Flack

With Mommy and Morgan on the road somewhere in Texas, Mason and I decided to spend yesterday evening after work hanging out at Crossroads Mall. We walked the entire mall, going into any store that looked interesting to Mason. We spent a little time at Le Mans, Crossroads Mall's arcade. Man, has that place taken a sudden turn for the worse. The arcade has three different levels. The newest games have always been on the middle level, while classic games sit on the upper level and redemption games and kiddie rides take up the lower level. During our visit, the upper level was filled with broken games and completely roped off to the public, and most of the kiddie rides and games on the lower level were unplugged or non-functioning. Some of the skee-ball machines were lit up but had masking tape over the coin slots. Both of the kiddie rides we saw (Pink Panther and some other one) were unplugged. The middle section was still quite active -- I saw The Fast and the Furious Racing (cars) next to The Fast and the Furious Racing (motorcycles), Time Crisis 2, 3 and 4, and other large monitor shooting games, but that's not really the type of games I'm interested in playing. Hidden all the way in the back of the arcade were two Star Wars Trilogy games (one big screen, one CRT) surrounding a Star Wars Racer. I could not tell if this was the beginning of the end for Le Mans or if they were just in a state of flux at the moment, but either way didn't look promising. Mason and I visited Game Stop and looked at all the new games, and checked out all the new Halloween decorations at Spencer's. From there we went downstairs to the food court, where Mason got his favorite meal (a corndog wacky-pack from McDonalds) and I had a six inch sub from Subway. With grub in our bellies Mason wrapped up his mall adventure by playing on the indoor playground. We stopped by Toys Were Us on the way home looking for one of those stupid Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Attack Crawlers, but no such luck. After that it was back to the house, where the two of us played a little Lego Star Wars II before bed time.

As I explain in the first chapter of my book Commodork, the driving force behind writing down my memoirs was to document them before the memories had completely faded from my mind. In that same chapter I draw parallels between my aging memories and my aging Commodore diskettes, on which the data has begun to fade as well. Preserving one's memoirs simply involves writing them down. Preserving old fading Commodore floppy diskettes? That’s a bit more complicated. Commodore 64 emulators use D64 files which are snapshot images of actual Commodore diskettes. In theory, you can transfer real Commodore diskettes into D64 files using a special combination of hardware and software, and then store them on your PC where they can then be accessed by emulators -- the difference being that D64 files can be stored forever and will never fade. They can even transferred back to real Commodore 64 floppies and played on the original hardware! Even if you happened to still have a 5 1/4 floppy disk drive in your PC, it still wouldn’t read old Commodore diskettes. To create D64 images of real C64 disks, you’ll need a vintage Commodore 1541 disk drive and a special cable to connect it to your modern computer’s parallel port. As anyone who’s tried it will tell you, due to the amount of variables involved it’s a complete pain in the ass to get working. I just spent the last week trying to get it to work. First off, there are different cables. The original was called the X1541 cable, but newer models include the XE1541, the XM1541, and the XA1541. You’ll also need the right type of parallel port on your computer. I never knew there was more than one type before this project, but it turns out there are at least half a dozen. Generally speaking it appears that the ones in older PCs work best, followed by those in new PCs. Ones in laptops seem to be the least compatible. And don’t forget, all of this has to be done with a real Commodore disk drive that is at least 20 years old or maybe older, so if it hasn’t been cleaned or aligned, forget about any of this working. Only certain cables work with certain software packages, only certain cables work with certain types of parallel ports, and even if you somehow manage to get all of this working you’ve got to make sure your old floppy drive is working correctly. Oh, and I did I mention this all has to be done in DOS? The cables don’t work well in Windows. In the back of my closet sits an old 486 DX4/100 that I used many moons ago as a workstation. I remember using this specific computer to transfer Commodore disks over to D64 format, but I couldn’t remember why I had stopped. Now that the book is out and I’ve archived my memories, I’ve decided to do the other half and archive my old disks as well. Getting everything talking has taken me a solid week of trial and error. Let’s see if I can summarize my journey. The computer booted into DOS, but locked up booting into Windows 98. I could boot into DOS and Windows safe mode, but neither one allowed CD-Rom access, and the machine is so old that it won’t boot off of CD-Rom, nor does it have USB ports. After tracking down another machine with a floppy drive, I made a Windows 98 boot disk. The floppy drive wouldn’t read the disk, so changed out the floppy drive and the cable (neither of which fixed the problem) before realizing the on board floppy controller had gone bad. I added an ISA controller which got the floppy drive working and allowed me to boot off the boot disk, which eventually allowed me to use the CD-Rom drive – unfortunately, the drive would not read my CD-R backup of Windows 98. It would read original discs (and who knows where my original CD is), but not backups. I guess the CD-Rom drive is just too old. So, out came the old CD-R drive and in went a spare 52x With the drive in place I was finally able to reinstall Windows 98, but I could not get the network card to work. After hitting my patience level, I pulled the card out, stomped on it a few times for good measure, and replaced it with an old trusty 3Com card, which 98 actually recognized. From there it was just a matter of configuring the card to get the network to see it, which it eventually did. This entire process took me a solid week to complete. Most of my boxes of “old parts” are out in the garage, while the computer in question is upstairs. That means every floppy cable, disk drive or controller card I needed involved a trip downstairs and through the house, almost always leading to some detour that kept me off the project for an hour or two. Another speed bump was Windows 98 itself. How quickly we forget what it is like to have to reboot every single time you change a network setting. The next time you curse Windows 2000 or XP, boot up a 98 machine and marvel at how far we’ve come in just a few years. Don’t get me wrong, I like 98, but I like how easy things have become better. The end result is a dual-booting Frankencluster of a machine that creates D64 images in DOS mode, and allows me to connect to the network in Windows 98 in order to move the disks over to the network. How is it possible to both love and hate old computers so much at the same time?

