March 28th, 2023 | 1308 - 1314
Got on the computer after work last night and played some Team Fortress 2. I dunno why it always amazes me, but it seriously does make me surprised every time I see just how many people are on it. I get it, it's F2P/there's a whole community/custom stuff/etc. so it's gonna have players, just crazy thinking I've been playing that game for what... fifteen years now? Sixteen? Funky as all heck. Best part is, I still absolutely suck. lmao
First day of training with the newest new guy went well. Seems nice, picked up on everything fairly well, just not one for taking notes. It's useful to have a lot of notes. I dunno. Maybe they'll figure it out later once they get into doing more of the paperwork.
Started taking pictures and testing systems last night for the stuff I'm selling off. Also finding more to throw in the "stuff I'm selling off" pile. I'm gonna try to do two or three more computers before I've gotta head out tonight, just keep it rolling and hopefully by the weekend have everything documented. I'll update the page on here once I get the stuff in Discord done, Coal made a forum channel and it's actually kinda cool to throw things in.
Speaking of Coal, she got her hands on a Sord M68EX. We made a deal, since I'm fixing everything for her (and she doesn't actually care about it that much) my payment will be in the form of that Seiko 5900. I'll hang onto it as a part of my collection, she'll get the N5200/07ADIII and the M68EX, we'll both be happy and I'll just let her come use the Seiko anyways. Should be a good time.
Don't really have anything else to say, I'd talk about some goofy ear clip things I got to replace my headset temporarily (it needs some wires repaired) but I want another day of listening to music on them before I really judge them. Have a nice rest of your day!
March 26th, 2023 | 2019 - 2025
Y'know, I can complain about working alone but I've gotta say sometimes it's a fair bit easier. Nothing against having others come work with me, just that everyone who does is from other divisions (but used to work here) so it's pretty much constant training. Wish it didn't have to be that way but eh, whatever I guess.
The weather last night was crap, up to 60mph winds, so a piece of my siding blew off. The people who installed it did a mostly good job except a few spots that have come loose. At least they always land on the deck or on the shingles and just sit there. So now I've gotta have 'em come back out and put it back up. woo. It's not expensive or anything, just kinda sucks. The old stuff never did this but the old stuff also took about eight good hail storms so it looked like absolute hell. heh.
I tried doing some work on the MSX-PG thing. Turns out I can't find a single darn 8-pin DIN footprint to save my life and it's annoying. Well I can, it's just rows of 3/4/1 pins whereas all the Chinese connectors are 3/2/3. Either I pay $4.50/connector or I guess I make my own footprint? I need to dig around more. I Just need to order all the little bits so I can get the RPi interface board in and start on software, once that's going it really shouldn't be too bad. Or so I hope.
March 25th, 2023 | 2004 - 2013
So for the last something like three months, I've been thinking about what all I don't actually use that I own. Fun fact, it's a lot. So, on the drive into work today, I decided I'd do something that little me would be horrified at and say that I'm going to sell stuff. I know I've done (and somewhat even failed) at it before but screw it, third time's the charm and this would be that. I've gotta free space at some point, money from stuff I'm not using to fund other projects would be pretty sweet as well 'cause there's talks of doing stuff like cloning the incoming Seiko, so I may as well do it while I have the motivation in me to finally start shipping boxes out.
Speaking of shipping boxes out, hey! If you're someone who is called/was called MilliaRage on Discord, please get a hold of me. I have a SCSI thing and a game that I never shipped you. I'd like to ship it to you if possible. Also, if you're someone who is called/was called hal, also please get a hold of me. I have a PC-8801MR which you shipped to me for fixing up, I've been trying to contact you for like four months and I'd really like to return your stuff!
Writing stuff out just reminds me how bad I always am at determining prices. So I dunno, I know I'm probably losing on everything I'm putting up but I don't care. If I can get stuff into the hands of people who will actually show it love, that's a lot better than rotting in my house "because muh collection is big" or whatever the braindead reason my head makes up is.
Last night I orderd something I've wanted for a while for airsoft via Rinkya, a Maruzen BV M93R. I hear people say they're some of the better Maruzen-made replicas out there, they're stupidly cheap, and tell me it isn't cool hearing BV noises coming out of a pistol. They've got a LRB and some other stuff that I'll have in soon enough, should be a fun lot.
Apparently we're getting someone new at work on Monday so I get to train another person. Woo. I don't actually mind it, it's just rough when two of the current four people on the job have only been here for less than two months as it's gonna be "train one dude" and also "help half the room". We'll work through it, I'm sure of it, it's just gonna be a much busier April than I was expecting.
Did I mention Coal wants to clone that Seiko above? Yeah. I dunno. I'm not against it. I'm gonna be holding onto it for like a whole year so hey, if we can get the ROMs dumped and it's just some simple-ish 8080 system then that'll be cool.
Can't think of much else to say. I dunno. I'm just bored at work. I guess back to trying to think up what I own (within easy reach, not in 50 boxes) but don't really use. Having shelf space back would be cool...
March 23rd, 2023 | 1710 - 1721
There's a scheduled power outage for like half of the city today. Because of that, work said "don't come in until we call ya" and I get some extra time at home. Woo!
The pair of NABU PCs came in today. Holy hell do they smell like mold, it was giving me a headache just being near their boxes. They're really cool, I opened mine up to take a look at it all, but I had to put it all back with added unscented dryer sheets and then seal it in a plastic bag. Did the same for the still-sealed one which will be going to Canada soon enough. Hoping that by like next Sunday, April 2nd, I should be able to open said bags up and they'll smell a lot less like cardboard death. If it still smells, well, the box may just have to live in the garage while the rest stays inside.
Worked on the Bizon and not only was the piston stripped, so was the bevel gear! I wasn't too impressed with the stock motor anyways so it's getting changed out. Also gonna add an in-line MOSFET, thinking just a PicoSSR 3, and redo the battery connection to Deans. Just need to spec out what parts to buy...
I've been reassembling this PC-8801Mk2SR today and man, the plastic on the front isn't fully brittle but it is kinda not that convincingly strong. Sucks. I'm giving it a good once-over for cracks in a minute here, just need to put the top case back on to call it good. Might have to add "model a PC-88 bezel" to the CAD list?
March 22nd, 2023 | 1345 - 1351
So I got that Classic Army Bizon-3 in. It's... the body is amazing. Lotta good steel construction. That said, it was packaged horribly/screws were loose/magazine catch was installed wrong/the piston stripped on the 37th shot. Hah. Guess that's yet another project on the pile.
Coal won't stop voluenteering me for projects so I had to tell her to calm down. Got the Coal Burner, that Seiko, and now a N5200 Model 07/ADIII coming to my joint. It'll be in like a month and a half for those two computers to hit, but now it's two undocumented computers that have no software...
Don't actually have much else to say, heh. Just waiting on the clothes dryer to do its thing then it's off to work with me. I've gotta do some research into that N5200/07 and see if I can get much-any info on it... I think the ADs are i386-based? It's in the same case as my Bungo Mini15, an odd PC-8801-but-not-really shell that holds this fat card system, and I wonder how similar it's gonna be. I dunno.
March 20th, 2023 | 1336 - 1351
Welp, got voluenteered for a project. Coal bought a Seiko 5900, a '79 computer/calculator thing, but she doesn't have a spot for it or any idea on how to go about fixing it. It'll be coming to me in around two months, idea is going to be doing fairly detailed documentation of all the PCBs followed up by trying to go about restoring (or replacing) the power supply, dumping the ROMs, figuring out if there's some way we can port an operating system to it (as we don't expect to ever find BASIC/FORTRAN disks), and then trying to write a program that uses it. Word has it that the predecessor, the 5700, was a card cage featuring an i8080. Who knows what'll be inside this absolute monster of a system?
12 more days and I'm finally done working almost every single weekend, it's confirmed that in April they're gonna give me a break and that's quite awesome. It's looking like I'm going to a hockey game on the 1st of next month, maybe taking the three days off for Easter (or just working them because I have nothing to do and the extra cash will be useful), and then it'll be more like work every other weekend. Finally get some time to cover a few projects, ship some stuff out, get the car properly fixed up, and go play airsoft. Woo.
Some dudes wanted to run a "book club" so I said I'd be in, I don't really read much and I do wish I read a lot more. First pick of theirs was a theological text, I'm not gonna go too much into it because I honestly have no idea how to feel on anything of the sort but it's at least quite interesting to go through. I've been too lazy to get to the library so I just went on archive.org, found a public domain copy of the text, and am printing a chapter at a time. It's been nice and I can highlight it/annotate it all I want without feeling bad about writing all over something. Might have to do more reading like this because dang if I'm not understanding it better.
Thinking of work, left last night and it was like 35F all day/29F at night. Started driving and the car felt like it was rumbling, ooked under it and everything was just coated in so much hard ice. Cleared it all off and the thing felt perfect. Blah. I want the weather to either just stay cold or stay warm, not do this "10F/30F/50F/30F/10F" traingle wave of a pattern 'cause dang if it isn't becoming annoying in more ways than my skin just being dry.
Guess I'm gonna go figure out what food to take to work tonight. Not really much else to do except maybe go look at UTSource. heh.
March 19th, 2023 | 1148 - 1205
It snowed something like seven inches overnight after being 45F yesterday. I think it's supposed to rain and get back into the 40s tomorrow. I love this weather.
Something like 40 minutes went into cleaning all the SFC carts I got in the other day. Wasn't too bad, all carts tested okay and there was just a lot of dirt. I think the last thing I need to figure out is power supplies, and by "figure out" it'll probably be "get a bunch of from UTSource" because any modern supply you buy is one of those same exact thin wall warts anyways.
I've been kinda lazy and haven't gotten groceries for around two weeks now. Not that there isn't stuff around the house to have, just that it's been getting pretty bad the past few days. The big 'ol bag of everyone's favorite grain has been gone and man, beans and barley isn't as nice as beans and rice. heh.
Coal got back to me and said she wants to do two things. It's pretty much just "hey do what you wanted to originally do" which was some COMX-35-like setup. Single-board, small-ish, integrated keyboard, some decent amount of RAM, more ROM than anyone needs, y'know how that goes. Issue is I need to "come up with a name for it" apparently. I'm gonna go with Stove. She has the burner, that's industrial. I have the stove, that's for the home. I dunno. We shouldn't be doing this at all but whatever. Gives me some random crap to do.
I guess, thinking on two breaks back, I should go figure out food. Gotta come up with something to cook, just what to cook...
March 17th, 2023 | 1343 - 1359
Well, I got the page for convention stuff started. Woo. I'd do more but it's time to go to work... if it's a calm Friday, really gonna hope it is, then I'll do more when I'm there. Heh.
Colantia is hitting a point where she's happy with her idea for what she's just calling the Coal Burner. She's speccing "for an oddly high-end 1981 home computer" so it's looking like either an 8MHz or 10MHz 68000, a 6847 video chip (with some sort of high-res later? I dunno.), something like 64KB of RAM, some amount of video RAM, some amount of ROM, and a sound chip. No idea what sound chip still, I keep joking we should use a pair of SN76489s "because it's a funny idea" but the AY-3-8910 is also just a good option. It's either gonna be a motherboard and separate keyboard or, in COMX-35/Superboard style, just one large board with the computer and keyboard together. We've talked about doing some sort of OSI Challenger/Sol-20 type of metal case, someone on Github made mention of a service in Spain that'll do laser cutting and forming of the top shell for like $40 else we just do it ourselves with a brake. Not sure which it's gonna be. I dunno. Motherboard design has to come first. Just excited that we're at a point where who knows, maybe in three months a computer will exist? She's gonna do design, I'm gonna build the the things. If all goes to plan, we'll do a run of like ten and sell 'em off for the cost of parts + $50 for labor. Then probably release it all on GitHub 'cause why not? She wants me to make a page about it for here so I'm probably gonna section it under Computers. I dunno.
I'd sit here and think about more to write but shoot, it's almost 1400. I've gotta go get a quick shower and off to work.
March 16th, 2023 | 0101 - 0115
Any of y'all see those Nabu PC things? I guess it was some Canadian company that made these Z80 + TMS9918 + AY-3-8910 home computers (good chip choices if I say so myself heh) that loaded data over a cable network. Then they died out. Some dude in the US had a thousand and change just piled up and they've been selling 'em off since like Novemebr or December I wanna say? I wasn't gonna buy one but I saw there's some amount of community care, nabu.ca looks really cool, so today I pulled the trigger on one. Well, two. I bought one to mail to someone else alongside some other stuff like a box of 8" floppies 'cause shipping to me is only $22. Shipping to Canada is like $65. Even though looking at PirateShip it's only like $35-50? I dunno, stuff's goofy.
Anyways, so we got talking about those Nabus and y'know I'm kinda... you'd think people would be doing more with them. Then it was brought up that a lot of people are probably just buying them to say "hey I have a NOS retro computer" or for the keyboards and basically nothing else. And knowing the scene I remember, yeah, it's probably true. Kinda sad.
The above said, I'm just excited. That RS422-PC interface software looks super cool. There are expansion slots and those always lead to fun times. There's CP/M and that's really cool. I think I'm gonna enjoy that stupid little dark grey box. It's definitely gonna get some use and that'll be cool. $100 ain't a horrible price after all. Gonna have a project to dump the keyboard controller so others can work with it towards say making their own keyboards, turn all the "no keyboard" systems into something actually usable and maybe even useful. Should be a good thing to put into the world for the future. And at least I know a few people are making neat stuff for the boxes.
I don't think I mentioned but there are way too many copies of Super Mario Kart in my house now. Bought a lot for $50 of like 110 Super Famicom Mario cartridges, half are Mario Kart and the rest are assorted. Also a lot of six boxed Super Scopes. Gonna be really cool to get that stuff cleaned up. The price was so damn cheap that I have (essentially) free pack-in titles to provide with all the Super Famicoms I'll find, fix up, and get new homes for at conventions. Is $30 for a console, hookups, a controller, and a game good? Console may not look the prettiest but hey if it works? I think it's good. I hope others do too.
