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...And Little E Makes 3 Gadgetology

Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part one: Space (invaded)

As a rule, we tend not to do weekend getaways and vacations here, and being flat broke is typically the culprit. Last weekend the Mrs. and Little E got to go on a road trip with her parents, though it was more of a business trip Pongwaterthan anything, without much sightseeing. Early last week I learned that a special event or two was happening out toward Oklahoma City, and started trying to pull a road trip of my own together out of sheer willpower. Sheer willpower, it turns out, doesn’t solve all the issues with my occasionally wonky loaner car. I’m grateful to have it, it gets me to work and back home again, and it’s driven a lot in the past week as I’ve gone to various far-flung work sites. But Oklahoma City? Not so sure it’s up for one continuous 3-4 hour journey. I started trying, far too late, to see if I could land a rental car, but it’s Memorial Day Weekend: they’re all spoken for.

Nathan and Chandra Martin contacted me via Facebook earlier in the week; they were making a rare return to Fort Smith with their kids and wanted me and Little E to show them this arcade that I’ve spent so much time talking about in Fayetteville. The thought honestly hadn’t occurred to me to say “Well hey, wanna go to OKC too?” That’s a bit like showing up at someone’s party and saying “Hey, let’s make this party about me!” As it happens, the thought had occurred to them too, and the whole weekend became a massive singularity of geeking out.

But on Friday night, it all started with keeping all of our kids up way too late at the local arcade. … Read more

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Gaming

E.T. and the Pit of Horrors

So I get back from a pizza run to find 25 different iterations of an article seemingly “confirming” the urban legend that a zillion copies of Atari’s E.T. cartridge were buried in the Alamagordo city landfill. But here’s the thing: there’s a picture floating around also confirming that unsold copies of Centipede – far from a bomb of a game – were also buried there. The entire contents of a warehouse in El Paso on which Atari no longer wanted to pay the lease are buried there, which, yes, includes copies of E.T. The story that holds that most of the inventory of E.T. produced was returned and buried is simply not true. … Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Should We Talk About The Weather?

RageCast for April 13th, 2014

RageCast! A bold new idea in weather forecast stupidity in which I look at the probability map for an upcoming severe weather event and try to match its shape to that of an internet meme “rage face.”

I’ve got bad news for you, northeast Oklahoma. Mother Nature’s targeting you just for the lulz. … Read more

Categories
Gadgetology Should We Talk About The Weather? Television & Movies

A challenging emulation situation

O'Brien forecasts the weatherI recently had to put an insane amount of time and research into setting up a new emulator for an extinct computer system whose output I once relied upon to a great degree. I’ve set up complicated emulators before, all the way back to the earliest versions of MAME where there wasn’t much of a community yet and you really were on your own figuring it all out. And even that was simple compared to this.

Is it an emulator for a game system, or so I can play a game? No. It’s an emualtor that makes one of my computers generate a display like the Weather Channel’s local forecasts from the early 1990s. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Funny Stuff

The smell of FEAR

2 min read

So E has had some mild issues with a few developing phobias, so I looked this up on Youtube to introduce him to the mother of all my childhood phobias, the Federal Systems Thunderbolt civil defense siren, and played it good and LOUD for him while telling him how one of these used to scare that crap and many unspeakable crap byproducts out of me when I was just a little older than him (but not by much), and how I briefly joined the school safety patrol in sixth grade because my mother thought I should stand RIGHT NEXT to the damned thing to get over my fear of the merest of possibilities that it might go off while I’m standing under it or just looking at it. I told him how these were first deployed in 1953 or so – probably right around the time my now-assimilated-by-the-UAFS-Borg elementary school was built – and had another setting – rising and falling tones – which were usually reserved for nuclear attack. Then I told him about growing up during the Cold War. I explained to him that, to be less scared of all of these things, I read about tornadoes and sirens and, yes, even Da Bomb, so I could better judge when it’s time to be really scared.

And there was a long silence.

And then he said “But Dad, none of THAT is SCARY. BUGS ARE.”

I really wish I was him sometimes.

Feast now upon the song of my childhood nightmares!

Next question: who in the flaming f#$& buys a retired tornado siren and PUTS IT RIGHT OUTSIDE THE BACK DOOR? I guarantee you the only reason that glass door doesn’t end up in pieces is because he’s got a heap of blankets stuffed down the horn. These things used to kill any birds that would nest in the horns.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff Should We Talk About The Weather?

Introducing RAGECAST!

Tornado Warnin'I had this idea last year, but too late in the lower midwest’s spring tornado season to implement it. That and the tornadoes that were happening were killing people – if I did start it last year, it’d be “too soon.” Ah, who am I kidding, it’s probably still “too soon”, but this is meant to lift spirits and incite laughter, not to poke fun at anyone’s grievous losses.

Tomorrow is my immediate area’s first day of 2014 in the cross-hatched bubble. Actually, back up – let me explain. … Read more