Disparate but not Serious

I've been pretty busy lately, but the pinball is taking the backseat to life. Mostly it's cleaning and getting the house ready for my daughter's graduation -- yesterday I spent about 2 hours cleaning bathroom floor grout -- but I'm also serving as Mrs. Entropy's surrogate daughter, since her own is spending Mother's Day on a Senior Trip to the beach. So I had to make breakfast, make dinner, do some gardening (which, to be fair, I was going to do anyway), and watch Fringe episodes with the wife. These are all fine things, but not really pinball things.

However, these are the pinball things that have happened. In league I got into the VA playoffs by having a pretty good final week. Since I was in A division, the playoffs were kind of a foregone conclusion, but I did my best. I even did some practicing in Visual Pinball to learn the rules of the games I was weakest in a little better. My weakest game was High Speed II, and I was happy after a few VP games to have gotten 300 M on it, almost 10x my highest league score. Then in Allentown, I played one that was there and busted out another 300 M, and on a real machine to boot! I felt I was ready. So what happened? Nobody picked that game against me. So much for pathos. Anyway, I had one 4 point game of WHO Dunnit and three third place finishes for a third place overall. That ended up being OK because I got the prize I wanted, a copy of Pinball 101 (and a new toolbox). The guy who finished third in B got the same DVD, so obviously we intend to study up and improve our games. But, ya know, it was fun. The end of the season party was last night, and this time it was only about a half hour drive away. The guy hosting had a great selection of games, including Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, which I played a few times as a youngster and co-did a VP adaptation for, but have never played as an adult. There was a pinball scavenger hunt and a get the closest score contest, but I didn't do well in either. I did have the most frickin' awesome game of High Speed, scoring 3.5 M and getting multiball twice, which is really good for me since I have trouble getting the ramp shot. There was one of the nuttiest games I've ever seen called The Wiggler. The steaks for dinner were good, too. And one of the guys in the MD league who got a full set of 6 digit Bally displays for free brought one for my Paragon, which has a display with a segment out. Good times.

Allentown was OK. I went on Sunday, because Saturday was our anniversary. Sunday kinda sucked. There were half the games and half the flea marketers, and none of the vendors had much that I was looking for. I had my aforementioned awesome Getaway game, played some Iron Man (which was good... people say it's just the Austin Powers playfield, but the game feels different enough to me). I chatted with a guy that I'd met at the Fairfax Open. I was happy to see that the guy with the Future Spa with the messed up playfield finally fixed the gate (I had left a note suggesting he fix it a few shows ago... maybe he took my advice). There were a few more games that were pretty interesting... I'll probably mention something about them later.

I did talk to the guy who sold me the LEDs for Quicksilver, and the LED manufacturers as a whole apparently worked with the Alltek Systems guy to solve the flickering light problem by either a) soldering a diode on every feature light, or b) buying a new lamp driver board. I wasn't aiming to buy a new lamp board, but the guy offered to sell it to me for 20% the $100 list, and since I hadn't found much else at the show to buy I went for it. This, of course, is waiting until after graduation...

Not much progress on T2, aside from selecting a line filter and teasing out the wires to install a new plug. I used my new tiny camera to see why the speaker panel wasn't fitting correctly, and it turns out that just bending the brackets was all it needed. I ordered some parts for it, including 3 of the 4 ribbon cables from Great Plains, still the best price on cables by a dollar each.

I've having very good luck with my Fish Tales playfield. It was missing its reel, and I was kind of disparing finding a new one. But a guy posted the reel and motor on a Mr. Pinball classified and only wanted $60 for it, so I yoinked it up. Then I posted a WTB on RGP and Mr. Pinball for the brackets that held the optos, and I got a response from a guy who had parted out an FT who still had the brackets. We're currently negotiating, but he sends me only one email a day... why is no one as eager to finish these transactions as I am?!?

More as I have time and remember all the stuff I was planning to write...

The Slow, Inexorable March of Progress

I feel like I'm getting next to nothing done on the pinball front, mainly because I am. We've got less than three weeks before people start arriving for my daughter's college graduation and our house and palatial grounds are in quite the state. My wife has been sick with pulmonary issues for going on three weeks now, so a lot of the work is falling on me. So it kind of sucks to be me right now.

