Flack

I don't see how there could be an arcade price guide. I am not knocking that particular one (I'm a big fan of Gameroom Magazine and RetroBlast -- those guys are awesome!) but I have seen such wild variations in pricing that it seems like it would be impossible to nail down prices. I guess the biggest problem (like with cars) would be condition. I've seen Galaga machines go for $500 and $1000, sometimes at the same auction. I just seems like there are too many variable involved to set prices for most games. I need to pick that guide up and check it out.

I sold my Air Hockey table. A fellow OKC collector came by and picked it up yesterday evening. Mason was a little upset that I'm getting rid of it, but he hasn't played it in a couple of years, and I really needed the space out in the arcade. So, now it's gone. Speaking of the arcade, I've created a new area of the website dedicated to my arcade games. It's at robohara.com/arcade, and I'll be adding a link to it from the front page later today. There you will find a list of all my arcade games, what I'm working on, etc. You should check it out at least once. Susan and I are still both dragging a bit after being sick this past weekend, but the stomach issues seem to have passed. I took Dad Sunday night to see the Hornets play the Utah Jazz. We lost by 14, but it was still a good evening. It was Hugo's (our mascot) Birthday, so mascots from all across the league came and performed all night. Fun night, lots of entertainment. Work continues on the Three Stooges videos. I have 50 or so dumped so far, which is over half of what I have and just over a fourth of all of them. There were 191 Three Stooges shorts in all; between the marathon and the ones I recorded last weekend on the PiVo, I think I'll have close to 2/3 of them when finished. And speaking of PiVo ... it died temporarily yesterday. We had a power outage yesterday during the day and when I came home I could not get the computer to boot. I hate these new "soft" power supplies (and by "new" I mean, over the past ten years or so). I like the old ATX style, the ones that had a manual, physical switch. I could not get the machine to reboot until I unplugged the power cord and left it unplugged for 10 seconds. After that it rebooted, SpongeBob was watched, and there was much rejoicing.

Thursday night, Susan and I awoke to the sound of Morgan puking over the baby monitor's speaker. By the time we got to her room, her crib (and hair) was covered in it. That was the beginning of one long night. After giving her a bath, I held her in my chair while Mommy changed her bedding. And then, of course ... more puke, all over Daddy. Long night, indeed. Friday night was Mason and Mommy's turn. Mason started with the puking around nine in the evening. Susan waited until after midnight to begin vomiting. Saturday, all eyes were on me. We all knew it was just a matter of time before I got the bug, and sure enough, just after dinner time it hit me as well. I don't know what this stomach bug is, but whatever it is plum wipes you out. I spent the rest of the evening Saturday and pretty much all day Sunday sleeping. The only thing I really remember about today is fleeting images of Susan coming and going, letting me know where the family was going, or announcing their return. What a crummy weekend for all of us.

BYOAC.com and KLOV.com are probably your best choices for something like that. If you have newsgroup access, RGVAC (rec.games.video.arcade.collecting) and its related groups are also a good source of obscure stuff.

Birthdays were a big deal for my sister and I as kids. Every year we invited lots and lots of people over, had cake and ice cream, played lots of games, and did lots of other things. Our birthdays were celebrated with as much gusto as any holiday. We had overnight camping birthday parties in my backyard, and roller skating parties at the local skating rink. All the parties started out at our house, and each year my parents would put on our Captain Zoom birthday records. Each one was personalized with our own birthday greeting. My name is Zoom, and I live on the moon, but I came down to Earth just to sing you this tune, 'cuz Robbie, it's your birthday, today! My sister's said "Linda" instead, of course. In hindsight I'm sure there were tens of thousands of kids across the country who had personalized birthday records from Captain Zoom, but no one else in my neighborhood did, which made for a pretty awesome birthday experience. Hearing Captain Zoom sing his two-minute birthday jingle dedicated to me was a highlight, and is a treasured memory to this day. It's weird, the things that pop into your mind as you stare at an empty Google search bar. I don't know why on earth the memory of that song popped into my head, but it did, and the first return I got was of, you guessed it, Captain Zoom's website. http://www.captainzoom.com A sign of the times, Captain Zoom now delivers his birthday greetings from the Moon via casette ($10), CD ($12) or DVD ($18) -- or, if you want to save on shipping, Captain Zoom will directly e-mail you an MP3 ($11). It may sound a little high for a two minute song, but then again almost three decades later, I hold those two minutes close to my heart. And, apparently Captain Zoom's been pretty busy in his lunar recording studio -- the website boasts over 3,000 unique names to choose from.

