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#95 Light the fuse - The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 7m·analyzed·Nov 15, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Dr. Dave troubleshoots a Williams Phoenix restoration while fielding technical questions in new 'Doctor Dave' segment.

Summary

George and Dr. Dave discuss a Williams Phoenix (1978) pinball machine that Dave is restoring for a local customer. The episode covers restoration challenges including a mysterious capacitor heating issue, playfield swap quality concerns, and a tangent into word aversion psychology. Dave also answers a technical question about Williams flipper mech upgrades via a new 'Doctor Dave' segment, and they share anecdotes about bird intelligence, homebrew pinball awards, and customer delivery logistics.

Key Claims

  • Williams Phoenix was produced in August 1978 with 6,198 units manufactured

    high confidence · George stating production facts at episode start

  • List price to distributor for Phoenix was $1,247

    high confidence · George citing historical pricing

  • Barry Osler designed the Williams Phoenix

    high confidence · George identifying the designer

  • Pinball Life sells Williams flipper mech upgrades for approximately $50 that include coil, end of stroke switch, mech, spring, and come fully assembled

    high confidence · Dr. Dave answering Grant's technical question about flipper upgrades

  • The word 'moist' has only become widely disliked in recent history (last 10-20 years), not before

    medium confidence · George citing a cognitive psychologist article on word aversion

  • Dr. Dave spent 20-30 hours restoring the Phoenix playfield

    high confidence · Dr. Dave recounting his restoration work on the game

  • The incognito bridge board is made by someone on Pinside and replaces the capacitor and bridge boards in Williams machines

    medium confidence · Dr. Dave describing the aftermarket component he used

  • Jake Danzig received the best homebrew pinball award at the most recent Chicago Pinball Expo

    high confidence · George announcing the award and referencing Pinball Profile coverage

Notable Quotes

  • “I call it super chicken with an afro”

    Dr. Dave @ early — Humorous description of the Phoenix game artwork featuring the phoenix bird as a stylized chicken character

  • “It's called a cocky lock”

    George @ mid — Punchline about Australian cockatoo-themed garbage bin lock device; demonstrates the hosts' playful humor

  • “Transformers don't go bad. There's something going...”

    Dr. Dave @ mid-late — Dr. Dave expressing frustration about an undiagnosed transformer issue on the Phoenix restoration; represents a complex technical problem

  • “Reading a book is a way better experience than watching the movie because your mind does a way better job of painting that picture”

    Dr. Dave @ late — Philosophical justification for podcast format (theater of the mind) rather than publishing photos

  • “There are no bad words, only bad intentions. George Carlin taught us that.”

    Dr. Dave @ late — Quote referencing comedian George Carlin in context of word aversion discussion

Entities

GeorgepersonDr. DavepersonBarry OslerpersonGrantpersonJake DanzigpersonJeff TeolispersonDr. ClownpersonWilliamscompanyPinball Lifecompany

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Dr. Dave identifies substandard playfield swap work on the Phoenix, noting missing mylar rings under pop bumpers causing premature wear despite minimal play. Discusses proper vs improper swap methodology.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'whoever did this playfield swap did not do that so it's already starting to wear around there even though the playfield only has maybe a couple hundred plays on it'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Dr. Dave encounters mysterious heating issue with capacitor on Williams Phoenix MPU. Attempts multiple diagnostic approaches including swapping to incognito bridge board, ultimately suspecting transformer problem—an uncommon failure mode.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'That means it's boiling electrolyte in there, and it could go boom or spurt out stuff' and later 'the only thing left is the problem is the freaking transformer'

  • ?

    product_concern: Discussion of inconsistent quality in used machine restorations purchased online/Craigslist. Multiple anecdotes about delivery issues, missing work, and follow-up repairs needed.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'within about maybe a day it stopped working which no surprise is craigslist' and discussion of Roller Coaster Tycoon requiring additional work post-delivery

  • ?

    technology_signal: Documentation of aftermarket parts availability for classic Williams machines, including Pinball Life flipper upgrades and incognito bridge board replacements, enabling cost-effective restoration.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'the whole mech is somewhere like 50 bucks or so you get the coil you get the end of stroke switch you get the mech you get the spring you get everything'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.204