Picked this up over the weekend -- got a good deal on it. Anyone know where to get sideart for it? Also, the steering is messed up but I've been on fulltime babysitting duty for the past few days and haven't had a chance to open it up yet.

I just got 50 more copies of my book Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie in over the weekend. At the rate the last ones went, I suspect these will be gone in two to three weeks. I am holding back one of the two boxes to take to the Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention, where I will be signing books in person. Commodork is a collection of my own personal memories and adventures from the golden BBS era. After briefly discussing my early history with the TRS-80 Model III and the Apple II, the book heavily covers the BBS scene. The first half of the book focuses on the Commodore 64 BBS world, while the second half talks about IBM bulletin boards, and the eventual arrival of the Internet (and how it destroyed the greatest hobby of all time). If you remember copyfests, warez, 1200 baud and busy signals, this book is for you. I have received several compliments both from fellow old-school modemers and from those who were too young to have experienced bulletin boards first hand. The entire first chapter of the book is available for free in PDF format on my website here. The site also contains purchasing links. The book is 167 pages, retails for $14.95 (US) plus shipping, and can be ordered either through Lulu.com or through me directly. I will be glad to autograph any books that are ordered through my site! Check it out at: http://www.robohara.com/commodork ... thanks!

In 1978, the year after Star Wars was released, our family got two things: our first VCR, and our first VHS copy of Star Wars. The bootleg video came from a friend of a relative who worked in a movie theater. A video camera was setup on a tripod after hours in a movie theater, and the entire movie was videotaped. The quality was crap -- everyone appeared tall and skinny and you can imagine what the audio sounded like -- and we still watched the heck out of it. I remember Christmas Day, 1978, watching Star Wars in our living room while reenacting movie scenes with the ships and action figures Santa had delivered. By the time Return of the Jedi hit theaters in 1983 HBO was showing Star Wars regularly, and the following year it aired for the first time on CBS. A few years later I got my first legitimate copy of Star Wars -- an ex-rental tape. The original trilogy boxset was released in 1994, while I was working at Best Buy. The first three films (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) were released in a single boxset for $50. Finally, I owned all three movies on video! I would never need to purchase them again! (Insert sound of Jabba the Hutt laughing at me here.) A year or two later, I bought the THX re-release boxset. And then, the letterbox edition, followed by the version that was both letterboxed AND THX. Not including the original bootleg and the ex-rental, I now owned four complete copies of the trilogy. And then came DVD. Not willing to wait for Lucas' official releases, I bought two DVD bootleg copies of the trilogy. One was actually VCD discs from Singapore/Malaysia. The other were out-and-out bootlegs, copies that someone had transferred from laserdisc to DVD. Then came the official special edition releases, which I also purchased, which were followed by the newer three movies which I also picked up. If you include both Ewok movies (both of which I own on both VHS and DVD), the Ewok cartoons, the Droids cartoons, the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, both seasons of the Clone Wars cartoons and other odds and ends I've picked up over the years ... that's a lot of freakin' Star Wars movies. This is all a long winded way of saying yes, I did purchase the "new" Star Wars DVDs that came out last week. The new 2 DVD releases contain the Special Edition of each movie on one disc and the original unedited theatrical versions on the other. $20 per package times three movies. At this point I could watch a different release of the same movie every night next week. And I just might.