So the other day Susan mentions to me that Morgan has a funny smell coming out of her face. Not knowing what to say about that, I simply nodded and went about my business. A few days later, Morgan's teachers mentioned that they're going to start teaching the kids how to brush their teeth, ostensibly because Morgan's breath is so bad. Fast forward to a couple of days ago at Morgan's scheduled doctor's appointment. Susan mentioned the funny smell to the doctor and her first words were, "she's probably crammed something up her nose." The doctor gets her light and shines up right up Morgan's nostril; sure enough, something's up there. With Susan calming Morgan and another assistant holding her down, they went in after it. A few moments later, the doctor pulled an entire Kleenex out of Morgan's nose that, according to Susan, "smelled like it came from the pits of Hell." Morgan seems happier, and the smell is gone.

If you hit a stumbling block while working on a project, one of the best things you can do is just set it aside for a bit. Sometimes, the solution to a problem will come to you in your sleep. Sometimes it will come to you the next day. Sometimes, as in the case of the 30 gigs worth of Three Stooges videos I recorded, a solution will come to you three years later. In 2004 I bought a video capture card for my old computer. While the software included with the card wasn't nearly as robust as the PVR software I'm running now, it did allow me to use the card as a simple digital VCR. I card allowed me to watch television in a window on my computer, and record those programs as MPEG files directly to my hard drive. Recording programs was simple; converting them to DVD was not as simple. In 2004 there were several time consuming hoops that needed to be hopped through in order to get my home recordings onto a DVD that we could watch in our living room. One of the first things I recorded with my card was a Three Stooges marathon. I believe the marathon took place on April Fool's Day, 2004, and ran for 24 hours. I hit record and let it run for the duration of the marathon. The next day, there they were -- 30 gigs worth of Stooge-slapping nyuks. But then the real question came -- what on earth was I going to do with them? The software I was using at the time would only squeeze about an hour's worth of video onto a DVD, and I wasn't interested in burning 24 DVDs worth of stooge shorts. I didn't want to delete the files, but I didn't know what to do with them either. So, for the past three years, they've sat dormant on my hard drive. In three years, a lot of things have changed. Divx and other similar codecs now allow you to greatly compress video without losing quality. GBPVR (my "PiVo" system I've been going on and on about) plays MPEG and AVI files in our living room just fine. I've been downloading cartoons and sitcoms from various places and putting them on the computer for the kids to watch. Suddenly, like a cream pie, it hit me in the face. For the past several days I've been loading those Three Stooges recordings into a video editor, chopping them up into individual episodes, and saving them as compressed Divx files. The increase in computing power over the last few years has made this possible. While the process still takes a while, we're talking about days now instead of the weeks or months like it would have taken a few years ago. In just a few more days I'll have almost every Three Stooges short, exported out into individual files, ready for my family and I to watch at a moment's notice. I knew if I waited long enough a solution would present itself!

There are entire industries I am completely ignorant about; one such example is the sandblasting industry. My friend Johnny recently acquired a set of truck rails that belonged to his grandfather. After having the rails cut down in length to fit his own truck, the next step prior to painting is sandblasting. Sandblasting is like sanding on steroids. Today's lunchtime adventure led us J&S Sandblasting, on the corner of SW15th and Penn. Upon our arrival we found a guard dog and lots of sand, but no people. The dog was particularly friendly and completely unmenacing. We could hear someone sandblasting off in the distance; obviously, they could not hear us. After walking around for a few minutes, Johnny headed back toward the source of the noise while I stayed up front. After failing to find a person, Johnny called the company's phone number, which was forwarded to the owner's cell phone who was out picking up lunch. A few minutes later the owners arrived. Johnny, the owner and I removed the truck rails from Johnny's truck and placed them in the "waiting to be sandblasted" queue. The entire building was surrounded by gigantic, ancient gas tanks. What these will be eventually used for, I don't know. With all the dust and sand in the air, it looked like an abandoned Martian landscape. Well, except for the guard dog and all the four wheel drive trucks ...