0:00
You know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar, if I was to say to you, girl we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire Try to set the night on fire Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George and I'm joined by my co-host and fellow pilgrim, he's no turkey, Dr. Dave. Hello, Dave. Hello, George. Knock, knock, pilgrim. You're like John Wayne Pilgrim. I see you've ruined it again.
1:17
It's uncanny, George. It's uncanny. How did I do that? It's kismet. We are so plugged in. Like minds. Okay, we're going to get right into it, folks.
1:30
We're going to start with a game Dave is working on. This is not a dedicated episode. We're going to talk about Williams Phoenix. Now, a little bit about Phoenix. 6,198 units. It was produced in August of 1978. Here's the thing that I thought was pretty wild. List price to a distributor was $1,247. Sounds about right. Right. Barry Osler was the person who designed it. I happen to like this game because you played it? no I'm just looking at it and I'm saying how bad can it be it's got a spinner it's got three bumpers it's got two four bank drop targets and an Italian bottom basic game now I don't know anything about the rule set have any comments on the game that you're now working on I call it super chicken with an afro that is that is that is going to play into at least the beginning of this podcast have you seen the center of this play field george it's super chicken with an afro well well isn't isn't phoenix supposed to be the rise of the phoenix the bird comes out of the ashes or the flames and resurrects isn't that the whole idea behind it thanksgiving turkey so so who took the uh who took the uh the liberties of making this some kind of guy i guess it's a man right it's a man chicken man chicken man there's a thing chicken man okay no no no what was that show he's everywhere he's everywhere chicken man no no no super chicken right super chicken right it was a dave maynard thing on nbc no no but that used to be a cartoon super chicken right now that one i think so okay i'll have to go i'll get the clip yeah when you find yourself in danger when you're threatened by a stranger when it looks like you will take a licking there is someone waiting who will hurry up and rescue you just call for super chicken but if you're afraid you'll have to overlook it besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it he will take a super sauce and throw the bad guys for a loss and he will bring and alive and kicking there was one thing you should learn when there was no one else to turn so tell us about your game this is going to be a short piece on what you're doing and we'll come back when this thing is finally put together well i had this customer email me with this phoenix and uh his company's actually the reason why he went and searched this game out on craigslist his company is named phoenix and he's the owner so that's why he won this is kind of a showpiece in his uh showroom local yeah about an hour from here okay so local and uh so he got it brought over and said i'm gonna i'll go through it but he showed me a picture it looks in pretty nice shape but he got it and within about maybe a day it stopped working which no surprise is craigslist you know but are you becoming like the williams magnet because you've talked about this i've seen no pun intended we'll come to that in a minute yes magnet i get it yeah well you've talked about it in several of our shows so i'm sure you're going to talk about it again and actually you are going to talk about it again all right i will we'll find out no no there's no finding out i'm telling you i am we're going to talk about it alcohol, right? Fair enough. So, brought it to me. I just started going through it trying to get it to him by Thanksgiving time frame. Had it for a couple months. And the plate feels in gorgeous shape. Back glass is pretty nice shape. Catnip faded.
Incognito
person
Chicago Pinball Expoevent
Pinsideorganization
The Classic Pinball Podcastorganization
Williams Phoenixgame
Roller Coaster Tycoongame
Dukes of Hazzardgame

content_signal: Introduction of 'Doctor Dave' segment for answering technical restoration questions from podcast audience. First question addresses Williams flipper mech upgrades.

high · George: 'The name of the segment is going to be called Doctor Who? No, Doctor Dave' and invitation for technical questions at classic pinball podcast numeral one at gmail.com

  • ?

    community_signal: Jake Danzig's homebrew Dukes of Hazzard machine wins best homebrew award at Chicago Pinball Expo, indicating active homebrew community and competition recognition.

    high · George: 'He got the best homebrew pinball award at the most recent Chicago Pinball Expo' and reference to Pinball Profile coverage

  • ?

    historical_signal: Documentation of Williams Phoenix production facts: 6,198 units manufactured August 1978, $1,247 distributor list price, designed by Barry Osler.

    high · George: '6,198 units. It was produced in August of 1978. List price to a distributor was $1,247. Barry Osler was the person who designed it.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Real-world account of pinball machine delivery complications: $600 shipping cost, weeks-long wait, truck driver inexperience/navigation issues, Route 6A delivery on narrow Cape Cod driveway requiring multiple driver changes.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'the truck driver was bringing it in... his real problem is, is that he's a young driver. He doesn't know how to navigate a driver with his big truck...they had to go get a different driver'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Discussion of acquiring machines through secondary market (Craigslist, Pinside) with variable outcomes. Examples include Phoenix acquisition and Roller Coaster Tycoon purchase requiring follow-up service.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'he got it brought over and said i'm gonna i'll go through it but he got it and within about maybe a day it stopped working which no surprise is craigslist'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Discussion of psychological research showing word aversion to 'moist' and other innocuous words is recent phenomenon (10-20 years), not historical. Cites examples from 1970s-90s Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines advertisements normalizing the word.

    medium · George: 'It's only in the recent history. packed like 10, 15, 20 years ago there was no such thing' with supporting vintage commercial examples

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dr. Dave articulates proper playfield swap methodology: complete rebuilding of all systems including mylar application under pop bumpers, versus shortcuts that leave machines incomplete or improperly assembled.

    high · Dr. Dave: 'when i do a playfield swap i rebuild everything some people not have way... they just throw it over okay it's swapped i'm done no you're not done not nearly'