Speaking of the same Japan box, I've got something big (to me and basically only me) to say: I bought some Multi16 software. 8" floppies for CP/M-86, M-BASIC, and MELSAP. They were kept in a good environment and still have all their paperwork, the velcro folders, and the blue cardboard outer box. Seriously praying these dump out well 'cause, if they do, this is pretty cool. I don't think any software has ever been dumped? System disks mean people can start actually doing stuff, I know I'm probably gonna end up trying to port a game or two. heh. I just need to find which 1165D drive I have that reliably works, get it nice and good and clean, and get the right boards to hook it to my Greaseweazle. If all works out, we'll have flux dumps and a whole new early-80s Japanese computer usable for everyone soon enough...
Friend of mine asked me if I'd ever played with STALKER Anomaly, told 'em no. I guess they saw my Clear Sky page I haven't updated in forever and went "oh hey here's this thing" so that's cool. I really need to finish that playthrough, heh. Then I'll play with this Anomaly thing. Then I'll hope 2 comes out and comes out good enough. Excited as heck to play it, just avoiding Twitter 'cause I heard people are leaking stuff.
Not much else to really say, I dunno. Gonna go browse the internet for an hour, maybe think about writing some more stuff, look into a 68K thing with Colantia, then it's off to bed for me. Today's food day, tomorrow's St. Patrick's day, and that just generally means buying reubens with the boys at work. Then going right back to work. heh.
March 13th, 2023 | 1347 - 1355
Small rant,
So I spent a good bit of time this morning under my car. It's a '15 Jeep Renegade, the worst model year in a span of like four years where they used Fiat engines known to just eat through oil like mad, and it has always been a noisy idiot. Just part of the 2.4L MultiAir experience.
Like a week or two ago, with the weather finally back down to "it's friggin' cold outside dude" temperatures, I got some noises to show up which I haven't heard before. There's always noise from the cold air intake, it's this junky split-tube design that likes to warp and leak and make great sounds whenever you give it some gas. Now, in addition to that, there's this constant noise until around 50mph or if you coast for a while (which is hard, the thing barely coasts down a steep hill) when it suddently just goes away.
I've found mention online that it may be the computer needing re-flashed, something something differential being controlled depending on weather and causing stuff to act goofy making said noise, but they say turning off traction control (or dropping the car into neutral while rolling) should solve that. Nah. Still makes noise. I think I have a wheel bearing going? Or maybe the initial flash doesn't control how they say it should? I mean it was basically one of the first few runs of these stupid cars. It's just really friggin' hard to tell 'cause, well, the damn air intake is constnatly making noise. Blah.
But yeah, so I jacked the back of the thing up. It's a constant noise, not a variable noise that goes depending on where I put the weight from steering. Rear-passanger side wheel, when you spin it, has a spot where it sounds like something rubbing. There's no noticable play in the hub, maybe it's just starting to go? But it sounds like it's the front when I'm driving. I dunno. I should go jack the front up and test it some more I guess. I just wanna figure out the darn problem. I also need to rememebr to call the dealership and schedule a reflash or whatever.
Other than that, not much. Got some airsoft stuff down. Waiting on the dryer so I can get clothes to go to work. It's :55 and I have to be out of the house by :45. I'm gonna go check that wheel real quick, pack a quick lunch, get changed, and head out.
March 12th, 2023 | 1209 - 1218
Man, I get why the whole daylight savings time thing exists but damn if the jump forward doesn't kill me every time. Just gonna be tired as all heck at work tonight because my usual seven got cut to six and I can feel it in my eyes. Blah.
Decided I'd sit down and try putting some amount of work into the 'ol site this morning... if I'm not lazy with how I work like I was yesterday then I'll also do some stuff while at work. Have a few ideas on cleaning up some pages and making load times take a lot less. I love that I have big 'ol photos (once you open 'em in a new tab) but dang if it doesn't take a while to load some stuff like the ML-8000 page on slower connections. heh. just stuff I never really put a ton of thought into.
Speaking of not putting a ton of thought into stuff, blew the whole month's spending money in a weekend. lol. Had to pay ZenMarket 'cause that's the thing to do when you've got 95k of credit in-use. Had to throw 160,000 yen at 'em to pay down said credit and pay shipping on stuff. Got like 60kg of box coming over. That's two boxes. So that's gonna be a lot. But it's also like a convention and a half of console stock? I guess I don't mind that much. If ya want a copy of Super Mario Kart for the SFC, come to me. I'll have like 80 of the stupid things! I also nabbed a CA PP-19-3 for airsoft 'cause I missed the PPS when they existed and I don't like the CYMA bodies too much. Should be neat. Just gotta not blow any cash for a few paychecks unless I feel like being really irresponsible.
thinking of bringing crap over for cons, had a silly conversation in Discord. I like to sell stuff at basically little-to-no profits because I get most of my enjoyment just seeing people happy and then the one person who ends up sending me something of them using the stuff and going "oh man this is cool!" or whatever. Because that, I have Famicoms priced at like $20 a pop. Got 10 of the idiots for 980 yen, so like $7.25. Shipping comes out to like $5 a unit so we're at $5.72 per system. Cleaning 'em up costs like $0.50 to me. Throwing in a game, I have a bunch of copies of Mario that I got for like $3 a pop including shipping. Adding a new power supply is like $8. So we're at what, $17.25 or something? $2.75 of profit makes it a nice even $20. I'm happy, they're happy, it's way under eBay, all is right. or so to me. lol. Got told I should charge more because I should value the time more, say $30. They're not wrong. I should charge more. It's still under eBay. I dunno. I just wanna be cheap enough that people can buy the things and be happy, y'know? I guess if $30 is still there then it won't feel wrong to charge $30. idk. no idea how to factor in mod price past cost of parts. Maybe in the case of Famicoms systems this year will just be $30 factory or $40 modded? but like not just the console, console/game/psu at the least.
Have I talked about the whole eating potatoes thing on here? Dunno what got into me but I decided I'd be stupid and do that thing I've heard a few others do, just only eating potatoes for like a week or two. I ended that and man, lemme tell ya what, seasonings taste amazing. lol. Went the kinda "hardcore" route on it, 99% of calories had to come from potatoes/only one meal per-day was allowed to have seasonings on it but no salt, nothing containing oil. It wasn't really that hard, it was just extremely boring. lol. Got talking with dudes at work about it and it is kinda interesting, I can sit there and over two hours eat a whole pizza at what, 2k calories? Meannwhile like three small-medium russets, 300ish calories, and I'm just stuffed beyond belief. Weird stuff.
I need to find my tube of 1802s. I wanna build some stuff. I just can't remember where I put the darn things. heh. oh well. Soon enough.
February 28th, 2023 | 1033 - 1048
Been a while, eh? heh. Gonna keep being a while sadly. Well not really? I dunno.
Work has it confirmed that I'm on for all of next month. All of next month. But, as usual when this happens, it should mean that I get at least three months of a normal schedule. Slam hours for the first quarter, act normal for the next two, then either get really slow or work a ton for the fourth...
The big 3D printer is back up and "running", I got one of those Snapmaker things because "oh hey three in one is neat" until I'm sitting here having stuff like bed adhesion issuses/the thing never stays calibrated/the Y axis has a variable zero/it's prone to running the hot end into the heated bed/it doesn't perform great with PLA+ no matter how I try to set it up despite the original Alpha Snapmaker doing really well... it just kinda sucks so I think I'm gonna go buy one of the larger Ender 3s. They're cheap and people seem to love them.
My Wizard came in so the FM Towns will, at some point here, get fully fixed up and re-assembled. Kinda excited. I found like five or six games that I actually wanna play on the thing. I also know people at shows will love seeing it. It should be neat. Either one of these mornings or just next month?
I found a listing after like two years for Multi16 software. A CP/M-86 system disk, a M-BASIC system disk, and some MELSAP disks. Also known as everything I needed to start working on the computer and a really legacy version of an industrial control system that I'm vaguely familiar with. It wasn't cheap, like $300, but it just made my three "useless" systems into three (hopfully) usable computers. It should also all be getting flux dumped, thrown on Archive, thrown on here, and will just maybe make a system in someone else's collection usable. That should be cool.
I also bought an arcade board. I've wanted an Exidy 440 for ages, Crossbow is a game I really enjoy but almost never get to mess with. Someone listed a boardset on eBay for half the usual price at QuarterArcade. I couldn't resist. I don't actually have a cabinet for the thing but I do have this old NEC PC-8801 color (15KHz RGB/"CGA") monitor which works but is in a case currently held together using packing tape. It shattered into like 500 pieces. I'm thinking about building a new case for it using some wood and metal, running some extra connectors for input like a speaker and audio, 9-pin CGA, and the same old the 8-pin Japanese connector, then trying to put the Exidy board in a wood case as well. Hook the two together, figure out how the heck to connect a light gun to said Exidy board, and then I have my own Crossbow at home? Throw in a multigame kit and I even get Chiller? Should be neat? I dunno. I hope it works. It'll be a whole thing soon enough.
Having Discord again has been pleasant. I don't do much with it but it's there. Only in like two servers, one with old friends from high school/college and the one Coal made. I think I'm gonna keep it to that. Just people to play Minecraft with and people to talk about old stuff with. Woo.
If I get more dead time later before work, fairly sure I will as I just need to go take a shower/clean out the car with four hours still before I have to leave, I'm gonna go back into the pages and set up starts for some new ones/clean up old ones. Kinda wanna get this site worked on some more, y'know? Hoping next month when my schedule opens up/I get weekends I'll be able to start throwing content out again. hah.
February 12th, 2023 | 0039 - 0111
Well, I found some time so I'm gonna use it to screw around. heh.
Work's been alright. The new people are doing well, skateboard dude beats himself up a bit too much but he's never used anything like we have before (he's just been folding boxes for months and only worked in food service before) so I'm just doing my best to calm him down and let him know it's going to be okay. This weekend is three of us so it's chill, all of like five small things to do then just paperwork until midnight. There's a shot I have next weekend off? I'm really hoping I do, it would help a load and a half.
I was all excited because a while back I went and saw In Flames on tour, their new album came out last Friday. Didn't realize the show opener was just the first two songs of the album! Makes sense. I hadn't listened to any singles, well I guess the stuff they played at the show but nothing else, and I liked the whole thing front-to-back. It sounded awesome and it made my Friday that much better. I wanna find another concert to go to but it has to be a few months out. I guess Silverstein is gonna be in Cleveland, I might go try to hit that one up 'cause I really enjoyed the new album they did?
Speaking of Cleveland, my CCAG table is paid. So yeah, two shows to run. Same two as last year. I uh... yep, settling on Famicoms. They're still at a price where I can get them for like $7.50 shipped, put $7.50 of work into them, then sell them for like $20-25 a pop and come home with just enough cash to break even on the show. Cheap enough that people will buy, enough profit that I don't lose money. $5 is all I want. $5 is all I'll take. Should be nice.
Colantia said she's gonna make another Discord thing. It's at discord(dot)gg/2BM2P6J7sb if you wanna join. If not, I respect it.
I kinda ran out of stuff to talk about. hah. Came home thinking I had all sorts of ideas in my head and I lost 'em all. Oh well. I mean I have ideas, just not stuff to go on here right now. y'know? yeah.
February 7th, 2023 | 0317 - 0341
So yeah, about long days...
The people we got seem really nice. The one dude's pretty neat, skateboarder with a decent amount of work experience in pretty rough areas (food service) and the other girl has a decent amount of relevant experience from other shops. Both are picking stuff up nicely so it helps a ton.
My brain isn't doing amazing, no surprise. Already down because I cut so much stuff out, now extra out of it because I spent ~10-11hrs at work dealing with work. Have to pull the upcoming weekend, not too excited for it. Should be off the weekend after, really hoping I am because I need it for my own sanity.
Buddy wanted a Super Famicom so I imported one for 'em. Also like 30 more Famicoms. CCAG sent out an invoice for the booth and I decided yeah, even though I'm kinda "out" of the retro stuff scene I still wanna go and have fun. It's looking like I'm just gonna be taking boxes and boxes of cheap-ass Famicom sets, like $20 or $25 for a tested/cleaned system and a game since I'm getting the consoles at a whole $4.57 a pop, and I think those will be enjoyed. I also did snag a Wizard from the new batch for my FM Towns, that'll get finished and put back together once said Wizard arrives. I also also found a stash of some neat-o chips and I think I'm gonna try some random homebrew crap with it. All else failing, I'll have a few goofy computers to lug along as well.
Speaking of computers getting moved, I need to ship stuff. hah. heh. I don't wanna go anywhere before work because I prefer getting seven hours of sleep/one hour to make breakfast/lunch/dinner and I can't really take enough break to go to the post office when they're open. Home pickup don't work 'cause I'm not at home when they come. This just sucks and I feel really bad.
De-riveted the GHK AK105 and man that thing is just a pain in the ass. Wouldn't recommend buying one. I am having some fun with it, it's cool to go through and fix all these various manufacturing defects, but it's not at all worth it for the $475 new/up to $1300 used (depending on model and if it's from a good year or bad year) pricetag. I can see why the guy who knows a ton about the things says that "anyone who still seriously buys these is probably an inbred" because, well, you have to be pretty stupid to take this over the other options. I guess I'm pretty stupid. Also on airsoft, got an Echo1 Spectre since Octagon did a new run of top-folders. Really neat. Gonna drop an HPA engine (Redline N7) into it, get some spare body parts for eventual breakage, get a light on it, and run it a ton because it's just fun.
Some amount of tabletop work has gotten done. I have another website that's like 80% ready for my one game to restart once it's ready and I'm through this training stuff... really praying I can at least get it going for a few more sessions. Or I'll just have a good base to restart. I dunno. I was browsing Reddit and some dude wanted like $1k for a few boxsets of Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020, was refreshing to see people commenting that it was overcharging to hell 'cause barely anyone even cares and the community is mostly older TTRPG players who don't actually wanna burn that much cash on this stuff. So used to seeing stuff like that come in and people just start jacking prices based off seeing one random listing. I don't think I've seen anyone pay over like $150 for a good-condition 2013 box in my life. Well, apart from a few idiots on eBay. But yeah. Really nice to see people actively encourage sellers to lower their expectations.