Due to popular demand (okay, three people) here's a picture of Mason in my old Shedeck Shirt. His teacher apparently got a kick out of the whole thing, and Mason got to stand in front of the whole class while she told the rest of the class the story. Hopefully other pre-Kindergarden kids think that's neat and it doesn't get him beat up on the playground. Also below is a picture of our new cat. After a week or two of going back and forth, the cat's official name is Don Piano. If you don't know who Don Piano is, check out this YouTube clip from America's Funniest Home Videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4sB--s5ROU Mason in my old Shedeck shirt. Don Piano

24 years ago in 1984, Shedeck Elementary held a contest to design the school's official t-shirt. I was in fifth grade at the time. Each student was handed one entry form, a white piece of paper with a black outline of a t-shirt on it. The contest winning design would be used on school t-shirts for years to come. One detail I remember about the contest was that the design should be single-color in design, as that's how the shirts would be printed. In fifth grade I was really into perspective drawing, so for my entry across the top I wrote our school's name in big block letters (SHEDECK) with lines coming down off the letters to make it look 3D. Across the bottom I drew a big pencil, on which I wrote, "in a class all our own." I colored the shirt in red and did the design in black. I also colored the pencil yellow with a pink eraser. If I won I knew they wouldn't color the pencil, but I thought it looked better that way. A week or so later all the entries were hung outside the principal's office -- I had won! A big 1st Place Ribbon was hanging on my entry. The principal sent a note home with my that my parents had to sign, giving the school permission to use my design. A few days later, the school counselor and I drove down to the local t-shirt printing shop, design in hand. My dad joking told me to ask them if I was getting a cut of the sales. When I asked the counselor, she replied "well, i guess we could always use the second place winner's design ..." and left it at that. After that I kept my mouth shut about the royalties. A few weeks later at school, the shirts arrived. They were red with white printing, and looks for all practical purposes just like my original entry. While cleaning out the garage last weekend I ran across a box full of keepsakes, including my old t-shirt. It still looks new; I must not have worn it much. I showed the shirt to Mason, who attends Shedeck Elementary, and talked him into wearing it to school today. Initially I thought some of the teachers would get a kick out of it, but on second thought I doubt any of the teachers will even recognize it. The only one that might was a classmate of mine when I went to Shedeck! So, along with Mason, I sent a note to his teacher, explaining what the shirt was. Hopefully she'll get a kick out of it. The shirt's older than she is.

Every now and then I have brief moments of clarity. Not to sound like a mental case, but it's like I step outside of my body for a moment and get this really clear picture of my life from an outsider's point of view. It feels really strange whenever it happens. During these moments I usually come to some sort of revelation ... and, usually, a day or two later I've forgotten all about the experience, and I go back to the way things were. Last night, while sitting in my recliner with the telvision blaring and the laptop open, it happened. I was overcome with the realization that I'm wasting far too much time online. There are so many things in real life I put off doing due to imaginary commitments in the online world. I spend ten to twenty hours a week alone modding a couple of different forums. Looking back at my 2007 resolutions, I can see that some of them are being neglected due to my excessive time spent on the Internet. Surfing the web and frequently refhreshing news sites and forums has almost reached the point of addiction. (Compulsion? Whatever.) It's like, I cannot be online any more than I possibly am right now. I never get away from being online. I am starting to have trouble finishing projects (like writing) on the computer as I get easily sidetracked by the web. Right now I am feeling a strong desire to take an "offline" vacation. Will it last? No, it never does. There's an old argument that it's easier to quit being an alcoholic than it is to lose weight; the logic being that alcoholics can avoid contact with alcohol, while the obese are still required to eat three times a day. I spend a lot more time each day behind a keyboard than I do eating. Computers are my job, my hobby, and sad to say, my life. One of the resolutions I set for myself this year was to have a book done by April 1st. At this point I don't see how that can happen. Every time I sit down to write I hit the Internet to check a fact or two, and an hour later I'm tracking down the latest Brittney Spears or Anna-Nicole Smith news and completely done with whatever it was I was writing. I guess when it comes to online ventures, it's hard to know when to stop. I'm always signing up for one more forum, or downloading one more movie, or grabbing one more album ... and at the end of the day I have all these messages, movies and albums that I never get around to fully enjoying. I spend so much time downloading stuff that I never get a chance to experience most of it. Eh, gimmie three days. I'll be back online in full force by then.