    • 5:32
    But the pump bumpers and so forth kind of show some wear and it looks like it's been partially rebuilt. But the plate feels like I flipped it over and it's gorgeous underside too. It's like it's pristine. Like this has to be a new all-star playfield someone swapped a playfield and did they do a good job not a bad job but when i do a playfield swap i rebuild everything some people not have way we're gonna come to that they just throw it over okay it's swapped i'm done no you're not done not nearly so uh you know the guy missed several things like light sockets or loosey-goosey so he did a lot So he basically did a transfer.
    6:12
    He did a transfer plus. He did a little bit of, you know, some little bit of rebuilding. You know, the drop target assemblies. No, no, no, don't go there. Okay, I won't go there. Not yet. Well, I'll just say the stickers. He put the stickers on there. So those look good. Don't go to the drop. Because they've heard about it, but I've got something specific I want to talk about. Okay.
    6:33
    All right. And, oh, yeah. So when you're doing a playfield swap, you know, typically you want to put those pop bumper mylar rings, those sticky mylars, underneath the pop bumpers when you're done because that gets trashed right away. That's why all these playfields from the factory have pop bumper mylar rings stuck to the playfield. Because the ball just, when it gets hit for the ring, it takes a big spin on it. It spins and kind of like, kind of does a little burnout in the playfield all the time. Times a thousand or whatever, how many thousands. so whoever did this playfield swap did not do that so it's already starting to wear around there even though the playfield only has maybe a couple hundred plays on it I see wear so I have to go and put Mylar around those the biggest thing with this game, I spent I don't know, 20 or 30 hours or so far just restoring the playfield it came up gorgeous, buffing everything I said okay great, all it's going to need now is just do my new boards in the back rebuild them, put a new MPU-327 back there and you build a power supply, this thing's going to come right up.
    7:39
    And, no. Didn't come right up, George. No. Leave it at that. Okay. Folks, you've heard me talk about our correspondent and friend in Australia. Well, he's got a request. He wants us to start a new segment.
    8:13
    He gave me half the name of the segment, and I'm going to build upon it. The name of the segment is going to be called Doctor Who? No, Doctor Dave.
    8:26
    Okay. So this is going to be our tech section. doctor who no dr dave so here's the question from grant oh damn here we go okay here we go so he came up with this and i like it because you talk about your stories and that's tech but this is going to be to our our podcast base you can ask dave a question so because i forget every single episode our email address is the classic pinball podcast numeral one at gmail.com you folks have been light i got a couple of emails which we'll talk about in a little bit but send your technical questions i'll give it to dave and we'll see if he can answer it but here's your first question from grant all right see if i can do he says my first question would be in relation to the williams flipper mech upgrades dave so often talks about i would like more information such as is it only the mech or is it the coils that are upgraded and also if so is there wiring rods to be done or is it just a direct swap one for one all right uh what's our patreon page george oh no we uh no all we need to do is actually the whole enchilada you buy the whole piece the uh from whom from pinball life okay remember he's in australia so that probably costs like nine billion nine billion dollars yeah and i think the whole mech is somewhere like 50 bucks or so you get the coil you get the end of stroke switch you get the mech you get the spring you get everything it's all made up it's all made up You don't have to do anything. Nothing. Nope. It even has the correct end of stroke switch on it. For this generation, you actually can pick end of stroke switch you want. You can pick your coil stop you want. You can pick the coil you want. And it comes all custom made, bang, the way you want it. It's a really nice drop down menu.
    10:36
    And the wiring is switched over one for one to the new coil. It goes right in. And the coil is more of a modern, a little bit longer, beefier WPC coil. Or early 80s Williams coil, let's call it. mid-80s versus like that coil from the late 70s Williams. So it's a lot better. You can tell when the flippers flip and it drops down, the original Williams stuff would go, it just dropped down and go rattle, you know, just like this is rattle playing. This is kind of loosey-goosey and not really, nothing with force and nothing with authority versus the WPC mic in there is a lot more stronger flip and it just feels a lot better. It feels more normal like um like the other games of its time you know because williams is pretty weak in that department so this thing brings it up to spec thank you okay so folks again the classic pinball podcast numeral one at gmail.com send your technical question to that email and i'll give it to dave and we'll see if we can get you an answer now in keeping with the bird theme all I have a couple of bird stories. This one was in the Wall Street Journal, and it caught my eye because it was in Australia.
    11:51
    And I don't know where Stanwell Park is, but it must be near the coast. And they talk about a sulfur-crested cockatoo. Now, do you know what a cockatoo is? Yeah, isn't that a white bird, like a parrot with all the feathers on it? For those who are of our ilk, there was a show back in the 70s called Beretta with Robert Blake. Yeah, don't do the crime. You can't do the time. No, no. There you go. Very good. So he had a cockatoo. Right. He had a cockatoo. So now everybody knows what that thing looks like. Now, the headline for this article is, in Australia, birds that learned how to ransack garbage bins are teaching others.