Learning Solidworks has gone kinda well so far, I have two parts modeled. The magazine tube holder for the JAC M10/Uzi magazines and a blank faceplate for my 9821Ra266. Both look nice in the program? I need to figure out how to get PLA+ working in my 3D printer (I assume it's similar settings to PLA? I need to just read the box I guess.) because I ordered a spool of eSun. I've been using this really cheap crap plain PLA for a good two years now, it's not amazing and my one test print (a JAC M10 holder) proved to be super stringy. Hoping the new (and higher-quality, like $25/spool and good ratings instead of $12/spool and meh ratings) filament helps like it should.
I uh... what else... I found out CETME C parts kits are cheap and I may build one in a few months 'cause it sounds fun, some more people have started using my Minecraft server and that's cool, I played around with that IW4X thing that lets you play MW2 but not glitchy and messy like the Steam release which was a nostalgia trip, the pancake houses open next weekend 'cause maple sap has been flowing so if I have off I'm going to one with some buddies, I think I'm just gonna buy tickets to play on green team for the July event that Gun Gamers is running at Ben Franklin Range because talking with some of the organizers/their friends/attendees for Overture and Attrition has me basically sold, Goo Gone is surprisingly nice and I need to remember it exists, and I'm really happy to say that I've gotten myself down another 10lbs/changed my diet for the better but I think sadly part of it is due to my (partially forced) not great eating habits because of the work schedule.
so yeah, there's some rambling.
I'll see about adding stuff maybe on the weekend, two others signed on with me so there's a solid shot if one certain thing stays dead that we'll be able to relax for a couple hours and I'm super excited for that. Wouldn't mind getting some work done on adding a few pages. That or I really wanna work on MSX-PG because I keep looking at that damn Pioneer and wishing I had a few hours to sit down and start playing with the RPi side of things, it seems super cool.
Hope y'all have a nice day and I'll hopefully post something else/a few proper pages before the month is over. I just killed 40 minutes of sleep to do this in an attempt to empty/decompress my head, I really need to go to bed because I have to be out the door for work in eight hours.
January 25th, 2023 | 0156 - 0201
I don't have much to really say, just putting something up to say I'm alive.
There should be some sort of pages coming about a few projects. Writing them offline on the Chromebook I drag around with me, they'll be up whenever I'm happy with them as a start.
Probably not going to have time to do much for a while. I'm going to have to train two people at work (yay not being short-staffed) but that means I'm going to have to go in early/stay over to get my own stuff done for the day. Originally it was just train one person, cool I can still do my own work in the standard eight hour day, but two people? Nah. I'm gonna be screwed out. Usually takes five weeks? Five weeks of at least ten hour days, every single day. No weekends or days off.
Guess I'll talk to this beige void again like March 5th or so. Well, put anything longer than a few sentences down. This is about as much "social activity" (if you can even call it that) as I get outside of my job so I'm probably really gonna feel like shit for the whole of next month. Oh well, do it for the money...
January 19th, 2023 | 0212 - 0227
Turns out sometimes stuff looks bad but just kinda works out. Was driving to grab food and hit some bars of steel that must've fell off a truck across some railroad tracks, sounded like hell but the car is just fine/I took said bars to the scrapyard and got $10 out of it. Been stuck in writer's block for a while on my tabletop stuff but ended up coming into basically the perfect schedule regarding my weekends by not having to worry about anything except my job. That GHK AK105 I got has a very minor pinch but functions perfectly and fitment ain't too bad, also someone is putting out a hop unit that engages in a slightly different manner, so it's a keeper. I'm happy.
Work's been kinda smooth... well, as smooth as consistently short-staffed can be. heh. There's someone on the floor who we like and has expressed interest in maybe coming to work with us. I said I'd train 'em if they sign up for it. Kinda hoping they sign up for it. Not too often I actually wanna train people at work, I'm more than happy to (attempt to) teach people stuff outside of work but at the job I feel like I do such a horrible job. Funny becuase others say I do a good job. Maybe I'm just too critical of myself, I dunno. End of the day, yeah, if this works out we'll be a little less short-staffed/we'll all have an easier time/someone new gets to join the hee-haw instead of being stuck standing at a machine all day/more people to talk with should be cool.
In July there's gonna be a big 'ol national-scale BB wars event coming to Ben Franklin Range which is like an hour and a half from my house. Closet something will ever be. Well, maybe not, BFR is hosting more stuff... anyways, yeah, 12hr BB wars game. Run by people I'm somewhat familiar with, and know to be quite cool, because they run a youtube channel and play at all the Western NY fields that I usually/used to play at. I think it's gonna be my first big thing now that I'm back into the sport. Was hoping for more LARPy stuff 'cause I like that but, well, hey it's gonna be a solid time. Can still go be goofy there.
Gonna work the weekend which kinda sucks but eh, three people again. I like that. It'll be nice and easy. Go in, do like an hour or two of actual job stuff, do like six or seven hours of other stuff, have people to talk with... I did a V1 print on a little thing I designed to repair a commonly broken part on another thing I really like. Turns out making little plastic locking tabs is hard. Who would've guessed? I assume it's a mix of my lack of knowing how structures should be formed, my like three-year-old bottom-of-the-barrel PLA, and just needing to mess around more. Someone told me to look into chamfers. Rounded corners are neat. I'm gonna probably make up the V2 model in that dead time.
I dunno what all to really say, my head's just been perpetually empty and at this point I think it's entirely down to a mix of depression due to a lack of doing anything social except for maybe every other weekend, anxiety because I can't get myself to go do stuff no matter how hard I try unless I put money down for it and/or have someone else to go with, and just not really doing much in general. Well, I dunno about the last point. But like, I barely... nah, I have been kinda playing games with some people. Buddy and his buddies wanted to play Planetside 2 and it was kinda fun. So I can't say I haven't been playing games. And I can't say I haven't been playing airsoft. I dunno, really. I entirely lost what I was thinking about, I'm just typing whatever comes to my head right now.
It's 0227. I should probably go to bed.
January 15th, 2023 | 0147 - I forgot
Took a buddy out last night and we grabbed some dinner, sat around, and talked. It was pretty nice. There's this spot that does chicken a good ten ways but, changing it up, I got something with sausage and shrimp... and chicken. Always find it funny. I go there and try to get something that isn't chicken, nah, chicken somehow finds a way. Not that I'm complaining, it tastes really good.
Stuff is slowly rolling in to finish off purchases I made before January and, well, that's kinda nice. Not much of anything left on the list of "stuff to maybe get". Just two computers, a bit more gear for airsoft, and organization-related things. Yay. No more "PayPal is taking $750 every other week" 'cause it's down to only $175. I think once February hits it's fully done. Gotta start saving for maybe taking another Boston trip and going to a few events...
Speaking of spending cash, one of my last things where I'm about to enter a money pit or refund the purchase entirely, Rush B got some GHK AK105s in. They're 2022 models. Y'know, the ones with horrifying QC issues like "we riveted the front trunnion on wrong" or "the rear trunnion was cast wrong" or "we didn't bend the receiver enough". Yeah. I paid money for one. Only because Rush B says they'll disassemble and double-check all of 'em before sending 'em. I think I paid on January 11th and they shipped on the 13th? That's a decent sign for once. Still have to double-check it when I get it, praying it's "just" a wide receiver as I can get that bent into shape by shimming it tighter.
I got some time in on the 9821Ra266 yesterday. Finally got rid of the USB interface card 'cause I got a circular DIN bus mouse in the mail. Yay. Threw in the UIDE-98 and got drivers installed, now to just get a disk installed. If I can finally have a bigger hard drive I'm gonna be really excited. I've been wanting to use it for a while now, just kinda rough when I can't put anything on it.
It's looking like today's gonna be a slow day so I think I'm gonna work on trying to organize a few tiers on a really messy shelf. Been wanting to get that shelf moved somewhere else if not just moved out so I can put in a longer desk, 8ft desk would be really sweet, but the top three tiers are just piles of random junk. Hopefully they'll be taken care of fast enough. heh.
January 9th, 2023 | 1222 - 1309
Easiest weekend in a while, holy heck. Not that they're ever hard when I have to work, just that three people meant there was only about 45 minutes of stuff per-person then we were done. With a bunch of downtime, I started working on learning Solidworks 'cause I bought that Maker license and all. xDesign runs great in the browsers there, I just have to log into my email on a private tab to launch it 'cause I don't want that password maybe saving to a computer. I was struggling to come up with a first project for CAD, so I ended up forcing myself to pick one that seemed useful for right now and then made a list of anything else that seemed neat and rolled a die to pick something off of it.
For the "useful right now", because I wanna go actually play airsoft with the ACM, I'm trying to come up with some form of speedloader... I can't exactly decide on what I want to be the speedloader which is becoming a slight issue. I have two ideas in my head right now, both taking from my years shooting flintlock: Make a "base-and-plunger" paper cartridge former or create some sort of "powder flask"/"powder measure" device. I say these because this doesn't load under spring tension, you remove the magazine tube, fill the now-empty chamber with 48 BBs, then slide the tube which has a spring at the far end back into the gun. Paper cartridges can be tore open and used as a guide to get BBs in then simply disposed, a powder measure can also just be a simple-and-reusable guide system. I'll probably do the measure option but, maybe for having on stuff like 48-hour games where I just play a Civilian-type character, paper cartridges could be a pretty neat way to run very light on the gun while keeping the focus on role-play up.
For the "random" pick, the old idea of replacement bezel plates for the 9821Ra266 came around. Simply enough, finding new bezel plates for machines without them sucks and then finding bezel plates with the cutout for the second FDD sucks even more. Everyone's talked about doing this so who knows, maybe someone else already has? I don't care, I can't find it myself and I want it. Talking like $60-80 just to have that second disk drive in a desktop machine with a real bezel plate, hell with that. $5 and a few hours on a 3D printer, maybe also an hour of finishing, sounds much better to me. This one should be pretty cool because the above project is nothing but making some cylinders with angles on 'em, I've already figured out drawing on the Z axis and using the Rotate/Chamfer tools. This project is making a weird rectangle, adding the curve into it, cutting some holes out of it, and also making locking tabs. I guess whenever I finish it I'll have to find suitably-colored filimanet or paint to finish it and re-make the Ra266 page.
Back on the airsoft idea, a friend has some interest in playing. I'd love to take 'em and have 'em rent but I know that renting gear can be a bit of a "ew I don't wanna do that" to a few people who have seen higher-end stuff. Because of that, I ran a little poll among some people and we came up with buying a CYMA M1A1 Thompson and a MP5SD6. Both will get some minor upgrades (barrel, bucking, nub, shims, grease, mosfet, maybe also bushings in the M1A1) then six midcaps, two 7.4V lipos, some simple gear (MAT49 ammo pouch + leather sling for the M1A1, Dank Robber DR-9 for the MP5), two speedloaders, two bags of BLS .30s, and eyepro/facepro. More than enough stuff to play. They'll get to pick whichever set they prefer, I'll keep the other, and I'll take 'em to a game. If they like it then they can keep it as a gift, if not we'll swap, and if they still don't like it then I'll take it back and just have extra stuff.
Back on the computer idea, I found some videos and articles on Japanese sites of people restoring and getting the little version (PWP-30) of my paper tape punch (PWP-50) working. Holy heck I didn't realize how fast these run! I'm used to hearing a defined "chunk" noise every time holes get put into the tape, not the "brrrrrrrrrrrrt" these do. That's really cool. Turns out I'm entirely right, it'll be a fairly simple task getting this hooked up and then it's just "ready the thing, send data, let it fly". Still gotta find a reader...
It's getting onto like 1300 and I should probably get going, I need to take something reasonable to eat for work. Yesterday we got lazy and bought the stuffed crust from Little Caesar's, it's good but holy crap I had two slices of that plus some of the ICB and I felt horrible because I over-ate off just that alone. Got some chicken breasts and carrots which need to be eaten sooner rather than later, just gonna make something simple out of that with rice and call it good enough. If I have downtime at work I'll start on measuring out and making a drawing of that Ra266 bezel plate, it's gonna be coming with me in my backpack all wekk, but if not then that's okay. Hope you have a nice rest of your day!
January 6th, 2023 | 1034 - 1056
Sometimes I question what the heck I was thinking when I bought stuff. Got home from work at 0050 or so and there were two boxes waiting outside my door. Oh boy, stuff! Issue is, I don't know what this stuff could be because I haven't been on ZenMarket for like two weeks (the large box) and the other one had no return address on it. Oh boy...
Opened the one with no return address and little me got really happy, I forgot but someone on Discord a while ago said they were selling an ACM (Clone of the Marushin) M500, 8mm not 6mm, for pretty cheap. It's an airsoft shotgun from before stuff like the Tokyo Marui gas system/the APS shell system existed, probably the most skirmishable shotgun ten years ago, and I used to have one (but in 6mm) when I was little. Gassed it up, dumped 60 bbs in the tube, and it fires great. Gonna have to order some steel action bars and maybe also a steel hammer/sear, the thing is so simple inside that with just replacing those two components I can probably make it outlive me.
The ZenMarket box was my paper tape reader/punch combo. Almost forgot about that thing. It's pretty friggin' huge, I can see why they put rubber feet on the back and a carry handle on it 'cause it's probably not meant to be out on a desk all day long. I don't exactly know what the right half of the thing is for. I'm gonna have to make a page about attempting to go about setting it up and using it. Silly me has been wondering "how does it encode data?" for a while now, turns out it's been in my face - there's a switch that says ISO/EIA, after re-reading the standards I realized that ISO should just be ASCII. Should mean that interfacing this to say an old computer may not actually be that hard? We have a DB25 serial port, can't be all that tough.