GB-PVR does have options to not record duplications and/or reruns, so that'll be helpful. By sheer coincidence, I set up the machine this weekend and added "Three Stooges" as one of my repeatable recordings. Monday, Spike TV aired a Three Stooges Marathon. Ah well; at least I've got over a dozen episodes on hand already. I've upped the default quality from low to high to see what kind of impact that has on both the quality and the length of the recordings.

I've spent the last few days fiddling with my new PVR system now affectionately dubbed "PiVo") getting things just right, and last night was the machine's first true test. Sunday night I told the machine to "record every episode of American Idol from now on," and last night my little digital recording pal did just that. Quietly in the background, hard drives spun up, the channel changed, and the computer recorded American Idol. After the kids went to bed, we got to sit down at watch the show at our leisure. It's like a VCR that programs itself and never forgets. During playback, I didn't realize that the ComSkip software I installed worked in real time. Through some magical technology, GB-PVR and ComSkip detect when commercials stop and start, and automatically jump over them when you watch your programs. The only downfall I so see so far is that by removing commercials, I'm also removing all my bathroom breaks. At least pause still works. Susan wasn't thrilled with the quality of the recording. I guess I'm so used to watching video on a computer that I didn't miss the miniscule ticks and stutters that Susan picked up on. The machine right now has 512 meg of RAM; tonight, PiVo gets upgraded to a gig. We'll see if that doesn't make a difference. I also got "transcoding" set up and working now on a nightly basis. "Transcoding" is a process that goes through each recorded video and compresses the normally uncompressed MPEG files into highly compressed AVI (divx or vxid format) files. The process runs in the middle of the night so I never see it happen, and the compressed files show no noticable decrease in quality. Just to give you an idea, last night's two-hour American Idol took up almost four gig of drive space in MPEG format. This morning it has been shrunk to around 1.3 gig. Although this won't prevent the purchasing of an additional hard drive, it'll certainly postpone it.

During lunch today, Johnny's cell phone began to ring. The upstairs help desk was calling to report a flood of accounts being locked out. Johnny told the caller we'd be right back in the office -- the ride back usually only takes ten minutes or so. During the normally ten minute ride, we encountered (A) a speed trap that caused everyone to hit their brakes, (B) a passing ambulance that caused everyone to pull over to the side of the road, © not one but two trains on the same train tracks, end to end, and (D) a stuck railroad crossing guard that continued to flash for at least five minutes after the trains were long gone. Fortunately we were not struck by a meteor and did not encounter an earthquake, the only two other possible delays we could come up with. The normally ten-minute drive took over half an hour. Ridiculous!

I'm "down" to 20 or so games ...