    12:39
    These birds are teaching other birds to be criminal birds? Right, to go in and open up, physically open up a garbage can lid. You know, like you have your garbage can that's got the flip-up lid because you have the guy with the automated arm that comes by and puts the garbage right in. Yeah. It's not like the old type where it was just a circular can with a lid on it. No, this has got the flip top. The birds are smart enough to figure it out. So it got me thinking. Yeah. I don't have an issue where I live. You would think in southern New Hampshire we would probably have some other varmint that would try to get into. Like a raccoon.
    13:18
    That would be one. I was thinking of my friends down at the Jersey Shore who have seagulls. Those things are super smart too. Or probably the people in the Cape. Oh, yeah. People have varmints that get into the garbage. I have crows. They will peck at my, I actually get a newspaper delivered every day. They think that the plastic bag is garbage, and they will peck my newspaper. So I get these newspapers every once in a while that look like Swiss cheese. But anyway, so it got me to thinking. The worst offender in my book is not the varmints that go into the garbage. It's the winged rats. we call them pigeons. I'm wondering if they again, it's half a world away I wonder if they have pigeons or raccoons or any other kind of varmint that would get in. Pigeons are city. They're city dwellers. You don't see them out in suburbs. I don't see pigeons around here.
    14:12
    I have a guy who raises those homing pigeons. Yeah, and they never landed on my roof. Hint, hint. I thought they would land on my neighbor's roof. But aren't they cute? They're white pigeons. Oh, yeah, they're cute. You ever look at your roof line after those things come around? Oh, not too good. Yeah, no. I'm not a big fan, as you can probably hear. But the whole part of this story, let me see if I can find the ending, is what they would call the devices that people developed. They came up with 52 different variants of devices to keep the birds out of the garbage cans. They would put bricks, cinder blocks. Some people used plastic bottles. Necessity is the mother of invention, George. But here's the thing that I love.
    15:02
    A company has developed a bird bin lid lock. And the people have a slang term for this lock. Can you guess what it is?
    15:18
    No. It's called a cocky lock. Wow. Popular in P-Town, I'm sure. Oh. Bazinga. Okay. We're done with that. You're on the sparrow.
    15:44
    Okay, okay. Don't do it. I forgot one. We're going to go back to the phoenix, okay, for a minute. That sounds a lot safer, George. I have to repeat these because they're funny.
    15:58
    You know I read the brochures. So I come up with their marketing phrases. Yeah, brochures from, for instance. For phoenix. Okay, yeah, so brochures. So, here's some of the phrases that they used back in 1978 to sell this game. Heat up the action. Oh, terrible. Light the fuse with Phoenix. Oh, fire them. The hot one. Introducing the fiery Phoenix.
    16:32
    Just bad. Hacky, huh? Just hacky. Ignite the excitement. Wow. How many other words do you have for hot?
    16:40
    What else can we do? Inferno. Yeah. Speaking of fingers do you want to hear because it a conundrum right now on why the game and I still haven figured it out and I never had this happen before on a game before What that You turn it on the game boots up but you get no feature lights You do have general illumination lights. And then the transformer starts humming a little bit, and then the guy did say, oh, the capacitor seems like it's leaking some stuff out of it. There's a really big cap on the back. It didn't blow up. It didn't blow up, but I rushed over and touched it. Boy, that thing's hot. It's not supposed to be hot. That means it's boiling electrolyte in there, and it could go boom or spurt out stuff, but you don't want it. Or one of the sides would split. Yeah, no. Or the fuse would come out. Well, they have safety stuff on it. So I turn that off. It's like, okay, maybe there's a dead short somewhere. You know what? I'll just take all the play-filled wiring away. I'll just have just a standalone transformer in the head and nothing else attached to it. Maybe the play-filled swap didn't go so well, and you got something crossed. and something whacked out. And the same thing. Same thing. Same heat of cap. I said, okay, I'll use one of these incognito bridge boards that they have that basically replace it. A what? It's called an incognito. Is that the guy that's on Pinside? Yeah, incognito. He's been around for like ever. Yeah, he made this bridge board. Where is he?
    18:13
    Good question. U.S. or foreign? I think he's foreign. I think so too, but go ahead. I bought a bunch of these about a couple years ago. I never had an opportunity to use them because, like, oh that big cap on the back never goes bad the two bridges in the back never go bad so i never had to use it but i have them well today is the day to use them why not take all that crap out of it since it's having a problem i'll just put his bridge board in there takes the cap out takes the potential bad projector fires up even though he tested good uh and turn it on and now the caps on his bridge board are heating up it's like okay the only thing left is the problem is the freaking transformer. Transformers don't go bad. There's something going... So now, I'm looking at transformer wiring. So now I'm on a whole uncharted territory. I've never really dealt with transformer problems before. So... And to try to find a transformer, if say this one goes bad, try to find one, you're going to pay at least $100 or $200 for a transformer for this. It's no different than a Bally game.
    19:19
