2004-06-30
Busy Saturdays, Cricket, and great finds...
I've done lots of stuff in the last week, but haven't got around to posting. I guess this'll mostly be a "what I did" post.
Saturday was a really busy day. Woke up before 7:00 a.m. to help set up for our yard sale (after helping set up most of Friday night too). Then I took off to the men's breakfast at my church. Richard Pepper joined me, and we played his "Caffeine" song (a parody of "Cocaine") and did some worship-type tunes too. Then back to the yard sale, where I mostly entertained the kids with some cricket practice, and throwing Rianna's hoola-hoop into a tree - it's stuck about 30 feet up now. Then I went back to my church building, and cleaned it with help from my dad and brother-in-law. Then I went to the First Baptist basement, met Richard again, and we did some music there for the folks, and got another free meal.
Sunday afternoon/evening I got to play Cricket again, for the first time in several years. Many of the people there were affiliated with the university, and all (except me) were part of the Pakistani community. They were very welcoming and friendly, and I never felt out of place, despite them speaking their native language to one another 80% of the time. It was great being around other people who share my love of this game.
We played two 12-over games, and one 6-over game at the end - in total, that took about 4 hours. My batting was fairly good - I stayed in for a reasonable amount of time all 3 games. However, I was feeling overly confident about my bowling, and took the 2nd over of the first game. My line was *awful* my first two bowls. Then my line improved, but my length and pace were off. I was facing one of the better batters, and he knocked my short-pitched, slow deliveries all over the field. I'm sure I gave up 20 runs that over, and pretty much caused my side to lose the first game. I wasn't asked to bowl again that day, and that was fine. I'll be working on that, and hope to return to my old form - when on a good day, I felt like I could put the ball wherever I wanted. And boy, were my legs and right side and arm sore Monday and Tuesday!
Tuesday was a great day of video game finds. First, at Winners I found the PC "Atari Revival" that I had been passing on for a few years at higher prices. At $3, I couldn't pass it by - it's Combat, Missile Command and Warlords all re-done. Then, at Cash Converters I found Omega Race for the Atari 2600 - it's really rare for me to find a 2600 game I don't have "in the wild" nowadays. I also bought a big shrink-wrapped pack of Genesis games, nearly 30 of them, for $20. Hardly any of them were doubles for me!
Then, the best find of all (lots of boring details, but it's all part of the little coincidences that led me)...
Returning from lunch to work, I happened to bump into a cow-orker I hadn't seen for a while. We got talking about Monday's federal election. Then he talked about something he had just heard on CBC radio. I mentioned, yeah, I was just listening to that too. So we went to our own respective areas. A bit later, he came down to ask what the website address was for the local CBC radio station so I brought it up to show him. He took off, I started reading the web page. I noticed a particular article about a gym and clicked on it - not really sure why. I started reading the article, and noticed something about "all the old arcade games were being pulled out into the back yard along with all the other junk..." - then I realized that this guy was renovating the old arcade I used to go to when Carla and I first got married and moved into our first house. I guess the arcade owner just left all his old stuff there when he went out of business or whatever. So on a whim I drove over there, down the back alley, and sure enough! There were loads of old arcade machines there, just lying around, exposed to all the rain and bad weather we've been having - but this was Tuesday, and they had only been pulled out on Sunday, and were just waiting there to be taken to the dump.
Anyway, it seemed most of the units had been gutted in some way - I'd guess that the owner had already sold off the most valuable stuff before he moved out. But still, I found a Tetris cabinet that was mostly complete (but no PCB), and a Super Pacman cabinet that was missing the PCB and the control (joystick) panel. But still, great! So I somehow managed to get two of them up in the back of my truck (dropped one on my foot in the process, unfortunately, though it appears I didn't break anything as the pain isn't too bad now, 30 hours later).
So, now they're sitting in my garage, and I'll have to see what I can do with them. At the very least, the cabinets are in pretty good shape - nothing a bit of paint and filler can't fix. The Tetris unit actually looks pretty good, but I have no idea if the monitor or power supply or anything works - I've got a lot of researching and learning to do. Maybe restore one right to a working unit? Or maybe make a MAME cabinet out of one? Who knows? But what a great day of finds...