For a couple of years now I've wanted to build a PVR. For those unfamiliar with the term, let's start at the beginning. First, we had the VCR (Videocasette Recorder). Devices with hard drives in them that record television programs digitally are called DVRs, or Digital Video Recorders. Most DVRs, like TiVo, are stand alone units that are purchased. A PVR functions essentially the same a DVR, the major difference being instead of a stand alone unit it is actually software that runs on a PC. After a few months of research and watching for sales, I've finally put together the system. The computer, a used 2ghz machine that I found through Craigslist, was $200. The video capture card I bought, a Hauppauge 150 with a remote, was $100. The other piece of the puzzle was the software. I decided on GB-PVR, which not only was the best PC-based PVR software I could find, but is also completely free. So, how does it work? Well, when the computer boots up, GB-PVR automatically runs. The software comes up to a menu with a dozen or so choices. The ones you would most associate with a PVR system would be LIVE TV, TV GUIDE, and RECORDINGS. LIVE TV is just what it sounds like -- watching cable TV. Like all digital recorders, my PVR allows me to pause or rewind live television. Like a VCR, you can hit record on the remote at any time and record the show you are watching. The TV GUIDE feature is similar to the guides seen with digital cable or satellite systems. If you find a show later you want to record, simply highlight it and press record. After pressing record, you have the choice of "repeating" that selection in multiple ways; you can repeat it on a weekly basis, daily basis, or simply tell the the software to record any program with the same name from now on (I will never miss American Idol again.) Under the Recordings section you'll find the status of all your scheduled recordings. You can quickly find what you've recorded and your recording schedule here. These are all functions that any decent DVR/PVR offers, but GB-PVR has some really impressive additional features that have me hooked. First of all there's a VIDEO PLAYER, which allows you to play basically any video type on your television (I've tried mpeg, avi, divx, and others). There's also a MUSIC PLAYER that allows you to play MP3 and other music files. A SEARCH button allows you to search for any program, find out when it'll be on, and allow you to record it. There's also a NET RADIO feature, with hundreds of free Internet streaming radio stations at your fingertips. For free! There's a YOU TUBE feature that allows you to search for and play YouTube videos. There are additional plug-ins you can download and install. I've installed a SPORTS TICKER that will scroll sports scores across the bottom of my television with the touch of a button. There's also a CALLER ID plug-in; you'll need a Caller ID compatible modem in your computer, but with that each time the phone rings the Caller ID Information will appear on my television screen (or show a caller's picture, if you have one on file for them). I installed a DVD TO MPEG converter which will let me "rip" DVDs and save them to the computer as MPEG files, so that the kids can watch them without needing to touch my original discs. I also installed a TRANSCODER, which goes through the hard drive and compresses your videos during off hours in order to conserve drive space. Several of these features require an Internet connection. I had an extra wireless network card that I installed in the computer. Through remote desktop I can control and update the software from my laptop (of course everything here can also be controlled through the remote control that came with the video card I bought). The wireless card also allows me to copy files both to and from the machine. After playing with the system for a full day, it is amazing that I waited this long to build this machine. It is awesome. It changes the function of our living room, changing our television to a remote-based multimedia center, backed by a computer. It may sound like a cliche, but I am already starting to wonder how I ever lived without it.

Five years ago, Susan and I stopped by a thrift store at lunch. At the thrift store, I found a Macintosh computer. The computer was priced .99 cents, and I still couldn't bring myself to buy it. What on earth am I going to do with yet another old computer, I thought. The lady working behind the counter read my mind. "Don't forget, it's half-off Wednesday," she offered. That sealed the deal; I plunked down my fifty-cents, and brought my new (old) Macintosh back to work with me. Surprisingly, the machine fired right up. For a couple of years I left it turned on, sitting in my cubicle. Most people simply walked past it. A few people would walk by, do a double-take, and then swing back and ask me what in the world I was doing with an old Mac in my cube. Like the other things I stack in my cube, I consider it a type of litmus test. If someone walks by my desk, sees an old computer and strikes up a conversation about it, chances are I'm going to like that person. The problem with my old Mac was, it never did anything. It just sat there, turned on, at its boot up screen. Without a working keyboard, mouse of boot disk (I can't complain too loudly for fifty-cents), I was never able to make it do anything. Until today. Apparently upstairs at work a contracting crew is removing our old cafeteria. Part of that removal involves a plasma torch and a forklift, of which the fumes of both are being pumped directly into our work area throughout the day. The smell is almost unbearable even for me, a guy whose nose hasn't worked well in 20 years. Everyone has a headache. I suggested picking up a canary and putting it in a cage just to make sure no one dies but I think there are OSHA laws against that. The problem seems to be worse in our room than anywhere else. At some point, the decision was made to prop our door open. Our doors are so heavy that everything we put in front of them isn't strong enough to hold the door open. Old hardware to the rescue! At least it's earning its fifty-cents finally.

So a lady and her son walk into a pet store and come out with a cat. No, it's not the beginning of a joke (unless the joke is my life). Susan and Mason went to the pet store last night and came home with a cat. Mason has been begging for a pet for a while now (I voted for either a goldfish or a hamster). You may recall we had a puppy for about half of a three day weekend about a year ago, but that didn't work out so well. The yapping, chewing, and pooping was just too much with a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old toddler as well. I had to be the bad guy and say "enough was enough" with the puppy. Back to the pet store he went, minus all the money we spent on shots and whatnot. And so, a year or so later, we're going to try it again, this time with a cat. After tossing around every name from Smokey, Midnight, Tristan and Plankton, we settled on ... "Nosferatu." Nosferatu was the first vampire film ever made and was based on the story of Dracula. Mason knows about Nosferatu from his brief cameo in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Of course this morning Mason has had second thoughts, and thinks the cat's middle name should still be Ashton. And so, outvoted 3-1, allow me to introduce Nosferatu Ashton O'Hara, latest addition to the clan.