    I mean, $200... No, $300 or $400 if you buy a Home Pin remake. And they don't go bad unless you start seeing this waxy substance kind of melting on the floor next to it. Then you know, yeah, there's a problem. But this doesn't have that either. So it's a real weird one. You've got to stay tuned for the rest of the story. In an upcoming episode, we're going to hopefully have the answer for it when we're all done with the game. Okay, good. So something to look forward to.
    19:43
    I want to give a shout out. I know you remember this person, Mr. Jake Danzig. He is the person who commissioned the Dukes of Hazzard machine. I was contacted by him with some pictures. He got the best homebrew pinball award at the most recent Chicago Pinball Expo. Very well done. If you want to hear a little bit more about that, here you go. Shout out to Jeff Teolis at Pinball Profile. Latest episode, it's right at the beginning. So if you want to hear a little bit more about Jake and his game, give that a listen.
    20:23
    Let's see, what else do I have? Oh, I want to talk about your little tidbit that you sent me, your little movie or video.
    20:36
    The Lit and Tilted? Who the hell is Dr. Clown? Oh, Dr. Clown. Yeah, Dr. Clown. he uh during the last few years of the latest unpleasantness we've all been going through um he uh he decided to take a different sarcastic spin on on all the mandates and so forth so he went around shopping with a kind of a prosthetic face mask clown hair with all the different colored clown hair big clown shoes and a white lab coat it said dr clown and he'd shop and he'd take a video of him shopping in a blue mask over his prosthetic clown face. It's almost like a Jason mask. So he'd go out into public and punk people. Totally. He'd just go shopping like regular. You guys are being kind of, in his mind and some other people's minds, it was kind of a little overkill on stuff. And he said, I'm just going to come and just go and punk everybody. And this is what I feel about the whole thing. So he gave you a shout-out. You were watching him and he gave you a shout-out. He did because I like to go in his chat. and then uh you know i'll go in this chapter do you think he does some funny stuff he said uh what do you say it's like oh dr day's pymorist regions here well we know the chat's going to be lit now and tilted stay tuned stay tuned on that one um okay oh we're gonna go back to grant and grant you're just you're all over this episode did you look at that picture of the fiberglass bodied kiss i did now is that i still don't know that's not a factory thing that someone made that somebody made that okay so i was going to say that bally wouldn't make that and have that and then so if someone did make that the next question is why did they make that they're really good at working with fiberglass they have a lot of free time in their hands maybe they make boats for a living and decided to apply it to another item in the house it looks very it looks very 60s-ish. At least I'm from Austin Powers. Well, I remember my buddy's dad worked for Simmons Mattress Company and they made a what do you call them? The fold-out bed? Yeah. You know, couch bed. Futon? No, the one that's buried in a couch. Oh, yeah. You take the things on. Convertible. Right, a convertible. They used to make a fiberglass version of that couch. It was very modern looking and he had well, obviously because dad worked for the company but he had That's what it reminded me of. Okay. But, yeah, very 70s. Yeah, 70s, very 70s. I didn't think it was bad, but... Nothing I don't. No, whatever. So where did he find that? Where was that a picture? I don't... He just sent the picture. You know, we get these random things from him, so that's why people keep... I was going to use the B word. That's why people keep saying to us, we should have a web page, or we should be posting pictures, because all we do is theater of the mind. And we never publish anything you do about the games you do, but other weird things that come up in this show. Yeah, I know, but then you've got to keep it all up to date.
    23:50
    I'm not doing it. No, I'm not doing it. You know, the theory of the mind, you know what, here's the thing. I'm not doing it. The theory is, like, reading a book versus watching the movie. You'll see nine times out of ten, reading the book is a way better experience than watching the movie because your mind does a way better job of painting that picture in your mind of what you're reading than someone else's opinion or vision of what you're reading and put it on a movie screen. It's a lot more limited. So there you go, George.
    24:15
    People seem to like our last show, the horror show. I went out and watched Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein recently. Those are great movies. Abney Costello? No, no, no, the original one. The original one. So thank you folks for that. I have a, this is from you. I got to find it.
    24:37
    Do you want to start while I look? Do you want to talk about the, well, no, let me start over again.
    24:48
    David Maureen and Janice and I were invited to dinner at Mike and Chris's house. We mentioned it, I think, in our last show. And they put out a nice four-course meal. Chris is, I guess, a trained chef, and we had carrot soup, we had caprese salad, we had a homemade lasagna, and then came the dessert.
    25:15
    And he made a gingerbread cake with buttercream frosting. And Dave, what was that word that was uttered in response to how delicious that cake was? That word would be moist, George. Moist. Now, you're not one for just kicking the horse.
    25:44
    Me, George? Nah. No, no, not you. Not you. So, Dave found this article out on the interweb. Why do people hate the word moist?
    25:58