On the plus side, Mrs. Entropy and I went to see a Kevin Smith Q&A last night, which was pretty cool. Not really pinball-related, aside from him mentioning The Accused once, but there it is.

The Doctor Who power driver board problem ended with a whimper, not a bang. I ended up re-swapping the new board back into the game for testing, but once I did that everything worked fine. I guess it was a bad connection... and the real way to fix that is to replace the connector and the pins, but that's way more effort than I'm prepared to exert at this time. So I'm leaving it be until such time as it becomes necessary to do something about it. Go Fightin' Procrastinators!

I started setting up the T2 cabinet... I would say "she's got legs, you idiot", but I've used that joke already. I installed the legs, attached a new backbox latch that I didn't remember buying, then screwed in a backbox bolt that I had around (I'm hoping to get a second one in Allentown next weekend)... for whatever reason, I had three sitting around in a parts bin, and I used two on DW once I found out I needed them.

Anyway, I was going to put on the speaker panel and mount the backglass, but for whatever reason the speaker panel doesn't fit properly... the metal hooks don't fit snugly on the wood, but instead hang up on it... and since the speaker panel won't go down all the way, the backglass doesn't fit properly, so it's all a mess. I have to look carefully at why the speaker panel doesn't fit, maybe file down the wood or something.

League has had its ups and downs. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be in the playoffs in MD... going into week 10 I was #4 out of 4 with a girl 1 point behind me (or should I say, a girl!?!), so I needed to have a good week. Unfortunately I had an OK week... I held my own on Doctor Who (for whatever reason I can't do crap on that particular game despite having no problems getting great scores on my own) and came in second. Next up was an awesome game of Shrek... when my third ball came up the other two guys had 50 Million and I had about 1 million, but then I did a spectacular 76 million point ball (including an extra ball). When I was done, people actually applauded my performance! *blush* That was good for first place. Then I came in second on Eight Ball Deluxe, but finished a distant third on Six Million Dollar Man (damn you, Steve Austin!) for zero points. So when the unofficial back of the napkin scores were toted up, I had 9 points and Rebecca's 11, so it looks like I lost out by one point. To a girl!?! The official scores haven't come out yet, but I'm not expecting much.

In VA I'm doing OK but I definitely don't have a lock on a playoff spot yet with one more week to go. Because I had a couple of sucky weeks, I actually played in the bottom group, even though I'm in A division. None of my group was there, so I ended up playing alone and pasting everybody's saved scores, getting a 19 out of 20 points. And unlike earlier in the season, this time I actually deserved it... two of my scores were pretty good, and the other two were reasonable. Unfortunately, now I'm being accused (good-naturedly? maybe...) of gaming the system by deliberately losing so I could play in the lower groups and get big scores. These people clearly think I have a much better understanding of the scoring and grouping dynamics than I do... for example, I can't figure out why I'm still in A after a couple of losing weeks. So anyway, now I'm #2 in A but with a couple of guys nipping at my heels point-wise, which means I'll have to post some solid scores on Monday to avoid being taken down. We'll see how that goes... usually when the chips are stacked against me, I have a history of choking on my own vomit.

But to end on a positive note, in practice on Monday I scored a career best 650M on BS Dracula... I think I stacked up several multi-balls, which is the way to get huge points on that game, and I was within about 40 mill of the high score.

Frenzy o' Bloggin'!

Boy, it has been a while since my last confession. After a week of allergies I got up at 4 this morning feeling clear and unable to get back to sleep. I took care of a bunch of morning duties, then found that our hot water heater was once again failing at its primary task... which means that all the time I'd allocated for a hot shower is now available for the titular Frenzy o' Bloggin'.

We got a crapload of snow in the Mid-Atlantic region this winter, so it was mid-March before the weather improved and the mud abated enough to allow for all that cabinet sanding I needed to do. So I moved and cleaned until there was space for all of the cabinets to exit into the backyard. It helped that I had just gotten about 15 sq ft of new real estate in my basement because we replaced our indoor fuel oil tank with a new one outside (not only because it was 10 years beyond its 40 year warranty, but also to solve the problems of our boiler not starting in the morning when you want to take hot showers after being sick for a week... oh, yes, believe me I am bitter). I stripped the cabinets as much as I was going to strip them, then took them outside one at a time and sanded.

