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J. J. Abrams of Lost and Alias fame has a Mystery Box, which he bought years ago and has never opened. He keeps it on a shelf in his office, and to him it represents hope and potential. He never intends to open the Mystery Box. This, to me, pretty much explains Lost and why if you watch it (I don't -- I watched 11 eps and stopped for no real reason) you should never expect to have any of the bizarre things you see on the show answered.
I mention this because in the week after I won my own personal Mystery Box of pinball parts that I bought on eBay, I was quite the giddy goat... I was thinking about what was in it, I was planning what I would do with the items I could identify, I was wondering if I had made a colossal blunder or if the contents of the box would allow me to make my fortune in the world. I was in a heighted state of awareness, my pre-frontal cortex was active, and I was doing all the things that the disembodied head of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima tells me I should be doing in Brain Age. But above all, I was filled with thoughts of -- dare I say it -- hope and potential just like J. J. Abrams.
But here's where J. J. Abrams and J. Entropy differ: He uses that sense of wonder to fuel his work, whereas I would get sense of wonder fatigue after a few days and simply open the damn thing. My work (computer programming) and my hobbies (pinball being the one that impacts this blog most often) don't rely on mysteries, they rely on solutions to mysteries. So when the box arrived on Tuesday, I pretty much tore into it as soon as possible on the day it arrived (after walking the dog and discharging whatever other duties I had as the pater familias). 
So, what's in the box? Well, I think if we opened J. J. Abrams' Mystery Box, the contents would be very similar to mine. There's an enticing layer of interesting parts on the top, which make up about 1 pound of the box's total weight. Under that is 29 pounds of metal parts, consisting mostly of old pinballs and leg bolts. Remember how I said I would get $50 worth of enjoyment from digging through the box? Well, it's more like a tenth of that. If I were J. J. Abrams and this was what was in my box, I would probably end up bitter and kill off Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in Star Trek.But I hyperbolize for comic effect. Actually there are some pretty interesting things in it. I did have some fun pulling out playfield plastics and identifying them with the help my pal the Internet. There are a few circuit boards, a lot of pop bumper plastics, a few targets. The biggest thing is the graveyard from BS Dracula. I had great luck cleaning the grime off of a lot of stuff using the dishwasher technique. But the big question is will I be able to sell enough of it to make back my $100? Probably not, but we can always hope.
I have a couple of days off next week, and I plan to do at least one pinball-related thing per day.
In semi-related pinball news, I've seen most of the TV shows and movies that pinball games are based on -- the exception being horror themes like Freddy and new stuff like CSI and 24 -- but I'd never gotten around to Terminator 3. Well, I was working my way through the Terminator series on the off chance that I see Terminator: Salvation this summer, so I finally watched it last night. Man, did it suhuhuhuhuhuck! Especially after watching the first two movies, which were both great, T3 paled in comparison. It was dumb and illogical and poorly thought out and had any number of problems. The writer and director were a couple of good time charlies that felt that the path to success for this movie was to take elements that worked in the other two films then just turn them up to 11 and add as many effects as possible. My verdict: Terminator 3 is the Highlander 2 of Terminator sequels.
I'm not sure whether I should post more or just lead a less eventful life.
But I should start with some actual repairs I did to a machine. My daughter brought home a bunch of her friends for Spring Break and while they were here they played some pinball. While they were playing Quicksilver I noticed a bunch of lights that were out on the playfield. So after they left I decided to do a little routine maintenance on it. First I lifted the playfield and wiggled the lights -- it turns out they were all just bad connections. Then while I had the glass off I wiped all the dust off the playfield. After that I dug out the Stern lightning spinner that I bought a few years ago and replaced the Middle Earth spinner that was on the game when I bought it.
That was an easy and gratifying fix, so I moved on to the ugly-ass "Tokens" stickers that have been on the coin slots since forever. I disassembled the coin slots -- fairly easy, just two screws and friction hold it together -- and pulled the tape off to reveal another quarter plastic and a 25c plastic. Nice! After a half hour of serious goo-gone work to get the tape residue off and running the plastic coin slots through the dishwasher, the whole assembly looks a lot nicer. 
Two easy fixes that only took me 23 years to get around to!
I picked up some more pinball music. At some point I found the secret website where a guy was selling music from all of the Williams System 11 games -- I'd heard about it on TOPCast but only managed to find it a few months ago. I immediately Paypalled $5 to the guy and heard nothing for about a month. Then I got an email asking if he had sent it to me, and then about a month after that I finally got it. It's good! Two CDs and very complete.
Then a few days ago I was browsing around at work while waiting for my program to compile and found this site of more modern music. There are about 80 files, which is great, but I have a few problems with them: The sound quality is a little irregular, and some of the music has odd tempo problems. I don't know if that's the guy's computer or how Pinmame is playing them. They don't have gameplay sound effect mixed in, which I kind of like. But my biggest problem -- and one I can fix myself if I get around to it -- is that they are largely unedited. Most of the cuts are about 1:45 minutes, which is fine for main play tunes but awful for shorter cuts. Really, you don't know pain until you've heard the 2.5 second Mola Ram clip from Indiana Jones played over 40 times. Choose Wisely, indeed. But you can't complain about free, and there are lots of great tracks that are neglected in the other collections I have, like Attack from Mars and Cirqus Voltaire. Overall I now have over a day of pinball music, though there are a lot of dupes.
With all the pinball-related traveling I've been doing, I've run up against the limitations of the FSPA's where to play pinball database. So I put out a call on RGP for larger and more national sites; I got a disappointing two responses. And neither of them have what I need, a distance-based search. I mean, knowing there's a pin in King of Prussia PA doesn't do me any good if I don't know where that is. I was toying with the idea of writing my own database, but at this point I'm thinking more along the lines of adapting a spatial search to the larger of the two (it also has URL-based search params, which are easy submit). Anyway, that's my next timesuck which will hopefully yield dividends.
Finally, the other day I got an eBay impulse buy. eBay's suggestions of other things like the one you're looking at are usually pretty far off the mark for pin-related swag, but on Sunday it popped up "30 lbs of pinball parts", which which at the time was priced just under $30. The thought of getting a big box of pincrap and sifting through it for days struck my fancy, and the seller chose to end the auction in the middle of the day on a Monday which is great for guys like me with access to the Internet at work. I bid and won for $65, which shipping the whole thing was just under $100. I reckon I'll get $50 worth of enjoyment just pawing through it and figuring out what everything is and whether it works or not. I plan to resell what I don't need on eBay, so I anticipate the triumphant return of the Dumbass Industrial Average to track my own personal price to earnings ration.
And really, don't I just need more things to distract me from fixing my games? I most certainly do.
So, what's in the box? Well, I think if we opened J. J. Abrams' Mystery Box, the contents would be very similar to mine. There's an enticing layer of interesting parts on the top, which make up about 1 pound of the box's total weight. Under that is 29 pounds of metal parts, consisting mostly of old pinballs and leg bolts. Remember how I said I would get $50 worth of enjoyment from digging through the box? Well, it's more like a tenth of that. If I were J. J. Abrams and this was what was in my box, I would probably end up bitter and kill off Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in Star Trek.
