Because the Amiga is the best and most fun computer ever created, it is easy to slip into temporal inconsistencies ... and this can, sadly, lead to marital problems. Oh, its true! Your new Amiga (female friend) seems to get a lot more attention that your wife, and you may hear the sound of a voice in the background as you start using your new Amiga saying "honey! honey did you hear me?"
Well, if your wife doesn't become an Amiga fan soon, you are going to end up having to make a choice. Back in the day, when you were single, you might have spent days on end playing on your Amiga - trying new games, setting up cool tools or applications or staring amazedly at the awesome demos people were making regularly. Now, with your AmigaOne, you discover OS4Depot and other wonderful sites full of AmigaOne programs just waiting to be enjoyed! But how can you do that and keep your wife happy?
I'll share my method .. this may or may not work for you... but at least I'm trying to help! There is an old adage "Happy wife, happy life!" It applies very much to AmigaOne owners. You see, if your wife sees the AmigaOne as something that distracts you and takes time away from her, and causes you to stop paying attention to her ... well, you are in for trouble! Before you know it, your AmigaOne might have a little "accident" wink wink, or worse, suddenly vanish into the attic or closet of unmentionable appliances! The horror!
So how can you overcome this? Well, the answer is to get your wife as enthusiastic as you are about your new AmigaOne. Insane you say! That's absurd! No woman enjoys Amigas! Well, there are a few ... even to this day, like Cammy from Australia and Elena Novaretti who wrote the program ZoneXplorer which works just fine on an AmigaOne by the way!
So here is the strategy.... first, consider, what sort of things does your wife enjoy? Does she like animals, cooking, puzzles, adventure, mystery? What? I discovered that my wife really enjoys puzzles, but even more so, things that require some long term strategy. Hmmmm... once you determine this, you have found the key! So I set up Dungeon Master on my AmigaOne and started playing it while my wife looked on. "What's that" she finally asked. "Oh, nothing" is the correct response. Don't let on how much you would love for her to become an Amiga addict too! A few days later I got the question "So, how do you start that dungeon game thing you were playing?" Success! At least initially. Soon my wife was spending time playing Dungeon Master, but it was over quickly... too quickly. She is rather smart, the puzzles were not much of a challenge. On to Dungeon Master 2! That took longer, but still kept her interested in that "AmigaOne" computer.
Then I downloaded Battle For Wesnoth for Amiga OS4. Whoo hoo I thought, this will take a while! Oh no! Catastrophe! After playing for a while and getting very interested in the game, she began getting ISI errors! I tried desperately to get someone who was working on the game to understand my plight. "I must have these bugs fixed! It is crucial!" Well, needless to say, they didn't understand the nature of the importance of this situation. No quick fix was forthcoming (although I think it has been fixed since then). My wife's interest in the AmigaOne waned.
My next strategy was to position the AmigaOne so that it wasn't off in a deep dark computer vault known as the "computer room" in most homes. Our family room is in the basement, and our nice new 32" LCD TV happens to actually be an ACER 32 inch 1080p high resolution computer monitor which we also keep in the basement for watching videos. Summer was coming, and my AmigaOne tends to get hot upstairs in our home, so why not put it in the basement, where it is cooler. While I am at it, why not connect it to that fancy 32 inch TV monitor we have instead of bringing my 17 inch LCD computer monitor down from the computer room?
The stage was set! The AmigaOne made the transition from upstairs to basement family room, and got a bigger display to boot! Hmmm.... what good strategy games are there?
My rescue came from an unexpected source! Amiga OS4 user Amidog just updated his Sony Playstation emulator. Trying it out, I discovered that it worked wonderfully! Good work Amidog! I found a farm simulation game named Harvest Moon from a little site called Playstation ROMs ROMS for Droid and began playing it - unobtrusively of course, at times when my wife happened to come down to the basement. "What;s that?" she asked! Aha! Success!
Happy wife, happy life!
Now, if I can just figure out how to get some time on my AmigaOne myself. Hmmm... perhaps we need TWO AmigaOnes?
That AmigaOne X1000 sure looks nice!
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