Overall it went pretty well. I started with the T2 cabinet that looked like it had spent some time at sea. The inside sanded up just fine... I used one of my wife's palm sanders and got the job done pretty quickly. Sanding the bottom was another story... little chunks of wood kept dropping out of the cabinet sides, probably because the water messed up the integrity of the wood. In the end, it looks a lot better as long as you don't peer at the sides too carefully. The good T2 cab and DW went pretty well, too. I wasn't able to sand off some stenciled text on the bottom of T2, and there were some stains on the inside of DW that I couldn't get out... possible leftovers from the soda that apparently was spilled in there at some point. But they all look way better than they did before, and sanding the bottom was a lot faster than the evening I spent scrubbing the grime off the DW with 409 and a Magic Eraser. I'm pretty happy with the results, and when I was done all of the cabs were parked in the space where the oil tank used to be, somewhat out of the way. And the space near my games where the DW cab used to sit is now clear, giving me an extra 9 sq ft of extra floor space. Time to buy a new game!

Another project that I needed to get around to was testing that hacked up driver board I got back in November to free up the DW driver for use in T2. I took out the board that was in DW a few months ago, put in the new board, then let it sit for a few months. Finally this weekend I got up the gumption to do something about it. Following Safe Standards of Behavior for Strange Boards (you don't know where they've been!), I only plugged in the power plugs from the transformer and measured voltages at the plugs where power comes back out. Everything looked pretty good, though I was a little worried about the 50V coil power showing up as 72V (I've since learned that this is normal). So I plugged everything else in and was happy to find I had a completely working game!

Almost. :P The one thing that was weird was the flippers seemed less powerful with the new board. This was especially noticeable when hitting the Cliffhanger Ramp from the upper left flipper... whereas before you could make a good sturdy shot up the ramp, now the same shot barely got the ball around the loop. Several games worth of testing showed that it wasn't me, the flippers were just slightly weaker.

A trip to RGP was extremely unenlightening. It seems like no one read my entire post... I mean, I am a trifle long-winded, but still. Everyone -- even Clay/Shaggy! -- wanted to convince me that the problem was caused by dirty optos. So I swapped the old board back in and the problem magically cleared up. I was kind of despairing, but then rgp mega-poster TheKorn came through with some potential goods, saying I should check the connectors and fuses because they may work but might have problems when push came to shove. It does give me more board troubleshooting to do -- and I need more board troubleshooting that I need to do like I need more holes in my head beyond the ones I already have -- but at least it's something to go on.

Finally, league update. I was ever so briefly #1 in A Division in the Virginia League, largely through dumb luck. Guys I was playing against had terrible weeks, one guy didn't show up, etc. I couldn't really expect that to last for a whole season, and it didn't. I am now just outside of playoff contention, and with 3 weeks to go I don't hold out much hope. In Maryland I had kind of a funny week... since I was sick, I decided not to go and used my saved scores. The guy who got to pick the first game picked one that I didn't have a saved score for, which gave me a forfeit. But then, the next two games they played were OK scores, but way better than the other two guys did. My saved score for the final game was crappy, but my two middle scores were enough for the win. I'm squarely in B Division playoff contention with just 2 weeks to go... though I gotta say that I had my druthers I'd druther t'were t'other way around... the MD prizes suck compared to the VA prizes.

Fairfax Pinball Tournament: Epic Swag!

Here's some extra post-tournament coolness: When I opened up the envelope containing my $62.50 in prize money, I found it contained a coupon for a free pre-registration package to PAPA! Yoink! That's a $35 value. I was not sure if I was going to go this year because it's such a long drive, but now I can't afford not to go! I immediately registered.

Then I asked the lovely and talented Mrs. Entropy if, since she enjoyed the trip to the Silver Ball Museum, she might want to accompany me to PAPA. And she said yes! Not only will it be more fun with the wife along, but she's a lot better at nighttime hell drives than I am. So if we go as a day trip, it won't be as rough on me.