    And this cognitive psychologist conducted a series of experiments. And the long and short of it is, people hate the word moist because of how it sounds, because of its connotations to bodily fluids, and are socialized to believe the word is disgusting. But this is only of a certain time frame. It's only in the recent history. packed like 10, 15, 20 years ago there was no such thing. Moist is like Betty Crocker moist pudding, moist cake Oh so you did it again! I know, I did Did I say moist again? No, I went out and found that commercial. You did? Oh There are a lot. I can't wait It was fine, it was a normal thing It was prevalent in the 70s, 80s I think almost up until the 90s What changed, George? How to teach about baking a moist, delicious cake and learn about love Take Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake Mix one teacher and one student begin with the batter the moistest of any leading mix explain that the moistest batter bakes up into a cake so moist it springs back then review you can't bake a moister cake than duncan hines end of lesson how to make your moist delicious yeah big word moist right in the box rigging big letters it's word aversion but that's not the reason I'm bringing this up. I think it's a psychological experiment on people. You just tend to take it to the nth degree, but that's not the thing that caught my eye on this article. It's the other words that people have aversion to. So not only do you kick the horse, you throw it off the cliff. Yeah. You set it on fire. Right. Shoot it. Pretty much. So here are the other words and they are not curse or swear words. These are just regular words. You know what? There are no bad words, only bad intentions. George Carlin taught us that. Well, we've used George, and maybe we'll use him again at the ending of this program. Just not the long one. The short version of George. He goes on. He's a little winded. Yeah, I cut it up a little. There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people that would have you not use certain words.
    28:05
    Here are the words. Ointment. Panties. You know that? Could put people in a bunch. I get it. Curd? Pandas in a bunch. Curd. What's wrong with curd? Like curdled milk? No, did you ever have curds? Yeah, curds in a way. It's normal. Have you ever been to Wisconsin? Yeah. Cheese curds? Yeah, they're really good. I don't care for them. No? You don't like squeaky curds? They're good. They're boring to me. Here's the one. Rural. Oh, that's supposed to be hate-filled people out in the... Rural. ...their own farming. Rural. Yeah, I don't... Dollop. That's fine with a dollop of sour cream on something. What's wrong with that? Like daisy cream, what's the, not cream cheese, sour, right, daisy. Rural's great. You do your own chickens, you get your own farm, it's rural. Okay, slurp.
    28:54
    Okay, slurp. Slurpees. Slurpees, who cares? Yeah. These people just need to get out of the safe space. Here's the one that's going to set everybody's hair on fire. What a safe space is going on, George. Because a game's coming up. Pulp.
    29:06
    Like Pulp Fiction or Pulp Orange Juice, who cares? I wish we could play Oh that one You can't just get a beep in a little bit A bit? I can't play that You can play a hint of it And then tell people where it is We can play some of that That's not funny, that's sick By National Lampoon Orange juice commercial I'll play as much as I can play But it's not going to play much You mean fresh squeezed Non-reconstituted Yellow orange pulp whatever oh boy that wrong again honey then I can't play it after that right but they'll get the whole it's funny even without their swearing the whole lead up is great that's a great album I've put segments of that on other podcasts
    30:08
    Here, honey, try this. Mmm, looks like our regular orange-colored frozen substitute for artificial morning breakfast beverage with pulp-like particles added. Wrong, honey. But, but, look, pulp-like substances, just like the concentrate that tastes almost like fresh. But doesn't cost like the concentrate that tastes almost like fresh. You mean this natural-tasting morning breakfast beverage with a flavor almost like fresh squeezed that tastes better than frozen and better than those reconstituted substitutes for artificial morning breakfast drink is actually pennies less preserving than those concentrates that taste almost like fresh and have poke-like substances? Wrong again, honey. Why the f*** did you stop saying wrong again, honey? and throw this f*** up in the toilet and get out there and get me some f***ing orange juice!
    31:12
    Hey, what's up, Doc? What's cooking? What's up, Doc? Oh, you're looking for bugs, bunny bunting. Doc is gonna hunt them just to get a rabbit skin, but now the rabbit's gonna get... What's up, Doc? What's cooking? Hey, look out! Stop! You're gonna hurt someone. with that old shotgun.
    31:36
    Hey, what's up, doc? Well, George, I had a call from a person down the Cape with a roller coaster tycoon that they bought off of Pinside. And they're looking for a game for a while because this older couple, they had some, you know,
    31:55
    really bad problems the last couple years. And on top of that, they had some other health issues going on besides all that stuff. So they were kind of, you know, bummed out the last couple of years. So they decided, you know what, let's treat ourselves and get a pinball machine. They're trying to buy a pinball machine online. They couldn't get one. Nothing really, you know, floated their boat. And they said, you know, we need something of fun, a fun roller coaster. Yeah, okay, Roller Coaster Tycoon. Well, this one's out in, like, Indiana. They had to get it shipped. I'm going to interrupt. All right. You've already done this game.
    32:25
