Kansasfest 96 report, part I

[geoff@seeker.the-hermes.net (Geoff Weiss)]

I had decided to not write anything about KansasFest 96 until GenieLamp
was released.  I was dissapointed with the content in GenieLamp so I
will embellish on what happened.  Most of what I will write will
revolve around me so please bare with it.

Day 0: Wednesday, July 17th
---------------------------

KansasFest...an event which I heard is a "must go" for any Apple II
user.  I have never been to one before so I wasn't sure exactly what
to expect.

I finally arrived at Avila after a 17 hour drive.  Road time to drive
from Washington, DC to Kansas City is about 17 hours.  This doesn't
include meals, bathroom breaks, and the overnight hotel stay in St. Louis.
It was about 3:30 p.m. when I got to campus.  When I was checking in, 
I was half expecting to see Cindy Adams.  I have never met her before, but
she seems to be heavily involved with setting up KansasFest.  I was very
surprised to not see her.  I enquired to ask if my roommate arrived.
I was told that the man in front of me was my roommate.  I thought it
was pretty funny that we arrived at virtually the same time.  I
introduced myself to my roommate, Kevin Thornton.  I had no idea who
he was, but later found out he used to be a dealer who sold Apple II
hardware and software.

Due to some of my computer equipment that I brought with me, I had 
brought along a dolly from work to cart my equipment to my room.  With the
dolly, I could bring all the stuff I had in my in two trips.  Kevin
had tons of junk: 2 IIgs systems, Laser 128, //e system, Mac system,
boxes of software and hardware, and spare computer parts.  Kevin was
really thankful that he could use my cart to bring up his boxes.

While Kevin was unloading his car, I went ahead to set up my computer.
My regular Apple RGB monitor for my IIgs is having problems--I think
it has a power supply problem since the screen likes to jump around.
Luckily I had a spare monitor that I could bring with me.  This
spare monitor is a relative new addition to my collection of computer
hardware.  It is a SVGA monitor; but I have a second sight card so
I can plug it right to my IIgs.  Oh, did I mention that the monitor
is a 19 incher?  On the desk in our room, I had my IIgs with a 19"
monitor on one side and my roommate his Mac with a 21" monitor on the
other side.  The desk was very well balanced.

Since I let Kevin use my cart, he allowed me to use his Internet
account (he lives in Kansas City so it was a local service provider).
When he tried logging in when he arrived, the conection didn't work.
Since I deal with problems like this at work, I reconfigured his
Free PPP to properly connect with his provider.  He was telling me
that a technician from his provider told him to change all the
settings the day before.  Unlimited free access to work ended up being
a nice benefit later during KansasFest.

Most of what happened next was a blur.  I remember going to down to
cafeteria for dinner to get a snack--all I remember was that Auri
"Ramalama-ding-dong" Rahimzadeh (quoted name courtesy of Diz) arrived
and sat at the table I was at.  He had walked in with a Powerbook
under his arm.  Even though I have never met Auri before, I some how
pictured that was him.  It seems like I was the only one at the table
who never saw GUS.  He booted his Powerbook and showed that the rumored
IIgs emulator was real.  This wasn't an offical presentation, but I
have to say that I wasn't all that impressed.  Sure, it was neat
seeing a IIgs running on a Mac, but I have no access to a Power Mac so
it didn't seem to useful to me.  If GUS was compiled to work on the
68k Mac, I would have been more excited.  I don't know if i have become
cynical, but it is hard to get excited over software if you don't have
the hardware to use it.

At this point, I would like to thank everybody who gave me rides
while I was at KansasFest.  I had driven a long way and didn't feel
like driving for a days since I would have an equally long journey
home.  I hitched a ride with Diz to go to KC Masterpice, a local
restaurant.  Diz is a funny, funny guy--if you get a chance, take
a ride in his van with him.  Just don't try to have a dueling
match with playing with AC and radio controls because you will lose.
Among the many conversations at KS Masterpiece, I met someone who liked
P8KeyChange, one of the programs I have released for the IIgs.  We
both agree that we didn't like Apple's decision to use the "8" key
to boot into ProDOS 8.  That was one of the reasons why P8KeyChange
was written.

Upon arriving back to Aliva, I pretty much staying in my room since
everybody else was wandering around.  Cindy Adams came up to me and
ask if I just arrived.  I was thinking--where were you earlier?  I
was one of the first to arrive.  Cindy "Mother Hen" Adam's excuse for
her absense was she was getting food.  I guess having a 19" monitor
on one's IIgs would cause a bit of attention.  I was approached by
the Seven Hills team and asked if they could use my monitor for demoing
their software.  I orginally wasn't planning to attend their sessions,
but there wasn't anything else interesting planned for those times
so I said they could use my system.  I probably should have been 
impressed: Ewen Wannop, Richard Bennett, and Dave Hecker were asking
me, Geoff Weiss, to use my computer system to demo their new updates.

I found out from these guys and Nate Trost that trying to make money
on the Apple II just won't cut it any more.  I learned that is any
software top 200 sales that it was doing well.  That made me
sick to my stomach.  I have a whole bunch of ideas of programs to
write/finish that I thought could sell 1,000 copies each.  At $30
per program, that is $30,000 minus advertising, manuals, disks, etc...
It would end up with a nice profit.  Reality hit me at KansasFest 
where $30,000 became $6,000 before supplies and advertising.  I
became really depressed.  

What I was thinking was "what am I doing here?"  I drove half way round
the U.S. to find that one of my child hood dreams suddenly shattered.
It was Dave Lyons who told me in 1992 that "alot can happen in a year."
Not only can alot happen in year, but alot can happen in just a few hours.
A quick look at the last few hours showed that there were alot of 
people with Macs. I looked at my system: all I have is IIgs, enhanced
with a Zip GSX, SCSI, and more.  Why am I investing my money in this
outdated technology, I thought.  I had a good feeling about the
Second Sight.  Too bad Sequential dropped the ball for support.  Tony
DIaz commented that he didn't put a SS in his GS since the last
KansasFest.  Maybe I should dump the GS and get a Mac-those Power
Macs will be able to emulate GS software, but then I will also
find software that can take full advantage of the Mac's capability.
Not only was the state of the GS market depressing, but it seems like
there was nobody at KansasFest.  All I remember reading about previous
KansasFest letters was "You have to go...it was so cool!"  It seemed
like only 60 people were there.  The session schedule looked 
uninteresting...maybe I should go home now.  Oops, already promised
Seven Hills my IIgs all day tomorrow.

I was ready to stop development of all the sofware I had was to about
to throw what I had done (bugs and all) into the public domain.  I
finally started to have some free time in my life to get back to
coding and it looked futile.

By this point, I've seen GUS, a ROM 04, an Apple Ethernet Card, a 
bunch of cards that Tony Diaz designed, and how commercially
unsuccessful the Apple II is.

I hung around with Eric Sheppard, Greg Templeton, Nate Trost, and
Burger Bill for the rest of the evening (well, next morning).  They
all have real jobs writing programs all day.  I'm glad my job is not
a "computer programmer."  Greg mentioned he has designed a new
animation format that is faster than the "current standards."  I was
awe-strucken how simple his format.  He said that he hopes to
port the final code to the IIgs one day.

We all headed back to our rooms around 3:00 to sleep for the night.

------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't expect to write so much, I guess that were alot of feelings
running through my mind the first day I was there.  Hopefully future
days will have less emotion and more content.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail: geoff@the-hermes.net   System Administrator for Hermes Internet Service
WWW: <a href=http://www.the-hermes.net/~geoff>Geoff's Home Page</a>
The report of my death was greatly exaggerated. -- Mark Twain