TDOS program QTERM which allows access to PINE (email) 
Lynx, uploading/downloading thru FTP, Newsgroups, chat lines, 
Telnet and the search engines Archie and Veronica.  Sounds 
like a lot to me.  My ADAM, my IBM PC XT and my Pentium can 
all access the World Wide Web.  Of the three, the Pentium is 
the best tool for this particular job.  But, as Dr. D. says, 
"What is amazing is not that the bear dances poorly, but that 
it dances at all."
     Herman Mason and Bob Slopsema were supposed to talk 
about Hard Drive Set Up and Repair.  Hardware problems delayed 
the start of this session for over an hour.  My family gave 
up.  Troy and Helen went to a local roller skating rink for 
three hours.  I hit two local book stores.
     Saturday morning began with an address by Richard Clee 
with emphasis on chosing the right tool for the job.  For 
many jobs that is an ADAM, even in houses where a Pentium lords 
its grand GUI majesty.
     P.J. Herrington spoke next on PowerPaint and related 
subjects and Gene Welch followed with a discussion of how to 
transfer PowerPaint Graphics to other formats for other 
computers.
     After lunch came the ADAM News Network meeting.  To my 
surprise this meeting was open to anyone who cared to come.  
This has been the practice, apparently, for some years.  I 
think that's a much better idea than a closed meeting.  The 
meeting ran an hour longer than expected, chiefly because of a 
long discussion of copyright problems.  ADAMites have always 
been ADAMant (lovely word, that) about protecting copyrights.  
We've seen our software experts give up in disgust after 
selling 4 copies of a program and getting questions from 10 
people.  Today, however, we have the opposite problem.  People 
want legitimate copies of programs that no one is currently 
selling.  ANN has formulated a policy to deal with this problem. 
 I am not going to state it here.  I think the subject is 
touchy enough that it should be stated once by the ANN 
leadership and thereafter repeated verbatim by those interested.
     Another item of great interest to me was a proposal 
that ANN use some of its money to pay for a hardware run of 
center-slot serial / parallel boards.  I think.  The discussion 
got a bit technical when defining the hardware to be produced. 
 What interested me was that only ANN could do this.  No 
single vendor could afford to tie up this much capital.  This 
particular issue was left very much to the discretion of Bob 
Slopsema who will make the initial contacts and determine the 
feasibility of the project.  The key, I think, is that ANN is 
taking the initiative for what I hope will be the first of a 
series of projects.  The future need not be one of constant 
retreats.
     The ANN meeting went through the time for Bart Lynch's 
TDOS/EOS utilities lesson and into the time for Gene Welch's 
Multimedia Utilities.  I am sure those were excellent 
sessions, but by then I was having some serious back problems so I 
missed most of that afternoon.
     I did get back in time for the Yahoo Chat Internet 
Conference and the Compuserve Conference.  Several people all 
over the country were able to participate in ADAMCon 09 through 
these conferences.
     Sunday, the final day.  A Continental Breakfast does 
not warrant getting out of bed.
     Ron Mitchell's MIDI Music session was impressive as 
always.
     The brunch was unbelievable.  The usual eggs, potatoes, 
bacon and sausage took care of the breakfast portion.  The 
lunch portion was a salad bar with an excellent assortment, 
including corned beef and cabbage.  There was a third area with 
three kinds of hot fish and two fish spreads.  A fourth area 
featured hot carved ham and roast beef.  to escape the room 
one had to run the gauntlet between two rows of desserts.  I 
have never seen such a spread.  We certainly got our money's 
worth on that meal.  I managed to mix Spanish peanuts with my 
scrambled eggs.  Crunchy, salty eggs.  Very interesting 
taste.
     This will undoubtedly be known as the kitten 
convention.  At one point the vicious attack kitten that had been 
roaming the presentation room was stalking Dr. Drushel as he paced 
during his Sunday presentation.  Luckily, his ever-alert 
fans noticed the dangerous beast and warned the good doctor, 
thus saving his bare legs from unsightly scars.
     Dr. Drushel's robot was the second most popular small 
beast at the convention.  Dr. D. (as Zonker called him) 
teaches a course in robot building at Case Western Reserve.  The 
robots his students build have to be able to avoid obstacles 
while picking up plastic eggs and taking them to their home 
base.  Some eggs have higher values than others.  Some have 
negative values.  The robots must be able to distinguish the 
types of eggs.  The course teaches problem solving in a 
real-world situation:  limited resources and limited time.  Since the 
robots are too big and too fragile to transport, he brought a 
simpler model.  This robot would move foreward until it hit 
something and then back up and move in another direction.  
