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| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | | 8:00 pm |
This is either what's wrong with the US, or pure brilliance
Today's been pretty good. Got up before noon for once, headed up to Chris Olivia's place to take a look at the monitors he's got sitting around for his DDR. The replacements he'd tried wouldn't sync, so while conferring with Brandon Martin, we determined that something in the power supply area of his original monitor. After further discussion (and about an hour on the phone with Brandon!), Chris is going to call a local TV repair shop to see about getting it to work. He's also going to see about getting one of the nice tri-mode monitors this week. After leaving there, I headed up to Addison and hit up a Culvers. Talked with Kristen and a couple other people while I was eating, then headed over to Dave and Busters to rock Super Shot like a Hurricane. A few hours later, I decided to head home. While the 355 south to 55 south to 80 west to Minooka trip is normally pretty uneventful, something odd happened as I was nearing the exit for IL-126. ( uhhhh, what the hell? P.S. HUGE IMAGES ) | | Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | | 7:40 pm |
It's been all over the internet
But I'm saddened over the death of Billy Mays more so than any of the other celebrity deaths that have popped up in the last few weeks. All signs point to the fact he was a decent guy with real passion for his work. That's not to mention that his infomercials were entertaining even before everyone on YouTube got a hold of them. There's really only one way I can honor his passing:  I realize very few of any of the people who read this have seen me immediately post shave. I think there's a few people who have NEVER seen me without facial hair of some sort. That's what it looks like right there. Doesn't look quite right, does it? The honorific is that I'll re-grow to a full beard again, then shave clean. I'll also be wearing my jean work shirts to work all this week. I'll skip on using an extremely loud voice though. LGF tomorrow or tuesday night. | | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 10:27 pm |
Pad LED wonkiness
Kristen feel better? ME a bit ME One of my pad led's is being odd Kristen how so ME starts off not lighting at all, after a couple minutes, it lights up dim but only if the center panel is lit. ME then it keeps getting brighter until it's fully bright while the center panel is lit. Kristen O_o Kristen that is odd ME then it starts lighting dimly when the 5 isn't pressed, and goes to full brightness when it is. ME then it eventually gets to the point of full brightness. My current though on this is humidity. Things were good (slightly sticky panel being the exception) before I left for Indy, and I came back to this LED oddity. | | Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | | 12:35 pm |
| | Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | | 7:14 pm |
This felt good
I TOTALLY went to value town on my pads and the garage. Process was as follows: Seperate stage from cabinet Bring legs up on pads, excluding two that had gotten stuck Split pads Bring 2p pad to it's back end (on a tarp), lubricate sticking leg and complete leg up Repeat for 1p Roll pads out of garage Roll cabinet sideways Sweep Roll cabinet to where swept Sweep Sweep where pads were Move some shit around Push cabinet further back in garage (glare reduction) BUST OUT DAT AIR KUMPREZZOR!!!!!!111!!!!!111!! Blast the inside and outside of cabinet Roll pads in Pet the dog Take off the subwoofer cover plate and clean behind it (there were cobwebs and a dead cricket in there) Replace cover Put the pads on their legs (tougher than it seems, the garage floor isn't level) Tie pads together Reconnect to cabinet At that point, I still had the compressor going, and was looking at my pads, so I started blasting out all the crevasses I could hit with it. Then I just decided to go with the flow, and did a full cleaning and reapplied foam tape to various brackets. Hitting it with the air compressor helped out a whole lot. I was taking out stuff I normally couldn't get at with just the shop vac. I started this whole thing at about 3pm, didn't finish until something like 630. And I still haven't played today. Heh. Oh yeah, Kristen and I went down to Urbana yesterday for one of my cousin's wedding. Ceremony was interesting, since it was Bahai. No priest, no ring, and the vows consisted of a SINGLE line. I wish I could say the reception was good, but I didn't really like it all that much. Who ever heard of Indian food at a non-Indian wedding? Not to say the food was bad, there just wasn't much there I liked. The worst part about the whole thing was the damned reception hall didn't have air conditioning. Also they decided against having a bar. Not such a bad thing for me, since I don't drink much, but come on. People were leaving to hit one of the numerous campus bars then heading back to the place. Kristen liked it a lot though, so that's good. | | Friday, June 12th, 2009 | | 9:58 pm |
phew
Nothing like an hour and a half of full songs followed by another step's to get the blood going. | | Sunday, May 24th, 2009 | | 12:15 pm |
The phrase...