Saturday was a really busy day. Woke up before 7:00 a.m. to help set up for our yard sale (after helping set up most of Friday night too). Then I took off to the men's breakfast at my church. Richard Pepper joined me, and we played his "Caffeine" song (a parody of "Cocaine") and did some worship-type tunes too. Then back to the yard sale, where I mostly entertained the kids with some cricket practice, and throwing Rianna's hoola-hoop into a tree - it's stuck about 30 feet up now. Then I went back to my church building, and cleaned it with help from my dad and brother-in-law. Then I went to the First Baptist basement, met Richard again, and we did some music there for the folks, and got another free meal.
Sunday afternoon/evening I got to play Cricket again, for the first time in several years. Many of the people there were affiliated with the university, and all (except me) were part of the Pakistani community. They were very welcoming and friendly, and I never felt out of place, despite them speaking their native language to one another 80% of the time. It was great being around other people who share my love of this game.
We played two 12-over games, and one 6-over game at the end - in total, that took about 4 hours. My batting was fairly good - I stayed in for a reasonable amount of time all 3 games. However, I was feeling overly confident about my bowling, and took the 2nd over of the first game. My line was *awful* my first two bowls. Then my line improved, but my length and pace were off. I was facing one of the better batters, and he knocked my short-pitched, slow deliveries all over the field. I'm sure I gave up 20 runs that over, and pretty much caused my side to lose the first game. I wasn't asked to bowl again that day, and that was fine. I'll be working on that, and hope to return to my old form - when on a good day, I felt like I could put the ball wherever I wanted. And boy, were my legs and right side and arm sore Monday and Tuesday!
Tuesday was a great day of video game finds. First, at Winners I found the PC "Atari Revival" that I had been passing on for a few years at higher prices. At $3, I couldn't pass it by - it's Combat, Missile Command and Warlords all re-done. Then, at Cash Converters I found Omega Race for the Atari 2600 - it's really rare for me to find a 2600 game I don't have "in the wild" nowadays. I also bought a big shrink-wrapped pack of Genesis games, nearly 30 of them, for $20. Hardly any of them were doubles for me!
Then, the best find of all (lots of boring details, but it's all part of the little coincidences that led me)...
Returning from lunch to work, I happened to bump into a cow-orker I hadn't seen for a while. We got talking about Monday's federal election. Then he talked about something he had just heard on CBC radio. I mentioned, yeah, I was just listening to that too. So we went to our own respective areas. A bit later, he came down to ask what the website address was for the local CBC radio station so I brought it up to show him. He took off, I started reading the web page. I noticed a particular article about a gym and clicked on it - not really sure why. I started reading the article, and noticed something about "all the old arcade games were being pulled out into the back yard along with all the other junk..." - then I realized that this guy was renovating the old arcade I used to go to when Carla and I first got married and moved into our first house. I guess the arcade owner just left all his old stuff there when he went out of business or whatever. So on a whim I drove over there, down the back alley, and sure enough! There were loads of old arcade machines there, just lying around, exposed to all the rain and bad weather we've been having - but this was Tuesday, and they had only been pulled out on Sunday, and were just waiting there to be taken to the dump.
Anyway, it seemed most of the units had been gutted in some way - I'd guess that the owner had already sold off the most valuable stuff before he moved out. But still, I found a Tetris cabinet that was mostly complete (but no PCB), and a Super Pacman cabinet that was missing the PCB and the control (joystick) panel. But still, great! So I somehow managed to get two of them up in the back of my truck (dropped one on my foot in the process, unfortunately, though it appears I didn't break anything as the pain isn't too bad now, 30 hours later).
So, now they're sitting in my garage, and I'll have to see what I can do with them. At the very least, the cabinets are in pretty good shape - nothing a bit of paint and filler can't fix. The Tetris unit actually looks pretty good, but I have no idea if the monitor or power supply or anything works - I've got a lot of researching and learning to do. Maybe restore one right to a working unit? Or maybe make a MAME cabinet out of one? Who knows? But what a great day of finds...
