Halloween at Castle Entropy

Halloween sucks for us. We live on a busy street with no sidewalks, so we've gotten about 3 trick or treaters in the 10 years we've lived here. And with the Entropy Scion at college, we don't even get a little run off from her holiday. Mrs. Entropy and I carved our pumpkins, watched a little Anime, and ate most of the good candy ourselves. Boo hoo.

On Monday I bought a new WPC CPU board that was advertised as 100% working on eBay for just over $100 + way more shipping than it should have been. Although I've been burned by the "100% working" ploy, in this case it was truth in advertising. I plugged it into Doctor Who and it seems to work pretty well. I can hit those ESCAPE targets now, and it certainly makes the Hang On shot actually scorable. There's one opto that I know is out (the right-most gray button target) and the right bumper doesn't seem to be working, but these are minor things. I played a few satisfying games with the new board. I also bought a new power driver board, a somewhat hacked rev 3 board which can't be used in Terminator, so the idea is that DW is going to donate its rev 1 board to T2 and use the rev 3 board. That's assuming the new board works, but testing it is a lot more effort than a CPU. Plus that wasn't sold as 100% working, it was "functional when it was pulled out of a BSD."

I really need to narrate the T2 story, but that will have to be another time. However, Shaggy has come through again with another wonderful dishwasher tip: Throwing the wiring harness in. I ran both of the T2 cabinet harnesses through (each as their own load, in deference to my wife who doesn't want Pinball Grime on her dishes) and they came out really nice... one was already pretty clean, but t'other was filthy and that looks really good now.

Wednesday's league was good, I think it was 3 wins and 1 loss. Pasted them on Mousin' Around with a season high score... MA is proving to be my goto game for decent scoring. There's one in both locations now, and it tends to be pretty good to me. My loss was on Fish Tales, which I just can't get started on in league... every other FT likes me, but the one at the Volleyball House has it in for me. I typically hit the boat ramps repeatedly to activate the Monster Fish award, but I have a hard time getting 3 ramp shots. The bad news about Monday league is that my complete destruction of my group last week has pushed me into A Division. Kinda cool when looked at from a distance, but up close it could spell my doom... the A Team seems to be a lot better than I am, so I'm really not sure how well I'll do.

Birthday Pinball Extravaganza!

Yesterday was my birthday, and my wife gave me possibly the best gift of all... she kept my sister-in-law and the boyfriend-in-law busy while I goofed off alone in the house with the dog. We actually kept my birthday a secret from them... my sister-in-law has an uncanny sense for coming to visit at the worst times. Once my wife told her specifically not to come around a certain day and the sis-in-law came during that week. This time we didn't tell them not to come, we just lamented their timing. It's not because I don't like my wife's sister, it was just that I had no desire to celebrate one of my rare prime numbered birthdays (47) with my wife's sister's boyfriend, who at the time was a complete stranger. So I informed my wife that we would celebrate my birthday after they left, and she was OK with that. And now that I've met the bf-in-law, I feel it was the correct course of action. I mean, he's OK, kind of monopolizes the conversation with stories of working for the Oakland city car barn, but he's not a guy I really want to party with. It's sort of like listening to my Dad's WWII stories, only boring and with no familial connection.

Anyway, so I thought I'd check the FSPA pinball location database to see if there was anything around other than Sole d'Italia's Family Guy. Well, there was! A Fish Tales in the Potomac Community Center, only one of my favorite games on a street that I take home from work when the Beltway is backed up (more or less every day)!!! E. Yoink. Exclamation. Point.

So I drive down there and the game's in great shape! It's there with a bunch of video games in the game room. They keep them turned off so parents can regulate their kids' gameage. FT kinda was a little tilted in the wrong direction so the ball goes SDTM a little more than I'd like, but cheeze! I got a couple of free games, and at one point I had six three foot kids clustered around watching me because the Halloween party had just let out. That was kind of funny. Anyway... frickin' awesome. A game I like on my way home from work. A great surprise on a largely covert birthday.

But the hits just kept on coming today! In league, I was 2 points away from a perfect night! I came in demonstrably first on three games and second on the fourth... recall that when the 2nd and 3rd scores don't add up to the first place, first place steals third's point. I was making my shots... jumps in No Fear, 3 or 4 Borg shots in a row in Star Trek, an awesome Penthouse Party in WhoDunnit... and if I had kicked ass on Twilight Zone (possibly by getting the extra ball that was lit but I couldn't seem to hit), I could have done it. I feel bad for the guy in my group that came in 3rd on all three games, because I think he got 0 points (*cringe*). But I can't feel too bad for him, because he was 3 points behind me in our division. Honestly, I think I could have handled him getting a few points instead of me completely destroying him, but I guess that's the way the pinball bounces. Now if I can just do that well in the Wednesday night league, maybe I'll be getting somewhere.

Barfin' up a blog entry

I'm really tired after a long day running around Gettysburg with my wife, daughter, dog, sister-in-law, and boyfriend-in-law. Much time was spent in strained silence while the bf-in-law, dog and I rode around by ourselves while the ladies kept their own car. I see it as penance for buying a crapload of new pinball stuff.

Yeah, I said a crapload. A pair of Terminator 2 parts games from eBay, a nearly complete Fish Tales playfield from rpg, and a mostly incomplete Bally Playboy playfield from Craigslist. Yoink!

More fascinating blow-by-blow accounts will follow, but I thought I'd open the blogging floodgates to try to get the flow of information moving again. Sadly, even though I haven't been writing, things have continued to happen.

Let's start with easy stuff. I did decide to do both the Virginia and Baltimore leagues after all. I failed pretty decisively for the first few weeks, but I've been surging in VA so now I'm #1 in the hood, G. Last week in MD I had my first really good week and moved up into the top 5. (Both of these are in B Division, of course.) MD is an interesting league... it's in an old warehouse that's been converted into a mecca for Volleyball, and in the corner are the league's pinball machines. It's an odd place to play pin... last week, a guy was playing Shrek and a volleyball bounced off the playfield glass, barely missed his head, and landed in the kid's play area. He didn't even miss a beat and kept right on playing... I think he ended up with a pretty good score, too. They're doing construction so parking is a bitch. Overall, they're nice guys... I think they're a little more competitive than the VA gang, which would explain why I'm on top in VA and in the middle there. I don't know if I'm going to continue two nights a week after this... I'll probably alternate between the two depending on how I feel. VA is more convenient to go to after work, while MD is more convenient from home and I work at home most Wednesdays. It's also rough on the finances, because each league is $60 minimum per season. But we'll see.

And I see by the clock on the desktop that it's just past midnight, so I am now more or less 47 years old.