Yesterware

"But do you have a Vectrex?" When someone learns that I'm a retro game enthusiast and have meticulously collected nearly every post- crash video game console released in the United States, more often than not someone carrying around a nugget of trivia that Vectrex is a rare console, despite the fact that they often don't even know what it is, will ask me about it and I'll have to admit, that no, I don't have a Vectrex.  It doesn't matter that Vectrex is pre-crash and I don't really collect pre-crash - I also don't have Pong, an Odyssey, a Commodore 64, an Atari 5200, or an Atari 7800 either, but those never come up.  What always comes up is the Vectrex. Twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a Vectrex from a now-defunct local used game retailer for around $100.  At the time I didn't know anything about the Vectrex and the awful buzzing noise the entire time it was switched on made me think something was seriously wrong with it...

Story Time Half a lifetime ago I was at school.  It was the 10th grade and I noticed something unusual about the digital watch the kid sitting next to me in shop class was wearing.  Below the display was an indentation with a round aluminum disc.  Being a total digital watch geek I had to ask him about it.  That's when I learned that the aluminum circle on the face was a temperature sensor.  It has been so long that I honestly cannot remember the particulars but I ended up trading something with him to get that watch. At some point in my 20's the watch stopped working and I took it apart to try to fix it - what I thought I could accomplish is beyond me.  Predictably I wasn't successful in my attempts to get it working.  Rather than put it back together, I placed all of its pieces into an empty margarine tub and promptly lost track of it for nearly 20 years. Fast-forward to last week when my wife was clearing out one of our many catchalls (you k...