And I'm definitely feeling like a dead man. It's not just oingo boingo over here, man. I am wrecked. Moving for three days. Holy crap. Trying to get caught up with everything. I've had my eyes on the prize this whole time, but like, it's been hard to make generative content in this setting. Today, I got back home to Wisconsin Rapids, and I sat down with an interview with ScoreBit, just uploaded that, so check that out. I have to say that I feel like I was kind of sleeping on the ScoreBit this whole time. I knew what existed, but I wasn't fully aware of what was involved in actually getting the platform going and all that. So I think I fleshed all that out, at least in my mind. So in the meantime, let me know if you hear back anything at all. Still waiting to hear back on some hands-on impressions from the new Stern cabinet. Debacle fallout. I was thinking about it today. I think Stern is just fine. And maybe this is a cost-cutting measure in order to maintain their margins or whatever. I'm not going to be an apologist for them, of course. I don't want to spend more money for crappy things. In fact, I think I'm in the camp of a lot of people that are going to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to the new Stern games, at least until we can get a sense on what's going on. And I don't think that's just me, you know, shaking my wrinkly finger at Stern in accusatory tones, but it's because I've got Winchester on the way. I've got Beetlejuice on the way. Dude, I got a Winchester. I can't believe it. And I'm in a lucky position here where I got a Beetlejuice coming as well. That's phenomenal just right there. I don't need any new games for 2026. I'll just with those two. So the fact that, you know, if Pokemon lands and it's great, like I'm not rushing out to get an le i still don't think you know le's are going to be there's going to be 996 of them apparently because like 1996 is when pokemon came out or whatever they'll be available you know walking deads are barely even coming out of the factory and they're still like did somebody get one for 9500 or something that's absurd for an le that soon so i think until we see the return of like some steady hits like metallica selling out immediately i think we'll wait now i'm on a list just in case I am hedging my bets. But like the fact that Pokemon can come out, I can see it, I can play it, I'll chase it on location. Maybe I can play it with score bit functionality. And then I'll look at picking one up later. It is a theme I'm interested in, especially if they bring the code building, the leveling system, the unlocking characters. If this is like X-Men launched where it was hit two white shots and then pick a mode, I'm okay missing this one, maybe entirely. You know, I'll go find a Game of Thrones to play or something. In the meantime, if the game's great, it'll be great. If the game's great, they're going to make it forever. They're going to be making Jaws premiums forever. I can always get one down the road. Jaws 50th, I can pick one of those up if I want. I'm lucky that I had a Jaws already and I played the hell out of it. So I'm in a good position there. I got to get my hands on the cabinets. Now, I have a sense, I haven't seen it yet, which is strange, given that I live spitting distance from Chicago and I'm in the active media, but there have been no media events at all for this game. I think it was down south pinball there, Mr. John Tomerlin. I think he's got his version of the game, and he says it feels solid. Now, I'm of the opinion that it probably does. The MDF sandwich plywood is sturdy, it's heavy, and it's a little less expensive, I guess, than plywood, But when, you know, with everything that goes into a cabinet, I can't imagine it's that much. But it probably does feel solid. Now, if this cabinet gets kicked around, is that going to maintain? You know, as far as drilling holes in the side of the cabinet, you're not going to be drilling directly into plywood, even through that laminate. So I don't know. And it's probably for most intents and purposes, it's probably going to hold up just fine. And down the road, I don't think anybody's really going to care. It's just right now it's a change and not in the direction we were anticipating. so we'll see what shakes out from that the good news for us home collectors is that these prices will be coming down and so when it's time to rotate some new stock through heck yeah i want to have a new walking dead with that screen and everything uh upgraded sound system and you know if i can pick up a budget le hell i'd rather pay 9500 for a walking dead le than 9500 for a venom le right now even though venom had the better art and everything but i've already played it So that's kind of where I'm at with all of that. And then 2026, looking forward, I think Sonic the Hedgehog could be amazing. You know, JJP just seems to have that hold my beer attitude when it comes to loading up their games and putting everything in there. I think Elton John shocked everybody with a license and a theme that nobody wanted. However, came with the absolute fire heat, man. So when we see Steve Ritchie apply that, his knowledge, right? This will be the game he's made with the most experience that he's ever had. This is the man that did No Fear, Black Knight Sword of Rage, Star Trek. Come on. So for him to be like at the top of his game