Well, last Wednesday Kristin and I picked up the pinball machine that I always wanted, Twilight Zone. The great thing about it was that it was only about 1 1/2 hours away from our house. The story goes like this: I was reading the newsgroup rec.games.pinball when I came across an add for a Twilight Zone that the guy had to move quickly and was prices exceptionally good, better than I’ve seen in about 9 months. After talking it over with Kristin, we decided that it was something that we were willing to get, so I gave the guy a call around 6:00. The guy let me know it was a first come, first serve. He already had someone from Columbus, OH coming Thursday, someone from Tennesee was coming Friday, and someone from North Carolina was going to stop by Saturday Morning. It had to be out by Saturday afternoon because he had another shipment of pinball machines coming in for him to repair and he had no room for some of them if the Twilight Zone was there. He had kept it from the last round 6 months ago when he had a shipment come in to fix up. He said the only way I would be able to get it is to come up that night, which we did. We finally made it down to Georgetown, KY around 8:00 and checked it out. The machine was in excellent condition, so we bought it. Believe it or not, but it actually fit in Kristin’s jeep liberty perfectly. I’m planning on adding a few mods to make it look nice. The pictures I took didn’t come out too well, so I’ll post some pictures of it once I get some good ones.
Category Archives: Pinball
Long over due update
Been a long time since I’ve done a post, so here is a quick update to what’s been going on with me.
I’ve been hired on as an employee at Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions, which I’m very excited about. I have been a contractor there for a little over a year, so I knew what I was getting into. Great place to work, with really great people. I’m a Unix Systems Engineer II. Basically do a lot of stuff, from installing systems to installing software, to mostly writing a lot of software to connect all these systems with a lot of seperate development projects.
It’s gotten too cold to go out on the jet skis anymore. Kristin’s jetski (’94 SPX) is pretty much ready to go for winterization. Just need to run the last of the gas that’s in the lines, run anti-freeze through the cooling system, remove the battery to the garage, put a little oil in each chamber, and spray down the all the metal parts with wd-40 so nothing rusts. Then I will be taking it up to my parents new place to store in their huge barn for the winter. Mine (’99 GS) has a little more work that needs to be done to it. I’m going to be doing the same thing that I’m doing to Kristin’s to mine. In addition to that, I will be rebuilding the jet pump, which I have all the parts to do. Once I’m done with mine and it’s been moved to the parents, I’m going to be moving the double trailer into the garage to work on that. Just needs one (or more) of the boards replaced, some touch up sanding / painting on the bottom side, and the rails to be moved to the correct location for the jet skis. We’ll be moving the jet ski’s to the double next year.
The double trailer brings on the next update, my car. We found out that with both jet skis on the double trailer, that the total tongue and gross weight of the trailer was too much for my Class I hitch. We had to buy a new Class I hitch for my car and install it. Installation was not too bad since this would be my third time installing a hitch on a car. Thanks to some help from my father-in-law, we were also able to get the independant tow light converter on my car. For anybody that is planning on adding a hitch and lights to your vehicle, I highly recommend just getting the tow lights converter on it’s own circuit instead of buying a converter that ties it directly to your lights. Just remember, if you get one that isn’t on it’s own circuit and you have a short in your trailer somewhere (which always seems to happen at one time or another), you will lose your cars taillights. Moral of the story, spend a little bit more money (about 20 bucks) and get an independant tow light converter.
Now on to another exciting project, which is where all my time has currently been spent. Kristin and I headed up to Columbus, OH for the coin-op auction that I found out about a little while ago. We went up with the intention of getting a pinball machine for me. We did bid on a couple and ended up getting the “Creature from the Black Lagoon”. Once we got home, we did notice that it had a few issues that we didn’t notice when we got it, but what can you do. I’ve already tore the playfield apart for the most part, cleaned it big time, waxed it, and almost have it entirely put back together. It’s in a mostly playable condition. The plunger still needs to be fixed and installed and the multiball ramp doesn’t have the metal ramp to the bowl, so in the rare case that you get the ball up there, it just falls back to the playfield. Should have it completely working in about a week. Will always have things to work on it, but atleast it will be playable as I work on it. I’m also doing a mod on it by installed a LED in each of the pop bumpers that will run off the general illumination circuit. Decided to do giant LED so that they require less power (less strain on the power system) and because they will stay cooler in the pop bumpers since they will be on all the time.
That’s about all the stuff I’ve done. Been so busy with everything else, I really haven’t had time to do much cool stuff in regards to computers and programming. With the new release of Gentoo 2006.1, I’m planning on getting back to installing Gentoo on my Xserve, which will hopefully work out better this time since a number of issues have been fixed.