Category: Home Base

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Gaming Home Base

Game room redux

My garage-sale-hopping this weekend didn’t produce any games, but I did spend all of $13 on some decent shelves and some baby clothes. Shelves are a good thing: basically, everything of mine that’s in the little bedroom has got to come out of there to make way for baby. That means tons of books, more than a few knick-knacks, boxes full of stuff that’s just been stored in there…and quite a bit of it will probably get tossed out, or set aside for a yard sale of our own that I hope we’ll have the time and energy to hold between now and baby time. So I’ve got my eyes open for storage solutions for the stuff I don’t want to toss.

These two shelves aren’t a bad start.

Earl's game room… Read more

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Critters Gadgetology Home Base

Scoping the place out

I hang out on video and computer game collecting message boards where my friends always boast of massive hauls from garage sales, yard sales, and thrift stores, and I never have that kind of luck.

Tonight, I can report that I continue to have precisely not that kind of luck. My wife, however, is a different story. Because in addition to finding a really adorable (and, for this part of the country, kinda unusual) stuffed moose for the baby (my baby was bit by a m00s once…), she also snagged this setup for me:

Orbitor 6500

Oh, but wait, there’s more… … Read more

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Gaming Home Base Music Television & Movies

A brief, and yet still boring, look at my day

The past 24 hours or so are really supposed to have constituted my “day off,” a concept which increasingly is fading from the realm of the real and being relegated to the realm of the mythological. (I know, I know – just wait until the baby arrives and “8 hours of sleep” also fades into myth.)

I spent a good chunk of my day mowing the front yard – as much of it as I could – with a weed eater whose battery goes kersplat after about 45 minutes. We have yet to pick up the push mower that I lusted after a while back, as Jan’s vehicle had another breakdown Friday. If the vehicle’s not a lemon, then the place in Rogers we’ve had to keep taking it to is, at least in my mind, highly suspect. I can’t come up with words to express how much we don’t need this go-in-for-one-repair-and-three-other-things-that-were-fine-suddenly-fall-apart-the-next-week crap right now. It’s just getting extremely suspicious. If I do find out they’ve been screwing us, I’m not going to walk in there and kick their asses. I’m going to let her do it – and trust me, that’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot more. (I know of what I speak here.)

Anyway, I also sprayed some weed-killer along our fence rows, tried rather not-at-all-successfully to install a screen on yet another window, and got some fallen limbs and hedge clippings out of the yard. I even remembered to wear something on my head – which is now a crispy golden-brown – during most of this activity.

Late last night, I got a bit of gaming in, trying out a few old friends and testing out some new ones I hadn’t played before, and I’m working on the reviews of those games right now. I set up a new video segment to render on the Avid today every time I came inside to get a drink, go to the bathroom, install some new weed-eater cord, etc., so it was digesting all that raw footage and farting up video segments while I was working outside. (On second thought, there has simply got to be a better way to put that.)

During the height of the mid-day heat, I came inside for a bit to wash, dry and fold clothes, and watched the Doctor Who Keeper Of Traken DVD with the commentary on. It’s funny how art imitates life (I’m one of the few folks out there who openly admits to enjoying Matthew Waterhouse and his portrayal of Adric, but by the beginning of part 3 I was mentally willing him to shut the heck up and let the other folks get a word in edgewise) and how it doesn’t (it’s incredibly sad that Anthony Ainley only got to do this one DVD commentary before his death a few years ago, because he seems like such a nice fellow, a real old-school British showbiz gentleman). There’s a nice dedication to him at the end of part 4. I’ll have a full review up, maybe as soon as next weekend, time permitting.

Jan and I watched the Olivia de Havilland / Errol Flynn Robin Hood tonight. Man, I love that movie. Flynn’s just the quintessential cocky-bastard-with-a-heart-of-gold in that one, and everyone from Harrison Ford on down who’s essayed some variation on that basic archetype owes him at least a nod. For the record, I have yet to see a movie or TV take on the Robin Hood legend that I like better than this. Seriously. And let’s not get started on Korngold’s put-the-whole-brass-section-right-in-your-face score.

I’m so looking forward to the push mower – I could actually listen to something on my minidisc player while I’m mowing the yard. And hear it. I was trying to listen to the score from The Incredibles today while doing my weed-whacking (hey, you have to afford me at least one big beefy delusion of grandeur a day), and that music is not quiet and it is not subtle, and I could barely hear it.… Read more

Categories
Home Base

IT BURRRRRRRNNNNSSSS

Tomato Boy!Yep, that’s me over there. Tomato Boy. Mr. Burns. From bald to redhead in just hours. Today wasn’t exactly a stellar day in my world – unless you happened to be a big honkin’ yellow star hanging over my head, then you definitely got to have your fun with me. One of these days I’m going to remember that there are these things called hats, and I actually own a decent number of them. I’m not talking baseball caps – hats. For someone who’s as big a fan of hats as I am, you’d think that I’d actually wear ’em outside on these occasions when I’m just going to step outside and trim the hedge in front of the game room window.