now, at the end of his career, in this end phase, and like just, I'm going to throw everything at it. Let's make it amazing. And then it's a license that I actually, a game that I've played, you know, well, I'm not a huge, you know, Sonic Sega fanboy. I was firmly in the Nintendo camp. I do like the games. I think they're fun. I always wanted to play Sonic. I just couldn't afford a Genesis and a Super Nintendo as a child, but I can now, damn it. I'm excited about this. This could be super fun. And Sonic Spinball was a fantastic game, a pinball game, video game themed after Sonic, was on the Genesis. I played it on Sega Channel back in the day when I finally did get a Genesis when I was in high school. This game could be great. The homebrew Sonic was super fun. So, you know, I'm looking at that here. And if Pokemon needs to come out and Fallout needs to come out and Transformers needs to come out then I can kind of wade back through look back at the year of Stern of 2026 and say well let me pick and choose Let rotate some of these through for a couple of months I think that a win I think that an absolute win So I like where they at I don think Stern is in trouble Okay There are signs of Stern being in trouble that we would see were that to happen. Now, I don't have any inside knowledge. I don't know what their margins are. I don't know what CEO Seth Davis takes home every year. So this is all purely speculation, but I would wager, right, given all the possible scenarios here, if I've got my eye of Agamotto opened up from Dr. Strange and I'm looking through all the different eventualities, if Stern was really in financial dire straits, I think what we would see is a lot of cheerleading, like we've never been in a bad position before, and then all of a sudden there'd be a new buyer that would come in and then there'd be a press release that we are now part of this new conglomerate that's going to open up even more opportunities for us. So stay tuned. Stern is only on the way up. that will be a sign that they're in trouble um so we're not seeing that so i think they're doing just fine i think they have enough customers that are out there buying these games no matter what people that don't listen to podcasts people that just have collections that are just you know addicted that dopamine hit and this is their hobby and i can't blame them because i share in it as well you know if i had three and a half million dollars in my bank and i was living off the interest of that which is what my financial person tells me that i need to do um yeah and then i would just like sit at home. I would go on my trips around the world and I would add a new stern every time they come out. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I think there's worse realities to live in than that. So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm not doom and glooming stern. I guess some other people are, uh, people will play it up for hyperbole while I don't completely inoculize myself from, uh, going off the handle just to make things interesting in terms of content. Um, that's not it's a little harder for me to do because I do this for fun and being real is more fun for me. So I'm excited. Have you played Walking Dead yet? Let me know how it is. Let me tell you about how my day went. So gosh, man, I had a whole I was going to I was going to launch into story time, but I don't know if you guys would be super bored with that. You know, I can kind of re-encapsulate kind of where we are now in the life of Don briefly. I'm coming to the end of my five-year stint here in the center of Wisconsin. And essentially, my job contract that I had signed with incentives per year and everything, it was a five-year contract. So that's up. So what happens now is it just goes kind of year to year and just continues off in the trajectory that it left on, right? And so it's always an opportunity, right? When a job contract comes up and then is just kind of in its renewal phase, similar to a lease where you would rent an apartment and then it would just go month to month after a year. This is an opportunity to look around and say, should I jump ship and go somewhere else? Because whenever you sign somewhere else, you get a new signing bonus and all this stuff, but you have to relocate. So it's a bit of a hassle. So should I continue where I'm at in Antonio Cruz control or look for something else? So in the midst of doing all that and pondering, this is coming up, what should we do? I got this opportunity from this other job that I do on the side where they offered me a full-time spot you know instead of just coming in as needed for extra money what if you made this your full time gig here's the compensation package and it was attractive and uh the only only problem was the uh location was in Maine and I live in Wisconsin uh now on the plus side it's a fly in fly out deal where I can fly out do my whole stretch of shifts which are actually less than what I'm doing now and then it would leave me more time uh you know for for mirth and enjoyment and this kind of stuff and that's something that I've been looking at doing eventually anyway and at the same time that that was happening my friends down in Benton were like Don why don't you guys come down here and then you know you can just hang out the factory here help us kick around some design ideas you know offer