..."I wouldn't wish 'x' on my worst enemy," Is generally a sign of not being a vindictive asshole. I can honestly say that I WOULD wish these Cysts on my worst enemy. It's not life threatening at all, but it makes things annoying and difficult. That said. I don't really have any enemies. | | Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | | 12:19 am |
| | Friday, May 22nd, 2009 | | 11:59 am |
Well this could only barely be worse.
ComEd just came out and cut power to the house for non-payment. So I'm stuck at home with no power except for the devices I have charged. I can't take any warm baths like I'm supposed to now, and it's not like I can drive anywhere. Moms on the horn with them right now about what the fuck. | | Thursday, May 21st, 2009 | | 4:33 pm |
Aw damn.
I just got back from an "emeregency" visit to my doctors office. I've got those god damned cysts that pop up on people's tail bones. They prescribed vikes, some antibiotics, and just told me to take warm baths. I'm off work until Tuesday at the earliest. If it sticks around longer than that, I have to go see a surgeon. I hope this doesn't fuck up going to Nola for the wedding. | | Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | | 10:41 pm |
Acen non-gaming post.
I know its been a few days since ACEN and my memory is starting to slide on what I did that wasn't completely game room dependent, but I said I'd do this, so heres the major stuff. Friday: Drove up, got things ready to go in the game room, then went and checked in at the Aloft. There's a lot I can say about the hotel, but the biggest thing is that it's trying way too hard to be modern. Met up with Brian after he showed, we did the game room stuff he needed to get done, then went to meet Brandon at his job and out for lunch. We stopped in at a place called something like Capone's. We all ordered our food then started discussing the merits of RC on tap. The woman at the front said she'd bring the food out when it was done. About 5-10 minutes after the order, she brought out Brian and Brandon's food, and told me that my Italian Beef would out in a few more minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I finally decide to get up and ask them what exactly happened. When I walked up to the counter to ask, I barely got the word "Beef" out of my mouth before her face dropped to the floor. She pulled what used to be a sandwich out of the oven and simply dumped it. I say used to be a sandwich, because the whole thing was charred black. Even the meat. Three minutes later, I had a freshly cooked beef sandwich, and got a free lemon italian ice out of the deal. Most of the rest of the day was wasting time at the game room, or waiting for Kristen to make it to the hotel. Night time was going to see Star Trek in IMAX with Brian, Kristen, Tim, and Kara. Movie was awesome. Saturday was pretty much a blur. Most of my time was taken up with gaming related stuff, though I did finally get to meet Zexerous (Willie) and get him his SF4 TE stick. Brian and I eventually organized some eats with Peter and his crew. Kristen and Stephanie decided not to come, much to my chagrin. But we pressed on and went to Asian Noodle House. Which was FREAKING AWESOME. We fed 10 people at a sit down resturant for slightly over 100 bucks. Sunday was pretty much the same as Saturday. The only major difference is that Brian, Peter and his group, and myself went to the nearby Giordano's for a dinner. Couldn't really tell you exactly what we talked about, since it's been a few days, but it was a good time. I headed back to the convention hotel to get some stuff home, and ended up sitting around talking with the gaming staff for a while. Finally got home around 11 PM. Something that actually took place over the course of the entire weekend was Dread's ACEN Fail Scavenger Hunt. Without giving away exactly what was on the list, It's safe to say I SOLIDLY found ten of the possible things. Probably the hardest one I found was someone skinnier than Dread walking around without a shirt on. Of course the strangest one... Hell, I'll let the picture do the talking:  | | Monday, May 11th, 2009 | | 1:09 pm |
ACEN report: Gaming Related Stuff