But wait! There’s more. Among my other staggering non-accomplishments today: … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Home Base

Light brainshowers

I’m about to keel over here from exhaustion, so here’s a cute picture of Oberon and Xena:

Oberon and Xena

Actually, no, I’m not just going to leave it at that. My wife and I spent the afternoon at my dad’s house, because we haven’t been to see him in ages, and because we wanted to show him the ultrasound video and personally deliver the still pictures. My stepmother was there too… ’nuff said. Still, it was pleasant enough visit, and I’m hoping we can have an even more pleasant one in the near future. (‘Nuff said.)

A less pleasant part of the day was finding out that my wife’s vehicle, which was in for one more minor repair, now requires one more major repair. The repairs don’t seem to come in flavors of under $600 or so, so I’ll admit that the word “lemon” has been rolling off my tongue quite a bit lately. It was a good deal when we got it, but I’m starting to think this was a set of wheels with one good year of service left in them, and we’ve passed that year. Long since passed. The constant surprise problems we’re getting have completely eliminated any kind of “backup for a rainy day” that we had built up, and when we need to be buying baby stuff and working on redoing parts of the house, that’s just absolutely killing us.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on GreenhouseFX.tv over the past few days, including working up what’s basically a print version of the website to distribute as a printable PDF.

I’m having one of those weeks where I wish I could declare my own by-week and just catch up with the rest of the world later. Too damn tired to even think about thinking about thinking.

Now that I’m done cooking up the food we’ll be nibbling on tomorrow during the day, I’m going to go get…well…maybe all of a couple of hours of sleep.… Read more

Categories
Home Base Serious Stuff

Mow, mow, mow your goat

I don’t get into too much serious stuff of a political bent on my blog because, well, frankly, it’s not that I don’t have my opinions, but there are other people who are so much more eloquent than I am, and they can back it up with all this “research” stuff that I’m sometimes not that good at. But I thought I’d chime in with a little environmental note.

I recently killed our lawn mower. This is not something I’m proud of. I was a doofus and forgot to check the oil after it sat out for the winter. My bad. Yes, you’re right. Not just bad but just plain stupid. (Remind me to tell you what happened to my Corsica sometime. Me and combustion engines just don’t dine at the same table.)

So my wife called me today as she was window-shopping for lawn mowers, and she only half-seriously mentioned that she was looking at a solution that consumed no fuel and produced no pollution. My equally half-serious response was “We’re getting a goat?” No, that wasn’t it – we could get a manual, non-electric, non-gas-powered push mower. To her surprise and mine, I said a very emphatic “YES.” She warned me “You’re going to be getting your exercise trying to move this one around,” to which I almost replied “Uh, honey? Have you actually seen me lately? More exercise isn’t a terribly bad thing…” But I look at it this way: the one we have earmarked as the one to Buy Real Soon (as opposed to Buy It Now) has a grass collection bag. With no motor, those cuttings won’t be coated in oil, and can be fed to horses. With no motor, there won’t be any more ear-splitting engine sounds that leave me with huge headaches. And last but certainly not least, with no motor, that’s one less vital device to require gasoline, which has gone up 80 cents a gallon over the past six months. (Uh, hello? Congress? You lovely folks who I helped to vote in last November? With all due respect…this is one of those things I was hoping you’d find some ways to fix…not that I’m saying Gonzalez doesn’t need to be fixed…before he has puppies or something.)

So: an unpowered push-mower it is. (And yes, you can bet I’ll get some pictures of this puppy in action, just for the sheer curiosity value.) My little contribution to making this tiny corner of the world that I supposedly (on paper) own a better, cleaner, quieter place. Just you wait, someday when he’s old enough to mow the lawn, my son is so gonna thank us for this decision. (In the same way that every son thanks his father when the mower is thrust into his hands for the first time – with unprintable words muttered under his breath as dad walks away. 😆 )… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Funny Stuff Home Base Television & Movies

Road tripped

Tomorrow we’re headed to Little Rock to have Those Other Tests done since we had some alarming markers show up on the baby blood work. It’s funny how one of our local hospitals builds a whole extra wing supposedly devoted to the best pre-natal and natal care in this part of the state…and yet, still, you can’t do jack without heading out to Little Rock or Tulsa. Thanks to everyone for their well-wishes and advice on the tests – believe me when I say that your experiences and stories are pure gold at this point. Tonight we have to take Jan’s vehicle – or, as I’ve always called it, Happy Wagon Of Death 2K3 – to leave it with the dealership in Rogers to fix tomorrow so she can be back to delivering the mail out of it Wednesday. I swear to God, everytime she turns the wheel even slightly, it sounds like an angry, asthmatic Wookiee is screaming out his rage from below the vehicle; the dealership is hopefully going to make whatever fixes or remove whatever Wookiees are applicable. Happy freakin’ life day. On the way, we’re going to try to stop in Fayetteville so I can snap some pictures of the R2-D2 mailbox that’s up there. I can’t believe there’s actually one in Arkansas.

