Hey there. I haven’t posted in quite sometime, as I’ve been too busy working to do anything arcade related. I just wanted to do a quick post and share some official info about a chat session coming up at CoinOpSpace.com.

Chat live with Steve Wiebe

On April 15th 2009 Steve Wiebe will be on Coinopspace.com, participating in a live group chat even with Donkey Kong fans and general coin-op enthusiasts.  Steve is the latest in a monthly series of live chat sessions that has seen the likes of Tim Skelly, Owen Rubin, Jeff Kulczycki and Brian Colin.

If you aren’t a Donkey Kong fan, and somehow have been living under a rock for the past two years, Steve Wiebe is one of the best Donkey Kong players in the world and starred in the movie King of Kong, a documentary about his quest for the top score.  Steve has one of the only 1,000,000 point scores ever recorded in public, and is one heck of a nice guy to boot.

Coinopspace.com is a brand new website for arcade, pinball and console enthusiasts to connect and share stories.  Coinopspace.com isn’t just a forum based website, but has every feature for sharing your collection and restoration hobby that you could possibly imagine.  There are advanced customizable profiles, photo hosting, a live chat section obviously, hosted blogs, videos and so much more.  In the coming months we hope to connect collectors with more arcade game and pinball creators to ask those questions about your favorite games you’ve been dying to know.

To participate in the Steve Wiebe chat you need to sign up for the website and then you can RVSP for the event at the following link:

http://www.coinopspace.com/events/live-arcade-chat-steve-wiebe

You can view all upcoming creator chats and events on the events page at:

http://www.coinopspace.com/events

There’s some more info on RotheBlog.com here:

http://www.rotheblog.com/2009/04/arcade/coinopspace-arcade/chat-steve-wiebe-king-kong-live/

Ask Steve all those questions you have after watching King of Kong, there may be no other better time!

Hey there! There is a chat coming up on Feb. 4th at CoinOpSpace.com with Tim Skelly. He’s the guy responsible for games like Rip-Off, Reactor, Warrior, and more…

If you don’t have an account at CoinOpSpace.com, you had best head on over there and create one so you can participate. You DO want to participate, don’t you? I bet you do, I just bet you do.

Hey! I haven’t been posting much lately.

The end of 2008 has been a bit crappy. Both my grandparents have medical issues and are currently in a nursing home. I’ve been running back and forth to the hospital and nursing home (an hour away) so much that I haven’t had much spare time.

My wife lost her job right before Christmas. El Crapo.

Anyways, this is just a short post to thank you for reading my site this year, and to look forward to what 2009 brings (hopefully lots of cash!).

I will be watching TV to see the new ball in Times Square drop this year (like everyone else):

Supposedly this ball is much bigger than previous years. I am officially making a prediction that the ball will not drop as planned. I’m thinking it will stop half way, or maybe turn off or something cool like that.

Hey there. This is a quick post to let you know about CoinOpSpace.com. It is a new arcade collector site that is more than just the forums or newsgroups that you are used to.

In addition to discussion forums, it allows you to create your own page similar to the concept of Myspace and Facebook. You can post photos, blogs, events, and more. It also has a quickly growing list of groups geared towards specific games and topics. Each of those groups has it’s own discussion forum and page.

To top it off, its run by someone that is actually making an effort to keep it up to date and growing.

If you are a regular on KLOV or the RGVAC newsgroups, you really need to go sign up at CoinOpSpace.com.

I had a bit of a scare yesterday. I left Crystal Castles on during the day while I was working. I had music on turned up a bit loud, and thought I heard a pop. I figured one of the cats was messing with something, and looked over to see smoke pouring out of the top of Crystal Castles!

I grabbed the fire extinguisher, but didn’t need it. I shut it off quickly, and opened the back door and didn’t see any flames. I opened up the windows to let the smell out, which took a long time and made the basement pretty cold.

The cause was the old flyback in the monitor (a GO7). It cracked open in the middle:

I had a rebuild kit for it that I was planning on installing soon. I installed it tonight and got it up and running. The pic looks noticeably better than it did before it went kaboom.

I finally got my initials (actually my nickname) on the first level by getting the high score. I thought it wasn’t saving high scores when powered off, but it seems to be saving them OK now. Here’s what it looked like pre cap kit. It’s hard to see much of a difference, but it is noticeable in person..

The replacement coin door came in today. It’s in great shape. I should be able to get around to installing it this weekend.

Hey! Hope you had a good Halloween. I’m going to try to write this as fast as possible, as I really should be working. I was going to do this as a tutorial, but instead it will only be tutorial-ish.

Awhile back I bought a ton of LEDs in different colors to make a sign from a kit that I got from EvilMadScientist.com. Someone posted a cool tutorial on how to make hanging ghosts with light up eyes via LEDs.

I borrowed that idea and made some Halloween decorations an hour before it got dark this past Friday. Here’s some of the materials I started with:

Read the rest of this entry…

In honor of Halloween, I would like to share with you something truly scary I just saw on eBay’s homepage:

Thanks eBay! Now I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

Back on July 1st, I posted about 4 arcade themed “RUB N’ PLAY TRANSFERS” that I picked up on ebay.

This is a quick post to let anyone that might be interested know that more have turned up on eBay:

Frogger: http://tinyurl.com/5dbcaj
Zaxxon: http://tinyurl.com/5myjmy
Robotron: http://tinyurl.com/5stnwh
Donkey Kong: http://tinyurl.com/6468we

Hey! I haven’t had any time to post here lately. The wife was told that she’ll be losing her job sometime between now and January, so I’ve been working extra hard on my gay day job to see if we can save up some extra money. Unfortunately, car repairs ate up what little we had saved. Damn bloody cars…maybe I’ll buy a scooter or a segway or something.

Anyways…I spotted this the other day and thought it was pretty cool:

See the FREE ALLIGATOR REMOVAL sign? That seems like a really great deal. I bet they do it for free because they can use them to make shoes and other alligatory stuff.

I *think* this is actually a joke however, because we live in RI, and I haven’t seen an alligator in these here parts for quite some time. (We did see a coyote walk right through our back AND front yard the other day!)

I was very tempted to call the number, screaming that an alligator is eating little bobby, and ask them to hurry here with their tranquilizer darts and see if they actually come. Here’s a closeup of the false advertisement:

Cya later alligator.