Not exactly the cheapest hobby...

Well, the bug has struck again. After 5 years of complaining to my wife about all those great arcade games that I bought, and then stupidly sold over the years, she gave me an "in" to get some new projects for the summer. The only caveat is that once I restore them, I'm no longer allowed to sell them (and thus complain at a later date). By the way, by arcade games, I mean the full-size video arcade games that were popular in the 80's, like Pac-Man, Frogger, etc. Yes, not exactly a main-stream hobby.

After a few weeks of fruitlessly searching eBay for inexpensive projects, I turned my attention to craigslist and struck gold, and by gold, I mean 4 arcade games that occupy the same space as a small car. An individual about 90 minutes south-west of me was selling 2 Donkey Kong projects, a Popeye project, and a Dig-Dug. Only the Dig-Dug worked, but the rest were complete, and $350 would take them all. After securing transportation (and by securing, I mean I bribed my older brother with Arby's), we went and picked up the loot.

As soon as some warm weather hits, I'll be able to start the restorations in earnest. Score!

It's true, I AM a cowboy

I just had one of those special moments in life that will go down in history as my Most Embarrassing Moment Ever. I was working the E For All show in L.A. this past week, and somehow found myself on the Rock Band stage in front of a rather large crowd. For the uninitiated, Rock Band is a new game in the spirit of Guitar Hero, except there are 4 positions - guitar, bass, drums, and microphone. We had a group of 4 wanting to check it out, so we headed over to the booth. They handed us some forms to sign, dangled a free t-shirt in front of our eyes, and pointed us to the side of the stage. And there we waited.

Now, a quick side trip. Have you ever had 5 people go to cram into a car, and one by one everyone quickly said "Not the bitch" to avoid having to sit on the "hump" in the back seat? Well lets just say I was slow on the draw, and ended up with a microphone in my hand. Singing a song I didn't know. It gets much worse. Someone then sent the video to my boss, who sent it out to the entire company. Ah yes, pure comedy gold.

So without further delay, feel free to view and enjoy my shame.

Too. Much. Noise.

As I sit here attempting to create my first blog post, my kids are behind me trying their hardest to keep me from assembling a single meaningful thought. Ian is on his computer watching an episode of Ben 10 that Matt pirated off the internet somewhere, singing along with the theme song for what must be the 40th time, and Matt is playing Guitar Hero on the big screen with the amplifier cranked as high as it will go (turned up to 11 I believe). They also manage to lose the remotes within 10 minutes of touching them, so I will just have to grin and bear it for the time being.

About a month ago, my brother and sister-in-law, David and Kathy, created a blog to keep us all up to date on life in sunny California. It really was a great idea, and I'm not sure why we all didn't do this before, but better late than ever.