Strange things often unfold quickly in my life. I don't even question these bizarre happenings anymore; I just go with the flow, ride out the whirlwind adventure, and document everything that happens along the way. Last Friday I was told my mother-in-law had purchased her own antique mall, and on Saturday Susan informed me that I would be running my own booth. Well, "booth" isn't the right word -- it's my own room. Apparently, it's approximately 20' x 40' in size (I haven't seen it yet). Susan told me it would be a great place to get rid of a few of my unwanted arcade games, so I guess that's what I'll be doing. The building is right off of Main Street in Yukon, and Susan's mom signed a one year lease. The store is set to open its doors March 1st, so I'm sure I'll be doing some painting and cleaning before then. 800 square foot is an awful lot of space to fill when you're not sure what you'll be selling. I'm sure I'll figure out something. The thoughts on my mind right now: - I need shelves. - I need display cases. - I need a soda machine. - I need to fix a few of my games and get them ready to sell. - I need to check into some sort of security system. - Google "running an antique mall booth." - Google "consignment sales." - I need to actually see my space before I do any of the above. Liz gets the keys to the building today, so at some point today Susan and I will go over and check the place out.

This morning, while dropping Mason off at the same elementary school I myself attended over two decades ago, Michael Jackson's "Thriller" came on the radio. As Susan walked Mason up to the school's front door, I turned up the radio, listened, and smiled. On December 2nd of 1983, when I was in fifth grade, MTV debuted the fifteen minute long Thriller music video. Thriller (the album) was number one on the charts at that time, and the debut of the music video was promoted by MTV was a worldwide event. My dad had our television wired through our home stereo (yes, I come by it honestly), and so not only did I record the broadcast on VHS videotape (which I still have a copy of), but I also made an audio recording of the long-form version of the song as well. The next morning I brought my ghettoblaster (what we called boom boxes back then) with me to school. While sitting with my friends on the back of the bus, I unleashed "the evil of the Thriller" (as Vincent Price says in the song) at full blast to the entire bus. Everyone loved it, and for about a week I was very popular. Unfortunately, after a few days of cranking Thriller every morning on the bus, several times every day during recess, and every afternoon on the bus ride home, my ghettoblaster's eight monstrous D-Cell batteries died, quickly ending that tradition. But, at least for a week, my friends and I had a good time. This morning while the song played through my car stereo I stared out the window at the exact spot on the playground where my elementary schoolmates and I used to sit around listening to the exact same song ...

I guess it should be no surprise that my camcorder is digital as well; after shooting home movies, I transfer them to the laptop and then to DVD.

