Archive for December, 2006

I find a post on the Google Group from 2001 of an individual in New York who owns this machine. Emailing, however, returns nothing as the emails are bounced back as the address is no longer valid. The individual’s name was Mark Deroller, so if you have any information about him, and if he still has this game or not 6 years later, please email me. Does the guy still collect?

I also found a post from Eric - “alphamonster” on the Google Group that claims to have the machine. The post is from 2005, but when I emailed him I didn’t get a reply back either.

I got to see the game for the first time. I wasn’t impressed, but for what I got it for, it was a good deal for a working board and monitor. The cab was in worse shape than the photo showed, and the joystick was set so low that it was really hard to manuever and play.

I started to think what I was going to do with the game. I wasn’t going to have it in my basement looking like this, would I just keep it in the garage? I should try to make a decision before Justin comes down and brings it with him in February, so I thought on it a little bit.

Busy busy Sunday. Went to church and visited with friends, but from there I decided we should head up to Fry’s Electronics on the northside. I know my part for the arcade game is scheduled for delivery on Monday, and I want to be ready when it gets here. But we drove all the way up there for a debacle. I knew that if I wanted to upgrade my computer and use the parts from my current setup in the MAME machine, it would be costly. But my projects just about tripled within being in there 10 minutes. Apparently DDR & DDR2 won’t work in the same board, the power supplies have different connectors and are much bigger, on and on. So, I couldn’t bare spending a grand plus on a new computer, especially since I had always pictured giving my old computer when upgraded to Sarah, and really using just a simple crappy one for the game. I gave a friend a call and made an arrangement that should work for $80.

On the way home I called a recommended electrician to come and look at some things in the house, and made arrangements with him later in the week.

We got home and watched the Colts for a little while, they were losing badly. We took a break at halftime to look at furniture online, and then my parents called so we talked with them a little bit. As soon as I got off the phone with them I loaded up my cars with 4 partial computer and parts that weren’t doing me any good but clutter and headed down to meet the guy with a different computer at 3:30. As I was running around Sarah was showing me the pants she bought on her trip yesterday.

From there I headed over to meet Brian at the gym and we worked out for an hour.. The Colts ended up losing 44-17 to the Jaguars, a record gave for the Jaguars franchise I understand. When I got home Sarah wasn’t here but was grocery shopping. I got to type on the blog a little, do a little surfing, then made dinner.

After dinner I went out into the garage and started to remove the harness and remaining circuit boards that were part of the Vs. Golf game that were in the extra Pacman cabinet I had. I did some cleanup and removed the T-Molding, getting the game ready for paint stripper. My cartoons came on so I came back inside and watched those as Sarah cleaned kitchen and did laundry and stuff.

Justin called so I talked with him for about a half hour and then the rest of the night was spent fixing things on my computer that haven’t worked since I reloaded it over a week ago, making sure I did manual Windows updates to Media Center and getting embedded video to work in webpages, and then I started to get Windows XP installed on my new computer for tomorrow. I did do a little photo upload for a client also.

We both hit the wall around 11:30 and got to bed together, which was nice.

We got up just after 8 and had breakfast together, Wes made french toast and that was good. The girls were going shopping so we headed back to the house. Sarah got ready and I went next door to help Keith and his family move out. It went really quick and efficient, but they were packed up and ready to go when I got there and had started an hour and a half before I got there. I was done just after noon, I came in, ate something, and then got to work. I had some more organization, communication and other things to do, as well as a layout I had to do that took me until after 6:00 pm. It was good to be done at that time, I was exhausted, I didn’t sleep that great the night before and I had worked all day and now it was dark outside. I had to get out of the house.

Went and got some milk for cereal, then went to the hardware store for some paint stripper for the Jr. Pacman project, then headed down to the movie store and picked up Mars Attacks and an order of cheesy bread from Papa Murphy’s. Got home, ate the whole bread thing because my lunch was kind of meager, watched the movie, and it was just about half way done when the girls got back from their Christmas shopping around 8:30.