No haircut yet; I may just have to tie it back and tuck it under tomorrow. I’ve really gotten out of that habit when my hair gets long. Adrian Paul, I ain’t. Instead, my wife and I spent Sunday night preparing prodigious quantities of food and then wolfing 90% of it down. I did the steaks and she did…well…all the stuff that actually tasted good. She even did the brownies, though at one point she cracked an egg open…right over the drain at the sink. In it went. We both stopped and looked at each other like “WTF?” She’s said that both her mother and her sister have warned her that expectant mothers apparently start donating brain cells to baby in large quantities during pregnancy, and I guess I really didn’t grok what that meant until I watched that perfectly good egg go from the shell straight into the garbage disposal. Just between you and me, I’m gonna milk that moment of comedy gold for months to come.

Hopefully everyone likes the latest main menu illustration for the site; as time consuming as these things are (that one was a 3:00am special), I’ve been trying to look for ways to tie everything together conceptually, even if I have to just flat-out invent the connection. 😆 (On the other hand, the process I was using to treat the pictures made Evangeline Lilly look positively hideous, which is something that takes quite a bit of effort, so my apologies there.)

And speaking of Lost…spoilage ahead if you haven’t seen it: … Read more

Categories
Gaming Home Base

Singing the praises of pants

Anyone who’s hung out with me over the past five or so years knows that my wardrobe isn’t exactly…well…diverse. I’m down to a couple of pairs of shorts, three pairs of sweats that I seem to wear incessantly, and one pair of jeans. I haven’t had a pair of slacks that fit me in ages. Tonight we went out in search of some new pants for me, and damned if I didn’t fall in love with the pair that we wound up getting. I’m gonna be goin’ back for more of those puppies as soon as the present budget squeeze lets up (more things to fix on Jan’s vehicle – I’m starting to wonder how close were getting to having shelled out enough moulah to have bought the damn thing twice over now). In the meantime, to celebrate the finding of the aforementioned pants:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/wideworldofpants.mp3]

The reason I wear the sweats so much is that they’re comfy. They don’t slide off me, they don’t cut me in half when I sit down, and they’re not too long. Once I get more than one pairs of these slacks…well, frankly, you probably won’t see the sweats too often. I also sliced all the foliage off my face today, and tomorrow it’s time for the bi-annual haircut. 😆 One of these days I might almost pass for normal.

Colecovision Super Action ControllerA lot of today was spent on housework, but I did get in about an hour or so of gaming time. A while back, I finally got a working Colecovision Super Action Controller, which, if you haven’t already seen or held one, is like an arcade joystick and keypad mounted atop the hilt of a sword which has four triggers on the hand grip. It looks like it should be bulky and diffifcult to manage, but it really is a great controller, and you’re just not getting the most out of a Colecovision without one. (When it comes to holding a controller for an extended period of time, I rate the default Colecovision joysticks lower than either the 5200 or Intellivision, two consoles whose controllers seem to wind up on everyone else’s pet hate lists.) Tomorrow I’m going to try to set aside a little bit of time to hook up the Roller Controller I got at the same time and get some Slither action going. Needless to say, you can expect some Colecovision reviews (and videos) pretty soon, as well as more Vectrex fun. Hopefully you’re enjoying watching/reading the reviews as much as I’m enjoying…uh…researching them. 😉

Almost done downloading The Shakespeare Code, so all in all, not a bad Saturday. Not bad at all.… Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Home Base

Blog reruns

I hate to throw “blog reruns” at you, but I’ve just been thinking recently about how much the topic of this blog entry has changed my life. I’m not going to try to claim that my freelancing life is a stampede of success, but y’know what? I’m much, much happier than I was the past two or three years at the station, by far. Even some of the health problems that plagued me while I was at that job have cleared themselves up. Best of all, it provided the answer to a question we didn’t even know we’d have until later (i.e. “who’s staying home with the baby?”) – by the time that one came about, we knew what the answer was.

So naturally I have the whole thing completely powered down right now – bad weather’s on the way in (it’s mere minutes into March, and we’re already under a tornado watch), and even though it’s on a heavy duty surge protector, I just prefer to unplug this machine from the entire universe for the kind of bad weather that hits us here. Needless to say, the Avid will get a lot of rest during the spring and early summer months. 😛 I’ve grown so used to the deafening ROAR of the outboard equipment, every piece of which has its own fan, that the quiet is somewhat mesmerizing in and of itself.

I went back and looked at the original “won the Avid” blog entry and saw that there was a link to the original eBay auction – or at least that’s where the link led at one time. Since the original auction has of course vanished from eBay’s database, I’ve put this selection of screen captures I took at the time up for your amusement. At the time, these seemed like a bit of a vanity piece, but now…well…this machine has turned out to be terribly important.… Read more