One subject my mother and I disagree on is the future of print photography -- specifically, "real" photos. She, like most members of our parents' generation, have hundreds (if not thousands) of photos; a few of them reside in albums, sorted chronologically, while the vast majority of them can be found in plastic tubs and cardboard boxes, stacked on top of one another in her closet. I, on the other hand, have very few "real" photographs left. I got my first digital camera exactly ten years ago; as such, every picture I've taken in the past decade has been digital. Every "real" photo my wife and I own that was taken before that point (our wedding photos, for example) has been scanned in and archived on our computer. The few photographs we hang on to are packed away, and the only real photos we get anymore are the ones our kids have taken at school. A few months ago I even borrowed one of my mom's picture tubs, scanning in the ones I wanted copies of. In my opinion, digital photos have many advantages over so-called "real" ones. For example, all my pictures are archived. I have them all stored on my home computer, archived on another computer, and have a DVD copy stored at work. They'll never fade and they'll never get ruined. Another advantage is the ability to search through thousands of photos and find the exact one I'm looking for in less than a second -- that is, assuming I've named it correctly. Programs such as Google's Picasa (which is 100% free) help me organize my photos and add captions. A third advantage to digital photos is the ability to improve them. I'm not talking anything as drastic as adding or removing people from pictures, but being able to remove red eye (again, something Picasa does quickly and easily) is really nice. In the future, people will not be sitting around their coffee tables, digging through boxes of photos trying to find one. They'll watch their family album on their television. That's what we do. My DVD player, a $29 cheapie from Wal-Mart, displays JPG files with ease. The new television I have my eye on has an SD slot (the same format that my digital camera uses) right on the front of it. Assuming I buy it, I'll be able to take pictures, remove the memory card, insert it directly into the television and view the results. There are many electronic items that I do not thing are better than their physical counterparts. I do not think MP3s are better than CDs, for example. More convenient perhaps, but not better. But as far as photographs are concerned, I get absolutely nothing from the physical experience of holding a piece of paper. For me, looking at a digital representation of said photo on a computer/television screen is good enough for me. I'm sure my mom and lots of people will disagree with me, but that's okay. For Christmas this year, Dad bought me a PhotoShare. It's one of those LCD picture screens, designed to sit on your desk or hang on your wall and display a rotating series of pictures, kind of like PowerPoint. I've had the unit set up on my desk for the past month, but today I decided to mount it at eye level just outside my cubical. It too uses SD cards -- I have a 512 meg card in it right now with somewhere around 500 pictures on it -- so putting new pictures on (and removing old ones off) the device is a piece of cake. The whole thing is so ... me. So, if you happen to ask me for a recent picture of my kids, don't be surprised if you get one via e-mail.

Over the weekend, "Speaking Freely," an apparently technologically-oriented blog, posted an entry titled "Five Things To Do With A PC When You Have No Internet Connection." The article was picked up by a couple of tech-related news portals, and thus the link was spread across the Internet. For those who didn't have the pleasure, here's the condensed version of the list. 01. Clean out and categorize your Internet bookmarks. 02. Delete programs you don’t use. 03. Unplug your PC, take the cover off and clean out the dust. 04. Write your next blog post. 05. Run any maintenance programs you don’t have auto-scheduled. 06. Write down your logins and passwords for all your sites, blogs, email accounts, etc. (Number was a bonus addition. A freebie, from "Speaking Freely" to you.) Those of you who think of "old school computing" as "dial-up Internet access" may be shocked by this, but there was a horrible, dark time in history where some of us used computers with *gasp* NO Internet connection at all. Shocking, I know. I used home computers for fifteen years before the World Wide Web popped up. The reason I mention these things is because three of the six items on Speaking Freely's list (numbers one, four, and six) are related to the Internet. As a guy who spent a decade and a half behind a keyboard pre-Interneto, it is amazing to me that someone couldn't come up with five things to do with a computer that aren't related to the Internet. Whatever happend to playing games? Or drawing, or writing? You could listen to music, or god forbid, create some! Who doesn't have a hundred (or a thousand) digital photos that could use sorting, reorganizing and captioning? I could come up with five things (and probably five hundred things) to do with Microsoft Office alone without Internet access, from creating a database to keep track of my record collection to making an Excel spreadsheet to help keep track of my diet, calories, and exercise routine. With my recent acquisition of tens of thousands of e-books, I could always read a book -- or write another one. Of course the simplest suggestion is probably, the next time you don't have an Internet connection, walk away from the computer for a bit.

The Oklahoma Coin-Operated Collectors Forum is having their/our first ever get together this Saturday at Cactus Jack's in Oklahoma City. Whether you're a buyer, seller, collector, vendor, or just someone who likes playing arcade games, come swing by and hang out for a bit! Who: Oklahoma Coin-Operated Collectors Forum What: Gaming, parking lot swap meet. Where: Cactus Jack's (OKC Arcade) When: Saturday, February 10th. Noon til ??? Why: Cuz we've got Pac-Man Fever, and it's drivin' us crazy!

The Oklahoma Coin-Operated Collectors Forum is having their/our first ever get together this Saturday at Cactus Jack's in Oklahoma City. Whether you're a buyer, seller, collector, vendor, or just someone who likes playing arcade games, come swing by and hang out for a bit! Who: Oklahoma Coin-Operated Collectors Forum What: Gaming, parking lot swap meet. Where: Cactus Jack's (OKC Arcade) When: Saturday, February 10th. Noon til ??? Why: Cuz we've got Pac-Man Fever, and it's drivin' us crazy!