Christmas vacation comes to a close…
Today is the last day of my vacation. As always, it went by way too fast. The good news is I only have to work Tuesday thru Thursday and then I’m off for 3 days. Eric & Sue are having a New Year’s Eve party at their house out in Calendonia. I can’t believe another year has gone by. Where does the time go?
Christmas weekend was really busy this year. Marie & I hosted Christmas Eve at our house for the first time. Everything went smoothly but most of her family left by 9pm. Better things to do I guess. Marie made alot of desserts that were soo damn good. I ate way too many of them. I just couldn’t resist.
Christmas morning Marie & I exchanged gifts. Marie’s favorite gift from me was an 8×10 photo of our dogs that my buddy Dan help me put together. The picture turned out great. Marie had tears in her eyes when she opened it. Marie bought me the Friday the 13th box set which includes the first 8 Friday the 13th’s along with a bonus disc filled with extra’s. It’s just a damn shame Paramount doesn’t release the uncut versions of these films for once. Some of the deleted scenes are included in the bonus disc but it would be nice to have them edited into each film. I highly recommend you go back and watch Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (part 4) and check out Cripsin Glover’s amazing performance.
We went to my sister’s house around 3pm to have Christmas with her, Dennis, their kids and my mom and her boyfriend Jerry. We ate more food and I consumed more of Marie's delicious deserts. They bought a Samuel Adams’s Holiday 12 pack. I’m not sure why she bought that as I’m not a big fan of Samual Adam’s nor are they. Dennis had 2 sips of one and threw it out. After exchanging gifts and getting shafted by Jerry while he gave everybody but Marie & I gifts (expensive gifts I might add), we went home for a bit and then headed over to Marc’s around 9:30pm. I brought the Holday 12 pack with me since my sister made me take it home. I had 2 of the Cranberry flavored beer’s which were actually pretty good. Marie & I played a few hands of crazy eight’s and then said our goodbye’s. It had been a long day and we were very tired.
Today has been my kick back and relax day. I spent some time working on my spare Super Pac-Man board that was giving me a RAM error. After removing the old RAM and putting in a socket and new 2114, the RAM error went away but the board was now giving me a ROM error. I swapped the ROM with the one from my working boardset but it still gave the error. I even tested both of the ROM’s with my ROM burner but they tested fine. I pulled and cleaned all the socketed chips on the board and fired it up again. This time it gave an I/O error, one of the Namco custom 56xx chips. Since there are two of these I swapped them and the error moved with it. After putting in a good 56xx, the game now works but I get alot of static from the speaker. Also, the munching sound doesn’t sound quite right. I have a spare sound amp and I’m gonna replace it and see if that clears it up. Unfortunately the 56xx custom chips are $20/piece. But at least I was able to get the board up and running again. Another board back from the dead.
I got my 2 Kickman boardsets back from Richard in Canada just in time for Christmas. Both sets work great in my Kickman cabaret. I’m getting some static from the speakers but I think the 2 big blue caps in the bottom of the cab are the problem. Gonna have to replace those and that should clear up the problem. I completely rebuilt the original linear power supply so I know that’s fine. This game is kinda corny but alot of fun and very challenging in the later levels. All I gotta do is make a back door for this game and it’s all set.
I think I’ll retire to the basement and watch an old school horror classic. Perhaps something Christmas themed like Black Christmas. Who would have thought that Bob Clark, the same guy that directed Black Christmas, would go on to direct The Christmas Story, one of the all-time best Christmas comedy’s. I just love that TBS plays that movie for 24 hours straight every Christmas.
You’ll shoot your eye out kid!
One step, two step
Wow, it’s been almost a month since I last posted to my site. It’s been a very busy month and will continue to stay that way I’m sure. Today I managed to finally finish putting the new tile on the stairs to the basement. I still have to finish putting the tile on the landing and pick up one more piece of stair trim as I cut my last piece too short. It’s a vast improvement over the nasty carpet that was there before. My next project is to finish sanding the knotty pine room, which is something I’ve been trying to get finished for awhile now. After the holiday’s I’ll stain and polyeurethane it. We want to get new carpet in there also as the current carpet is in pretty sad shape.
Last weekend my friend James & I met up at Pete’s house in Detroit for a geek’s night out. We went up to Marvin’s Marvelous Museum as James had never been there before. It was a little disappointing from the first time that I went there with Marc. They had alot of newer arcade games and most of the coin operated amusement devices that I put a quarter in did not work. Overall it was a pretty disappointing visit. After Marvin’s we went to a nice pizza place (can’t remember the name right now) and had a couple New Castle’s and a couple large pizza’s. It was pretty damn good pizza. Pete’s buddy Dan met up with us at the pizza place. We then went back to Pete’s and played video games for a few hours. I finally got a chance to play his sitdown Outrun. It’s been a long time since I’ve played the sitdown version. What a riot! Later that night I introduced Pete to Joysticks, which we watched on his DLP projection TV. Damn was that nice. I HAVE to get one of those for my home theatre room!
Marie & I are having Christmas with her family at our place for the first time this Christmas Eve. I’m taking next week off for Christmas so that will give me plenty of time to get the house ready. I just hope we have enough chairs for everybody…