    Yes. When we went to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. Yes. Yep. And somewhat similar situation where they bought it from somebody, that somebody contacted you, or they did, and said, hey, I want to pay you to go get the Gremlins out and make sure that the game plays correctly, if I remember. Right. Well, that one up north was supposedly a restored game from a supposed big company, big box company. I spent a lot of time making sure that that game worked right, and it's the ramps, if I remember those. The ramp wasn't right? Yeah, those habitrail jobs. Yeah, it wasn't quite set up right. It wasn't quite put together right. And on top of that, it still had a problem that we really couldn't figure out, but the customer didn't really care that much about it. All of a sudden, the volume would go up to a super high level and then come back down again.
    33:12
    Kind of like our podcast. Yeah, kind of like our podcast. We call our Rollercoaster Tycoon podcast. Take that, Dave Marston. Take that. Poor Dave Marston. Stop beating up on poor Dave. He loves it. If they're not talking about you, Dave, they don't care. Okay, well, I guess you can go with that. So they decided to get this thing. It's from Indiana. They had to get it shipped, and it cost, I don't know, $600 to ship or something to North American van lines, and they waited for weeks for it to come, and the truck driver was bringing it in. And he called us saying oh well I can get there today because I can I don know He very nondescript He like why not We took the day off today for you to get here We want it delivered today Well no I can They finally called the home office or whatever the shipping company So yeah, his real problem is, is that he's a young driver. He doesn't know how to navigate a driver with his big truck. He can't, he doesn't feel like he's comfortable to get in it. So they had to go get a different driver, spend a couple more days somewhere getting a driver and getting him to navigate their driver with his 18-wheeler to feel comfortable. What kind of driveway do they have? Well, it's right off Route 6A. Oh, okay. Never mind. So it's 6A and a driveway. So now you've got to stop traffic and back it in and try a couple times. And it's just, you know, one of those. That's the main road right down the spine of the Cape. Down in Brewster. So all the way out. Okay. Yep. All the way out. Well, it's not as bad as early Cape, but still not great. Yeah. so so they finally got it in and you know set it up and it still it had it had some issues so they called they called me up and said i can come and fix the issues plus i can give it a good day spa so we spent the day down there got it all oh clown puke leds in this thing george and cheapo ones like these cheap little blue ones from from like they're jerry bulbs this thing's low with jerry balls george well jerry's gonna like it he is i got a whole have a whole another bag You must love it. Another bag. Christmas is coming, Jerry. I give him the Jerry bulbs and a couple other little things, and then Jerry sometimes lets me into these shows early. I help Jerry. It's like Jerry's kids, Jerry's bulbs. So I took all those out of there, got rid of all that crap, cleaned it up, new clear rubber all around, and then they said, oh, we want to think about something to do with the batteries. I said, well, the batteries look good, but we'll get those out of there. It's easy to put an Envy Ram in there. No socket required. because Sokka's already there. They put an Envy Ram and chip in there. No batteries, no needed. Okay, so we did that.
    35:51
    What I should have done is I should have play tested this game before I did anything. I didn't really do that, but they said they did.
    35:58
    Uh-oh. Yeah, uh-oh. Uh-oh, George. You know better. I know better. I know. I do know better. You've got to follow procedure, and sometimes I don't really follow procedure. So, you know, Powered On Call comes on, and I put all the stuff in there and reset all the scores down nice and low and put it on free play and all this other stuff. And play, it's playing great. Turn it off. Turn it back on again. It's all still there. No problem. Okay, I think we're good. Play a little more. And then said, okay, have a nice day. You guys are all set for a while.
    36:31
    Well, she texted me a couple days later. Hey, the game says insert coins. It's like, okay, that's not good. Why is that not good? Because that means it's like having your batteries failed That means it reset everything again It should not be resetting anything NVRAM holds all the stuff Now I did have this problem When I was on site there With NVRAM I said is it my imagination It didn't hold my settings And I turned it off for a couple minutes So I said yeah So I tried another NVRAM And then it seemed to work I still didn't totally feel 100% confident but I think I was late with him there for like nine hours and I had to get home. It was like a two-hour drive. So I'd say, okay, I think it's going to be good. Let's, you know, a lick and a promise kind of thing, you know. So she said, oh, it didn't. I said, okay, well, go into the settings. I told her how to change it back to free play. And so it did. And then she played. Okay, I think it's fine. But I knew in the back of my mind, it's like, this thing is going to come back. I just, this is going to be a problem. So I got to start researching why. I've never had. So I contacted Andrew who sold me these NVRMs a while ago. do you ever hear any rejects for NVRAM? And he said, you know what, I've never had anyone fail on me. I've sold thousands of these. No one's ever come back on them. They've always been good. Yours would be the first.
    37:52
    Especially since you tried two of mine and they both seemed to fail. It's not NVRAM that's failing. NVRAM's supposed to hold the setting. No, I understand. I'm wondering did the board corrupt the NVRAM?
    38:07