And finally, when I went to pick up Quicksilver on Monday, it had earned just over $52! I gave half to John, which brought my total income from the tournament to $124 in cash and prizes, or about $80 after expenses. Sweet.

To top it off, Wednesday's league night was an ass-kicking, but for a change it was me kicking the ass instead of my ass being kicked. I didn't stay for the final reckoning, but I got 4 points on all my games, which is the maximum score you can get. Yay for our side!

Fairfax Pinball Tournament: Epic Recovery!

Sometimes all it takes is the right state of mind. And in this case, I more than made up for my sucktacular first day at the tournament with a completely unexpectedly good finish.

Here's what happened. Mrs. Entropy is away at the Ladies and Gentlemen of the 1860's conference with our daughter, so I'm home alone with the pets this weekend. I put Darwin into overnight dog storage for Friday night, because I correctly predicted that I would be home late. But I expected to be finished pretty early at the tournament on Saturday, so I took him on two walks (with a little running thrown in to make him extra tired) so that he'd sleep while I was gone. I left at about 3:30 to get down to John's Place before the playoffs started at 5.

I will say that in retrospect, the initial omens and portents were favorable: I found 37 cents on the ground in various places throughout my day, and I'd had good practice games at home on Paragon and Eight Ball Deluxe (Doctor Who is down for board testing). And then at the bar in a practice game on Strikes and Spares I put up a score of 500K to beat Justin, who is a _way_ better player than I am (last Wednesday in league he smacked down the King of Payne in Medieval Madness with an amazingly relentless assault on the castle).

My standings had improved relatively. Whereas on Friday I had been #8 of 10 in B Division, at the end of qualifying I was #10 of 19. Still out of the top half, which meant I was in single elimination... if I lose one best of three match, I'm out (the top half was double elimination, meaning that if they lost they would play winners in the loser half).

Things were not looking good in general, because the bar was having serious power issues. Games were resetting right and left, and somebody mentioned that even the street light outside was flickering. This worked out pretty well for me Friday, because Monster Bash reset on a crappy game and my next game was a lot better. But Saturday it was nuts. They even had Quicksilver turned off, despite the fact that it uses 1/3 less power than a comparable pinball game (I was going to cite a link to that in my blog, but I guess I haven't blogged about it... when I replaced the GI in QS with LEDs, I did a before and after comparison with a power meter and discovered the power savings).

Anyway, so my first match got under way with the #19 guy. I was extremely nervous and tightly wound, because I knew from keeping score for him that he had not developed his competitive skillz, and in spite of my "here to play not to win" philosophy, losing to him would have, to quote my college French professor Mlle Schoonmaker, sucked dead donkey dicks. I need to retroactively amend my philosophy to say that I'm here to play not to win, but not to crap out in the first round either. I just barely beat him on Mousin' Around (another terrible game! what is it with me?), Big Buck Hunter, and some third game which I forget.

By then the power problems were out of hand, so they called a break so they could deal with the problem and I went to dinner with Brian, who I hang out with when I can... he came in first the season that I came in second, and we seem to be pretty evenly matched. By the time we got back, they had pretty much fixed the power issue by bringing in a generator.

The guys whose match would result in my next opponent apparently did not have a dog to get home to so they took their good old time playing their match. But by the time they finally got back into playing, I had entered a state of mind that was extremely conducive to my pinball playing: I didn't really care if I won or lost, because both were good things. If I won I got to advance, and if I lost I got to go home and take care of the dog. Once there, I was nigh invulnerable.

The loser of that round had my same first name and owned a Quicksilver too, so it was the Plate o' Shrimp Lattice of Coincidence round. I think I won that one 2 to 1, and I didn't need to finish my last game because by the time I hit the third ball I had beaten him, including another good game on Strikes and Spares.

Now the pace picked up, because I knew almost everyone I played after that and they were aware of my urgency to not clean up dog poop when I got home. Next up was Ken, who plays in Baltimore. We pretty much trade off beat downs... sometimes I'll school him soundly, and other times he'll knock me off my high horse and make sure it tramples me in the process. I won that 2 to 1, and again the denouement was on Strikes and Spares. This time, I destroyed him utterly and salted the earth he lived on. I frickin' turned over the game and lapped him on the fourth ball. He recovered somewhat on his final ball so that I only almost beat him by a million points, 1.2M to 270K.

