R.I.P.

The pinball machine that was supposed to be here sometime next week has been killed. It was a gristly battle, but the between the plumbing and drywall it didn't have a chance.

Someone do a BBQ for me this weekend in memorial. I'll be at work. :P

In keeping with the death motif of today's post, I just got this link sent to me from SushiBoy. Kind of funny the first few times.

Enjoy.

Quick update...

...as I'm nearing a huge data merge for a weekend at work. If I'm lucky all will go well and I'll get monday and tuesday both off. But I'm not counting on it. So maybe expect a post this weekend as I watch progress bars.

Made some headway on the wiring, I've got a plan, know the breaker layout and just ahve to actually wire the thing up. And make a trip or two to home depot. The wiring boxes are hung for the plugs in the family room and I know where I want the rest of them to go. Some (small) headway has been made! Huzzah! Hopefully I'll be working on it more this evening.

We're going to be pouring a back patio here in the next week or so. My brother in law does cement work and is kind enough to give us the labor for free and set us up with all the materials, though we have to pay for those. My wife is more or less heading this project up so you'll probably see pictures on her blog about it. I think she had dreams about it last night, I woke up to questions about color selection and pavers choices this morning.

I got sucked into the Riftwar Saga series again and have almost finished silverthorn. I'd recommend it if you've not read them and, you know, like to read.

Muzak

Ran into a song I haven't heard in a while, thought I'd share, called "I'm OK you're OK". It's live, but not really so you'd know after the forst 15 secs or so. It's by the band MxPx.

It's an AAC file, playable with quicktime. I had to convert it so I could host it on a free site. I hate that crap. Maybe I should buy a domain so I can host my own mp3 files. Not sure if it'll work in internet explorer, someone will have to let me know.

Happy Thursday.

Slacker

So yeah, been a while.

The wiring is eluding me. I've had a bunch of family obligations, and between watching [sick] kids, visiting family, a WoW patch, and various miscellany, I've not gotten a lot of stuff done on my list. Just in survival mode.

Been thinking about the MAME post, I'll get that done here soon. Yadda yadda, promises promises. =)

Per usual though, I can't just make a useless post and leave you, so here's something to help keep you entertained.

Edit: the link wasn't working for some people (hey, it worked for me!) so try this link or this link if you need to.

Someday I'm going to figure out how to embed a .swf with blogger.

Pinball is cool

More is better. Or so they say.

I visited the pinball hall of fame this evening.

Played:

•Twilight Zone. Good stuff. Good enough to own. 'nuff said.

•Addam's Family. Still my favorite, though TZ is a close second. This was the favorite of those who attended with me.

•Super Mario brothers. Not worth the money.

•Pinbot. This reminded me a lot of space mountain at disneyland for some reason. Very well done, I can see why it's considered a classic. One of the best I've played from that era of pinball.

•Star Wars: episode one. Really cool idea there, they had a video image overlaid on the back third of the pinball machine, and you could "interact" with it. Impressive technology, and fun to play a few times. I wouldn't want to own it though, it would get gimmicky after a while.

•Creature From The Black Lagoon. I hear a lot of people like this one, but it felt off. I think the table wasn't quite balanced right, maybe the legs weren't centered properly. It made cheezy chick moaning sounds when you inserted the quarter and hit certain targets. Maybe that's why.

•Tempest. Okay, this isn't a pinball machine, but this is good stuff! Just as fun as I remember, and I still stink at it.

•Stargate. I could definitely live without this one.

I was looking forward to playing attack from mars, but they didn't have one. Or a Who dunnit, or an Indiana Jones. Or a Getaway, or a Medieval Madness.

Games I missed:

• South park. This one was played almost all night.

• Lord of the Rings. This also had people on it the whole time.

• Funhouse. Another "classic", I wouldn't mind having a go at again sometime.

• Terminator 2. Just couldn't quite make it to this one. never really interested me.

• High Speed. Never played this other than on Visual Pinball. If you've not tried this I'd recommend it. And you can try Visual Pinabll's new offspring Future Pinabll. Anyhow, I woulda liked to try High Speed, but I didn't get to it.

Overall it was a cool place, a real dungeon reminiscent of the old 80's arcades. I talked with the owner a bit. He's hurting I think, they haven't made the rent since opening, though they came close last week. (Weekly rental? not sure) They have power consumption issues as well, I can see why. I bought a "this old pinball" DVD, twilight zone edition, you know, in preparation for my machine. $8.00 well spent.