Sunday night, Susan and I went to the casino with our friends Andy and Lea. This was our second trip out to Riverwind. After getting settled in, we headed over to the buffet. I've been on a Saturday night ($14.95/person) and now Sunday night ($12.95/person), and haven't been impressed either time. I don't think they have as many items to choose from as I first thought -- everything is just spread out further than most places. I'm pretty sure Fire Mountain, Golden Coral and even Hometown Buffet are all better buffets. Riverwind also has a Mexican Restaurant and a fast food court. If we're hungry next time we go, we'll try one of those instead. Unlike the first time I went, the slots were not good to me this time. $20 here, $20 there ... in a short amount of time I was down around $50 from quarter slot machines. Andy and I found the girls playing Blackjack at the $2 minimum poker table, so we joined them there. After losing the final $20 from the $100 I took to the casino, I went to the ATM to get another $100 (to win back my original $100, of course!). I'd bet $5 and lose it, then double my next bet to $10 and lose that one too. It was amazing, with six people at the table playing, the other five would all get face cards and I would get a five or a six. Secound round of cards, everyone at the table would be looking at 19s or 20s, and I would have 12 or 13. This must've gone on ten hands in a row. When I got down to $25 I bet it all and somehow got a blackjack. I left the table with $60, putting me down $140 for the night. As we were walking to the cashier's booth I remembered that I had $30 or so still on my player's card, so I walked over to a dollar slot machine, inserted the card, and pulled the handle. The wheels spun and stopped on a red seven, a blue seven, and a diamond. All of a sudden, the machine started ringing and flashing. The screen began counting up my winnings. Ten dollars, twenty dollars ... it kept counting ... thirty dollars ... fifty dollars ... one hundred dollars ... I scanned the machine trying to figure out what I had hit, but I couldn't find anything that matched! One hundred and fifty dollars ... two hundred dollars ... two hundred and fifty dollars ... my eyes were popping out of my head! Finally, the machine stopped at two hundred and sixty-seven dollars ($270, minus my original $3 bet). I had been twenty or so steps ahead of everyone. When everyone walked up, the machine was still ringing. I snatched my card out of the machine. Susan was asking, "what did you win?" and I said, "oh, nothing big." Then I whispered to Andy, "I just won $267 dollars," and he started laughing. Of course when I finally cashed out, the girls got to see how much I had won too. I felt like I had won a million dollars or something. Andy bought everyone cinnamon rolls from Cinnabun for the trip home. At the end of the day, everyone came home ahead. Susan, Lea and Andy all went up around $20 each at the blackjack table. Apparently I need to rethink my strategy there.

Last night while working on my newly acquired arcade game, I began feeling guilty and a little bummed out. While not directly responsible for Star*Cade's closing, I guess we are all a little bit responsible. When I was a kid my parents took me to the arcade all the time, and I'm sure every quarter I pumped into a glowing machine helped with the rent. These days, Mason is content to sit at home playing Xbox games, and I'm content to sit here and watch him. It's much more convenient and inexpensive than loading kids up into the car and spending quarters in some arcade across town. So when yet another arcade permanently closes its doors, I do feel a little guilty. Of all people, I should be the guy taking my kids there regularly, supporting them. If not me, then who? After lunch today, Mason and I dropped Susan and Morgan off at the house and then headed out to Cactus Jack's. Mason and I played Star Wars Pinball, The Simpsons, and Galaga together. And then, Mason looked up at and said, "when are we going to play the games I want to play?" I never really thought about it before, but I suppose he's right -- we usually play the games I consider fun. And so, with another five bucks in tokens at his disposal, we played the games he wanted to play: skeeball, basketball shooting, "Feed Big Bertha", air hockey, and others. Someday when Mase looks back on his time spent visiting arcade, I want him to remember his experiences as fondly as I do.

