Archive for the 'Fun' Category

I just bought two Zinwell ZAT-970A Digital to Analog TV Converter Boxes at Amazon.com and I didn’t have to pay shipping or tax! They didn’t even ask for a credit card. I used my two TV Converter Box coupons for $40 each off the purchase of qualifying boxes. Since the price of the box on Amazon is exactly $40 and it qualifies for free shipping and no tax for Arizona residents the grand total was $0.00.

Now all I have to do is wait, and when they finally get here that old TV I’ve had since I was a kid will work like a charm! These are great to have on hand in case of an emergency if all you can find is an analog TV and you need to get TV reception.

Consumer Reports has excellent Digital to Analog TV Converter Box ratings.

When they announced the winners at the end of the tryouts for So You Think You Can Dance season 5 they played the song “Look at Me (I’m a Winner)!” by the Aquabats! Check it out:

I went nuts and uploaded the clip as fast as I could when I didn’t find any hits anywhere else on Google for The Aquabats and So You Think You Can Dance.

The t-molding came in on Friday and I had some time on Saturday, so I installed the t-molding and finished up the project. I took some pictures of the control panel on the finished arcade.

I don’t have a router, but a coworker’s father was in town with all of his tools and he finally give me the means to finish the project. When I tried to install the t-molding at first there were some areas that weren’t deep enough. I used my dremel to make the slot deeper all the way around. I wouldn’t have been able to do that with the dremel alone, but since there was already a slot it helped. I have a depth guide that I attached to the dremel to make it work. I didn’t even need any glue! I just put the t-molding around the outside. Using a towel as a cushion I tapped the molding in place. The hardest part was cutting the v-shaped notches in the “t” part of the molding so it would go around the corners. Since this t-molding also had a lip I had to cut that, too. The lip was necessary to keep the vinyl down around the edges. For some reason the adhesive didn’t work very well around the edges and it wanted to come up.

I attached the top piece with the controls to the bottom piece with two hinges on the front side and a catch on the other so I can flip it up from the back to work on the wiring underneath. You can see the control panel wiring in the Unfinished section of the gallery page.

The Arcade cabinet came with a control panel, but it only allowed 2 buttons per player and the joysticks weren’t very good. The new configuration is also somewhat narrower so the machine can now fit through most doorways without taking off the control panel and the box it is on. Now that it’s done I’ve got exactly what I had envisioned!

Now, to work on that Donkey Kong high score…

I hope you have a wonderful week. Christmas is the best time of year, troche even if it is freezing all over the place.

The most recent album by They Might Be Giants, The Else, closes with this really catchy song called The Mesopotamians. Now you can watch the video for The Mesopotamians! You might find that it bears a passing resemblance to The Monkees, which is undoubtedly the inspiration for the traveling band concept. Near the beginning of the Monkees video they are walking toward the camera with their arms behind each others’ backs. Near the end of the video for The Mesopotamians they are shown doing the same thing. There are a few other parallels, but I’ll let you find them yourself.

My boss came in to the office with a little birthday present for me. He’s taking our group at work out to lunch for my birthday. He wants me to wear at least the eye patch when we go out since it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

UPDATE: We went out to the Olive Garden. I wore the eye patch and scared a little girl with a teddy bear while waiting in the lobby. I wore the eye patch up until after we ordered drinks. When the waitress came back and I didn’t have the eye patch on she told me that she thought there was really something wrong with my eye! I felt a little bad for having unintentionally deceived her, but she seemed to think it was all right, and she gave me extra ice cream for dessert. Of course, I was so stuffed after the ravioli, breadsticks, and 2 bowls of Zuppa Toscana that I couldn’t have eaten a regular portion of the chocolate-caramel goodness.

Overall, we didn’t do too well when it came to talking like pirates. I guess there’s always next year!

For the last couple of weeks I have been listening to the 7th Harry Potter book on an MP3 player in the car. I am using an FM modulator to get the signal from the MP3 player to the car’s speakers. I can choose to have the modulator broadcast on any frequency in the FM band, but it works best if it doesn’t have to compete with other, possibly stronger, signals. The default for an unset preset on the car radio is 87.9 FM, the very low end of the FM band. It just so happens that no local stations use this frequency, so I figured I’d use it.

While driving around, I would experience interference and static sometimes. After a few days of the commute I determined that it wasn’t in any particular location; the static seemed to happen whenever it wanted to. During on of the times when there was static, I tuned my transmitter to another frequency, just to rule out that it wasn’t part of the recording or a defect with the MP3 player. When I tuned my transmitter away I was blown away by crystal clear &em; and very loud &em; heavy metal music. I thought this was an isolated event at first.

I started turning off the transmitter any time I heard static, and in every single case, there was another signal coming from another car! I was astonished. I know there are FM modulators available that work with iPods, but I was amazed by how many people were doing the same thing I was. I wouldn’t think it would be very popular. After a while I deduced that most of the signals came from satellite radio. I guess the little boxes for cars that receive satellite radio come with FM transmitters to make car installation easier. I’m guessing that most of them default to using 87.9 FM.

If you want to try this yourself but don’t want to listen to minutes of noise in between hits (the whooshing sound makes me sleepy) try just switching over to 87.9 FM at intersections. The more cars you can get close together, the greater your chances of picking up on a signal will be. If you get lucky, then the signal will be coming from one of the cars traveling the same direction as you, then you can listen to it until you get too far apart. It can be fun trying to figure out which car is listening to the Howard Stern show. I’m usually wrong, though. I think I know which car it is, then the actual car will turn off the road and the signal fades away.

Have fun, but be safe. Don’t let the random transmissions distract you from your primary driving responsibility.

I finally broke down and bought the Wii. I thought I would be able to buy one in the stores by now, but it looks like demand is still outstripping Nintendo’s supply, and stores are immediately selling the few Wiis that are trickling in on their delivery trucks. I ended up bidding on eBay until I accidentally won one of the auctions. After all was said and done I had paid about $400 on it. I was a little upset at first, but as soon as I got it set up and started playing with friends and family I immediately knew that I had made the right decision. My only regret so far is having waited so long to buy it.

When I got home from work today I was feeling really sick. I had a pretty bad head cold and a cough, and I am pretty sure that I had a fever, too. I arrived home just 15 minutes before the post office closed and there was a slip of paper indicating that a package that required a signature upon delivery was waiting for me at the post office about two miles away. I grabbed the paper from the mailbox and went right back to the car without even going inside the house. I wanted to get the Wii ASAP!

After I got out of the post office with the package, I opened it up in the car. The way it was packed made it impossible to remove without getting packing peanuts everywhere, but I wanted to open up the package completely in the car before I got it home. If this had turned out to be an eBay scam, then I wanted to be alone when I found out. I was fearing a Wii box filled with rocks or some other heavy substance instead of the game system I was expecting. Everything checked out, and the system seemed as brand new as it comes!

Krissy was really excited for the new Wii. She wasn’t quite as excited as I was, but that’s understandable, I guess. My coworkers were amazed to hear that my wife actually approved of the purchase and looked forward to playing video games with me on a regular basis. I love my wife!

I can hardly wait to get more friends and family involved when I can get more than just two controllers. You see, the Wii becomes more fun the more people you can get playing it together at the same time. Wii remotes are sold out almost everywhere, just like the Wii. It’s a good thing I bought that Wii remote at Toys R Us back on November 20th of last year!

According to Samuel Shu of The Tennessean, recipe flatulence forced a plane to land! This is unbelievable! Almost anything can bring an airplane trip to a screeching halt nowadays, it seems.

This test is a lot of fun. Pay close attention to the instructions and let me know how well you do.