For a vacation cenered around pinball I'd have to recommend Lyons Classic Pinball instead, better quality machines and smaller shop with a much better collection of games. They are in the Denver area, just a bit to the north. That said, I still had a blast going. =)

Kind of funny, most people go to vegas for gambling or sex, I end up going for pinball. How sad am I. Maybe I'll get some of the rest when I get home. Talk about a gamble! :D

I should go to bed. I have a presentation tomorrow. Until later.

The Microwave

So, for my wife's birthday she got an over-the-stove microwave. (Happy birthday Bon!) We picked it up Tuesday evening. No problem right? Just unscrew the old hood and screw in the new microwave, should be a snap.

Well, lots happened between when we picked it up and when we were finished.

So, we got back from Home depot around 6:30 PM. Great! I want to tear into this project and get it done. Should be an hour or so worth of work. Right?

So, an hour later I'm cussing out the guys who installed the hood. Apparently it is hardwired to the circut. After flipping off most of the house's breakers and resetting all my clocks, I got the power to the hood shut off. I unwired it and stuffed it into the garage. Now, the problem from here, is that the microwave has a plug on it. I'm pretty hesitant to just chop off the plug of a brand new, never used microwave, so I had to get a bit creative. A trip to k-mart later, I had an outlet for $1.49 that did the job perfectly. Oh, we're about 3.5 hours into the project at this point. This is about when I started taking pictures. =)





You can just see the edge of the old microwave in the pictures above on the left there on the counter.

The screws that you see hanging down were tricky to get aligned, we did it though. Only took two tries. I should mention here that at around 11:00 PM we were ready to re-drill these holes. Of course my stupid cordless drill had it's batteries run out, due to drilling a hole in the "spacers". (Yeah, the spacers go between the underside of the cabinet and the microwave. They account for the space under the cabinetry so the screws wouldn't tweak things going through air or some such. That's a story in itself -- I had to dig up some wood, cut and drill it to use for spacers... probably a good hour in and of itself.) anyhow, so I got a good 45 minute break to watch TV and talk with my wife. Anyway, these screws barely fit, it's a good thing our cabinets weren't an inch shorter or the whole thing would have had to go back to the store.

This is off the cuff and a bit disjointed write-up, but there you go. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, isn't it?

And the final masterpiece:



I love you Bon, hope it was worth all of my cussing, cursing, and general grumpiness. Maybe I should get a construction loan after all and hire someone to finish the basement. =)

Until later.

Wants

So I want to post. I really do.

Not much is happening though. I currently have a sore throat and I'm easily angered. Especially yesterday, the baby (poor thing) has an ear infection, so I got around 4.5ish hours of sleep.

I'm headed to vegas for a "user's group" event for our software. except that it's turning into training because the users don't really want to be involved or make suggestions.

I almost have one of my coworkeers convinced to go to the pinball hall of fame with me. I'll let you know how it goes.

The basement wiring is still making me feel guilty. I admit it, I'm intimidated. =) I'm going to call my neighbor this evening, he has offered to help me get it figured out. I think I know what I want to do, but it's a matter of knowing if I really can, and especially what I ought to do that has me concerned. I'm probably being too conservative on this... I should just do it and get it over with. It's not THAT complicated.

I wish someone would have told me that 250 feet of wire would be $103. Talk about sticker shock...!

On a side note, here's an interesting way to waste some bandwidth. I've not used it a ton yet, but it's an interesting idea.

Until later.

Ever since I was a young boy...

Got an email today. I'll post the relevant portion here.

Hello DadGuy. I will be getting a TZ in about 2 to 3 weeks. That's the one
for you.

Out of 5 that I am getting this summer, 2 are already presold.

Either way, your machine will probably be done by the 4th of July, so you're
cool there. Once it's here and I start working on it, I'll keep you int he
loop and shoot some photos of the refurbishing process.

I should have a pinball machine in my home within a month or so. And the really cool thing is that I get to celebrate with fireworks! heh.

In that light, I've dug up a song link for you. Out of respect to those like me who hate web sites makign sound out of nowhere, you'll have to press play yourself.



In other news I'll be actually purchasing some real wiring material this evening. If I get around to it I'll take some pictures of the newly "wired" network closet. I'll probably have to move the shelf already. Due to the way the wires come in, the half-pound cable modem and similarly weighted wireless router want to jump off of the shelf when I'm not looking. I've moved them to the floor for the time being. I (still) need to crimp an end on the remaining short ethernet wire as well as ends on the cable so that I can attach an extension. But since it's not currently used I think that's why it hasn't gotten done. I may actually get a box for those connections so I can put them in the hall ceiling instead of inside the wall. We'll see.

I've been thinking about my post in regards to teh MAME machine and I'll try to get at least an overview going in the next week or so.

Summertime is busy. Looks like It will especially be so this year.

Until later.