some input and you know we'll kind of get you in here you know as an unofficial official member of the team you know essentially and maybe we can go hunting and stuff too and so that was very tempting so all these things kind of happened all at the same time. And so, you know, I wasn't in a position where I was planning on buying a new house and moving and all that. And I've explained this before. So I'm in the midst of making it all happen now. So we did the first part of this, which was actually moving down the bulk of our permanent belongings down to Benton. The pinball collection is now there. A lot of my tools and everything are down there. Monica and the kid are living down there. They're starting school. I'm still finishing up work up here. So everything is chaos. So I shut down my Pinside store for now because, yeah, my whole printer setup is in three different locations right now. So until we get that going. This was funny. I was going to rent a big U-Haul to take everything down to Benton. And my friends down there were like, why don't you just here borrow the trailer, the trailer they use to bring games to TPF, out to Pintastic. Not Pintastic. What's the one, Allentown? what is that called pin fest or something uh where they go out there the ones that go to expo they're like you know and i'm like you guys are gonna like trust me with a spooky trailer and i looked at it and said yeah let's go ahead and do that just like a 20-foot trailer right so i take this thing up home it fits all of my games no problem couches beds the thing's fully loaded it's a three-hour trip we're two hours into it and then monica remarks that off her passenger side rear view window she's seeing sparks coming from the wheels of the trailer on that side so So it's about 10 degrees out. It's Wisconsin. A foot of snow. We're out along the Wisconsin River near House on the Rock, if you know where that's at. Essentially, you know, about 15 to 20 minutes away from the nearest town in any direction, right? Along the woods. Pull aside the road, and there is a bare rim. So this tire is done gone and has done been gone. The tire next to it is enraged with shrapnel and rapidly deflating as I'm watching it. So not only was there no spare in the trailer, of course, but even if there was a spare, I've got two flats on a side of a completely loaded trailer. There's eight games in here. You know, the other ones were already at the house. There's a huge heavy refrigerator in there, a bar, a couple of beds, a huge leather sectional couch. Like the whole thing is like waited for bear you know full of tools and all the heavy stuff that I didn want to just move in my pickup truck So the whole ordeal took about three hours Um we had some uh you know random good Samaritan locals uh that were very colorful They happened to stop and offered some assistance They were going to drive me somewhere It six 30 at night It dark It been dark for two hours already It cold It Friday afternoon Uh so you know Friday afternoon 6 PM there's no tire shops that are open anymore they all closed at five you know and and they're halfway to drinking uh by now so uh i was stuck on the road i called the spooky guys they're an hour away they hit the road with some jacks to see if they can help out meanwhile these this helpful couple came back again and uh offered to again you know drive me around they had my phone number because they had they'd uh helped me report myself to the local authorities so they knew like my my stuff was on the side of the road and wasn't abandoned uh so they had texted me back at about eight o'clock that night and they said there's a tractor supply hardware store about 30 minutes away they have two of the tires mounted on wheels of your trailer in stock right now they're open till nine and they offered to come pick me up and take me there and so i was in the car with some strangers uh heading down the road and uh yeah super fun uh fun couple uh they're they're they're i don't i don't know if they're common law or if they are married or fiancés or whatever but basically the long and short of it is uh they're homeless truck drivers living in a semi-truck at the diesel shop trying to do good deeds for samaritans to reflect positively back on them and i'm like oh my god this is uh is this a scam am i is this a fake story am i being scammed right now but they didn't they weren't asking for money or anything they're just kind of sharing on this you know hour round trip drive that we're on uh i didn't let on that you know hey i'm a world famous podcaster and I've got $80,000 of pinball machines and this trailer broke down on the side of the road. Come slit our throats or anything. But I did my best to be entertaining with these guys. They're really helping me out, man. They did us a solid. Now, when they came to pick me up, the spooky guys had just showed up. So Mon and them had some other adults in the room to help them out. And of course, they were goofing and laughing on this whole thing that I'm about to get murdered and raped in the woods and were chuckling about it, which was great. So thanks for that guys. Love you too. Uh, we get the tractor supply. The two, the wheels are there, man. We pick them up. Uh, I go ahead and get them some stuff for their dog. And, uh, the only thing he wanted was a diamond mountain do. And I'm like, you get yourself one, sir. Go