Birthday Weekend

Friday night CP's friends spent the night for his birthday party. They had fun and stayed up well past my bedtime.

GP had his party at Laser Tag today. It was funny to watch the kids feed their tokens into the vegas-style ticket games like candy. They each converted $5 of tokens into 130 tickets so they could redeem them for a $0.25 prize in under five minutes. CP got a little more mileage out of his by playing a very graphic swat team shoot-em-up game. What ever happened to Pac Man & Galaga? (They live in our garage!)

Saturday morning we dismantled the trampoline and stuffed it in the attic. Good thing, too, as our Nebraska winds returned today. It looked like it was snowing from the seeds blowing in the wind.

I worked a couple of late nights last week to get a new control panel in operation for Dig Dug in time for CP's sleepover. We now have two joysticks with four buttons each so that we can play all the fancy games. Today I installed some nice small buttons to handle Enter, Escape, and Coins. It's almost there - I just need to get the monitor, PC, and speakers anchored in the cabinet so we can move it. I built and installed a video amplifier for Pole Position to help out with the dim display. The PC outputs less than one volt, and the original arcade monitor is expecting 4. It works OK - not great. I was excited about using the old monitor, but now I'm just tired of it.

Last night I worked a climb at the scout center. After the kids left, I was able to get in one climb. What a feeling! When I got home, it was over to JRO's for sliders, a fresh keg, and the Penn State game in his most excellent home theatre. Wow!! Too bad Penn State lost again to Iowa.

The Huskers won easily in their 300th consecutive sellout. They have sold out every game since 1962.