Archive for August, 2007

Was really looking forward to the Revive event tonight. I knew we had a lot to do before we got to that point though.

When we got home, I had my Pengo board waiting for me. But first I ran up to the BMV to take care of some necessary car stuff.

As soon as I got home I toyed with Pengo, and put the pcb in the cab. But, I had problems making it work, surprise, surprise. Sarah took the opportunity to take Nokes on a walk since he would be going back into his crate for awhile.

We managed to get ready and leave around 6 p.m. The school kickoff picnic that is normally in Beech Grove, just happened to be tonight. It was at Southeastway Park. I had not a lick of an idea where that was, and Sarah knew where it was based off a finger lick and a left turn at the tree with three squirrels.

So, we took the way I found on the map, and only briefly thought we were lost. We sort of stumbled on it by accident, thank you magical directional toe.

Most of the craziness was over with, there was only cold food left and a hearty serving of gossip about kids around the school. Sarah did introduce me to Christine again, and her husband Kyle. Nice two, lots of energy, they’ll be fun additions to our young group if they start coming. But tonight, they had family plans.

So, just before 8 we finally head out to Wes and Kate’s. The sky looks like a darkened version of when you do those blue flushes in your water closet, swirly and deep blue. On the way it dawned on Sarah, everyone is probably enjoying refreshments in their hands, or by tipping each other by their legs underneath the faucets. We have all of the cups, glasses, and da parti catalyst, cornhole. Oh well, that is Sarah. Great planner for a lot of things and I should pick up the details but I often choose to laugh and write about them later.

The party itself was confined to the inside because of the nasty weather on the horizon. We had a decent turn out, around 12 people, including a new cool couple Kyle and Shannon. We all spent the night kicking back some drinks and dividing the sexes in two by playing the ever popular electronic catch phrase. The looser the tongues, the more fun the night was and the harder my sides hurt. It was just an awesome night.

I am pretty pumped, I hope everything works just fine.

I took the time last night to do some more cleaning that somehow I missed when I brought it into the house.  There was still some dry junk inside the coin door area up front that I vacuumed out.  I also took a look back at previous emails with Bob Roberts about what to do about the sound issue.

He said it was probably just a bad connection, that the pot doesn’t usually go bad.  Just check the wires back to the board.  Well, it is a short trace, the connection goes right to the harness behind the separating board.  I looked at the molex connector, and noticed that some of the pins were sunk back a little more.

I took a screwdriver and pushed the pins down so they should make a better connection.  I also took that same small gauge screwdriver, and pushed it around in a circular fashion inside each of the female pin connections.  This widened them just a little, not enough to make a bad connection, to make the molex connectors fit better and easier.  I had such a problem with a tight fit with those Pengo molex connectors, and I felt like this was the best way to loosen them up.

I really hope that fixes my sound issue, and if my sale goes through this weekend on another machine as planned, I am going to immediately order that kit from Prok.  I am so pumped to think about having Pengo working perfectly.

Wow.  I saw the score before I went to bed, but this is ridiculous.  A 30-3 route of the Baltimore Orioles, and all of the big run producers by little known names that probably will never have a night quite like this one.

No one in the majors has scored that many runs in over 110 years, and seriously, who even counts stats from that long ago?  Cubs scored 36 runs against a team in Louisville many years ago.  Louisville, yeah, not been a team in a long time.

They also set a record for runs in a double header, 39 total beating a Tigers record from 1937.

Wow, how embarrassing for the Orioles. If Eric Bedard doesn’t pitch, I guess the runs come in sets of 10.

My pengo pcb is back on it’s way to me from Pittsburgh via ground.  It should work from what I hear.

I need to double check my power supply.  It was fine when I looked at it before, but it is always good to double check.  If I felt more proficient I would probably look at a switcher instead.

Supposedly the board didn’t have a chip that was fully seated, or a leg was bent or something.  I tried reseating them myself, and didn’t notice a change.  I was also really careful about the legs, so I don’t doubt it was bent, I just wish I knew how it got that way.

Monday night my boss gave us his pre-season game tickets to go and see the Colts vs. Bears preseason game downtown.

We went out to Acapulco Joe’s for dinner, Sarah had never been and really enjoyed it, and then we walked to the game from there.  It was a rainy night, so it was a good night to be inside watching a game.

We had the usual spot, eight rows back.  I wore my big crazy yellow and blue wig, it was a lot of fun.  They played mostly second and third string guys for a good portion of the game, so it got a little slow later on.  We left with 4 minutes to go, and they ended up losing 27-24, but it was cool to be able to go to a game with her in any respect.

Last night I took a trip to get a “free” plywood board to mount the 19″ monitor in the Tetris.  Granted, it cost my gas, and it was in Avon area, but still a bit cheaper I suppose than buying a whole sheet new.  It is 25 x 36 x 3/4″, which should be thick enough to support a monitor and I held it up last night, it is big enough to fit in the space I need.

Now I just need to get some help making it fit the Tetris, with the holes cut for the monitor and bolts.   I am going to try to secure some help Friday for the next week.

Now I have to test that monitor’s diodes in the basement:)

It may take three weeks, but it sounds like I may be able to have it delivered to my area, which would be just amazing.  I will post updates as I get them here, of course.  But…the countdown is on.

We don’t know, but suppose we’ll find out soon enough.

This is the third day in just over a week that he has found one outside and gone running after it uncontrollably.  Usually they are outside of the fence in the gutterway, but tonight it was inside the fence and Sarah was scared that he was going to “play” with it with his mouth.

“What would you do if he came up to you with a bunny in his mouth?”  I said I probably wouldn’t be thrilled, more for my cleanup of myself and the dog, than being upset he killed a bunny.  Usually I yell to go “Bite dat bunny Noksie”, which really gets Sarah riled up, but it would be nice if he just did the exercise part and left the doggie-teeth-in-bunny-tush part out.

I went out and got a new ratchet so I could more easily put the Wells Gardner monitor parts back together and get the monitor plugged back up to the Wizard Of Wor game. I was glad that I had the extra arcade game cabs so that they could serve as a work bench.

The Wells Gardner monitor was a difficult cap kit replacement to work on, so I was glad that everything powered up just fine when I turned the Wizard of Wor game on. But, unfortunately when the monitor lit up, it still had the lines going through the opening screen and gameplay. The cap kit didn’t fix my game issue, and now I have to go back to the drawing board.