Sounds like they did really good, and I know I will find out more tomorrow. But we didn’t but finish the movie and then Lori and Kenny popped by and hung out for awhile. We talked, had some wine, then moved into the dining room and played Batman Uno and Sequence and had a lot of good laughs and drank pucker and Sprite. Around midnight we honkered down for some SNL and then the alkie started to catch up and the eyes got heavy so they headed out and Sarah and I went to bed soon after.

Got to go out to a nice lunch today at work, which always makes the day go by faster. Got out of work and home at a decent hour and before Sarah. I did some loose ends, invoicing, organizing of different digital resources. Sarah got home from the gym after 6:00 and gave Wes and Kate a call. They were doing dinner at Pizza King on the east side so we went over there and met them. Decent pizza, never had it before, the crust was really crispy and I think we decided it had some friedness to it.

On the way back Wes and I got a Gallon of Captain Morgan and then headed back to their place for movies, rum and cokes, and good fun. It was nice to relax from the work week with friends. We got to bed at a reasonable hour, I beat everyone, I stayed up till one playing Mario on the Nintendo when Wes and Sarah were passed out.

Day went by pretty stinkin quick. The work day went fast. At home I got changed and then Sarah arrived, she went and dropped off some forms with our financial guy, and we then headed down to the gym to meet Brian and Kim and had a hard workout. The rest of the night we were pooped, watching some tv like Scrubs and 30 Rock (Which I had wanted to check out) and then Sarah went to bed before 10 and I stayed up, took care of some loose ends and planning for freelance stuff.

Got a good early start to the day today, I had some errands to run after work. Today was a lot of fun, did a great design and got some great news, so that made the day especially great. After work I talked with Nolan some about Chris and potential jobs for him. I headed over to Beech Grove and stopped in American Wolverine and met Eric. Phil (arcade contact) had been pushing for me to go and introduce myself, and I think Phil is a good guy so I did just that. I also found a Happs storefront three offices down, how cool is that, and met James. I found prices for arcade stuff and left my name for anyone who might be interested to help me out in fixing some things.

After that I headed over to the wholesale furniture store to check on a number for a bedroom suite, but they had moved stuff around and I couldn’t remember if I had the right model or not, so back to square one. The guy who has sold us this stuff in the past isn’t particularly easy to work with, but for such a good deal you take what you get.

Spoke with a new freelance client through heavy traffic on the way down to the gym to meet up with Brian, had a decent workout.

Got home, got in the loafing wear and hung out, ate dinner, and did some freelance work. Sarah met with Kate and had book study, baked a cake for Wes’ birthday, and sorted through some jewelry and I know had a ton of fun because she was in a really good mood when Kate left.

Long day. School in the morning, one of the last few times for awhile. Then, during the day today I made the mistake of running a check disk, and it took forever. Fortunately I am an artist and I can sketch ideas on other projects as I patiently wait for that type of thing to finish. Sarah too had a long day, she had a parent meeting after school that got her home late and exhausted.

Went to the movies tonight, saw Man of the Year, reminded me of Click from just recently, very funny to start and then really serious at the end. Had a whole group tonight, Jeff, Sarah, Rick, Chris, Michelle and Sarah and I, it was fun.

Got home and took care of some loose ends that seem to never end between business and personal life, and they have really came about more in the last month and a half for some reason. Then marched 17 bags of leaves out to the road for pickup later this week. We had about 35-40 bags again this year, but hopefully a little less next year, I cut down one tree out front, taking out all of it’s 32 leaf production for next year.

Still simultaneously working on all of my little arcade projects. Watching a bezel on ebay for the Dig Dug machine that ends tomorrow, tomorrow I am going to go and try to meet a service guy that was recommended to me from someone else, later this week I should get another computer part that should be the final piece to getting the Pac-Man up and running as a MAME machine, and I am trying desperately to find original sideart from a Jr. Pac Man, photos of it so I can trace it digitally into vectors for reproduction. Now that the hosting switch is taken care of I am looking again at making a section on the site to talk specifically about this stuff. If you have opinions on what section should go, let me know.