Work's letting three of us, somehow there's three of us, on for the weekend and they also just had people out to fix one of the CMMs which threw a power supply alongside some proprietary cards. Guess I know what my whole weekend is gonna be, fixing all the programs on said CMM. "Sucks" but I really don't mind, it's something to keep busy with and if a few of the worse programs get remade into versions which don't stop 50+ times on failed measurements before they end then I think that'll help just about everyone.
Got a fair few hours before I need to be out this morning so I think I'm gonna play a little something, work on a little something else, sketch up some art for a thing a coworker pitched, and then figure out food. Should probably also actually eat breakfast. Just getting tired of ham and eggs every morning... turns out, living with just yourself, you really don't need to buy an entire ham for the holidays. Could've gotten away with just a flat 'ol gammon steak and been more than fine. heh. Hope you have a nice day!
January 3rd, 2023 | 1319 - 1330
I dunno what exactly got into me but I've wanted to screw around with CAD more and more in recent times. I guess it's the projects I want to screw around with? There's the idea of doing 3D printed bezel bits for some of the PC98s, say one for the Ra266 I have with the 3.5" disk cutout. Then there's the little me idea of a semi-automatic 40mm launcher for airsoft. Also just making useful-ish things for around the house I can print out. I dunno. I looked into the options and I saw everyone basically said "use Solidworks or Fusion 360", asked the dude at work who I'm gonna be under for a bit what they use for mold design and he said Solidworks. Figure I'll get a jump-start on the courses by learning it myself so I gave 'em $70 for a year-long maker license. Heck knows if I'll have any decent idea what I'm doing by February but hey, if I can at least make some small things and print them out on my own then that'd be neat.
Was kinda fun having the few long weekends in a row but now it's back to the usual schedule. I think when I get to work today I'm just gonna tell them to put me on for the upcoming weekend. I could use the OT, gotta start saving for a trip to Boston and a few other things with friends, and it's not like anyone else is gonna take it. Definitely going to fight for getting every other weekend off if I can for the forseeable future just because I do wanna do stuff like play games, see friends, and whatever else. Thinking of work, I guess on Thursday they're gonna interview someone? Should be interesting, I dunno. If we could be less short-staffed I'd be happy.
I forgot how much I hate getting a site started with GitHub Pages 'cause I'm being lazy and using that for another project. It's not that it's bad, it's just that getting a theme configured and working never goes how the instructions say and my config file always looks goofy compared to what they say I should have. Almost makes me wanna just throw stuff on here but, for the sake of having stuff like actual navigation for people who won't enjoy this jumble, nah.
I'm screwing around with/enjoying this one stealth game, Blood West, so I'm gonna play that for like an hour then get myself off to work. Just hope it doesn't crash again. heh.
January 2nd, 2023 | 0113 - 0118
Well, it's 2023. Another year has gone by. Neat.
I get the day off, it's quite nice having a three-day weekend after a four-day weekend, but man I dunno what the heck to do with it. I guess play some games, try to figure out the .wiki site a little bit, maybe finally write about two games 'cause I took screenshots and whatnot for a few pages, and just lounge around a bit?
I don't actually really have anything else to say. The head is extremely empty. That's fine I guess. Kinda sucks. I dunno.
Have a nice day.
December 29th, 2022 | 1044 - 1101
Well, the 25th was fun. Got to see my brothers, gave them some Super Nintendo games they've been hunting for/got a bunch of mead. Got to see my dad, gave him and helped him set up an antenna/got some cash. Got to see my mom, gave her some earrings/got a wok and bourbon/bourbon-related things. Got to see my cousins, gave them gift cards/got gift cards. Woo. Ended up using the wok this morning, got it all blued up and made some egg fried rice in it, good gosh that thing is a ton of fun. I'm interested to see what more I can do with it, I did get stuff for a simple stir fry to take to work so marinated beef + mushrooms + peppers + carrots + garlic + rice I guess. It should be fun!
I've been taking a lot of time to work on organizing out the things which I cleaned and it's paying off pretty well. Bought a bunch of storage totes, been puitting things in them based around themes and labeling it all with slip-in invoice holders for shipping boxes carrying lists of everything contained. Got a few ammo cans, finally sorted out the piles of boxes of bullets/balls/bbs into proper places. At the moment I'm working on "spare parts" from computers, I have a lot of framework from PC98s which were beyond recovery and just random stock from other systems I've gotten over the years. Porkbun had a promotion for a free .wiki domain so I think I'm gonna nab one to neatly organize out all my Cyberpunk 2013/2020 information as a website of documentation instead of being a jumble of pages on various sections.
Speaking of website work, well getting to it, I finally played some video games the other day. Buddy invited me out to a LAN party so we could sit down with six people and play Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator which is always a fun time. In setup I put like half an hour into STALKER: Clear Sky. Thinking with the extended weekend I may put part of a day back into continuing my savefile and updating that page? Also should finally get back to working on the MSX-PG project but man, just kinda stacked a bunch of stuff and cleaning has been hte most satisfying. I think I'll stick to that.
Kinda excited, my head's been perpetually empty and with that I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of things but I think I'm going to end up closing the year out with most of my stuff on the to-do list settled? Stuff is cleaning up, I'll be properly holding down like 65lbs from the first of 2022, I got back into some hobbies I enjoy, my head has had a lot less stress, I've got a few little trips planned, I should be good to start finishing up projects and getting things to show off at conventions... really friggin' sucks basically only talking with people at work, I really miss having any amount of being social and it does eat at me pretty damn often, but maybe trading that off for more stability was good. I dunno. If I have any big goals for next year, it's basically just drop at least 40lbs more/attempt to figure out how to healthily be in contact with at least some people that way half of my thoughts when my head isn't completely empty are "you're lonely and stupid".
December 24th, 2022 | 1010 - 1018
Been a little bit. Heh. Kinda just keeping myself busy with random things, getting through more house cleaning/trying to figure out how to take care of a few issues coming up at work/spending a bunch of time hiking. Now it's like -5F (-20C) and all the roads around me are closed down or extremely discouraged from being used, just cooped up in my house with a few days off.
There was a little "bring food" event at work on Thursday, just four of us 'cause everyone else is calling off, so we went a bit overkill but it was pleasant. I made apple crisp and mac and cheese, someone got a huge antipasto salad, someone else brought filipino food that was like this rice and sort-of a beef stew to put over top of it, and the last dude brought really nice coffee and hot chocolate. It was solid. Because the whole "being snowed in" thing I'm just working on my leftovers at home, the pantry has maybe a few things left in it then it's just empty. Kinda fun seeing all the free space in there now.
Had some buddies out yesterday, built some stuf with 'em and just sat around talking over food. The one is going away to California for a few months again next weekend, nice to spend time while we can and I need to find some stuff to have to do when they get back.
I guess I'm kinda just sitting around all day, nothing to really do except clean up some mess from last night and maybe work on a computer, so I'm gonna see if I can get time into the tabletop stuff. Been on a break from maintaining it for a bit and I do wanna restart the game next month, I need to put time in. Also just update the Minecraft server. hah.
December 18th, 2022 | 1002 - 1011
At like 2200 yesterday, they issued a winter weather warning. "8-12 inches of snow" + "winds up to 30mph" was what it said. Wake up this morning and well, the power is on/there's only a quarter of an inch of snow on the ground/the slow snowfall is coming perfectly straight downward. Look at the weather map right now and it looks like something big is moving to us. I hope I can get to work before this maybe gets bad.
Because the weather was clear last night, I went on a bit of a hike after work. I know the layout of some local gamelands damn well, I've walked them hundreds of times. Threw on some good layers, went out, and grabbed a flashlight. It was kinda pleasant. I forgot how noisy geese can be even at night, any time I got near the waterline of the swamp I could hear them start honking. Heh.
Cleaning is going well so far. Moved ten computers, put a shelf where they were, fit them and some drawers of component storage up, made a good corner usable again. Yay. Gotta do more but I also just kinda wanna play a game until work hits. Hm.
December 16th, 2022 | 0100 - 0113
Seven more days and then I get four days off. Woo.
It's been a little sad but I haven't been thinking about it much, my brain's been so (relatively) empty with the cycle of wake up/have three hours to get food ready/go to work until midnight/get home/go to sleep that I haven't really got work done on a ton of stuff? I dunno. I need to get working on thinking again. There are so many things lined up to get worked on, just gotta work on 'em I guess.
I was screwing around cleaning the pantry and I looked at the bag of barley I have. Thought about it a while and y'know I've never actually ate just barely plain. Pretty good. Kinda like brown rice but a ton more filling? Good lord that stuff works wonders at making me not feel hungry. Ate maybe a cup and some change of it cooked on Tuesday, didn't even think about wanting food until Wednesday. Ended up throwing some mushrooms, sausage, a can of chipotles in adobo sauce, and some extra tomato sauce into the rest. Let it sit in the fridge over night and had it today. Really good stuff. I'm gonna remember that.
I need to come up with food to bring to work next Thursday, it's both food day and also the last day before the holiday break hence "seven more days". The last two food days have been McDonald's because I've never actually ate a fast food burger in my life until now. The Big Mac isn't bad but it isn't amazing, the double quarter pounder was better because more meat, throwing a chicken sandwich between the patties was just too good. Am I gonna go out of my way to eat that stuff? Nah. But if someone offers at least I now know that it ain't too bad. Back on the topic, yeah, holiday break means food day becomes pot luck day. Gotta make a dish. Someone's gonna be doing filipino rice, I assume someone else will have some amount of bosnian food, I have no idea what the one dude who bought mexican last time will do, and I need to dig up my cookbook to find something to make. Should probably bring something standard as american, maybe find some common side dish then also try my hand at something different?
Christmas gifts to give out are slowly rolling in and it's pretty cool. Threw a present under the work tree for one of the lab techs, the other is getting a keyboard kit that we're waiting on switches for then I'll box it up and put it there as well. One girl really likes BTS so I found BTS Uno, also got a pack of the nice thin-point sharpies that she really likes to use at work. The other I have no honest idea about but I know they like a specific kind of coffee so I got a pound of it and also a box of the nice sharpies. Gotta figure out two more people. Then I'm buying rifle parts for some builds for high school friends, I have Secret Santa stuff that should get mailed out next week, and I bought some stuff for the brothers. Woo.
I think I'm just gonna try to get myself to sleep earlier than usual tonight, gotta put the garbage out and then hit the bed. I'll stop here, hopefully I'll get some work done in the morning. Meaning to put up a shelf and move some computer stuff. Will I finally do it? I hope I will. Hah. Enjoy the rest of your day.
December 13th, 2022 | 0101 - 0127
Good weekend.
One of my first friends from way back in elementary school got a flintlock rifle not too long ago. He knew absolutely nothing about it, it was serial number 1 from a company that went out of business thirty years ago, he had no idea how to use it, had no idea if it could even be used, but he was interested in learning. I grew up shooting flintlock rifles, traditional cap/flint black powder firearms are the only thing I'll go hunting with, and I love one-offs. I told him I had the weekend off, he said let's make it a thing, we invited another friend out, and we had a solid two days. Got a good excuse to travel to a town 45 minutes to the south, got some great pizza and chicken, got to teach someone that traditional firearms can be quite fun, and I bought them some stuff for all three of us to put together as Christmas presents. It feels nice.
I went to see the work doc today, he's a nice guy, and he got on the topic of my history with my head being kinda not amazing more than thirty days out of the whole year. Told him it's still about there and he made a suggestion to try things like vitamins via supplementation. Decided I'd do some reading... man, I can't tell if there may actually be something helpful that exists through supplements or if they really are just a load of crap. I'll see someone talk about Vitamin D, I'll look into it and 85% of the things I can find are Covid-19 conspiracy theories, 15% of the other things are people saying it can be helpful to the body with studies so I try to read those, it links off with people saying I have to take two other things with it, nobody states specifics on the other things to take, I can't find an average value that would be classified as "uniuversally beneficial" to take because pills range from 1,000 to 100,000 micrograms with every numerical value covered, then I see things about people taking too much of something and feeling horrible because they overdose on it but it's fat-soluible vs water-soluible so you have to have like 20,000mcg and 10,000mcg and 5,000mcg and 2,000mcg pills that you vary depending on how the third tree to the left of your house feels that morning or something I can't understand... man, how the hell do people take these things? Seriously. I don't understand any of it. I think I'm just gonna try to eat more meaningful/healthy meals and be more active. Maybe dropping another 50lbs, getting myself on a better diet, and doing more with my hobbies is what I need to work towards. Not spending $125 at a GNC for something that has no evidence I can find if it's a placebo or not.
Speaking of reading and trying to better myself, a got a present from a coworker today. It's Schwarzenegger's Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, a book I've heard a lot of people basically credit as not only teaching them but motivating them to get into lifting, and y'know that is something that I think I could probably do to make myself feel better without a ton of "well what if..."s to it. I read the introduction today and I wasn't sure what to expect, sounds like it might be neat? A history of bodybuilders, going over all sorts of execrcises and what they do, how to stretch, how to plan. I never really lifted anything amazing but I used to enjoy lifiting in high school, I could bench 285lbs at my peak which was about my body weight. Maybe this will make me want to get back into it? I already know that the idea of dropping back to say 285lbs with muscle is motivating enough to try various physical activities out.
I guess speaking of food stuff, it's gonna be pantry cleaning season soon here. Oh boy. The second January hits, I don't let myself buy any food except for the basics (eggs, flour, rice, milk) until I can't make a single meaningful meal with what I have on hand. I wonder how long I'll be able to go this year? I have something like three pounds of long-grain rice, two or three pounds of various beans, a five-pound bag of barley, a lot of cans of mushrooms and tuna, a lot of frozen vegetables, basically a whole frozen deer, a bunch of chicken... if I can get three weeks I think I'll be pretty proud of myself. Might start looking into recipes to see how much I can do with it all.