I think the best way to sum up ACEN is by what I told NappyJin at the end as we were coming back from the Wisconsin crews traditional pre-home Giordano's dinner. "The slogan for ACEN for next year should be, 'Something Happened'." Because it's true. Something big happened for pretty much everyone, but a lot of times people just don't even know WHAT IT WAS that happened to them. It seems to sum up working at the convention too, a whole bunch of shit happens on your watch, and you really can't do anything about all of it. So what happened for me? A lot. Might as well start with the whole reason I even went. The Pump Machine held up to about 99% of expectations. Moving the pads shifted all the accumulated dirt and dust around and created some odd sticking and over sensitivity that I had to tweak out late thursday and early Friday. My modifications were still a bit oversensitive, but by the time the tournament came around most of that was worn down to working dead on. People were posting awesome scores. The other problem was something like 8 or 10 eaten quarters, but I know exactly what causes that and I can't really do anything about it. Basically, both coin slots are on the same circuit. If two people try to put money in on both sides at the same time, one of the quarters doesn't register. And anything NX2 or higher doesn't register COIN2. I did get some huge props on the machine though. DarkLink looked at it and was impressed, gaming staff save Melissa (since she'd seen all of it) was impressed. I even had someone who'd pretty much never seen a cabinet before come through, look at it and say I did an awesome job rehabbing it. I guess it shows that I took the time to work on it. Oh yeah, the LED's and new bars helped too. I did incur some damage with my pad umbilical, and a screw that was loose kept coming out from the cabinet, but I expected those. As for numbers, here's the Bre\-/k Down! (ddr pun :p) Friday: 102.50, bookkeeping showed 101.00 Saturday: 104.50, bookkeeping showed 104.00 (also tournament day) Sunday: 19.50, bookkeeping showed 19.50 Total: 226.50. How does it compare? I know for a fact that IIDX made something around 236, considering Brian got something like 118 for bringing his Gold kit. I was told I changed more cash in than ITG, and DDR/Pop'n combined on Friday too. No clue really on Saturday numbers, and the game room was only open for something like 3-3.5 hours on Sunday. The DH thinks I probably completely outearned ITG (DarkLink claimed making about 300, I have doubts), and counting costs, I MIGHT have outearned DDR (Peter had to pay for his transit, also had to comp back on two tournaments). Speaking of Touranments, Pump went awesome. Dread won speed and WhiteDragon won freestyle. Melissa's made huge strides in freestyling in the last couple years. Sean K ended up taking second over WinDEU in the finals, with WhiteDragon rounding out the top four for what could be called an overall win. Everythign went fast, nobody had any complaints about any of it, and people had fun. I wish I could say the same for DDR. That was a level of faggotry that WILL NEVER BE REPEATED AGAIN for an official ACEN tournament because they're not going to be running any more official tournaments on DDR. DDR players bitch and moan about the ruleset not being in thier favor all the time then whine about ITG players doing the same thing. On top of that, they claim ITG is a, "vastly different game." One of them actually tried that argument with me, my response was simply, "I'd listen to your argument if you were talking about the difference between either four panel game and pump. You're still playing a four panel game with the same basic skill sets and the same basic game play. The only differences are that ITG is more stamina based and DDR hasn't changed since 2002." They promptly shut up after that. I'm seriously considering calling out the top eight players as reasons there won't be an official tournament anymore. The "two consecutive ties" thing pushed me over time too. Honestly, there are far more people there who want to just PLAY THE DAMNED GAME than try to win a free ACEN touranment for a fucking ribbon. I should have just disqualified everyone who got single digit greats and done a bracket from the top eight after that. Those assholes ran their own touranment right afterwards anyway. Now that that's out of the way, I have to comment on the shape of the other machines there. Peter's DDR and Pop'n were in great shape. DarkLink's ITG was in great shape except for the bars and the fact it's a hacked monstrosity that I wouldn't pay to play. Doug Fowler's 4-slot neo-geo lacked marquee glass for some reason (played fine apparently). Forrest's machines sat the worst with me. Guitar Freaks looked like ass, it was dirty and banged up. DrumMania's monitor was VIBRATING IN THE GOD DAMNED CABINET. IIDX kept going off sync. None of his uprights were in very good shape, the non-showcase one had multiple coin slots taped off, his puzzle fighter