Archive for April, 2007
April 8, 2007
Last night was miserable. I woke up every two hours to check on the dog, all I could think about was the mistakes I made with Kellogg, and I was just so worried all night, I barely slept, and I don’t think Sarah did much either.
We had to leave him alone a lot today. There was the long church service, and then later on during the day when we had lunch with friends. He did really well, he whined in the crate, but we expected that. The second time we got home, it may have been too long, he had some small sprinkles the moment we let him out of the crate, and when I got him outside he took a really long pee.
He has been really good so far, going very little inside at all. He grasped a lot of things right away, going potty outside, and he already does some sitting for treats, food, and water.
He got more rambuntious today, starting to bite a little more and not letting us pet him as gently as we got to yesterday. But he also got a lot more playful today, he was sprinting outside all over, hopping, eating grass and just being a cute puppy. It makes me that much more sad to think about Kellogg, and how sick he must have been. He just must have felt terrible a lot of the time, I don’t think he ever had this energy or stamina, especially on the first day.
Later on tonight we celebrated Sarah’s birthday, and started to tell people about him. We got some photos online for people, settled a little more on a name of “Nokes”. We had started with “Shark” because of the way he would crawl towards you on all fours, but it didn’t roll off your tongue how I liked, so even though it was different I didn’t think I wanted to call him that all of his life.
Today he climbed up the ledge and the steps to the house after we let him out, so that was really impressive, and he seems to be eating and drinking everything we put in front of him. He started to chew on the rattle fish a little today, as well as the blue bone. Sarah took him through the whole upstairs today, letting him explore, he is really curious. He loves to play underneath the bed, hiding, crawling around and exploring, it is really cute.
First Mr. Do! photos from Rob Carroll
Today was a great day. As promised, Rob sent me some photos today. Now, in the past, when I have asked for photos from people, they have sent me one or two, but Rob knew exactly what I needed. He took the time to send me a ton of photos, almost 30 in total of the whole sideart and details of each of the individual pieces (apples, monsters, ice creams, etc.) He even sent me photos of the kickplate, control panel and bezel, which was pretty sweet too.
However, the machine, like the one Walt has, is pretty worn on the sides, the sideart barely visible in parts. I hope to work from some of what he sent, but some is too worn to even work with. The one really awesome thing is the bezel. The Mr. Do bezel has some of the exact character drawings on it that are on the side. The condition of the bezel is pristine, so I should be able to draw characters from there, and arrange them on the sideart. But I don’t think all of the characters on the side are on the bezel as well, so I think I will need to get some other supplemental photos to help me piece meal is all together.
It will be a process, but Rob has been great so far, and I was up for the challenge. I only know of two of these machines owned by collectors, so it is a miracle that I got any photos to begin with.
Before the night was up I traced the apple as best I could see in the photo. I asked Rob for some additional detail shots, and he said no problem.
April 7, 2007
Thursday I went down to Petsmart looking to see what they had available for dogs, but there wasn’t barely any. On Friday Sarah did the same, and nothing new. Late Saturday, I was working in the garage when Sarah came out and told me she had phoned the two Pet locations, and that Petsmart still had two dogs left for the second shelter there. She wanted to go, it was about time for them to leave (5:30), so we had to hurry.
The two dogs were lab mixes. The last thing I want is a lab anything, too much energy and too high maintenance. So, we went back to PAK to see if they had anything new by chance. The aisle was long, and stretched out ahead of us, and there in the distance, we saw one little brown puppy in a cage by himself. Both of us got tears in our eyes, he looking strinkingly like Kellogg.
I picked him up and let him roam around outside the cage a little bit, he seemed really calm. He wandered some, but didn’t show too much interest in me at all. We asked about him, apparently a litter was dropped off Friday night, all different colors. The in store vet thought that he was Terrier and Shepherd mixed, and after looking at some photos, we started to see the rat terrier in his ears.
We were still kind of debating about fostering him, getting him checked out for any major problems when the lady came over and said that if we wanted him, we could just keep him. If he went back with her, she’d have to put him in a kennel and she just wanted a good home for him. You can’t beat that, free, so we decided at the very least we would take him for now and have him checked out.
When we got him home he really warmed up to us. I noticed right away that he was quite different from Kellogg the more you look at him. He was a little bigger, and he seemed to have a lot more energy. But even though he has a lot of energy, he seems to be pretty calm and easy going, not too excitable. We boiled all of the old toys, and right away he seemed to latch onto the tennis ball and “Thing 1”, the Dr. Seuss character.
We had to do some running around, so we took him with us since we had just got back. So right away, he got to meet Kenny and Lori. I was pretty paranoid of him being in a house where there were other dogs, so we just held on to him the whole time.
Some of the traits we started to notice, he likes to hide. He will crawl behind me and the couch and just lay there and sleep, or chew on a toy. He also just loves the outside, he will dash around and have a grand old time. It is also really cute how when he runs really fast, his ear tuck down and it is like little leaps so close to the ground. He comes up to you, tries to bite at your face and just loves to jump.
Got hi-res photos of Agent X Sideart and Kickplate
Tonight Richard sent me hi-res photos of the Agent X sideart and kickpanel, we are under way.
Installing a new Dig Dug harness
Got out in the garage today and started putting in the new harness. I got most of it in, and took out the old one completely. I just braved it and assumed I could find all of the correct connections for each of the molex connectors. That is the great thing about this harness, there are no solder points, all plug and play. I think I figured out today though that I will probably need a connector for the coin door, the old one was cut off completely. Here are photos of the male end that I have on the harness.
I am also starting to think that there is an audio board that needs to go with this, which really pisses me off that I am figuring this out now. I have to try to find out which one.
Follow up with Rob Carroll
I sent Rob a follow up email today, and how exciting, he had time to get back with me. I didn’t fall into spam, so he had got my other message and said he had no problem sending me photos of the game for me to do some tracing on. Maybe even as early as tonight. Thanks Rob, hopefully I can help him out in some way, I have noticed he does a fair amount of posting so he must be fairly involved in the hobby yet.
He even helped me with a small bit of what little I know about the history of the game, so I rewrote the above section a little bit.
Received uncut Dig Dug harness
Got the uncut Dig Dug harness today in the mail. I tried the connection which was labeled a “J20” with the PCB board I have, and they fit, so that is exciting. It came with all sorts of goodies, the operation manual, and even the cone buttons that I had hunted
for a good deal for so long, so it was definitely a good purchase.
I managed to get the workbench organized and cleared off, probably for the first time in 6 months, so I got the monitor setup and ready to work on hopefully this Saturday.
