Why do I get the feeling that we've picked up another pathetic life form?

Because we have. Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man finally arrived yesterday, so I took a look. The first thing I noticed was that it reeked like a smoke filled room... the seller is obviously a good friend of the Tobacco Industry. The pictures from the auction really didn't adequately show the full extent of the playfield wear. But I've seen worse. And it's astoundingly complete -- I couldn't spot a single piece of hardware missing, not even flipper coils -- and the mechanicals look pretty clean. The only thing I couldn't find in the box was the right return lane clear plastic... I'm hoping the seller still has it and will mail it along. Of course, I sent this request after I left feedback mentioning the glacial shipping and distinctive odor. ^_^; We'll discuss in detail at a later date.

But the big news in Who-ville is the successful acquisition of a real speaker grill! Two of them went up on eBay within a few days. I bid on the cheaper one that included speakers, and ended up getting it with shipping for less than the opening bid of the other one (sans speakers). It arrived a few days ago and I installed it tonight while watching Bleach on Cartoon Network (which I've seen some of in Japanese, so I don't need to pay 100% attention to in English). After replacing most of the lights and one of the sockets, I found that almost everything works except for the Doctor 7 lamp. While I was there, I put #555 lights in all of the empty backbox sockets (which was most of them), then closed it all up. You have no idea how satisfying it is to get rid of the flimsy-ass thing I made. When I put the translite in, it sat squarely in the groove rather than sitting at an angle and looks like it will fall off if I look at it funny.

The expensive grill guy was also selling a Dalek for too much money (starting bid $100, and - surprise! - it didn't sell). I'm hoping he'll relist for a more reasonable opening bid.

What would a blog entry be without pictures! Here's the DMD shootout... mine versus the real thing. Can YOU tell the difference?!?


And here is the installed grill in the newly lit game. I took the pic without a flash, so it's blurry but shows the lights working. Hee!


This final note: I sold my spare Black Knight plastics last week... I got $110 for about half of them, which is great because I payed $100 for them 3 years ago.