By now I was feeling pretty good. I was not scared at all. I just felt kind of... invincible. I had a very positive attitude about it. I think I could have taken on Lo Pan in a game of Chinatown or San Francisco if I had to.

Next up was Brian for 4th place, and I pretty much toasted him on bread, 2 to 0. He had watched me roll over SandS so he knew to steer clear of that train wreck. I think I beat him on Who Dunnit first, getting that ol' reliable spank mode Penthouse Party and becoming Roof Champion. The last game he picked was Sorcerer, and I managed to pull ahead on the last ball so I didn't have to finish that game either.

Then I went against Ralph for 3rd place, a guy I met for the first time on Friday but a lot of people knew. Ralph must not have been watching my previous Who Dunnit game and he picked it. It was touch and go until the last ball, when I got Penthouse Party again for a billion points. I didn't finish the last ball on that one either. I think I won that match 2 to 0 too.

And on to Kendall for 2nd place. He plays in the VA league and is working on a homebrew pinball project like I am, though he's a lot further along. He had a bad game of Sorcerer, then an awesome come-from-behind game of Monster Bash. However, that loss allowed me to pick... wait for it... Strikes and Spares for another erect nipple victory, 500K to 2 or 300K.

And finally, there could be only one. I was playing Jason for first place, another guy I'd never met before but everybody seemed to know. Since he was in the double elimination bracket and I was the plucky newcomer from the bottom, I had to beat him twice. He picked Big Buck Hunter Pro and I managed to pull off a narrow victory there. There was one awesome moment: He hit the Ram target and it kicked the ball straight down the middle. He looked at it dejectedly for a second, then said, "I got ass-rammed!" Working as I do with a lot of Indians, that just made me laugh and laugh. So he picked the next game, which was No Fear. Now, he had put up 1.5 bill on his first ball against Kendall earlier, but this time he just couldn't get it started. He got an easily beatable 450M, but unfortunately for me I couldn't get it started even worse than he did and took a loss.

And here we come to what proved to be my fatal mistake. I lost the game, so I could take a game pick or an order pick. Looking back at this narrative, that choice would be obvious: Strikes and Spares. But because my nascent strategic pinball mind has apparently not developed to the level of even basic common sense, that never even occurred to me. I thought back over the games and what I came up with is how well I did when other people picked the games. So I picked the order and allowed him to pick the game (in retrospect: Fuck you Robert Frost and your road less taken!). He picked Getaway, which was in the bar portion of John's place, hoping that the smoke and incredibly loud and mostly bad karaoke would distract me enough. It didn't really, but even though he did a beatable score, I came in about 8 million short for second place in B Division.

But despite that, I was so happy with my performance. I had six straight wins in single elimination, I played great most of the night, and I placed second when the most I was hoping for was to get through a few rounds. Everyone I played were great sports, we all had a great time, and we got to play a shitload of pinball.

After that we goofed off, watching the A Div players duke it out and playing games here & there for another hour or so until they got around to giving out the prizes. For second place, my prize was $62.50, which pretty much pays my expenses for the tournament and then some. But that also means that I am now a Professional Pinball Player. If/when I go to the Pro-Am Pinball Association Championship in July or August, I can hang out with the Pros and totally snub the Ams. Yeah! I'm quittin' my job tomorrow and following the Dream!

To add a cherry on top of my victory was the fact that Quicksilver -- WHO DID NOT DIE! -- got a semi-permanent fix to the flippers from Scott, the guy who repairs the games for the league. (I'm all about the movie quotes today.) It was turned off initially, but it was on for the bulk of tournament play.... and Scott even put a couple of bucks into it at the end of the night, probably because he was learning and trying to beat the game (they have one at PAPA, so it could show up in championship play some year and it never hurts to know the spank-worthy shots to make, such as the sweep shot on the center targets when 20K per target is lit). I'm going to pick up the game tomorrow after work, and in theory I'll get a little more cash from the quarters that QS has been taking in all week.

And when I got home (9 hours after I left) Darwin had been a super-good boy and managed to keep his wits and bladder about him. So all in all, it was a very good day.

Fairfax Pinball Tournament: Epic Fail!