I love my kids so much and I try and do as much as I can with them all the time. I may not be the most responsible adult when it comes to chores or doing laundry, but my kids will not grow up complaining that we never used to take them anywhere, haha! Instead of rollerskating I talked Mason into going to the local arcade with me instead this afternoon. I'm about to post about it right now.

Star*Cade, Heritage Park Mall's arcade closed its doors at the beginning of this month. Today, the owners auctioned off their remaining stock (games). Auctions like this are bittersweet -- while you hate to see a family-owned arcade (or any arcade, for that matter) go out of business, their loss typically means cheap games for me. Dirt Dash was my only purchase of the day. To tell the truth I didn't even want the game, but no one else was bidding on it so I got it pretty inexpensively. It's got some minor steering issues which I'll take care of this week. I haven't decided if this is a keeper or a seller yet. A lot of that depends on if it'll fit through my own arcade's door. This game is big, and heavy.

I spent over four hours on the phone last night with Jason Scott, creator of BBS: The Documentaryand founder of Textfiles.com. Jason is working on two new documentaries: one covering the history of text adventures titled GET LAMP, the other (and the inital reason for the phone call) covering arcades (tentatively titled Arcade: The Documentary). And when Jason says he's covering "arcades", he talking about the complete history of arcades. It's an amazingly broad subject, the scope of which I cannot completely fathom. Jason's BBS Documentary and my book Commodork are similar in subject but different in approach. His documentary (which spans 3 DVDs and is 5 1/2 hours long) documents the entire BBS experience, while my book tells the story of BBSes through one person's experience (my own). As I said on the phone last night, his documentary is kind of an inverted pyramid that tells hundreds of people's stories. My goal was the opposite, to tell hundreds of people's stories by telling one person's. Different takes on a similar subject. During our conversation, Jason offered me some great advice pertaining to sales and marketing of my book along with his opinion of it (yes -- he bought a copy and read it!) He definitely rekindled a fire in me about the book and writing in general.

Yeah, it's definitely a hoot. I just wish he could drive the dumb thing. He's pretty good about steering in videogames. I wonder what it is about a real steering wheel that just makes him want to aim for the curbs?

... but you can't take the trailer park out of the boy. Or, something like that. I actually only lived in a trailer for a couple of years, but I'm pretty sure I had white trash tendencies long before that. I still had a mullet when I got married in 1995, and I've always kind of liked El Caminos. This is actually just a long-winded way for me to announce that the magnetic flames I ordered for the golf kart arrived, which Mason and I applied to the vehicle this weekend. Mason and I have had some good times already on the kart. There's a park on the other side of our neighborhood, a little over a mile away, that Mason and I drive the kart to on the weekends. Its electric motor doesn't move too quickly, but we get there eventually. The kart has four cup holders, so Mason and I usually each grab a can of generic diet cola for the ride. On the way to the park Sunday, I spied a tiny dirt road in the corner of my neighborhood. We've taken it before; it leads to a small oil pump, but it opens up to a big field which we occasionally do a lap around. I noticed Sunday that the road actually continues on, so we decided to follow it. The path continued on, running parallel with the interstate but behind weeds and trees tall enough to restrict our view. The path lead us past a pond and all the way past the neighborhood. It reminded me of a safari wilderness adventure or something. Eventually, the weeds and trees opened up to a large opening. Up ahead I saw cars and a building, and I realized we were in the Best Western parking lot across from the new McDonald's off of Reno and Mustang Road. We had driven a complete mile, from Czech Hall to Mustang Road. On the way home we stopped by the park and played for a bit. As goofy as it may seem, I kind of like our little golf kart outings. It's a time where the boys can get out and be by ourselves for a bit.

