Two Warps to Neptune
The classical station at Virginia Tech is playing Halloween-themed music this morning (though they are stretching the definition in places). Unsurprisingly, they played “Tocatta and Fugue in Dm”… but do I free-associate anything involving Halloween? No, not me. I immediately start thinking of Gyruss.
Mmm… think I need to fire up MacMAME when I get home… play some nice emulated old-school games. “Red Five, standing by!”
More Tales from the Ad Biz
A local firearms dealer is advertising his new stock of Bushmaster .233 rifles this week. When questioned about the taste level, he shrugged and and said, “I can’t help it if I’m suddenly getting 15 calls a day for the things…”
One of my co-workers suggested darkly that everyone could make even more money if Bushmaster re-issued them in a special “Sniper Edition.”
Scary clothes day
Was an interesting weekend… it was fun Friday night, standing in Wal-Mart with limited funds and wondering what in the heck raininva and I were going to wear to VTSFFC Halloween the next night. Not sure whether it was loopiness or creativity, but we ended up building props and going as ‘click-system’ figures that had broken off their bases. You can see us in some of the party pictures that yubbie has already posted. (If you’re not quite sure what a ‘click-system’ figure is, you can see them at the Wiz Kids Games website. There were enough gamers at the party to get the gag.)
The party itself was good fun… nius did an excellent job arranging everything. plenty of munchies, good music, some fun costumes, and all sorts of gaming downstairs. Rain introduced meiran and markush to click-system MechWarrior, and I got to see Kingdom Hearts, Frequency, and Armored Core 3 on the PlayStation 2. (They’re all on my wish list now.) We stayed late and had a good time.
Sunday, we forced ourselves out of bed to play more click-system MechWarrior for prizes at a local venue. That wasn’t quite as pleasant an experience; while the players were skilled and sportsmanlike (which isn’t always the case), the scenario was horribly skewed; a smart player could easily win by making sure to play the ‘weaker’ of the two sides. The house rule we created to try to fix that favored the other side automatically, and it just didn’t work well. On top of that, each prize comes in two parts, a figure and an enamel pin in a collectors’ box… well, the venue had removed the pins from the boxes for some reason and had to be reminded to give them to the winners. Not cool.
Still, the weekend was good… if a bit tiring. Also, Rain and I need to remember that going 24 hours without food is bad. Very bad.
dahdahdahdahdah – JunkYard Geeks!
Tonight on TLC Online, our challenge is for mikailborg of the TechnoFetish team. His job – to build a working analog-to-digital video converter from things he finds in his apartment – before the end of the afternoon!
He’ll have an easy time with the digital end – he’s already got a FireWire-equipped computer made for digital desktop video. But, how do things look for conversion?
He’s got a Sony digital camcorder that he’s wired in there! It’s got an analog adapter cable with RCA jacks at the far end, and it plugs right into that computer of his, so conversion is okay. But here’s the rough part – he’s got to find a way to deliver that analog signal, and his wife probably wouldn’t be amused if he borrowed the living room VCR. So what will our challenger do?
Look at that! He’s blowing the dust off a 15-year-old Sharp VCR he pulled from his bottom shelf! I can’t believe that thing still plays tapes – it hasn’t even been plugged into the wall in over 4 years!
He’s got it all hooked together… now he’s changing the arrangement of plugs in his FireWire ports – and it’s working! Image quality isn’t the best, but then most of his originals weren’t that good to begin with! It’s working!!
Thank you for joining us for this edition of Junkyard Geeks. For the benefit of lekythen, subbes, and rubinpdf, this episode will be re-broadcast next month on BBC Online as part of “Scrapheap Geeks”. Join us tomorrow as Richard O’Brien hosts an episode of Sony’s Virtual Crystal MazeQuest Online (subscription fee required).
mikailborg‘s still going to have to return the camcorder, though.
My cosplay season approaching
Okay, just in case anyone can help me… for an upcoming costume, I am looking for a WWII – 50’s vintage “Ike” jacket in a size 41 or 42. If possible, the jacket needs to have few or no insignia on it, and the lighter the color the better. Also, I just don’t have tons of folding green on me at the moment, so a nice cheap price is another factor.
I nearly had one on eBay today, but the guy had a reserve listed, and I later discovered I wimped out 5 bucks short of it (but the jacket was sniped at the last second anyway, so I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten it.)
Tales of Modern Idiocy
A collection of unfortunate help-desk tickets: (had me snickering helplessly)
Stories of the increasingly surly owner of a video-game rental shop:
These are web pages nearly guaranteed to make you feel better about yourself.
Oooh… I just mentally bought a whole stack of t-shirts…
Sarcastic “God” billboards (may offend some)
Among other favorites: “I gave you a bigger brain for a reason. Start using it. – God”
LiveJournal Use Survey
(copied from madwriter)
This survey looked like fun, and a chance for a little more introspection than the usual character quiz (such as the fascinating “Which Space Rogues Character Are You?” quiz by raininva). Ahem. Anyway…
1. Your LiveJournal “user name” and what it means:
Nothing complex or mystical at all – I’ve used “mikailborg” since my AOL days. “Mikhail” is an infrequent nickname for me in my local group of fans, a group which is overloaded with “Michael”s who need nicknames for clarity; “Borg” becuase of the artificial hip I recieved in ’89 after my car tried to imitate Buckaroo Banzai‘s and tunnel through a mountain. I had to pull the “h” from “mikhail” because, at the time, AOL screen names had to be 10 letters or less. It stuck, and my Elfie e-mail is still missing the “h”.
2. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the highest) how well does your LiveJournal represent who you actually are?
Boy, the last question was so easy… I’d give it a 7-8. There are things about me which I may never discuss on LJ; on the other hand, I’m working on really opening up my mind and heart here once in a while, just to give them both some badly-needed fresh air. We’ll see how the experiment goes.
20 more survey questions and answers