Drushel got this teaching job because he had practical hands-on 
experience with a small computer.  (Guess which one?)
     Dale Wick did a demonstration of his micro-compiler for 
BASIC.  Actually, the language is not BASIC.  "For this 
version, the program is a mixture of MicroSoft QBASIC syntax, C, 
ADA, and some Coleco Adam specific ideas."  The key is that 
the resulting program can be compiled.  This makes the program 
run many times faster.  In a very intensive hands-on session 
both Helen and I took turns typing in the sample programs 
and we both enjoyed ourselves immensely.  This was probably our 
favorite session of them all.  I was so impressed that I 
bought the latest version so I can play with it more.
    As an aside, one of the things that interested me was 
that the text editing was done in VDE.  For years people have 
been telling me that VDE is an excellent low-end 
word-processor that runs under TDOS.  It is described as very much like 
SpeedyWrite, my word processor of choice.  I finally got a 
chance to play around with VDE.  I found that it does indeed do 
insertions and deletions easily.  I did not get a chance to 
play with it a lot, but I had no trouble opening and closing 
files.  I have not yet had a chance to move text which is the 
other major word processing task.  I will keep you posted as I 
play with VDE further.
     Came the Adam Store of which much good will be said.  
Several vendors were very patient with me as I told them what 
I wanted, paid for it, and then told them what I intended to 
do with it.  Herman Mason, George Koczwana and Howard Pine 
managed to straighten it all out and sell me what I needed 
rather than what I asked for.
     My first goal was to re-attach my ADAM to my dot-matrix 
printer.  I broke my Eve serial / parallel box the last time 
I moved my ADAM.
     The next goal was to make the ADAM access the 
hard-drive of the IBM XT that is its neighbor on my desk.  While the 
ADAM was cut off from the dot-matrix printer I was using 
WordPerfect on the XT.  I got used to that hard-drive.  Giving it 
up would be tough.
     My final goal was to make my Pentium emulate a virtual 
ADAM.  Dr. Drushel was helpful in telling me what I needed to 
download from the internet to do that.  I'll keep you posted 
on these experiences also.
     At the banquet Helen and I sat with Dale Wick.  I asked 
him what it is like to be a guru.  He launched into the 
story of how he was a teenageer and got his first computer (a 
TRS-80) and what he did with it.  The entire table was 
fascinated.  This kind of story exists for every one of us.  How did 
you come to meet ADAM?  Let's tell those stories.
     ADAM is a remarkable technological story, but most of 
us who are left are not all that interested in the technology. 
 Show me a TRS-80, a Timex, and an ADAM with their covers 
off and I doubt I could tell you which is which.  ADAMCon is a 
family reunion.  We are interested in people at least as much 
as in technology.  Let's tell the stories behind the people. 
 How did you meet ADAM?
     I was very surprised when Dale complained at the 
banquet that he often gets his 463-ADAM newsletter too late to 
attend the 463-ADAM meeting.  Dale lives in Ottawa, CANADA.  The 
meetings are held in Portage, IN, USA.  It never occurred to 
either Jerry Vrancks or me that anyone that far away would 
want to come to one of our meetings.  We generally schedule the 
next meeting one month in advance.  I talked to Jerry about 
this.  In the future we will schedule and announce meetings 
two months in advance.  Further (an open invitation to any 
ADAMite) if you will let me know a day or so in advance I will 
put you up for the night of the meeting so you don't have 
hotel expenses.
     Having said that, I should hasten to say that our 
meetings are generally Jerry and me talking for a couple of hours. 
 Neither of us is particularly inclined to try to teach the 
other and we don't get real formal.  Helen attends when she 
is not working.  Don Woolston comes when weather and health 
permit or when he has a hardware or software problem.  We have 
actually had better attendance for some of our on-line 
meetings than for our regular monthly meetings.  We try to meet 
on-line every four or five months.  If there is some topic you 
want discussed either live or at an on-line meeting, please 
contact either Jerry or me.
     ADAMBOMB 2 was the subject of much discussion at the 
convention.  Bob Bar convinced some people that they should 
open the disk and play this game that they have owned for a 
year.  I tried to get to each of those people and tell them if 
they really enjoy this game then they should also buy and play 
the original ADAMBOMB which I think is the finest game ever 
made for our computer.
.
     Having said that, I should hasten to say that our 
meetings are generally Jerry an
i