Do Want

Today I stumbled upon a link involving information about Lego Technic. For those of you unfortunate enough to be ignorant about it, Technic was Lego's line of, well, technical models. That is, they had motors, pulleys, gears, beams, pneumatics, and all sorts of other nifty parts that meant you could build models that actually, you know, did stuff.

Anyways, after reading up on the newer Technic sets (I haven't played with legos since I was in middle school, and I think I may have to start up again), I decided to research some of the new fancy-shmancy "Mindstorms" kits- basically, a programmable microcontroller that can interface with lego motors and sensors (yeah, they have sensors now!).

This all reminded me of a much older kit called the Control Center (I'll find the part number sometime). The Control Center was, in my mind, the predecessor to the Mindstorms line of controllers. It featured three independent motor controls, and was "programmable" in the sense that it could be made to memorize certain motor commands; the motors were controlled using buttons on the front surface. The models one could build with it were amazing- a drawing machine, a dinosaur, all kinds of stuff. I ended up incorporating mine into pretty much all of my models that I came up with. Since most of these were cars, this usually involved using what was called the "East-West" motor port to drive a micromotor for a rack-and-pinion steering system, and a regular high-RPM 9V Technic motor to drive the rear wheels was controlled by the "North-South" motor port. There was a third port, and that usually went unused, unless I had some power accessory I wanted to incorporate (usually, that would be a pneumatic pump for something like a pneumatic arm).

This set brings back a lot of memories; before my parents moved us all out to Forsythe, I had seen this set in the Lego catalog (yeah, I got the lego catalog. My parents got me hooked when they bought me the 9V motor starter kit). Anyways, the set listed for something like $250.00, which for an eight-year-old kid may as well have been $∞.99. Well, I started saving up my allowance, and by the time we moved to Forsythe I had something like $100 saved up for this set that I pretty much dreamed about every night.

Well, on one of our frequent trips to Billings (or we were stopping in Billings on our way back from Missoula, I can't remember), we stopped at Toys-R-Us. Now, we usually stopped there, even though we didn't normally come away with anything- looking back on it, I think my parents used it as a treat to get us to behave well, which makes sense; trips to Billings were all-day affairs, and I can only imagine how grating it must have been to try and manage two (and, eventually, three) young children for a whole day and 200 miles of driving.

So we stop at this Toys-R-Us, and I'm looking at all the Lego sets inside all dejected-like, because they don't have any sets that I both want and do not own. We walk outside, and on the curb is all of their clearance merchandise- inventory that has failed to sell well and that they need to move. Lo and behold, there is my dream set, sitting on the curb, the box somewhat dinged up from being moved around-- and it has a clearance price of $100.

I bought the set, and the rest is history. I literally cannot explain how much joy that brought me, especially when combined with the rest of my (already considerable) lego inventory. After building the models in the book, I used it as the electronic basis for pretty much every creation I had; I even used it to add additional motor controls to sets that didn't originally accommodate them.

Anyways, I thought I'd share. I can think of no other single item that I have owned throughout my life, excepting my first computer and my first car, that have brought me such joy. Looking back on it now, of course, I realize what a simple piece of electronic equipment it was- I could build it myself, now, with way more features- but at the time, it enabled me to do things with my Legos which had previously remained only dreams. This is significant because as a child, my legos were my canvas- they were the medium through which I expressed myself, and through which I explored my own creative abilities.

I am thoroughly convinced that legos and, via subsumption, the Control Center, are a significant reason why I have the interests that I do, or at least caused me to pursue those interests.

New Year's Resolution

One of my New Year's resolutions: post more frequently.

Maybe I should put a sticky note on my laptop...