cabinet part xvii

You'd think that living with my dad, the handyman, for 20 odd years I would have picked up a few tips here and there. I hate realising that I had this valuable resource living in the same house as me and I never took the time to learn anything. Actually, I'm sure I've picked up a lot from osmosis, but it wasn't intentional. Until today, I'd never picked up a paint brush. Before July, I'd never worked with a piece of wood bigger than a hand mirror. The only part of this project that I'd ever had experience with is the wiring, and that's the easiest part of the whole thing!
Anyway, after getting long overdue advice from the old man, I've slopped on the undercoat. His suggestion to tint the undercoat grey makes perfect sense. If you're painting black over white it's going to be much harder to cover than black over grey. I've taken the liberty of preparing this handy diagram.


It was a race against the heat though, as the stuff was almost dry before it hit the wood. Nice day to work in, but not really ideal for learning to paint.
No matter, the undercoat's on. I'll have to shoot back to Mitre 10 tomorrow to get some fine grain sandpaper to give it a good finish. Man, I really need to start an account there as I've been down at least dozen times in the last 6 weeks.

 

Tomorrow, weather and Debbie permitting, the first coat of black paint is going on. It's finally going to start looking complete. How exciting!

the end of the day can't come soon enough

So, I'm in the middle of a pretty serious project at work and I really don't want to be involved. Without giving out any potentially sackable information: we're changing banks and I'm part of a group of people that is supposed to make the transition seamless for our business.
Considering the size of the project and the potential impact (on both staff and customers) I'm really not comfortable having to read through lengthy business requirements docs to see if they suit.

The problem is, I'm just a pleb.

I joined the company as an Accounts Officer 2 1/2 years ago. I picked up the skills pretty quickly, as it was pretty linear kind of work. I was quick and accurate at my job and knew how most of our processes worked, so when a team senior role became available I jumped at it. The role made sense, as I was still doing the work, but was able to apply my extra knowledge to help other people. Nobody who knows me could've guessed I would enjoy that part of the role! Anyway, as part of the senior role I taught myself a bit of vba and made some Excel macros to help simplify our processes. After 9 months or so, I was offered a role as a "Continuous Improvement Officer" alongside Travis (another long suffering employee). Dorky friggin title, but basically it meant I could concentrate on building Access databases and other tools to help my department manage their workload. It was great fun building/coding these things then seeing 40 odd people getting a lot of value out of them. I like to think my skills in this area have progressed a hell of a lot in the last 9 months, to the point where I can throw something together in an afternoon what would have taken me a week.

Please note, that none of the learning I've done since 2004 has ever been about the company itself. I'm the last person to ask about who the big players are at IAG, or who is marrying whom, or who got fired for copying and selling DVDs on work time. I'm not interested, and to be on this project just pisses me off. I now have to know who else is involved, who they work for, how we interact with them… I've discovered too late that I don't like the high level stuff. If I didn't actually have to do anything and just had to offer my opinion, I reckon it would be fine. When I'm sent out to discover something like "Business Impacts", with nothing more than an email, I really worry that I'm going to fuck it up. What if I don't look at things in enough detail? What if I miss something obvious that will impact on this multi-million dollar project?

I miss being on the tools and being able to solve problems at the grass roots level. It's too late to back out of it now I suppose, but god I can't wait till it's over.

cabinet part xvi

There's finally a light at the end of the tunnel: I laid down the first coat of paint today! I discovered too late that the drop-kick at Bunnings gave me a roller designed for use with gloss paint, not matt, but I'd already put my old clothes on and wasn't going to put it off any longer. It was only the mdf primer, so it doesn't really matter if it's a rough finish. I'll give it a light sanding next weekend and take it from there.