had the wrong marquee, and they all looked like hell. His MvC2 Showcase cabinet looked ok, but apparently had joystick problems all over (source NappyJin). Aside from a candy cabinet that either didn't work or never got turned on, I can't really complain about those. Honestly, his game selection is awesome. It's just that they all look horrible. In terms of non-arcade gaming stuff, I picked up DJ Max Clazziquai. Wanted Black Square, but the only place selling it there was out. Played it a bit at lunch, pretty good. I do plan on bringing Pump again next year, I'll likely have the newest version at that point. I'd like to see about securing a second cabinet of some sort of game that would go over well there to bring. Two cabinets seems to be the minimum threshhold to make things even more worthwhile. The cabinet and pads come back home on tuesday, I told the gaming DH to take a day off and decompress from the whole thing. I have the marquee and bars home already (they fit in my trunk/back seat respectively). I'll make another post later tonight about the other stuff. Gotta go deliver, since I'm at work and John's back. | | Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | | 11:06 pm |
| | 3:27 pm |
| | Friday, May 1st, 2009 | | 12:14 am |
| | Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | | 6:51 pm |
| | 8:34 am |
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDD stuff
Alara reborn has changed my decks in the following way: Esper: I yanked a couple Parasitic Strixes in favor of Thopter Foundries (life gain, dork regeneration, and card drawing if I give my chromatic stars to it), and put the Filigree Angel in just to see if I can break it. Red/white: Reborn has some nice red/white cards in it, but I'm honestly going to need to re-tool or just blow up that deck. It smashes early and then just flails about like a fish out of water. Turbo Mill: Hell, Reborn basically only gave me some backups, here's the (rough) decklist I'm running. It's not that far off the Bill Stark version. 13x island 3x reliquary tower 4x Shelldock Isle 4x Pluemevil 2x disperse 1x font of mythos 3x Howling Mine 4x Jace Beleren 4x Boomerang 4x Broken Ambitions 4x Evacuation 4x Sanity grinding 2x Cryptic command 4x Twincast 4x Negate The base verson calls for 17 islands, 4 Howling Mines, and 4 Cryptic Commands. I stayed with one font just for the hell of it, and I decided against picking up the other two Cryptic Commands simply because getting them was either going to be a pack crapshoot or cost another $40 bucks on two cards that are getting ready to cycle out of standard. Hell, the only reason I even HAVE the second one was becuase I essentially got it for $15. I still stand by my early affirmation that the Uncommons are where this set really shines. The rares/mythics are nice, but can be a bit on the difficult side to deal with. There's also a LOT of really nice 2 cost drops in the set. | | Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | | 9:18 pm |
pumbi update
 I realized that going after ten million steps was stupid considering I could really only get something like 50k per play with four other people, so I'll take my chances in the point lotto. Now I'm going after 70% arcade. I've done all of normal, and have MOST of hard done (I'm into the zero k-pop, and skipped over a couple of 14+ hards) Bar status: ITG bars are in the car, machine is barless at current. Expect pump bars on thursday. | | Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | | 11:50 am |
One of these things is not like the other. (plus musings)
 It's stable, which is the important thing. The ITG bars are going back to avs on thursday though. They should have my pump bars by the. Now for the other musings. I'm very torn on the new magic set, Alara Reborn. There's a whole BUNCH of just bomb cards in it, but the gold theme throws a monkey wrench in just USING them. While not as much of a problem in constructed, limited can be a raging pain in the ass. Drafting in particular is overly difficult because of the scarcity of mana fixing. The other thing is that the uncommons have been more useful than the rares so far. I don't think it's a bad set, but it really doesn't mesh wit Shards and Conflux to this point. | | Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | | 11:56 pm |
.....fuck it...?
so uhhh... Where do I go from here with the second one? In all seriousness. It looks like I could actually USE them. If not, someone already offered to buy them from me for what I paid for them. This is just fucked up. |
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