ahead and get yourself one. Uh, their truck had about a quarter tank in it. We stopped at the quick trip. I filled it up for him. No problem. Uh, they dropped me off back there. They offered to make me some of their deer chili. They were working on like, well, a couple of great people here. So, um, You know, I was hesitant to get too friendly with them because I don't need people, you know, moving into my house. But, yeah, there's some good people out there. So what a time. You know, I'm borrowing this guy's, this company's trailer, right, the one that they use to move their, you know, the whole multimillion-dollar business of machines back and forth. And I'm trying my best to, like, drive sensibly with it, be respectful of everything, not be wild, not get it, you know, wrapped in a ditch or anything. I'm one hour from being complete with my mission and then I'm driving on rims man I'm driving on rims oh what a story uh I was I was thinking I was going to be stranded there all night and I'd have to wait till Saturday morning and try to find a place to tow it to or something it's just miserable you know just what you don't want to do in the middle of winter and luckily we made it back that night 10 10 p.m got everything loaded into the house managed to get all the games in the downstairs. Every muscle in my body is just wrecked. And then in the midst of all this, I've got, you know, people are texting and Cengiz is texting Don. They need WAP. I know they need WAP. I have no energy or stamina for anything. I had mentioned to Scorbit, they had reached out to me through their media liaison. And I set up an appointment for Monday, today, to go ahead and record. And then I forgot about it. And then I just wrecked myself through this whole hassle and everything. I've been frozen for two days. You know, the winter is coming. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I got to get home. I'm supposed to talk to score, but what am I going to say to these guys? Uh, but to their credit, man, uh, the, the three guys I talked to, uh, Jay Adelson, uh, Brian O'Neill and Ron Richards from score bit. Great guys. We just got right into a conversation. I think it flowed really well for about 40 minutes there. And then I went ahead and downloaded the score bit app on my phone. And I noticed that, you know, I've got a couple of bars in town here and they showed up on pinball map that they have some games but i haven't really ever gone to them uh mainly because i've got better games here at home and i don't frequent the local little bars there although they are cute charming establishments but i took my scorebit app and and to their credit uh scorebit got me out to go finally visit these locations in my town uh each one had you know one game and it wasn't the one from pin side or pin map pin map hadn't been updated for these locations since like 2021 so that's not uh that's not abnormal so i went ahead and updated pinball map for these locations i took my pictures i'm going to submit to scorebit and talking to these guys you know they mentioned that you can actually put the scorebit functionality on like basically every company's game uh they found a way to interface with them whether it's data east adam's family games old bally williams or whatever even moderns um to do like leaderboard not just of the Stern Insider connected games, but like every game that's there. And so I'm curious because I haven't really messed much with this functionality. Like, is it as good as they were describing? Let me know in the comments below if you've heard anything. Otherwise, what can I tell you that's like insider stuff? In spooky news, it's just so fun over there. We went out to dinner the other night, talked some stories. All the Beetlejuice parts are already in stock, in hand. because I asked the guys like, so, you know, it's December, you're planning on building in January, like, when do you send off for all the parts to go ahead and build your next game, you know, so you can get geared up, like, does that order go in now so everything can come in, and they just looked at me like, yeah, we already have everything, we can build them right now, and in my mind, I'm like crank them out man let get some Beetlejuices out there you know but like you know their process and I just kind of jumping into this but they used to it you know of like you know make a game you know cook it for two years and then you know launch this thing and then build it for a year and then get to your next one. Like that's their pace. Like that's what we've seen from them. But like me, I'm looking around, like, we got the parts, man. We got the people, we got the passion. Let's put this together. Let's get these out there. But they still have, you know, their, their, their evil dead build is on schedule to complete, you know, here in the next couple of weeks. Um, and then they'll be doing Beetlejuice and I'm looking around at like the other games that are in development and I'm like you guys should release three games a year because you've you're sitting on so much magic here um but like that's that's not the process and I'm just seeing this process for the first time like in front of me uh so it's just like that perspective is just so incredible so uh hashtag blessed to be you know friends with these guys and uh working hard to just make pinball magic continue to be