It's looking like we're about to start getting a bunch of snow really soon here, the weather is definitely moving towards that, and I've been pretty lazy with my snowblower. Need to find a worm gear for the rotation on the chute, I currently can't move the damn thing so it only blows forwards and that means three times per trip up/down the driveway I have to stop, get in front, shovel everything off to the side, and it sucks. Hm. Sounds like a trip to the industrial park is gonna be in my near future.
I got playing with some mail that came in the other day, notably that LD-V510 laserdisc player, and whenever I get the drive to work on stuff for this site instead of just cleaning house/writing on paper I've gotta get it under the PX-V7 and get a picture of it. Just a cool setup. Then open it and fix the tray mechanism. The thing plays laserdiscs perfectly! I just have to hopefully swap a few belts so I don't have to take the top off and spin a gear to eject/retract the dang tray by hand. Hah.
It's going on "kinda late" and I'm doing nothing else tonight since I don't have to prep much food for the morning, I saw the barley and I think I'm just gonna put it with some frozen turkey stock then maybe throw in some meat and veggies for a quick hot meal-in-a-pot to take to work, so I think I'm gonna get myself to bed. Would be nice to shoot for six or so hours of sleep if I can. Maybe I'll get some stuff done in the morning? Can you tell by the fact that I'm writing a bunch and my head is moving that I'm not entirely depressed right now? heh. I'd really love if I could move forward on a project or two, getting that 9821Ap proper fixed and playing some games would be damn nice if I say so myself, and I need to use this whole "feeling up" thing to the best extent I can. Let's hope I can keep myself going for more than a week!
Enjoy the rest of your day!
December 10th, 2022 | 0123 - 0147
I managed to get a weekend off! Next will be at work, but the one after (the holiday) will be four days off. Pretty happy about that.
I uh... there hasn't really been anything going on. I got my boxes from ZenMarket in, Xa13/9881L/LD-V510, and I have yet to mess with anything from them. I did get some decent work done on the tabletop stuff but it's all using pen and paper, I still have to start proofreading it. I haven't shipped boxes out just yet. I did find stuff for PPS-43 flats but I realized I need a few tools I don't own. I bought some more Secret Santa stuff to give people. I put a new hop bucking in the USW. I think that's about it?
I'm aiming to get a fair bit of cleaning done today. It's gonna be a good day for it, nothing to do anyways. Gotta break down a lot of cardboard boxes, throw out a decent amount of junk packing material, finally get the small shelf up next to my desk, finally move a bunch of stuff into deeper storage, and finally reassemble a few devices. I think I'll also play some games? I've been itching to make a little more progress in STALKER and I'd love to pull something random off the 'ol shelf.
I think tomorrow I'm gonna go help a buddy out. He inhereted a flintlock rifle that looks fine, says it's .50 caliber, but he has nothing for and has no idea how to use. I've used flintlocks for the majority of my life, they're some of the only firearms I feel I'm even worthy to own as a civilian and they're the only firearms I feel are reasonable to use for hunting, and I have a ton of supplies for the things. I don't think I have anything for .50 though? We're gonna have to take a trip to a store. I have a rifle in .32, a rifle in .54, and a rifle in .75 so yeah, nope. It should be fun.
I'm kinda just sleepy and sore, I stayed a little extra at work to get some stuff ready for the weekend, so I think I'm just gonna find something peaceful to do then get myself to bed. I saw Speedy put up a new video so I'll probably give that a watch, or just go see if the script is up on Patreon because it's easier for me to read than it is to listen. Always fun learning about some random new game I never heard about. Maybe I'll also finally organize my music folder a little bit? I dunno. Have a nice rest of your day!
December 7th, 2022 | 0234 - 0259
So I got to doing a bit of thinking for the tabletop game. Something I've never really done before is actually put a halfway-decent effort into detailing structures of groups, I mainly just kinda detail the big dudes then make a table of rollable fodder characters to populate a faction. Most of the time the fodder characters are one-offs, sometimes they end up developing out into something proper and become a major character, usually when the latter happens I'm screwed because I forget half of what I improved mid-session. How about trying to go into more detail? I feel like that'd be a decent idea. Write some simple materials that can get printed out and passed to players, design some logos or mottos, actually flesh out organization, or whatever else. I think that's gonna be the thing to do after I wake up.
UPS has three boxes from ZenMarket all hitting me at the same time, gonna pray they get here before work else that's gonna suck to have sitting out all night long. PC-9821Xa13, PC-9881L, and I forget the other thing. I think the Laserdisc player? I don't honestly remember. I know the paper tape reader/writer and the second PC-9821/S1 are still at their warehouse. After those are out I'm gonna start looking into things that I can just stockpile as fun little repair/cleanup projects, Faicoms lol, and maybe I'll also finally get my hands on a Game Gear? I'd love to own a working Game Gear at some point here. Ain't no time like the start of the year to put that on the project list.
Speaking of boxes, I finally got my fresh boxes I ordered through work so I'm gonna find some packing material and finally get things shipping out. They were just gonna order through an old ULine account to get blanks but I told 'em nah. Getting spammed with the catalogs already sucks, people on Discord told me the owners put boatloads of money towards donating to shitbag political causes. Did some reading after being told that myself and hah, nope, hell with that whole company. It "sucks" because what I got are work boxes but I really don't care. I know $50 isn't much compared to the tens of millions of dollars they throw around but, hey, $50 less towards shitbag politicians and crazies is at least something.
Speaking of shipping companies, DHL is finally gonna deliver something pretty friggin' huge to me next week. I found a guy through a forum who knew another guy who was trying to offload some old PFU gear. Got chatting, found out he had a deskside A50 and a racked A70, got chatting even more, found out he was willing to sell me the A70 but I had to buy the whole damn rack, organized some janky stuff, money moved hands, I got a weird old minicomputer using some custom CPU to my name, it's finally arriving. Oh boy. Dude's also willing to move the A50 now, it's just a 68020-based system, but I told them I'd have the money the week after the A70 gets to me. I have basically no good space to put any of this but screw it, I've been using my garage to keep some AS/400 junk, why not put some PFUs in there until the house gets cleaned out as well?
It's going on like 0300 and I should probably get some sleep. Gotta do some thinking about tabletop stuff, see if I can find plans for making a PPS-43 flat with the barrel shroud for some jank airsoft project, actually check my email because it's going on like three days now, and get hyped for work 'cause it's food day and food day means pizza and goddamn I haven't had a nice pizza in a while.
Have fun!
December 6th, 2022 | 0153 - 0237
I got a fairly unexpected call. It was Hal and she wanted to talk for a while, just the usual "how's it going" for a bit, then she wanted to pitch an idea. I guess she's getting into musical instruments, she's had an interest in vacuum tubes for a while, she bought some Doepfer eurorack modules and a simple case, she's getting bored of buying modules, and now she says she wants to know if I wanna help her out with making some sort of goofy audio gear from scratch potentially involving said interest in tubes. Told her yeah, I'm down. I quite like my eurorack jank and it's mostly just using sloths to control patches and just slowly changing them, it's kinda relaxing. Making some probably entirely unstable chaotic mess? Hell yeah. I have no idea where this is going to go but I guess she's supposed to be emailing me some drawings one of these days, all I know is that this should be pretty cool.
All the everyone got their stuff up for Secret Santa so I can finally go about buying gifts, oh wait nah that's gonna wait because the ZenMarket shipping fee was a little bit heavy. Eh. That's alright. Just means more time to think about what to actually buy, probably better than going with the first thing my head says. Person wants some game stuff and some music stuff so I think I'm gonna blow the "budget" and get something from both sides.
I thought I'd have anything to actually write about but nah, nope. Just one thing really pissing me off from work but I'm gonna wait until it's resolved, praying that'll be today. Ranting about stuff usually gets it proper off my head so I'll have the situation proper resolved first. Gonna need to think of something positive to go alongside being angry. I dunno. I think I'm gonna go think what stuff items-wise to officially put in the tabletop game then get sleeping. Have a nice rest of your day!
December 4th, 2022 | 0106 - 0128
I lost my PSP charger like a month ago and I know it can't have gone far, it was honestly not ten feet from me and I know it didn't leave this general area where I have the old computers set up, but I still can't find it. Agh. I got some stuff in that I've been wanting to play around with for the sake of playing around but it's a bit hard to run a UMD when you don't have something with a UMD drive that actually works. Doesn't help I have a 1000, even if I had enough battery to get the system on I wouldn't be able to just charge over USB. Bleh.
One of the guys I play airsoft with was with me at work today so we got talking about stuff. He's trying to get into streaming, dude's playing a mix of Apex Legends/Overwatch 2/Cyberpunk 2077/Fallout 4 at the moment, so there was like four hours of just talking about derping around in games. Last we played he couldn't stand me because all I do is act like a fool, now that he's finding a little being silly as helpful to keeping things fun he understands where I come from. He's also starting to understand why singleplayer games can be a good time and I appreciate that. I'm only "playing" Stalker, I haven't actually played for like a week, but I told him about it and he sounded pretty interested.
Got chatting about airsoft as well, namely how we're fitting idiotic roles and trying to find the next event we want to go to. We both agree we want some LARPy game, say a MSW Insurgency/Grimnir Tactical/Omega Productions event. I guess American Milsim is coming within like four hours of us but ehhhh no. I'm talking about how I want to buy stuff that uses APS Smart Shells, the USW with a SeeAll to 50m is my "long range" kit, and I'm considering starting to invest in Taginns and actually practicing well enough to lob them through say windows. He's claiming he doesn't want to be a speedsoft player but he's looking into a HPA Hi-Capa, lighening and upgrading the heck out of the M4 he bought, and buying the most optimally lightweight kit he can find for mobility. Ha.
The person I got for the Secret Santa event still doesn't have a wishlist so I'm sitting here paitently waiting for anything. I just wanna spend a little money, well I'm gonna spend a bit on ZenMarket tonight to get stuff out but like y'know buying gifts for people. Fun stuff for the time of the year, not PC-9811 expansion boxes that are for any time of the year.
I'm gonna go try to get myself to bed at a reasonable time, wake up, get some writing done, cook some food, maybe put an hour or two into the 'ol video game, and start on sighting in the SeeAll/getting the hop-up on my USW perfect for .32s.
December 3rd, 2022 | 1314 - 1352
Talked with Coal for a few hours this morning, she came by to say hi. We ended up getting on the topic of conventions next year and y'know, I realize I probably need to start planning within two month even though the shows I'm scheduled for are in eight and nine months. Is that sad to say? I feel like that's probably sad to say.
One of the big things I need to put honest thought into is just taking stuff that's "cool" or whatever. 'cause yeah, taking a Kenbak-1 is neat to me and I think probably only me. I enjoy taking the Japanese computers but it's always like ten PC98s, I need to actually fix the everything else and have variety. People really enjoy seeing CRTs, not LCDs, so I should probably put work into getting tubes and learning how to go about maintaining them. People really enjoyed seeing PCBs so doing something like actually building them up into functional devices might be useful. If I was smart I could do all this in a few months but nah, it'll take half a year, so I need to actually get going on those things.
I find seeing people happy more valuable than seeing cash in the wallet. Makes me really suck at making a profit but eh who cares, I'm funding this stuff with working overtime. I wonder how many sets of Famicoms/Super Famicoms I can get? People seeme to really enjoy the "$10 loose"/"$25 with hookups and game" packages. I think I'd have to sell like 120 sets to actually break even on the show costs? That'd be super cool to get 120 systems running again and into the hands of people who want to use them. This is how I lose all the free space in my house.
I need to order a box of something like paper bags. Also get something like a flat cart for loading stuff in. I kinda also wanna get some sort of speakers and take some of the MIDI gear and just let it play music. Hm.
I guess I'm gonna go get myself to work and start thinking. Probably get the section back up on here for show stuff and write my plans out on there as well. If I can just get some fun setups going, solder together stuff people have mailed me, get a project of my own done, and meme out three digits of Nintendo systems at cheap-ass prices then I think I'll be happy enough with myself.
December 3rd, 2022 | 0204 - 0218
Well, I'm properly tired. Didn't really sleep at all, just maybe 0335-0700, and I'm somehow still awake after the whole day and change. Did a little bit of organization, did a little bit of writing, did a little bit of playing with the MIDI boxes, went to work, and now I'm sitting around.
The person who was supposed to be with me this weekend got called to work at another shop. Things are supposed to be busy but y'know what they say when it's just one person on-shift, outbound production and the schedule take priority over floor calls. There are a good thirty certs that need done for some stuff which just arrived to fill a gap in the floor, that's roughly twelve hours of paperwork, so that's gonna be everything. Gotta get some new albums to listen to 'cause I'll be burning through ten or fifteen.
I don't really have much going around in my head. I guess that's a good thing. I'm gonna go drink some water and get to bed, maybe in the morning I'll play a game or something?
December 2nd, 2022 | 0214 - 0235
I did the same thing as the day the power was out for two hours before work today, just sat with everything off in the house by candlelight and wrote stuff on paper. It smelled nice. Problem with doing that is, well, I kinda ran out of stuff to put here.
Laughed my ass off, got to work and whaddya know the safety people are going around with cheap-ass stuff. One of said cheap-ass stuffs was Nalgene bottles, that thing I threw on the Secret Santa list. Grabbed a 32oz and if I randomly get another in a month then I don't mind at all, I quite like carrying these things around so two ain't bad. heh. Like half of the group was missing lists, I think there's only two left as-of now, so that's pretty cool. Gonna be neat to see what people get each-other. Hope the person I got likes what I'm getting them.
Work still hasn't gotten me the boxes I ordered through 'em, something about the size I ordered being absolutely bought out by other customers at the moment. Big 'ol heck. I think we have ones that are similar sizes which would work kinda well, they just have the company logo all over the sides but eh my address is on the top anyways so does it really matter too much? Nah, I don't think it does. I think ('cause I signed up to work this weekend like a fool wanting that sweet sweet overtime cash to go into the "buy MZ-2500 and Instruments and Striker 12" fund) I'll just go the easy route, get shipping paid, and see if I can keep the driveway clear enough of snow for USPS or whoever to come get boxes from my house. I said I'd get stuff out by the end of the year and goddamnit I'm not gonna miss on that.