(One of multiple updates today.) After a couple of days of off-again/on-again rain, Mason was climbing the walls. One option I've had in the back of my mind for just such a day is Yukon on Wheels, the local skating rink. I don't remember when Yukon on Wheels was built, but it's been around for a long time. I remember going there in fifth and sixth grade and the place didn't seem new then. Many of my old memories of the place revolve around the rink's small arcade. I spent as much time playing games in the arcade as I did roller skating. I can't remember ever leaving without making sure my initials were at the top of their Yie Ar Kung-Fu and Crossbow machines. Sunday, 20 years later, I found myself experiencing deja vu. The videogames have been updated and perhaps the carpet's been changed, but everything else seemed identical -- except, of course, the employees are much younger than I had remembered them being. Mason, never having skated before on a real skating rink, was like a deer on ice. For the first time. With banana peels glued to his feet. I tried to get a picture of him standing upright but it was nearly impossible. You would need a faster camera than I own. Mason skated in the practice area for a while and then decided to tackle the big rink. He started working his way around the wall, falling every two feet or so. Halfway around the lap a referee took mercy on him and helped him back over the beginners area once again. Mason stepped foot in the beginners area again, fell, and hit his elbow hard on the floor. He immediately began screaming and I ran to pick him up. He screamed the entire time I was taking his skates off. He said he couldn't move his arm. I got his skates off and carried him out to the truck. I checked; he could move his arm a little and his fingers were okay so I figured at worst we were looking at a serious bruise. After a night of pampering and ice, it appears the arm is okay. Mason's dying to go back next weekend and try again. Maybe next week we'll try elbow and knee pads.

Saturday afternoon my upper stomach started hurting. Bad. Susan and I have developed a pain scale (from 1 to 10) to let each other know how much something hurts. These stomach cramps started around a 3 or so. By mid-afternoon, it was an 8. I tried everything to relieve the pain -- PeptoBismal, Tums, Aspirin, you name it. I tried eating a little something in case these were just really strong hunger pangs. I sat on the toilet for a while, thinking maybe that might help. Nothing. I eventually laid down, curled up into a ball and took a nap, hoping that when I awoke the pain would be gone. For a while, it was -- then it returned. I started worrying. Your upper stomach is pretty close to your heart. Your gall bladder's around there somewhere too. The way this was hurting, I figured something serious must be wrong. My dad had just stopped by to visit when the pain started in again. Once it got bad enough that I was visibly in pain, we decided to take a trip to the after hours clinic. Dad took me to the Mercy afterhours clinic while Susan took the kids over to my mom's. After the obligitory ten minutes of paperwork, we were moved to a waiting room. The pain began residing once we were there. Susan showed up a few minutes later. The pain was almost completely gone, but I had a new problem. I needed to poop. And so, while waiting for the nurse to call me back, I slipped into a side restroom and did what I had to do. After that, I felt great! Of course, moments later the doctor called me back. He asked about the pain and I told him the following. "Well, my stomach had been hurting all day. Then I got here and took a crap in your waiting room. Now I feel much better." The doctor looked at me. "You took a crap in my waiting room?" "Well, not IN the waiting room. In the bathroom off to the side," I said. "Ah, that's good," he said. "I would have to bill you for that separately." And so, as a small town part-time doctor who gets stuck with the weekend shift, he told me it could have been either stomach flu, or a digestive issue, an ulcer, my gall bladder, or a heart attack. Or acid reflux. If it keeps happening, I should see my normal doctor. In the meantime, I should buy some Maylox. One ten dollar co-pay and one turd later, we were back on our way. Susan thought the whole thing was pretty funny until Sunday, when she began having stomach pains ...

I finally got the X1541 cable working in DOS mode, but I can't seem to get the networking working in Windows 98. Last time I just installed over the old Windows directory. Today I deleted the directory, and started again. I'd really like to get the networking in '98 working so I can easily transfer the dumped C64 disks back and forth across the network. It would also be comvenient when it comes to copying/installing games on the 98 box, as the 1 gig drive feels really small to me.