out there and a part of the forever you know beetlejuice is going to get made and then forever there's going to be a beetlejuice game out there somewhere to go find and go play and hunt down you know and there'll be a thousand of them uh so those should be you know at least several hundred on location around the country uh the major places should have them you know amongst the evil deads and things and they're just going to be even more great games seated out there and i don't think barrels of fun is like you know sitting on their laurels either I think they'll continue to cram the dunes out, but Winchesters are going to be out there. I can't wait to see what they're bringing next. Dutch, I think, is about to shock the world with Back to the Future when they finally get to it. There's some great pinball that's coming out. What a time to be alive. I love it. So that's kind of how my last couple of days have been. I just wanted to get some more of this info out to you. If you want more Don Storytimes... uh dude i've got stories about like all kinds of stuff i used to do um i used to be a tire technician yeah back in the day so like by the time the spooky guys came up there i already had the deflating tire was already off the trailer um i was just going to get that one uh you know changed remounted and then stuck back on there but then i ended up finding tractor supply has mounted balanced tires ready to go for trailers phenomenal service god i love those guys i'm gonna go go spend some money at tractor supply this holiday season if you got one near you because they helped me the hell out. That was just, it was incredible. Otherwise, we spent our first weekend down in Benton with like pinball machines and a television and like our couch, like where it actually feels like a home, not just where, you know, crashing at this little pad with no furniture. And like, I'm really loving that place. Let me tell you, people picture little Benton, Wisconsin, 953 people. Well, 956 now, um, with us being there as being like middle of nowhere, little Hamlet, how could you possibly survive down there? Uh, let me tell you 22 minutes away is Dubuque, Iowa, uh, multiple universities. It's on the Mississippi river. You have the whole riverfront there, uh, casinos, hotels, uh, old mill district. That's like been gentrified with cool little boutique restaurants and stuff, a Detroit pizza place. There's big box retail up on the hill. It's a lot like a successful Charleston, West Virginia, if you've ever been in that area. It's not a Pittsburgh. It's not that big, but it definitely has an Allegheny-type vibe to it. But there's a Sam's Club. There's a mall. There's Target. There's Chipotle. There's a Popeye's Chicken, man. I'm just still exploring this area. And so I'm essentially in a suburb of that. I'm in a bedroom community of Dubuque, Iowa. All of that functionality is right there. And then Galena, Illinois is also 22 minutes away and is just the cutest little town in Illinois that exists ever. If you're anywhere near Northwestern Illinois, this little town of Galena sits right there. Ulysses S. Grant had his hometown there. His house is there that he returned to after the presidency. And there's furniture from the White House in this little house you can go tour for like five dollars volunteers will tour you around it it's great and then the whole downtown has every storefront filled with some kind of cool boutique place whether it's like food uh crafts a bakery uh some weird ladies uh dresses and stuff like there's something for everybody down there we went down there for dinner there's a sushi place also on the strip there uh that's heavily frequented by the spooky crew and they were doing this luminaria event, right? Where they had like, there's, there's ice and snow all throughout the town. You know, it's all plowed. It looks like it's stepped out straight from the universal back lot. And then there's a little candles in these bags placed all up and down the roads, the hills, everywhere at these luminaries, right? So it's six degrees out, frigid, ice cold. And the streets are packed on this Saturday with people going around holiday shopping, caroling, eating, drinking, having a great time. And it's all like 20 minutes away. So Benton is awesome. Benton is awesome. If some of these ideas about future events and things come to fruition, I think you should put it on your schedule to come check it out. Come check it out with us, man. You got to see this place. I was going to fade that back in. Excuse me. I've been on an oingo boingo trip now. So for a Patreon episode, I can go ahead and use copyrighted music because this isn't going out to the masses this is going out to the best people in the world thanks so much for your continued support to patreon as i know more i'll try to dish it out here first i keep my finger on the pulse and thanks for bearing with me through these last couple weeks of just yeah i i swear i'm working hard every day but it's not always directed in this look in this direction that i would prefer but that will end soon and i'll be back to full-time pinball nonsense even more than before I'm excited about where this is all going. Thanks for being members. Thanks for being Patreon crew. More info as I have it. Be cool. It's only me. Don't be afraid. I would love an Owen Goatboy and Goatpin. I mean, come on. Thank you.