Paid off Zen for two of the last three items in their warehouse, a PC-9811L and a PC-9821/S1, and they'll be getting to me next Tuesday or so? Quite excited, 2023 is shaping up to be the dumb-ass year where I finally get permanant setups going. I've got the Ra266 actually being used every day writing this junk and the 9801DS up in the bedroom for gaming, and having that silly expansion box for the DS and the stuff to get an original 9821 running, mmm. Feels good. I just need to squeeze the original 9801 into the mix somewhere, issue is one's in pieces and the other still needs fixed! I also "need" a 98DO. That can wait. I'm probably gonna lose the 100k credit next year but honestly its kinda run its course, I've gotten all the cheap old Japanese computers I could possibly want to meme off of it. All that's left are higher-end objects which I should just properly have the cash on-hand for anyways.
I think I did something like eight miles of walking today and for some reason I'm not all too tired. Usually I'd be a little tired. I think I'm gonna go put the phone on charge, come back to the computer, write some stuff for the tabletop game 'cause no other pages are far enough to justify updates, then go sleep.
Decemebr 1st, 2022 | 0212 - 0237
Woke up yesterday and the power was out. My phone was dead, I didn't get a shower the night before, and the house was near-freezing. Yep, it's winter.
With not much else to do, I lit a candle then saw down with a paper and pen to just write stuff at the kitchen table. It was pleasant. I threw a few things down in this journal I've kept since I was maybe fifteen of the various things I'd like to see if I can do with myself, mainly related to a mix of finances and just trying to improve my mental health. It goes something like this:
I got to work and it turns out we passed this audit that corporate made it sound like we were going to absolutely fail with less than five minor non-conformances! Pretty damn great for all the doom and gloom of the last few days. Sadly one of the coworkers is gonna be out for the rest of the week, her daughter got quite sick. Really hope she gets well soon.
Some buddies from college and I run a Secret Santa and we pulled names today. I got someone who should be pretty interesting to get stuff for 'cause I know what they like but I also don't know what they like. My list is goofy, it's all stuff I'd want for work like a flashlight or a water bottle or pens. Turns out buying that stuff on my own sucks so it's pretty sweet when someone else gets it for me, heh.
It's kinda late and I kinda just want to sleep. In the morning I've got some work to do around the house, cleaning a few things I didn't get to 'cause no power, then I'd like to translate some of my writing I did for the tabletop game from paper to here. Have a nice rest of your day!
November 29th, 2022 | 0104 - 0141
We're getting audited at work, just the usual yearly check-up by a few of the well-known regulatory commissions to make sure our facilities are up to spec for the higher-end customers that have entire operations manuals on how we have to act to keep them around, and with it there's a bit of a change this year. Corporate decided they'd send one of their guys down to help pretty things up for the auditors and, because I'm the closest there is to 'em on the floor, they're with me. To call them an ass would be a compliment and I'm entirely uncomfortable with it. He won't stop making remarks about how poor, how unfufilling, how boring, or how useless he feels the floorpeople are. He's constantly trying to correct anything I do to his way and telling me how he's where he is because he's smarter than me at a job he doesn't know anything about. He won't shut up about the expensive drinks he buys and the prostitutes that he fucks. Any time I'm asked to talk about stuff I enjoy I only get negative responses. He constantly randomly leaves for really stupid reasons, one was to go jerk off of all things, and if we question him we get cussed out. Any time I try to get away and talk with coworkers I'm fairly sure he's purposefully breaking something 'cause random stuff we're not even using on shelves across the room somehow ends up dead and I have to go back to babysit him.
I really don't like going to the GM, going to HR, or any of the other sort of stuff but I can't stand this. I've let multiple people know that I'm not going to work with this dude because of how he acts. I seriously have no idea how people get into this mindset that just because I'm a blue-collar worker it means I'm dead useless to society even though I'm this person who's there making sure the machinery runs so things like hospital supplies, pregnancy tests, and hazard-free baby food containers are being produced no matter what state the world is in. This corporate jackass gets paid to take pieces of paper, put them on a scanner, and move files into folders. That's it. He can just feel dry air, cough, pretend to get scared that he might have covid, and get given two paid weeks off every single month. I'm the useless one? Seriously? I could do that whole job in my downtime and still have three half-hour breaks. It's frustrating. I don't want to work around someone yapping about that shit. If he wants to ramble to whoever he's paying to pretend to enjoy sex with him that he's the best thing in the world, cool, whatever. I'm not that person and I really don't want to be that person. I just wanna go to work, have a decent time joking around with coworkers, get stuff done, maybe read a book or play a Game Boy in downtime, and then go home to live/enjoy my hobbies/sleep for the next sixteen hours.
If anything comes positive out of this entire encounter, 'cause I assume nobody will do anything about this guy until Wednesday when he's only there for four hours anyways, I guess it's more mental fuel for the Cyberpunk tabletop game stories. That's probably not a good way to look at things but hell with it, turning anger into a creative outlet is probably a lot healthier than many options I can take. It's better than being so goddamn low that I go home, drink a bunch, curse out the people I view as "under" me, and angrily wish I was having sex with Instagram models like this guy pretty much makes his usual Monday night sound like.
On a less-annoyed topic, I did get some time to have the coworker test out various keyswitches! They settled on liking Holy Pandas the most, SCKM Cream Alps second-best. We're gonna get 90 Holy Pandas for them, I'm gonna get 90 of the Zeal 75g Clickiez for a board of my own that way it's a little "build stuff together fun time" thing, and maybe the week before Christmas we'll get to getting everything together? I'm really excited for it.
My copy of Vivisector came in the mail all the way from Germany and I'm pretty excited to get playing it after I beat Stalker. Always love getting random game boxes and ones for games I'm entirely unfamiliar with are even better. Only issue is, well, it's all in German and I imagine the game will also end up being in German. I wonder if it can easily be switched to English? Looking it up, the game only has releases listed for CIS and EU territories. Kinda neat. I don't think I own many Windows titles that didn't get at least some sort of North American release.
Kinda out of stuff, the little bit of space I have in my head was taken up by wanting to rant and that's all out of me so yay. Maybe airsoft stuff in the mail tomorrow? It'd be pretty cool of it comes. Probably some house cleaning in the morning? The basement got a little piled-up again but I think I can fix it easily enough. I'm gonna go get to sleep. Have a nice rest of your day!
November 28th, 2022 | 1247 - 1309
Well, back to work today. Also paycheck week, yay. It's gonna be fun to start paying for Christmas presents, this is when the OT comes in handy...
I did a little cleaning this morning and kinda got the WIP shelf a good 80% set up for me to actually start progressing through it? All the systems I need to test are loaded on the thing, all the systems I need to work on are also loaded there, and I set up some nice labeled boxes with all the "parts kits" for the various things I know I need to work on. Gonna be pretty cool to finally get some of these boxes shipped out, some of these other things running, and start making pages for the rest.
Sat down with the guitar for an hour. First time in a fair few years and man, I need to try picking that thing up more 'cause I lost everything I used to have. It's nothing fancy, just a black-bodied mexican-made Standard Strat. I think it was from 2016? I know I got it in high school around a year before I started building tube amps, 10th grade seems about right. I never played much on it but I did grow up with a decent amount of blues and garage rock so that was about what I liked to mess around with. Always joked I'd build my own everything to go with it and I got 2/3rds of the way, I have my own speaker cabinet and my own amplifier. Just need to make my own pedal(s), I never do really use much more than some fuzz. Been out of it for a while but it was all a damn good time, started to look into making my own analog synth stuff then other hobbies kinda took over my mind. Some day I should get back into it. Maybe that can be something for next year?
DHL should be dropping off the stuff for the keyboard soon, hope it comes in before work... I may push leaving back as far as possible just to see if I can have it not sit on my porch all night long. Found the keyswitch tester block and like seventeen different switches to throw on it? Red, Brown, Black, Blue, Green, and Clear Gaterons. Red, Brown, Black, White, Bronze, Copper, and Purple Kailths. Blue, Green, and Silent Red Cherries. Also a Holy Panda. I think that'll be a decent little assortment to let the dude feel what he could build with. I also have a few Alps switches on old keyboards, maybe I'll bring one or two of those in as well.
I think I'm gonna throw some time at work towards trying to read again. I like to write but my gosh it's just hard for me to figure out how to read without being distracted as all hell. Someone gave me a few books, A Billion Years by Mike Rinder and a hardcover copy of Torikaebaya Monogatari. The one clearly says what it's about on the back, I guess it's about some guy who left Scientology which should be pretty interesting 'cause a few of my former friends refuse to talk to me or even acknowledge me any more, they're both Scientologists and I guess that prohibits them from talking to the outside world or something. I dunno. Used to do a ton of stuff together, kept in amazing contact, then they started to join and they slowly dropped out of talking with me because I didn't agree with everything they were saying. Made a few jokes they were "in a cult" and that was it, they cut everything off. They don't even talk with their parents or family any more. The other is... it has no description on it anywhere and it's in Japanese so I guess I'll figure it out as I start picking it up. I'm also taking the Game Boy with me so, if reading fails, maybe beating Kirby it is.
November 27th, 2022 | 1122 - 1147
A buddy drove through town yesterday, we stopped at a sports bar to get food, and ha ha Ohio State lost. Weird as hell, we're in a town with a Penn State satellite campus and only maybe three people wanted Michigan whereas almost the rest of the bar wanted Ohio. booooooooooo. I don't follow sports too much but one thing I know from my time in college is that Ohio State sucks. Penn State is better. Ha.
I started tearing into that SC-88 Pro, page is up yay, and I need to find a new transformer. I got linked one but it doesn't look like it's the right one, just says two 15V outputs and nothing about 5V. I've never really looked into having to replace transformers, I just swap entire power supplies, and I guess if I can't find what I need then I think I may have a dual-output 12V/5V Mean Well laying around? 5V6A, 12V2A, I dunno if that's enough. Probably isn't. Should probably just keep browsing for transformers. I think I also ran out of different links to put every time I say "Speedy". Heck.
Got chatting with Coal this morning and she was saying I should try to find some random event to go to in an attempt to just talk more. Can't really find much the more I look, well can't really find much that looks interesting. Told her that and she suggested a few other things online but eh. All went pretty bad last time so I told her I'll stick to waiting at least another month and however many days it is, not rush back after only a week.
Some circuit boards from JLCPCB come in tomrrow, I was originally gonna do this big-ass order of various things I found neat but then I decided I'd cut back and just get the important stuff. "The important stuff" is MZ-80K replica PCBs. Those should be fun. Hal said she wanted to learn KiCad and I joked about her doing the project. She pretty much made everything, I just helped her with resources, figuring out what to do, and double-checking the schematics she drew out. I'm also kinda bankrolling it. We're going to pray these work well, if they do then she's gonna try working on a smaller version and then she's gonna throw it all up on GitHub.
I think stuff for airsoft also comes in tomrrow. Accessories for empty rail space. Only the best.
I really have no idea what to do with myself today but I know it's getting near time to eat lunch. That seems like a good idea.
November 26th, 2022 | 0010 - 0031
Yesterday was the first day in a long while that I've just kinda sat at home all day. It feels kinda nice.
Yesterday was also the first time in a while I beat a game. I was browsing my Steam library for stuff I haven't played in a while and seeing one title led to my mind wondering what the dev behind it was up to. Hindere Beat (adult content warning) is what I ended up with. Neat little platformer, I had a fun time with it but man the first hour was confusing and the second hour just started to get a little repetitive. Still, for like $1.09 ($2 on Itch/when not on a Steam sale) it really ain't bad. I dunno why but I always like to just "check up" on indie devs who I buy games from after a few years, if they made something new and I remember their game well enough 'cause I liked it then I usually just buy whatever new thing they made. I also got two other games with it, some shooter called Cultic and this story-programming game called One Dreamer. Wonder if I'll be able to get myself to beat both of those as well? Beating all the games I got on a sale on a would be the best I've had in my whole life.
I tore down the PC-9821Ap and took disassembly photos but I kinda forgot one step and I feel goofy. Should also probably get a good shot of the battery and whatnot just in case people have interest in it. Hm. Kinda happy with how it's going along but I think I might need to downsize a lot of my photos, I tried loading the page on a slower connection and turns out yeah even with downsizing loading like twenty 4032x3048 or whatever pictures is pretty insane. Never really thought about that too much 'cause the whole "I live somewhere with fiber-optic now" thing. Funky.
I got a SC-88 Pro in the mail, I think I mentioned it before. Thanks, Speedy! The rear I/O board is kinda just floating which is weird and it looks like I'll need some more screws but hey, whatever. Less screws in it right now means easier disassembly for later. It'll get done soon enough. Bit bigger than I expected if I'm being honest. Maybe this weekend I'll at least start on it? If I'm smart I'll reassemble that 9821Ap and maybe go throw this on the table to start tearing it down. heh. if I'm smart. that doesn't happen often.
Speaking of projects, I figured out that the MSX is like 4.5V peak-to-peak for the LaserDisc output. I guess I'll need a level shifter included in the Pi side of things 'cause stupid GPIO being 3.3V heck. Whatever. Stuff for that will probably be ordered by the end of this weekend.
Out of stuff in the 'ol brain, slow day just kinda doing whatever. I'm gonna go look at my games, maybe put an hour into STALKER, put that Ap back together, put that SC-88 on the table, maybe start a section called "Instruments", then it'll be sleepy time. If I'm really dumb, or smart depending how you look at it, I may take advantage of that KYA sale because $95 for a mid-tier highly-usable thing is pretty sweet when it comes to airshit. Hm. Has it really been 20 minutes staring at this page? Time is moving fast.