    Then I'm thinking So maybe you should go back to batteries. Yeah, so I was thinking, you know what? So I have a couple little weapons in my, what's it called, quiver? A couple of arrows in my quiver. There you go, a couple of arrows in the quiver, yes. Okay, there, Robin Hood. Thank you. So one is go simple. Okay, let's go back to Square Enix. Let's put batteries back in it, and let's put their original RAM back in it, and see what happens and see if it's happy, right? if it still isn't happy then it's like okay then it's not that it's not that i'm thinking it's not even that i'm thinking that it's one the socket that this thing plugs into has a problem maybe one of the pins isn't quite making contact all the way but i would think that would throw up an error code if it wasn't happy when you turn it on uh or i didn't i sent i sent an email to stern tech support because you can't call them anymore i don't know why they're still playing that game God, no. Two years later, we're still going to play this game, but you can't call anybody, so you have to email them, and you have to wait until you hear back, and we're playing Telegram, Telegraph, you know.
    39:16
    You don't have a spare board? No, not for the Stearns. What kind of? It's a SAM. It's a White Star, I think. So that's a board that's no longer used.
    39:27
    Yeah, no longer used. No, it's early 2000s. Okay. Pretty robust board, pretty, you know. Okay. But, I mean, I could. they're out there. I could find one. I think it's like $400 or $500. And I don't think it's the whole board. So I started doing more research. So I sent a thing to Stern. Here's what I got. I'm hoping to hear back from them. And I told the Slade, listen, I'm working on it. She's very nice. They're a nice couple and they're willing, you know. But, you know, from their point of view, I can't blame them. I'm the last guy. I touched it and now it was working for her and now it's not quite where it's supposed to be. And I get it. But I also told her, you know, the game, it is 20-year-old technology. It's 20-year-old chips. Anything can happen, you know. So I'm going to still work on it for them to figure it out. I'm going to figure out their issue. So I have a call into Stern. I also went on Pinside. Pinside is a great, it's like the Alexandria library of all this stuff because other people have posted things in there. And it's great when they post problems and they post solved at the end. And I found one. It's the exact same problem I had with this game on the Lord of the Rings with the same generation board, exact same situation. and he solved his by a new PAL chip. The PAL chip... A what? It's called a PAL chip. Let's be your PAL. We're PALs. It's a PAL chip. It doesn't sound like it's your PAL right now. It's not my PAL at all right now. So typically this PAL chip resides right underneath the battery section and typically any leakage and it gets corroded and you have a problem, you've got to replace the socket, clean up the traces, put a new PAL chip in. But this board, from what I saw, didn't have any of that. now i looked at it pretty close but could there be a problem with the well let me let me interject and say how do you know it didn't and that whoever whomever they bought this from didn't clean it up maybe you can't you can't see it but it was already corroded because i will say whoever sold to him did not really sell him he said oh it's a low plays game it only has 600 plays on Right, well, there's a reason. You know why? Because it was broken. No, there's an even better reason. He replaced the batteries in the thing, and it resets the count. Oh. So they sold him, like, oh, this is a homie who sold me a signal. I told these guys, like, no, no, this guy was kind of a shyster. No, he's, I mean, it's not a bad condition. You know, they paid up for it. Right, but you have to come in. I get affected by the fact I didn't clean up someone else's mess. Again. Yet again. How many times have we told? A lot. How many times have we told this story? And now you have, too, because it's the same thing. okay people bought the game up in new hampshire right at least now i'm now i'm married at least they were smart enough to to contract you i.e the people who sold the game and say hey go set it up for these people and for the most part it was pretty good right as you know you know the game came hundreds of miles things get jostled around i think things were bad from day one right well nobody played with that you know that habit trail yeah and that to me that is that's a time suck Oh, it is. And when we did that, if you recall, it was like 9 billion degrees. Oh, yes. I went through like 19 headbands and four t-shirts. So, yeah, that's a day I won't forget. Yeah, that was a long time. A lot of optimization, a lot of customization on that one. So this one here, and I know I've had this problem, well, similar stuff with the PAL chip not being good. And another thing that's key with what you said. And also, now I'm getting this message saying, open the door. So that message only comes on in a stern game like that. Yeah, open the door. Open the door. Open the door, dummy. Open the door. Right.
    43:01
    Open the door, Richard. Who's there? Who's Richard? I don't know. They used to play that clip on the FM radio station I used to listen to, and I don't know why. No one's going to know that reference, George. I know. I know, but I do. And remember, I'm entertaining myself. I don't care about you. Okay, I get it. I had a friend named Richard, so I used to always say that. Open the door, Richard.
    43:25
    Did you ever call him Dick? Yes. Okay. Did you ever say you're a real Richard? Yes. Knock, knock, George. Oh, no. Who's there?
    43:41
    Yeah. Yahoo. You don't sound very excited to say Yahoo. okay george that's that open the door means that your batteries have gone bad replace the battery or you just replace the batteries so it wants you to put the batteries in it wants you to open the door why are you even having this conversation with this homeowner she has no clue she bought this game remotely. No, she does have some mechanical. She's a little bit mechanical. She's not your typical housewife that... Retail consumer. No, don't even say housewife. Retail consumer. