12-11-05, 7:46 AM

Thy mother mated with a scorpion.

Music: Aqualung - Good Times Gonna Come

I really need to know who's going to be attending Holiday Holocaust this year and so we can start working on picking a date. Please get ahold of me about it, since Christmas sure is coming up fast and the time will be upon us.

So, as some of you may know, I've been hunting around for a pinball machine for these last couple months. Because I am a giant child, I had decided I would use the money I got from that car accident towards it. After watching eBay auctions for weeks, but not really wanting to have to pay the large shipping costs without actually being able to see and test the machine for myself I decided against that option. So I started watching the classifieds at Mr. Pinball and soon one popped up locally which caught my interest.

It was out in Wood River, Illinois, just east of Alton, so not terribly far away, and I found the guy selling it, Chuck, was a really friendly and excitable owner of a large hardware store and a pinball collector. He showed me the machine I was interested in, got to play it a bit, found it to be in really great condition so I decided to take it. Then he proceeded to show me how to get into it and check things out, then he wanted to show me the other machines he'd been working on recently. So I got the impression he's a really nice guy that's really into his hobby, and he has his own rather large shop, so he seems pretty well off, which led me to believe he'd be less likely to try to scam me or take my money and run. He also promised he'd take it back if anything major went wrong with it when I got it home and that he could find time to come take a look at it if something went awry.

So yesterday I borrowed my grandfather's giant delivery van and went to go pick it up, where Chuck showed me how to remove the legs, how to change the batteries in the backbox without losing the high scores, and such, and then helped load it on to the van. Also, after I had told him this was my first pinball machine he agreed to knock $150 off of the asking price, so it ran me $1200. He also gave me a box with some extra slingshot plastics and a Cliffy protector for one of the parts of the playfield, which'll keep things from getting too beaten up by flying pinballs. I like Chuck.
Getting it home wasn't that difficult and I was concerned about how much damage it could take since this three-hundred pound beast would be going downstairs, but Chuck assured me that he's transported a lot of pinballs and that, being commercial machines, after all, they're made to be tossed around a bit. I would soon learn how true that was.

The major problem with this plan, I thought, would be enlisting the help of my father to get it downstairs, since I had asked him if he wanted to go half and half on a machine and he told me that money would be better suited to getting me a new car. Man, what arrogance, don't you think? Grudgingly, he agreed to help, and getting it through the side door (after removing the actual side door) was okay, but the tricky part was the stairs. My dad was handling the dolly from the top, I was trying to add force from the bottom and try to make it down step-by-step. Well, half way down the stairs the dolly was titled at such an angle that my father couldn't really get a grip on the dolly and I was basically holding it up myself. He told me to get out of the way to avoid being crushed, which I quickly agreed to do, trying to guide it as much as I could from the side, but that was pretty futile as the machine loudly thundered itself down the last few steps.

After a few minutes of rest and coming down from the adrenaline rush of fearing for my life, my father and I began assembling the legs. "So you decided to do a little sneaky end-run on me, huh?" he said. I should add that I hadn't told him I was going to buy it or was on my way to get it, I had just shown up yesterday with a pinball machine.
"Well," I said, "Even mom said we're both pretty stubborn when it comes to what we want."
"Who?"
"Me and you."
"I am not."
"What about that car?" I asked, gesturing towards the garage with my thumb, where my dad keeps his Buick Grand National which cost him 20 grand and only takes it out on nice weekends during the spring and summer.
There was a pause, then, "Oh, that car." Laughter.

So, the moment of truth, we fired it up and it started almost immediately. No error messages at the start-up or anything. The only thing we found was that about four or five bulbs weren't working, probably busted during those drops down the stairs. I hit the start button and the game lit up, playing perfectly.

I'm now a proud owner of a Doctor Who pinball machine. I played a few two-player games with my father and after a few minutes he agreed, it does look nice in the basement, it adds some fun to it, and that he would pay the remaining $150 I had borrowed from my mom.

Sucker.

-K.

ex-ter-min-ate

12-5-05, 6:54 AM

Roy had a Vietnam flashback, even though he'd never actually been to Vietnam.

Music: Miles Davis - Two-Faced

I finally updated at the end of last month, so you can pop back there to see in case you may have missed it. I also updated the What to Think section.

I wanted to come on here and do my civic duty to alert all of you that the action-strategy hybrid Darwinia is going to be available over Steam starting December 14th for just $19.99, though if you pre-order before then you can get two whole dollars off. You can learn more about the game by visiting their website, or go ahead and grab the demo from here.
It was already released earlier this year, and I really enjoyed it, though I don't think I mentioned as much as I should have here. Go check out, it's simple, it's small, it doesn't require a beefy system and it's a blast to play.
I was really pleased to see this happen since sales for the game haven't been very stellar, considering it was independently developed by three guys working out of their apartments with no real publisher support, and this deal with Valve will help give it the awareness it didn't have before. They're supposedly getting 60% of the profit from every sale and they're now working on a multiplayer addition, so why not lay down a couple bones and help out the little guy?

Also, I'm still stumped as to what we're doing for Holiday Holocaust this year. The idea of it being more console oriented is still out there, or we could just try to focus on some older titles. I don't even know what day it should be on and I don't know who's coming. I could use some help with this.

-K.

space zombie from pluto