You know, it's a good thing that I go to leagues and tournaments to play rather than to win, because if I went to win I would spend a lot of time sorely disappointed. On the first night of the Fairfax Pinball Open I suck so hard I created my own gravity well. My two qualifying scores put me at #8 out of 10, though to be fair if the qualifiers today stink up the place I could end up in a better seeding position. As it stands now, I'll probably be in the lower half, which means I could move up in single elimination if I play well; however, based on last night's performance, that's unlikely to happen.

There was also a classics tournament, and I was eliminated in the first round, losing the first two games so we didn't have to play the third. The first game was Mousin' Around, which I picked because it's usually a good game for me. There was a bit of an irregularity, in that I scored an extra ball but the game was set not to award them, so I started playing it (and got the skill shot!) before I realized it was the other guy's ball. But I did the right thing and trapped the ball s

o my opponent could continue playing his ball. I doubt it made a difference in the outcome. Losing the first game means I got to pick the second, so I picked my own damn game, Quicksilver, and proceeded to lose. To be fair, both games were pretty close, but it was not one of my finest hours.

But I did do some volunteer scorekeeping, and did OK under the fairly light load. Today (Saturday) is usually when the biggest turnout is.

And just to give me that extra bit of bile in my mouth, Quicksilver developed flipper problems in its first day on the job in 25 years. The left flipper has some loose screws that probably need to be tightened by replacing them with bigger screws and could use a new coil stop. The right flipper is just weak and might have a problem with the EOS switch. The repair guy said he'd try to take a look at it, and since it's scheduled to be used in the one-handed mini-tournament, hopefully he'll look at it early today. And the gameplay is not very tight... it's got a low angle and the slingshots require more effort to fire than they should. I'll need to deal with that when she comes home. But here is a picture of it on site next to the engorged areolae of Strikes and Spares. A lot of people told me on how nice the game looks, especially with the LEDs, and I was happy to accept all compliments on QS's behalf.

But overall, it was pretty fun talking to people. I met Trent, the #7 ranked player in the world (I looked myself up and it turns out I'm in the high 1,400's), and Koi Morris, who it turns out I'd played a game of Maverick with at Allentown a few years ago (and it actually ended up in the blog... go to the end of the post to see). There was a guy there from my hometown of L.A. who edited reality TV shows for a living and came out specifically for the tournament.

I did get my first, second, and third runs at Big Buck Hunter Pro. My first two games kind of sucked, but the third was OK. I enjoyed it, but I didn't feel like investing $1 per game because I was already smelling up the joint.

And that was pretty much my day. Today I'm heading down in the late afternoon for the playoffs, but I'm guessing I'll get single eliminated pretty fast and I'll make it an early night.

On Location

Well, everything went pretty well. As I mentioned, the game was loaded up, and the next day I drove the car and pin to work. After work I drove out to John's Place, getting there a little after 7. Only two other people were there, so I started unloading everything myself and setting it up. I did get some help when I lifted the backbox onto the game, but otherwise I got everything put back together in about a half hour. I was going to get help putting the back legs on, but then somebody pointed out that there was a pinball cart available. Boy, did that make things easier. In fact, later I realized that I had put the front legs on the back, so rather than adjusting the feet I just put the game on the cart and swapped the legs in about 2 minutes. Suddenly a cart seems like a good use of $300.

The game didn't get a lot of play while I was there. A couple of people played it after league, and a few told me how nice it looked -- it is a visually striking game, and it helps that at the time it was sitting next to Cyclopes, which looks like it was drawn by a 12 year-old on a textbook cover. I don't know if they're going to use the game in the tournament or if it's just going to be there for practice. The tournament starts tomorrow, so I'm going to go after work.

One funny thing that happened on Monday was the comedy of errors continued and I finished the night at #1 in A Division. One of the guys I was supposed to play against didn't show up and had no pre-played scores, so he forfeited. By dumb luck, one of the games we played was Mousin' Around, which usually does pretty well for me in league play, and the remaining guy I played against doesn't do well on it at all. I won one other game, and he beat me on the other two but not spectacularly, so I ended up in first place. I expect that to last exactly two weeks, but only because we have the Monday after the tournament off.