November 24th, 2022 | 2107 - 2123
Food is nice. Everything turned out good that I made which I'm super happy with. Getting to see people is also nice. Huge thanks to Coal for letting me come over and have food, better than sitting at home and doing nothing on my own. Only menat to be there for two hours but she rroped me into helping her workplace, they were giving out whole prepared dinners all day long. Agreed 'cause I've never really did anything of the sort with myself before but I know it's enjoyable to see other people happy. Can definitely confirm, it's still really nice to see other people happy.
One of my brothers turned up in town because I guess it was on his way to go see some friends and, something I didn't expect at all, he came through with my Game Boy. I had this DMG that I thought I lost a good year ago, just some junked-out unit I had that I did a case swap and put a LCD screen into. It's in an old official belt-attach carry case/holster-of-sorts which I unironically want to put better stitching into so I can wear it whenever I'm at a show of whatever. It also has almost my whole collection in the case. Tetris, Alleyway, Super Mario Land, The Castlevania Adventure, Operation C, Ninja Gaiden Shadow (JP), and Kirby's Adventure (JP). I may have a copy of Link's Awakening somewhere in the house? Really happy, I left duracells in it and those things leak like mad on me. Guess I got lucky 'cause the set in there stayed clean, the system still powered up real happy. Makes me real happy. I'll probably play some of one of those games and put it on here, heh.
I guess KYAirsoft is doing a sale, like $65 for a WE G17/18C/19, so I'm probably gonna spend more money and buy one of those. I keep hearing people disagree between "buy WE and upgrade, they're good" or "buy TM and upgrade, WE are unreliable"... it's that or if I'm really buying a pistol to screw around with I just go get a WE Desert Eagle 'cause the thought of a L6 + some goofy foregrip + custom-making some sort of stock seems pretty damn entertaining. Issue is the idea of just going full meme and buying a Striker off Octagon with the APS barrel also seems quite fun. Two tiny goofy dudes and stuff to go with them or one big goofy dude? Hmm.
I forgot to try any of the pie I made so I think I'm gonna go do that. Head's currently empty as I write this out. I'll work on the 9821Ap a bit, maybe play some games, then when I have more thoughts before sleep come back here. heh.
November 24th, 2022 | 0058 - 0133
Four days off. Woohoo.
Work was goofy. Everyone except three of us in out of the seven supposed to be there came in, threw down a vacation slip, and left early. On that, we had enough food for like twenty people and then someone decided they'd also order tacos on top of it. 1st also left us part of a pineapple upside-down cake and drinks, and 3rd left ice cream and enough stuff to make every damn sundae under the sun. It was great stuff, no doubts there, but good gosh I doubt I'll be able to even eat much today with how much there was. Everything is either cooked or cooking for home so I'm gonna wake up at like 1030 and have a fat meal ready when I doubt I'll even be hungry. heh.
Was kinda funny thinking of work, we had a few people come by our office 'cause all our food was free. I guess the molding side had catering from someone on-shift but it was like $25 just to be able to have it? It looked good but wasn't anything actually fancy. Pretty insane. Kinda disgusting to think about but I guarantee the dude who ran that walked off with some serious profits... man it's supposed to be a communal gathering of people bringing food for all to enjoy, not an opportunity to profit off of coworkers. I dunno. One of the dudes who came to our little "party" works on the opposite side of the building in an office all alone to himself where he does gosh knows what for gosh knows who. Cool dude though. Had a good half-hour converstaion over sarma about computers and they gave a half-hour back about birdwatching.
I was doing a little bit of cleaning before I left for work and I found this old DVD copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I remember playing it online as a kid all the time, kinda wanna play the singleplayer mode now and see how it is 'cause I never actually did and I bet it could be cool. I remember the first Bad Company kinda but not too well, it was fun. Can't express how disappointed I am with games just ditching singleplayer, I mean I get it but even if something like a CoD story mode used to be a joke it was still pretty neat. I'd rather have had a Black Ops 4 singleplayer over the battle royale mode but I guess everyone who plays Warzone these days would disagree. Speaking of that, coworkers wanna play Warzone 2. Ha. I told them I will but I also told them I'll drag them way the hell down. The one dude already asked if I wanted to play Ape Legs or whatever that Titanfall-based one was and, well, it just didn't last. Dude's trying to be a streamer and constantly hit clips. I'm just having a fun time. I end up derping so hard we didn't even make one game before he was getting frustrated at me trying to just be funny. Being a tryhard just ain't fun to me, I'd rather have a silly time.
The dude who came down from Boston to go to a concert then head down to TN for a while is back in town for a bit. There's this old joke where I call snickerdoodles "hecks" because I go "oh heck" every time I make the idiots. I don't have a cookbook, I'm always too lazy to look stuff up, so I just kinda eyeball things and it seemingly turns out good enough that people fairly often ask me to make the inconsistent bastards to bring places. In the spirit of old times, and 'cause he asked, I guess I get to make another batch of hecks. I'm gonna pray that I don't screw up too hard, heh.
I was looking at eBay for a while today at computer stuff. Can't really find anything I care about. There are those funky NABU systems which I see the dude who has the thousand of is parting out even further now? I don't remember who but someone was telling me someone else was trying to start a group buy or something to get them at a bit of a better rate than like $60 + $20+ shipping, well that whole contact is probably gone 'cause y'know th'ole "dropping everything" thing but I dunno. Considering one. Love how they have bulk rates on some of the stuff now. I wonder if that's a result of the idea of a group buy? I dunno. I looked at Yahoo Auctions as well and eh. Kinda just holding out for stuff that I can try to dedicate to/build myself at this point until I save up enough to reasonably shoot for a MZ-2500. That'll be next year.
Speedy got in contact via email and one currently dead SC-88 is coming my way. Gotta re-add the idea of doing a little section for my various audio gear that way I can get a page going for it whenever it gets to me. Also just re-add that junk about the Yamaha EMT-1 which I did find a 9V Center Positive supply. But yeah, it should be good fun to try and get that 88 making noise again. If I can fix it up happy it'll join the goofy stack of stuff I use to make fart noises, listen to Sea Shanty 2, and take to conventions for playing Sea Shanty 2. I don't really know many more MIDI tracks than the Runescape soundtrack 'cause that was a good part of my childhood.
I think I'm about out of stuff to talk... I do have kinda a "schedule" of things to do? It's not much. Today is food day. When I get home from Coal's, or after I get off writing this if I'm not too sleepy, it's "document opening the 9821Ap" time. Tomorrow is gonna be making hecks, a bit of cleaning, a bit of hoping some packages come in, and then either finally fixing the FM Towns PSU or starting on recapping the 9821Ap. Probably also putting an hour into the four games I have out to play, two where pages already existed (but are gonna get reset) and two which are gonna get added on. The day after is the same games and whatever I didn't do the day before. Sunday is gonna be some MSX-PG stuff. Should be fun and leaves me with a bunch of downtime to do other stuff too. Woo.
Ok, now I'm out of stuff to talk about. Have a nice rest of your day!
November 23rd, 2022 | 1126 - 1132
Man, I forgot how much fun and also pain it is to make anything sushi-related. Did the rice and vinegar, just waiting on it to cool a bit in the funny wood bowl, and bleh. First batch got a little burnt on the bottom because I used the absolutley wrong pot for it, second batch is good but I almost screwed up and didn't cook it long enough. Can you tell I don't make a ton of rice? Correction, my usual rice dish is something like beans and rice... I actually did do beans and rice but I had to do it a bit different. Usually I like to throw in bacon or some sort of sausage with pork, I also really love farofa and I usually use bacon for that. Nah. The one girl is Muslim and I wanted to make something she could actually eat. I basically just made odd chili topped with rice and farofa that was butter, some beef fat, garlic, and onion. I think it tastes okay? I dunno. We'll see. If nobody there eats it I guess I can but man there ain't gonna be room in the fridge. I have some cold-smoked salmon so I might also just make nigiri if not philly rolls 'cause cream cheese. Hmm.
I'm already out of time, gotta get back to cooking, so yeah I made food woohoo alright have fun
November 23rd, 2022 | 0119 - 0201
Just one more day. Not even a hard day, half of the shop is going to call off and we're going to be having a silly little dinner in the department. Two dudes are buying some sort of food, I think they're talking about Long John Silvers which... I mean, it is food. Haven't had it since maybe fourth grade so man I hope it's at least alright. One girl is making some Cevapi which should be cool. I made two pies, pumpkin and apple, and also got stuff to drink. I'm gonna throw in an extra goofy surprise, Spam Musubis, because the dudes buying whatever take-out have been saying they wanna try them. It should be fun, an absolutely goofy set of food but hey nothing wrong with that! Third shift brought in all sorts of stuff to do crazy ice cream sundaes which looked really good. I think they also said they were going to get pizzas? First shift is just doing hot dogs because almost everyone bailed on them. I told 'em if they had good mustard and sauerkraut I'd come in four hours early, I dunno why that's my favorite set of toppings, but nah. Sad. heh.
I got to talk with Coal from like 0010-0100. It was mostly just asking about how I've been feeling the last few days, told her what I said last night of "well my head's been kinda really empty" and she got a laugh out of that. Said my head can't be empty since I'm clearly writing down a fair few thoughts. I guess she's not wrong, it just really does feel empty 'cause when I try to think about anything there ain't much really there. She made a joke I should try meditating. Ha.
Back in high school I took a an AP Psych course and one of the things was meditation. Instructor told us to lay down, put on this thing for guided breathing, and I just fell right the hell asleep within three minutes. Must not've been snoring 'cause nobody said anything about it then/when I asked later nobody said they knew I did. Got myself to sit up on my knees, fell asleep agian, fell over and hit my head on a cabinet. Made everyone laugh. Got up and sat in a desk by a window. Fell asleep again. Got woke up when the teacher went to dismiss the class and noticed I wasn't responding to him. Was kinda funny. Like two more times since then I've had people suggest trying it, an old friend and a former coworker. It always ends in sleep. I wonder what that says? I can't close my eyes for more than maybe five minutes without just clocking the hell out. Everyone always goes on about how they feel so great, thinking a ton until it all just vanishes and they feel open or free or floaty or whatever, I just fall the hell asleep.
Did I say I got most of my cooking done for Thursday? I dunno why but I'm cooking for me, myself, and I. Like, seriously, I bought this big turkey and all the stuff to go with it. It's just me. There's nobody else. What the hell was I thinking? I honestly don't know. It's gonna be pretty sad 'cause I'm gonna sit at my table and, well, it's just gonna be all this food and stupid me looking at it. Admittedly I'm not actually making a lot of everything, just the big turkey then like a small amount of everything else, but man... all this work for just myself... it ain't the same as when I was with family or had friends to make stuff for, that's for sure. Just really depressing to think about nowadays.
A former coworker was looking for a VN to play for some reason. Found that kinda funky, the dude basically only plays RuneScape or Call of Duty. Told 'em to check out that Macro and the Galaxy Dragon title 'cause it was neat, it ends happy, the animation was cool, and it's on sale. Dude's been beyond ecstatic playing it, really had a blast with it, and I'm happy about that. Usually my recommendations aren't amazing which is why I tell people to just not listen to me, not that I've given someone a title they absolutely disliked but usually it's something so out of left field that people just get confused. Kinda neat that one really worked out.
Keyboard bits shipped, DHL says they'll be here next week, and oh man that's gonna be nice. Get to teach someone how to solder. Woo! LaserDisc player, computer, airsoft gun, funny attachments, and keyboard stuff? Talk about good mail.
I was considering starting up a thing about some PSP games I got in recently and where the hell did I put my PSP charger? I had it like a week ago plugged in next to the Kramer scaler thing. I can't find it for the life of me today. It's not there, it's not behind any of the shelving there, it's not in any of my bins of various stuff, it's not with the bin of chargers, it's not on the mess shelf... heck. I just wanna play games and watch dumb stuff via UMD Video but noo. Oh well. Maybe I'll do a little more looking before sleep tonight.
Speaking of sleep tonight, I guess I'm gonna go get ready to do exactly that. Got a few hours of work to do in the morning and I'd like to get a little more content on here every day that I'm not too busy.
I don't think I've said "have a nice day" in a while 'cause, well, my head's been a bit too messy to even do that myself. So, with things kinda starting to look up, I hope whoever is reading this has a nice day.
November 22nd, 2022 | 1255 - 1316
I finally had it in me to test the PC-9821Ap which I got the other week. Plugged it in, turned it on, and it did happily pi-po. Whew. Huge relief there. Because of that, and knowing it's going to die if I don't crack it open soon enough, I made a page about it. Just talked about the externals and expansion cards for now, some pretty pictures to look at are always nice, and maybe Saturday afternoon into Sunday I'll get a full teardown plus pictures on recapping the thing? Should be fun or so I hope. Should also just hopefully be a decent reference for anyone who buys that style of computer. I know there's a lot of talk about them but more pages won't hurt anyone. I'm trying to think about what else to maybe write about, I'd go get pictures of something now for later but I don't think I'll have the downtime at work. Hm.
I was screwing around looking for stuff to maybe try going to in 2023 and y'know, I think I'm happy with the current setup. I told buddies I'd do one or two more LARP-y airsoft events, I don't want hardcore milsim just 'cause I'm still in the going-on-two-year process of finishing cutting like 180-200lbs off my body and if I go buy expensive gear to dress up funny now then it's hopefully just gonna kinda be a waste in three months when it's too big for me. Stuff where I can either dress silly or just wear my usual hiking/hunting gear and act like an idiot would be best. I tried looking into more conventions going on and, well, CCAG and CGC are locked in already. Buncha people I know are talking about trying to go to ColossalCon in Sandusky but it's the same as when I would go to Tekko, I just don't do anime so going to an anime con is kinda weird? Yeah i do a lotta JP consoles/computers but I don't think I can really get anything of value from shows like that. Probably gonna pass. Other than that, I can't find much else.
Was having a laugh this morning because there was a red fox screwing around under my car when I was looking outside to see how the weather was. Don't see the things too often and, when I do, it's usually only for a second tops. This one wasn't long enough to get any good pictures of it but it was definitely the longest I've been able to look at one before it runs away. I keep forgetting that we're in the odd little downtime between early hunting season ending and main hunting season starting up next week... actually, no, I think it starts this weekend? I keep forgetting PA is taking a lot of their restrictions off of sundays so I think it's the 26th to December 10th. Basically all the wildlife is kinda just gonna be doing odd stuff for the next few weeks. I just hope I don't have a deer run straight into the side of the damn parked car again.