I'm always looking for little projects to do on my days off. One of the things I've been meaning to do is get my old 486 computer back up and running once again. The 486 processor was replaced by the Pentium in the mid 1990's. When I started at Best Buy in the fall of 1994 all we sold were 486 computers, and when I left in the spring of 1995 all the computers we had were Pentium based. Of course those were first generation Pentiums -- we've seen P2, P3 and P4 chips since then. The average person off the street probably couldn't come up with a use for a 486 computer these days. I have a couple in mind. The first thing I need this computer back alive for is so I can again use my X1541 cable. The X1541 is a cable that allows you to connect an old Commodore 1541 disk drive to a modern computer's parallel port, thus allowing you to transfer programs between the two. A while back I started transferring all my old C64 disks to the PC for archival purposes, but when the 486 died so did the project. To avoid a bunch of technical crapola, the cable works best in DOS mode and only on certain machines. I've purchased a newer style of cable and still couldn't get it to work on my laptop, and I've never got it to work right in XP, DOS mode or otherwise. The other thing I want to do with computer is play older DOS games on it that won't work on newer computers. Most games work, and many more can be made to work through DOSBox and other programs, but some things just don't look, sound, or work right. I doubt I'd be using it daily to play games on, but the option would be nice. And so this afternoon, operation 486 began. And boy was it a mess. Originally I had the machine set up to boot in either Windows 98 or DOS; that way I could use the X1541 cable in DOS mode, and still transfer the programs over to my other computer over the network in Windows 98. One day, Windows 98 just stopped working. So, that's where I began. I was able to boot the machine into safe-mode, but from there I was unable to see the CD-Rom drive or the network. Without the CD-Rom drive I couldn't reload or repair Windows. Without the network, I couldn't copy the install files over. The machine doesn't have any USB ports, not that it would help me much in DOS. Without access to Windows I couldn't make a boot disk, but with one I knew I could access the CD-Rom drive. From bootdisk.com, I downloaded a Windows 98 bootdisk from my server, and ran into another snag -- neither of my working machines have floppy drives! I came downstairs to check my wife's machine -- another strikeout. Finally I remembered that my laptop had a floppy drive that I could attach to it, so I copied the file over to the laptop via the network, attached the floppy drive, tracked down a floppy disk from the garage, made the boot disk and went back upstairs. Went I went to boot the machine from floppy, nothing happened. I checked the cable and made sure that it was plugged in the correct way -- it was. I yanked a floppy drive out of another spare machine, swapped it, and tried it instead. Nothing. Then I tried another cable. Nothing. The only thing left was the controller, which is on the motherboard. It couldn't be that, could it? Back to the garage. I dug around in a few plastic tubs before finding an old controller card. I slapped it in the machine and connected the cables. Success! The machine churned and whirred and after a few minutes, finally booted off the floppy. First hurdle crossed. I stuck in some old Windows 98 CDR and changed to the CD Drive in DOS. Nothing. I waited. Nothing. I hit ® for ®etry a dozen times. Nothing. I pulled the CDR out and stuck some other CD in. Worked fine. I stuck the CDR back in. Nothing. Was the drive so old it didn't read CDR's? That would be bad, as my original Windows 98 CDs are god only knows where. I stick in another CDR. Nothing. Shoot. Off goes the machine and out comes the CD-Rom drive, a 6x Plextor dating back almost as old as the machine. In the closet I have a stack of CD-Rom drives that have been removed from machines, having replaced them with DVD burners. The top one was a 52x drive, so I changed the jumpers and tossed it in. No sense it screwing anything together at this point -- there's no telling what I'll be replacing next. After another floppy boot, I stuck in the CD and it recognized it. Woo hoo, two for two baby. The rest was simple. I started the setup, saw the Microsoft message of "60 minutes remaining," and took off. I came back once an hour or two later to reboot the box, and I went back agan later and it was done. The box is back up and functional, and all I ended up replacing was the floppy drive, controller card, cables, and CD-Rom drive. Sheesh. By the time it was done I didn't feel like messing with it any longer. Maybe tomorrow I'll hook up the C64 cables and see if I can't get that to work once again.

Look -- I appreciate the fact that you are bound and determined to put 32oz of Diet Coke in my 32oz cup. Really, your generosity knows no bounds. But unfortunately for me and my cup holders, a 32oz cup does not hold 32oz of liquid. It holds about 31 1/2 ounces of drink. Before I can even get a straw poked through the pre-cut X in the lid, syrupy goodness begins to bubble its way up through the middle of the lid. The only solution to this is drinking the excess Coke from the top of the lid, lapping up cola like I'm drinking out of a plastic petri dish. While driving. And even after that, jabbing a straw into the lid inevitably sends pop shooting out somewhere. The only true solution is to suck the fluid levels down by puckering up your lips and pressing your mouth against the slit pre-straw insertion, using the same technique (I would imagine) one uses to suck the venom out of a snake wound. I'm okay with forfeiting the extra half an ounce of soda. I can't imagine drinking 31 1/2 ounces of liquid and thinking to myself, "man, if only I had an extra half an ounce ... that would really top me off." The trade off for Coke-free cup holders and a dribble-free shirt each morning would be well worth it.

While I love our country, I hate having to defend it (verbally) sometimes. A friend of ours married a guy from France. Everytime we get together for dinner it seems like I spend the entire time defending our country's policies. I'm not very political in the first place, and it gets old pretty fast. I think the networks that move things around in cyberspace are similar to the old BBS ones, except these move at light speed. Every time I search Google for my book title I find another news site or blog that mentions it. It's quite exciting.

