If this is Labor Day, why aren't I working?

Well, things are moving along briskly and stopping abruptly in equal measure. I am almost caught up on TOPcast shows... I haven't watched the videos yet, but I'm two back from the most current one. Walking the dog for 45+ minutes a day sure helps me get caught up on my podcast backlog. The one that stands out in my mind, of course, is Python Anghelo, who I kind of figured would be a character based on what everyone else was saying about him, but I really wasn't prepared for someone who was so full of shit as he was. He's obviously very talented and I like a lot of his games, but he is so egotistical and completely convinced of his own genius that he was extremely difficult to listen to. First warning: All the disclaimers they put before, during, and after the show. Second warning: When Python told Clay that he should read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead if he (Clay) wanted to understand what he (Python) was talking about. For me, Ayn Rand is in the same category as Thoreau... if I had read them when I was in college, they would have totally blown my mind. But because I read them as adults, I have the experience to know that what they're saying is idealistic (Thoreau) or a justification of selfish bullshit (Rand). So the fact that Python likes Rand so much told me a great deal about him immediately. The way he just dismissed people that he didn't consider to be geniuses really got on my nerves. Everyone else is "copycats and moneymen" (please to read quote in Romanian accent). And some of his ideas -- for example, this "Zingy Bingy" thing he kept talking about -- sounded like garbage, and everyone was probably right to think it would have been a colossal failure. After the Python Tapes I listened to the Jeff Powell interview, which was the first one I listened to live, and he mentioned that Python either made up or significantly altered the truth... at least now I know what he's talking about.

My last boss was Romanian, and while certainly not as bad as Python, I see a lot of similarities between them... especially how stubborn she can be and often convinced that her way is pretty much the only sensible approach. I should ask her if she's read The Fountainhead, or at least Atlas Shrugged.

But enough complaining!

I tried fixing the last couple of SCRs on Eight Ball Deluxe with no luck. When I carefully examined the board, I saw that a previous owner had tried to repair the tracing without much success. I'm not up to repairing tracing, and not surprisingly neither of the new SCRs did much. But the good news is that the flippers work again... it might have been fixed when I reseated the playfield fuse, or it might have been fixed by the Pinball Fairy blessing my game in the night. Who knows. I think the bad flippers on Doctor Who were caused by one of the plugs not being plugged in properly or the flipper fuse was blown.

I'm not providing a lot of definitive factual information today, am I?

The New Fall eBay Season has started... I'm pushing my wife to start posting stuff (mainly because it's a lot of work for me, and I already have a job), and she's starting to do so slowly. I'm kind of anxious for her to come up to speed quickly, since we need the money. September is "no listing fees" month -- finally, an eBay promotion that I can actually take advantage of, as opposed to their usual "free gallery pic on auctions posted between midnight and 1 AM on Tuesday the 14th!" -- so between us we spewed out 13 auctions. I'm selling the rock tumbler I bought to test parts polishing, and the first result of the new parts polisher, a spiffed up drop target bank from Skateball. That's right, the Dumbass Industrial Average is poised to move again! After that I've got another drop target bank ready to go, but after that I have to find more stuff to sell.

While I was assembling polished drop target assemblies, I reassembled the 5 targets assembly from SB with Centaur ORBS targets and replace the Harlem Globetrotters inline targets with the Centaur wheel targets. They look great. I did it while watching DVR'd Daily Shows and Colbert Reports with my wife... if you tire him out, the dog will now settle down and let us watch TV, as long as the cat doesn't show up. This should allow me to get a lot more work done on some of the labor-intensive projects I have, like stripping playfields.