God, It's hard not to get impatient with this thing. I've been working on it (on and off) since the start of April and I still haven't got it to a playable stage! As long as I don't have any major distraction next weekend or the one after I should be able to... ah fuck it. I'm going on a charity bike ride with Deb and some of her work mates on the 15th. I guess I'll just have to pull my finger out next weekend and do one coat of enamel on the Saturday and one on Sunday. If I manage to get those done to an acceptable standard, I should be able to cart the whole thing upstairs during the week.
I also just realised that the last paragraph was a total stream of consciousness. I only seem to do that when I'm tired and my internal monologue is already asleep. If I was to stop typing, would I stop thinking as well? Let's see

cabinet part xv

I've almost got the damn thing ready to paint. When I was sanding everything down this morning, I realised that I'd mounted the fluorescent support too far forward. Once the marquee went on, the light would only have about 20mm clearance, which I reckon would be too close, fading the artwork really quickly. I'd already bogged up the screw holes from that, so I had to dig them out and move the whole thing back another 60mm.
Another minor setback, but hopefully I'll be able to finish sanding tomorrow, get the primer coat on and get the first coat of matt black done. The forecast is for 26° tomorrow, and the shed is shaded, so it should be perfect weather for the paint to dry.

I'm still trying to decide what front end to use for the MAME interface. Once choice is a 3D arcade where you can walk around an arcade with the original cabinets and artwork. It's more of a novelty thing really, but would be good for when people come over as it looks pretty cool.
Mamewah is probably the most common one, but it does look a little plain and I'm having trouble setting up "favourites" lists. Maybe I should just read the manual.
Deb is in town at the moment, so this is probably a good time to try a few things out.
Off I go...

saddle sores

Two weeks ago Deb and I bought bikes with the intention of cycling to work 4 times a week. This Tuesday gone, I managed to have breakfast, bike to the gym, workout for an hour, get myself cleaned up then get my ass to work well before 9am. I really enjoyed it, so I should be able to keep it up.

We're going home for Christmas, so the plan is to get myself in shape before then. I was pretty soft and overweight when I went home last year, so hopefully this time I'll be a bit tidier.

parklife: after the djs went home

We had fantastic weather on Saturday. The sun was out and there was barely any wind. The rain that had been forecast during the week never arrived and by 12.30pm I was drunk. You couldn't ask for a better start for a dance (music) festival.
Hmm, I was going to leave a review of the evening here, but my memory of it all is strangely fuzzy. The bits I remember:

• I had a great time and drunk loads of beer (+ a bit of miscellaneous)
• I only had to pee twice (or was it three times?)
• We saw Ash & Rox after a 12 month hiatus (woo!)
• Stanton Warriors were flat (I think there was only one of them)
• Trav bought a cheese-cutter
  
• John So (the lord mayor of Melbourne) came on stage to say hi (the crowd went ape-shit!)
• Krafty Kuts played a get-the-fuck-out-of-my-club set that really dragged and at the end played a DnB remix of Golddigger that the sound system distorted almost out of recognition
• I wore out part of my shoe dancing on the temporary plastic flooring

Here are some pics.

Trav and Me. Possibly munted at this point.


Deb and me (or is it Deb and I?)


Some random Jamaican dude (hehe, it's Ash)
Geez I've got a big head!

parklife

It seems like only yesterday that we ordered tickets to Parklife down on Birrarung Marr. Tomorrow it actually happens, and I have to say I'm a little excited. Since moving to Melbourne I haven't been to many dance events, sticking mainly to pubs playing top 40. We've managed to see Ed Rush, Rennie Pilgrem, Grooverider and A.Skillz at different nights over the past few years, but with Krafty Kuts and Stanton Warriors on the same stage it reminds me of Fabric where you could see half a dozen top notch DJs for the price of a couple of pints.
except this time it's $80...
and outside..
and I'm so out of practise that I don't think I'll be on my feet for a lot of the time.
whatever doesn't kill you huh?

Trav is taking his camera, so I'll be able to steal some pics off his site and post them here once they're up :)


Will update on Sunday, as I'm pretty sure I'll be at home for most of the day.

intestinal bypass

Yesterday I ate a dodgy chicken sandwich. I'm pretty sure it was the chicken sammie, but Deb had one from the same bird and felt fine.
I didn't feel fine.

I've spent most of my time in the toilet since 2pm yesterday and I've got to say I'm over it! My arse is red raw, proving that the all seeing all knowing "Intelligent" designer, royally fucked up when she designed my insides. Surely there's a better way to digest food than to melt it down with acid, and if not, why not make your sphincter a bit more bloody resilient? I would happily transplant the calluses on my heels onto my butt hole if I thought it would give me a bit of relief.
I mean what's the deal with designing me to enjoy eating curries and spicy food but punishing me when they come out again? Sometimes I swear that my insides see the vindaloo coming and rearrange things so that my intestines aren't even part of the equation. There's no chance in hell that curry can make it through 9 metres of twisted flesh tubing without losing any of it's heat!