Happy Labor Day to you too! Yes, time spent with the family is precious, but on the third day of a three day weekend, some "alone time" sounds pretty good too right about now, haha. Incredible Pizza wasn't *too* expensive, compared to other outings. Lunch for three adults and two kids was $30. We ended up putting $15 on the "debit card" and didn't run out while we were there. I know the bumper cars were $2.50 and the go karts were $5.50 so that's $8. We played quite a few games for .30 cents each and never ran out of credit. I have taken Mason to the arcade before, and I think my mind is stuck in the 80's. I always think, boy, we can kill an afternoon with five bucks. What I always forget is that most games are at least fifty cents to play now, with many of them priced at a dollar. Five bucks doesn't go as far as it used to.

Yesterday a billboard for a new restaurant caught my eye. The restaurant is called Pole Position -- yes, like the videogame -- and the advertisement promised pizza, drinks, and go karts. I decided to surprise the family for an outing to Pole Position today, so the four of us along with dad loaded up in the car and drove to the new restaurant. Unfortunately when we arrived we found a big "COMING SOON" sign hanging on the door of an obviously unfinished building. It was similar to the end of National Lampoon's Vacation, when the Griswolds find Wallyworld closed for repairs. Instead of taking a security guard hostage, we did the next best thing. We went to Incredible Pizza instead. Incredible Pizza is one of several "indoor fun centers" around this area. It is as close as this this generation will come to hanging out in arcades, although much has changed since I was hanging out in the dark, black-lit quarter-muching halls. They are like smoke-free arcades with marketing geniuses making sure every nook and cranny of the building is designed to hold your kid's mind (and your wallet) captive. The front half of Incredible Pizza is all about the pizza. A lengthy buffet holds pizza, salad, pasta, and desserts. It's all you can eat, and for $6.99 a person, you'll have to eat quite a bit. There are several themed dining areas to choose from. We sat in the movie theater which was airing Elvis' Blue Hawaii, but we also saw a "Family Dining" area, a "Gymnasium" area, and a "50's Diner" area. The food was not particularly spectacular, but there was plenty to choose from. The buffet's design keeps people flowing (there were no major bottleneck areas except maybe the drink fountain), and the dining areas were spaced out enough that you didn't feel like you were on top of one another. And if you think that your kids are going to let you out of Incredible Pizza without playing some games, then you obviously don't have kids. Incredible Pizza contains tons of video games, two bowling alleys (one regulation size, one smaller one for the tots), bumper cars, a mini-golf course, and a go-kart track -- all indoors. All games and rides are paid for through an Incredible Pizza debit card -- you put money on the card, and swipe it instead of using cash. All videogames and rides are configured to accept the card. Most videogames I saw were between 30 cents and $1.10 to play. The bumper cars were $2.50. Mason had a blast on the bumper cars while the rest of us watched him bump himself silly. After the bumper cars, we walked around, played a few games, and finally stumbled across the racing circuit. There are two types of Incredible Pizza race cars -- fast and slow. Fast is for big kids, slow is for little kids and adults who are taking their kids to race. $4.50 for solo racers (1 race, 7 laps), $5.50 for doubles. We swiped our car, and headed out onto the indoor track. In just a few minutes we were entering our car and heading toward the starting line. The Fast and The Furious, it ain't. As far as the slow cars are concerned, you pretty much keep the pedal to the floor at all times and follow one another around the track in single-file fashion seven times. Although it wasn't that exciting for me, Mason really enjoyed it. After the race, we spent another 15-20 minutes walking around and playing a few games (Outrun 2 was particularly fun) before calling it a day.

Yesterday (Friday) was my friend Andy's mom's 60th birthday. He and the rest of the family organized a surprise birthday party for her after work. Before the party, Susan and I were scrambling to get both ourselves and the kids ready to go. While Susan was getting Morgan dressed, I was putting my shoes on when all of a sudden I realized Mason was being a little too quiet. I called out his name, and when he came walking around the corner I realized why he was being so quiet -- he was concentrating on <b>cutting his own hair with scissors</b>. And so, five minutes before time for us to leave for a party, I had a four-year-old boy with no bangs. Technically, Mason only cut half of his bangs off (the left half). Susan cut the rest of them off to make it even. His little hair-do was quite the talk of the party. Today, Mason went to the barbar shop where they all but shaved his head. Great timing, exactly 10 days before his first ever school pictures.