I have an hour until I have to be getting ready to go to work so I guess I'm just gonna hop off early, grab some photos of random stuff to write about in case I do somehow get free time, then make some food to take. I found a few cans of tuna in the basement and I haven't had a tuna melt in a while. I need to go to the grocery store on break and pick up a few cans of spam if possible, we were joking about spam mitsubis at work and I may try making a bunch tomorrow morning to bring in as a joke if possible.
November 22nd, 2022 | 0043 - 0106
Two more days. We're "down" a person, someone's doing a preventative maintenance all week so even though they're helping us the rest of us have to do a little more, but that's fine. Just two more days, and Wednesday is gonna be a screw-off day after 1930 anyways. There was a sale that happens every year at work, the QA supervisor's wife is a really good baker and they sell pumpkin rolls. Big friggin' things, four-ish pounds of pure dessert, and they taste damn amazing. I gave him cash for two and the came in today. Had a slice and it's just too nice. This time of year is horrible for me, I get so many sweets... these, Coal said she's gonna make a pie for me to take home on Thanksgiving, candy everywhere, all the gas stations sell eggnog for some reason and I do enjoy that stuff, and gosh knows how much else. So, in an effort to try and maintain weight instead of gaining ('cause I'm still in the process of trying to lose another 80lbs on top of the 115 I've already cut), I decided I'd get myself back to doing thirty minutes of walking uphill on a treadmill as my break at work. I eat fast so I always squeeze that into ten minutes, gonna switch back to doing my lunch on a 10min then execrise on the 30min. Really sucks 'cause I haven't been keeping up amazingly but, I know after two or so weeks of consistencey, it'll start to feel good. I think I was doing 3.9mph at a 15% incline last I was actually on this? I have a "fitness planner" thing someone gave me somewhere where I track my numbers. I'm out of it so I'm only doing 3mph flat which is probably around or slightly slower than my normal floor pace. Burns like hell but eh, it'll be worth it.
I followed through on starting to order gifts for people. I think I already said I'm getting the stuff to do the keyboard for the one dude? Went on Goulet Pens and bought a nice pen alongside a few inks for the dude who's into that stuff. Also figured out that the girl I don't know much-anything about really likes scarves so I'm gonna find someone local to make a scarf with a nice pattern on it and I think that'll be a good gift.
Also with spending money again, I paid for the CGC '23 table. $252 and change. Before a hotel. Oww... nah, it'll be worth it. It's something for my head to look forward to, good think number one. It's motivation to get projects done so I can show stuff off, good thing number two. I should be able to break even on the $600 I'll spend in total to go, good thing number three. It gives justification for buying goofy stuff, good thing number four. The only downside is "It sucks to have to pay for this during holidays because spending is already getting murdered finding gifts" but, eh, not too bad. With all the OT I work, it's not like I won't make the cash back anyways. I have a whole zero plans on what I'll take and, well, I doubt I'll do any planning until next year. If I'm smart I'll get through the rest of this year to straighten my head back on, try to reconnect with other people who are making cool stuff, and then throw in a project of mine so I can just go show off a variety of homebrew things. Maybe also have built units of stuff I took there to sell. That'd be the coolest stuff ever. If I'm dumb, well, the show's gonna suck. I need more things that look neat so people wanna come up to talk about (and a case of water so I can keep talking all day), homebrew and funny color PCBs seems to do that super well.
I put an order in through work for cardboard boxes 'cause I can get stuff via them via their supplier for less than basically any shipping service online. Got two that need to get out within like two weeks, some computers and some computer-related stuff, then I may have a few more as time goes on. Hoping everything ships well 'cause, well, if I can get myself confident that the postal service will quit losing my stuff then I'd like to try doing stuff like listing spare boards I don't really need any more for the cost of shipping and getting them to people who could use them more.
Not really much else on the top of my head so I'm gonna stop here I guess. The head's been pretty damn empty which is neat? I dunno. Probably just because I forced myself to shock out of any usual environment and I'm still processing it all or so my best guess would go. Gonna go play some games, restart some pages, and then get some sleep while I pray for companies to ship my stuff. Mmm... Boxes...
November 21st, 2022 | 0145 - 0206
Three more days at work. Just three more days. Then I get at least two days off... maybe four. I really hope it's four. The person who signed up for 2nd has a project that they want him to come in early on 1st for, he says he'll do 12hrs and cover but I need to figure out if scheduling ends up letting that count as our shift being covered. Usually if someone stays over for four hours into the weekend on second, it used to happen damn often, they'd call it fine. If not, I guess I work. If that happens there's no way in hell I'm working the weekend after, I'm not going for a whole month on-shift.
Thinking of work, I need to start getting gifts for the people in my department. Yeah yeah yeah, Christmas talk before Thanksgiving, I'm such a horrible person... We always give stuff to each-other for Christmas and, well, with working so damn much time is flying and that's coming up pretty damn soon. One dude started getting into fountain pens but he has a cheap Hondigan off Amazon with a nib that's messier than hell, I think I'm gonna buy him something a bit nicer. I personally carry Pilot Varsities because I don't really want to carry anything pricey, also nobody else uses fountain pens so nobody will steal them from me, but I do occasionally have my Lamy Al Star on-hand. I like the thing, maybe I'll get one for 'em. Another dude wants to build a keyboard and he's gotten me a lot of stuff in the past so I'm gonna buy him parts to make a keyboard. Found a PCB and mating case that he really likes the look of, had him use a switch tester where we figured out that he loves 67g Zealios switches, and I bought a nice double-shot keycap set. I have the rest of the BOM on-hand. The one girl likes K-Pop a lot so I think I'm gonna just buy her a few albums, I've liked Humming Urban Stereo for a really long time and I know their CD releases are quite cool. Looking at the major groups, same deal, they have really nice box sets. The other girl, well, I have no idea what she really likes so that one is gonna be hard.
Speaking of buying stuff, in an effort of retail therapy which doesn't actually work but will at least give me some excitement to be had with friends, I budgeted half the bonus we get on next check towards a new airsoft replica. I mentioned below that I was considering an ASG/B&T USW A1 and, well, I got just that. Evike has a pretty okay deal on them right now, $193 for the thing and $48 for the extended magazines. I got the thing and two of the extendeds to start. Threw in a neat little flash hider to make the front look pretty as well. Also went out and took advantage of SeeAll having their stuff at half-off so I bought the goofy sight from them, then a thing that I think will look neat on the front. Told the dudes I play with and they were all really excited to hear I did this 'cause they wanna go to an event in, my gosh my guess was amazing, February. Told 'em I'm more than down, I've got a decent amount of vacation but only plans to use two days of it so a trip to go play bb wars for a whole weekend sounds pretty sweet.
Got to talk with my Colantia on the phone, I'm just gonna call her Coal in the future because it's all I actually say when we talk. Just wanted to check up on me and how I was doing, told her my head's a bit messy but I'm finding all sorts of neat little things to keep me happy. She was at a game store and told me she found an Amiga CD32 for $200 which seems like a killer deal these days. Asked if I wanted it, I told her nah 'cause I already have some 4000s, so she bought it for herself. I think it's her fifth CD32 or something like that? She has stupidly insane amounts of Amigas but I respect it, gotta love something in life. At some point she's going to bring it by so we can play this one game, The Chaos Engine, and I'm pretty excited. Looked up a video of it on YouTube (the one I linked) and the game looks damn fun. It's also just been a while since I got to do any couch co-op stuff.
I'm looking around the basement and man, I need to do some more cleaning. Doesn't help that (probably next week?) I'm gonna pay ZenMarket to ship some of the last of my stuff I have in Japan over, a LaserDisc player for the MSX and some more computer stuff. I need to make good room for it all if I'm gonna try and hold myself to my idea of getting more stuff fixed up right. I should probably also look into getting rid of a fair bit of stuff for space. Hm.
I'm pretty tired so I think I'm gonna go to sleep. If it doesn't snow then I'll have all morning to work on stuff, going to try and find boxes to get some things shipped out then work on cleaning a wire shelf, moving another wire shelf, and trying to write some more stuff for this site I guess. I have my thoughts from my ongoing playthroughs of Rance 01 and STALKER Clear Sky still here 'cause, well, I do want to put stuff up. I'll probably put those back on the website. Like sometime in two weeks I'm supposed to get a copy of Vivisector: Beast Within in the mail so hopefully I'll have one of the current games beat that way I have time to try out what looks really goofy from the video someone linked me to about it.
November 20th, 2022 | 1840 - 1841
I finally actually set up an email account proper for this site, not just a forward to somewhere else. Pretty neat. Nothing else to say.
November 20th, 2022 | 1713 - 1730
Back to work, and with that, back to an easy weekend. Got here at 1530 and I'm fully done for the day, time to sit around until like 2200 then go finish up the shift. Someone jammed the radio on the local country station which isn't what I usually listen to, kinda funny but it's sad that I've already heard a song played twice. The radio in general just makes me sad. I should put some other music on the thing.
With putting stuff back on the site, I decided I'd go through the pages I'd most recently worked on (PX-V7, Games) and revise 'em then throw 'em back up first. I think that was the right thing to do? When I was rewriting the PX-V7 page, down in the LaserDisc part of it, I had the idea I didn't before to check out the Pioneer LD-700 service manual. Really glad I did, not only did it show me that I think I could buy a LD-700 and fix it up as long as nothing crazy is dead but it also confirmed some of my ideas from earlier. I'm going to order a little adapter board tonight so, with that, maybe by Christmas I can have things cleaning up for release? Would be quite neat to get out soon enough.
Trying to figure stuff out with games... I mean the tabletop stuff is settled, see below, but the video stuff. I need to actually dedicate to playing a game but writing about the one I'm playing through is kinda hard and writing about the other isn't much easier. Maybe that's good that they're a bit tough? Makes me think a little. I dunno.
It's still snowing pretty good around here, I think they said four more inches by midnight at the current rate, so oh man I hope the plows by my house don't make a big-ass pile in front of my driveway. Last night I had to park at the bottom, walk up, grab a shovel, walk back down, clear a good ten feet, then I could get the car up. I think I'm gonna have to do that again. I need to just remember to keep a shovel in the back of my car, that'd probably be pretty handy.
I think I'm going to see what I have good pictures of on my phone and start going through figuring out what I can write. I have downtime, I should work on some of this stuff.
November 20th, 2022 | 0138 - 0202
Welcome to website revision five and blog revision three! I think this is just going to be a rolling theme at this point, any time my head screws up and I quit a platform everything gets re-made in a way that's basically the same but slightly new at the same time. It's unhealthy as hell, let me just say that much, but I guess it's a way to operate. Hopefully, as this time I'm going to force at least three months away from everything except here no matter how messy my head starts getting from a lack of any social interaction, this will be the final "revision" that things ever get to?
It's not even worth talking about Discord because it's depressing shit, nobody wants to read about that. If you're from Discord and you really wanna talk with me then use the email on the main page. I'll keep in contact that way, and only that way, until I'm confident enough to go back to running my own little thing again.
Had work tonight, it was kinda nice because two other people were there so what's normally a heavy workload was turned into three stupidly simple workloads. Left and good gosh there was a hell of a snowstorm tonight, I couldn't see anything driving home. Big flakes, high winds, and no running plows even though we knew it was going to hit for hours beforehand is always a great setup for the worst possible driving conditions. Just on the few miles of i90 I drove, not more than ten minutes on a clear day at the speed limit, I passed by seven cars who ran off into the median. I think that's more than one car per-mile driven? I dunno, it was some crazy number. My usual drive is 45 minutes, today was an hour and 20 minutes.
Cleveland Gaming Classic put out their vendor applications for the 2023 show, now a three-day show instead of the one-day that it was last time. I need to plan anything for the future that way my head doesn't get back on the "you have absolutely zero meaning and should just not exist" path, this is a thing for the future that I liked doing in 2022, so I'm gonna pass them the cash to do it. I'm really sad to say I'm gonna have to buy a hotel in Cleveland, a city only an hour and a half away from me, but again it's something (and also something kinda cool) to look forward to. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to take but, hey, I have like nine months to plan. Even if I cut three months away from stuff, that's still six months to set up stuff for what should be a much cooler display. I think I also told the people for the Cleveland Classic and Arcade Gaming show that I'm gonna attend again, that should be a one-day in July, I guess that's two things to look forward to?
I got to chat with my tabletop group who I haven't run since like September and it turns out they actually want to keep their characters for when we start back up in 2023. That felt good to hear. I need to re-set up all the pages on here for them, having a site for them to go to is pretty awesome compared to the old mess that was hoping everyone's notes were on the same page, and maybe also just take the few months I have to expand a bunch of things. Hm.
I also got to chat with some people I played Airsoft with. Two of 'em wanna start back up soon here and, finally, others agree with me that running oddball stuff is pretty friggin' cool. For the longest time I was always the "hinderance" because I was using goodfball exotic replicas while the others ran ARs and AKs. Now I've got the one saying she basically wants to go play in cosplay and the two others willing to branch out into being unique on the field and just having fun instead of trying to LARP as military in silly bb wars. Sadly I don't think we're gonna actually play until February because money, that's okay though. Gives me time to consider new gear and right now I'm stuck between the ASG USW A1 or buying accessories for my OTs-126...
Back to the top lines, I need to redo content on this site now... that's actually kinda a good thing, deleting everything, because it means I can re-tool certain areas and re-write other things I'm not happy with. I guess it "sucks" if you don't wanna read the same thing again but, well, eh. More info isn't going to hurt anyone.
I think this is enough rambling for now. TL;DR, my head got screwed up/everything got deleted/snow sucks/convention in nine months/also convention in eight months/Cyberpunk is happening again/airshit is fun.