Artist's Rendition:

birthday

The big hand on my biological clock clicked over again today; one more shuffling step towards grey hair, wrinkles and bladder control problems. There's something debilitating about being constantly aware of your own mortality, it's just not a nice way to live. My brain is still young enough to remember the invincible feeling of my early twenties, but my body aches just thinking about what I used to get up to.

I guess 29 isn't a bad age to be, you can stop drinking whenever you want without falling victim to peer-pressure. Although it's probably not because you're more mature, it's merely because you can't stay up late enough to drink that much any more. When I was 21, going out at 11.30 was the norm. 8 years later, if I'm not back by 11.30, you'd better start calling the hospitals, because I must have been mugged to have stayed out that late.

Anyway, so that I can watch the seconds tick over in the year before my 30th, Deb got me this cool watch:

hangovers are fun

The day is finally drawing to a close and not a minute too soon.

I represented my team at our divisional awards dinner last night (we won "Team of the Year" at our business unit's awards night a few months ago). We didn't win, but I got a whole team's worth of wine down my gullet.

Today I was hungover.



God only knows why they chose a Thursday night, but I made it to work on time and lasted all day. I could've done without the 2 hour (or was it 2.5 hour) workshop in the afternoon, but I guess whatever doesn't kill you....

I should probably do a little more work before I go home.

cabinet part xiv

Built the computer on Monday night and it's got to be the easiest part of the project so far! I had flashbacks to my polytech days where we had to change jumper settings depending on the chip speed we were using, create boot discs so we could install the cdrom drivers, which would in turn let us install windows, but only after manually partitioning the hard drive...
That last paragraph will probably only make sense to a few people I know, so don't worry if you're not one of them. All you need to know is that this time it took longer to install Windows than it did to build the PC.

Tonight, I hope to get all of the MAME software installed so it runs seamlessly. Hopefully you won't see any Windows screens at all before you're presented with a game list to choose from. The one problem I'm having is that you can't turn the PC on using just the mouse, even though I've selected it in the bios settings. Maybe I'll just wire up another control panel button to be used as the comp's power button....
Shit, I don't have any spares and it's not worth ordering just one button. I'll have to think of something else.

Update: Picked up a flourescent light fitting for behind the marquee. I guess I'll have to start thinking about what artwork I want up there.

fatty fat fat fat fatty fatty fat fat

There was a fat guy on my packed train today with a bag in one hand and a pack of Twisties in the other. He could have put away the salty snack treats to have a spare hand to hold on with. He instead chose to put his backpack down so he could gorge himself on crap. He almost fell over twice before Richmond, but only once he'd upended the Twisties, spilling the last crumbs into his gaping mouth (and down his front) would he wipe his hands on his jacket and grab a handle.

There's something about seeing big fat people eat that makes me nauseus. It's like watching someone stab themself in the chest with a knife, except you can't do anything about it without offending someone. Only about 2 percent of obese people can actually claim they have a glandular problem. The rest of them eat too fucking much. True story.
There should be a fat tax, where the higher bmi you have, the higher medicare surcharge you have to pay. People talk about taxing things like McDonald's and Coke to try and get people off the junk food, but has that worked with alcohol and tobacco? No. People drink more now than they used to and it's the health risks, not the cost that makes most people stop smoking. (I realise that booze and fag tax is just a cash cow for governments, but let's pretend you understand where I'm coming from)

Taxing products won't work, but if you're made to weigh in when filing your tax return, people might think twice about licking a chip packet to get the last grains of sugar and salt out of it. The fuckers that let themselves get too fat will end up getting stung at the end of the year. At the very least, they'll be too short of cash to impulse buy a couple of Snickers, at best they will look at changing their lifestyle to avoid the hefty tax bill every 12 months.

verdict: food for thought

cabinet part xiii

It was a bit of a slack weekend this weekend. I had a bit of a hangover on Saturday, so it took a while to get downstairs. All I ended up doing was a bit of bogging. At least that puts me a step closer to painting.