That's true, and that's the decision one has to make. Would you rather have 6,000 games available through emulation in a MAME cabinet, or Tempest. Well that's kind of like saying to a collector like CPUWiz or Marco would you rather have original 2600 games or Z26 emulation to replace them. Arcade games are as collectible as anything. And if you are a collector, you gotta go for the real deal The hardware, the artwork, the boards, the original parts.. it makes it. I think the answer to your question would be. "I'd have 5-12 cabs including tempest, 1 mame 'cab' (aka the pc with a joystick), and one JAMMA" Not exactly. It would be like saying to a collector like CPUWiz or Marco, would you rather have ONE original 2600 game, or a Z26 that can play basically any game. Then the decision would still be, would you rather have ONE dedicated machine, or a machine that runs thousands of games via emulation. I'm not saying one choice is right and one is wrong -- I'm sure you could easily find people in here who would argue either position. Fortunately, I've got enough space and cash that I don't have to choose.

When I launched review-o-matic.com last July, I thought adding ads to my site might be a nice source of income on the side. Since the site is all about reviews, I decided to include ads to the following three services: Google, Netflix, and Amazon. The way the ads work is pretty simple. For Netflix, if people sign up by clicking on a link from your page, you get five or six bucks. For Amazon, you get a percentage kickback for any purchases made through links from your site. Google is simply a pay-per-click service. After so many people click on Google links from your site, you make a few bucks. So after two months, how have I done? Let's look at Netflix first. I include a big link to Netflix on the front page and in every movie review on my site. In the past 60 days, exactly 0 people have signed up through Netflix through me. Alrighty then. Let's move on to Amazon. I've included Amazon links to every applicable product I've reviewed. In other words, if I review a CD, there'll be a link out to the side where you can buy it from Amazon as well. My net total sales over the past two months? $0. No one has bought a single thing through the site. Well, at least Google's pay-per-click system came through for me. Today I got an e-mail from them saying there was a problem with my account, and they wanted to know if they should direct deposit the $0.01 I've earned to date, or if I would prefer a check. Check, please? Ya' know, I'll probably keep the ads on my site for a couple of reasons. There's always that chance that someone MIGHT buy something through there. The ads aren't "in-your-face" (maybe that's part of the problem), and I think it adds a certain amount of legitimacy to the site's look. And if that's what you're going for, I suppose it's okay. If however you're looking for a way to retire, well, good luck finding a condo for $0.01.

That's true, and that's the decision one has to make. Would you rather have 6,000 games available through emulation in a MAME cabinet, or Tempest.

Wow! Things are going better than I ever would have imagined. Less than a month ago I was a guy with a bunch of Microsoft Word files sitting around on his laptop. One month later and now I'm a world famous author! Ok, maybe not world famous, but sometimes it feels that way. As some of you know, I've already sold out of the first 30 books I ordered. I just ordered another 50 tonight, so hopefully those will arrive before the end of next week. The first 30 shall be known as the rare, first edition prints (also known as the ones with typos). They will also be known as the copies without ISBN numbers! The new books will be "official", complete with ISBN numbers. I guess that means that a copy of Commodork will now be in the Library of Congress -- weird! More importantly, with an ISBN number the book will now begin appearing in online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and so on. It takes 4-6 weeks for that to start happening, but that's okay. By the way, for any of you would-be Lulu authors, figuring out how to purchase an ISBN number is a complete pain in the ass. I've been working on it for over an hour now. I've saved all my notes, so if you ever need to do it, drop me a line. Here are two very cool things that have happened over the past day or so. Number one, I've been invited to appear at the Emergency Chicagoland Commodore Convention (ECCC) in Chicago on September 30th, signing and selling books! I will also be doing a reading from the book at the show as well. I've never done anything like that before, so we'll see how that goes. I was also contacted by a group of guys out of Germany who write a retro computer magazine and wanted to interview me for their magazine. How cool is that! I have NO idea how someone in Germany heard about the book, but apparently they did. Maybe that'll be my new line. "I'm big in Germany, you know." Feedback from people who have read the book has been great so far, although I'm not sure people would take time out of their day to let me know how much my book stinks. Link: ECCC (September 30, 2006)