I also got the keyboard drawer door done, the latches and handle are on (the handle will be painted wood, so should hide the drawer a little)

Sunday, I was in town with Deb and decided to get some new speakers, as my old desktop ones are shot, and didn't have any speaker grills to cover the holes. They were only $50, so didn't break the bank and run fine off the old desktop amp too. I might upgrade that one day, but not till I've recovered from everything else.

another aussie icon gone

Bloody hell, they're dropping like flies over here!
Reports are saying that Peter Brock has died in a car crash in WA.

new job

Deb's been a bit jittery the last few weeks, waiting to see if she'd get a job she applied for. I've had to put up with a nervous demeanour, late night "can't sleep" episodes, mild depression and complaints about all sorts of crap. She finally had her interview yesterday, and I'm proud to say that she got the job! Woo!!

Hopefully that means plenty of restful night from now on.

cabinet part xii

I ordered the computer parts for the cab today :) It's probably a little over spec for what it'll be doing, but when they create a 64 bit version of MAME, I'll be ready and waiting. It's a little sad that the machine I'm building to emulate Pacman and Space Invaders will have ten times more grunt than my main computer. I'd hate it to feel neglected, so I'll have to make sure I upgrade that soon as well.

crikey!

This just in:
There is a rumour that Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin has met his maker.

Update to follow

Update: It's now on The Age website which lends a little credibility to the rumour. It sounds like he got a stingray's barb through his chest.
Also, News.com.au

I guess he was always going to go out doing something a bit different. I can't see him being satisfied with a simple car crash, or falling down some stairs.

He was definitely a character, I'll give him that.

disapproving rabbits

The title says it all.

Disapproving Rabbits

cabinet part xi

All of the woodwork is now done (except for that damn speaker panel, which I forgot to do again). I spent hours working on the housing for the control panel (and the control panel itself), but I think it paid off. I'm a bit more comfortable working with wood than I was a few months ago, but there's no way I can afford to rush things as there wasn't enough wood to start another panel if I stuffed it up.
The panel slopes slightly, and it's at just the right height (for me anyway. Screw the rest of you!). It turns out that the trackball did have leads to hook up mouse buttons, so the two black buttons above the ball are them. The two above those are MAME function keys.
I think I'll set up one as ESC (to get back to the main menu) and the other as a shift key. With that one held down, you can map anything you want to any of the other buttons (Volume up/down, pause etc)

As the budget is pretty much blown out, I don't think I'll be buying fancy speakers and an amp at this stage. I'll just use the old computer speakers and sub that I have lying around. They're not anything amazing, but that will probably add to the authenticity of the game sounds.
Next weekend: bog up all of the screw holes and prepare everything for painting. (shit, and finish that damn speaker panel!)
This week: Think about how to tidy up the controls. I'm thinking a thin sheet of plexiglass with some artwork under it. Failing that, a piece of self adhesive laminate would work just as well.

cabinet part x

I got impatient on Thursday waiting for the weekend to come. The solution? Book in an annual leave day at the last minute and spent Friday in the shed :)
It hit 25° after lunch, so it was really nice working downstairs and my weekly walk to Mitre 10 was great.
The result was that I got loads of work done. I pulled last weekend's work apart to fix the not-as-square-as-it-should-be problem I had. The keyboard drawer design was changed a little to make it function better as a computer instead of just a games machine: The drawer front now swings down instead of being attached to the sliding part of the drawer (does that have a name??). The only problem I had was discovering that MDF doesn't like screws put in the end of it, so I had to recess the hinges on the outside. I'll cover those up with a bit of bog, so it won't be visible on the outside. Hopefully I'll never have to remove the drawer for any reason, because it'll be near impossible!

Deb arrived home at just the right time to help put the sides on. After that, it was straight forward attaching the back and top pieces.

Today's work will hopefully be fitting the speaker panel and getting started on the controls. This is going to be the biggest part, because the layout has to be spot on. If I put a joystick in the wrong place, it'll make playing uncomfortable and will just piss me off.
Just realised that I didn't get button inputs hooked up to the trackball. That's going to make it hard to use as a mouse.

Bugger, I'm off now to see how I can get around that.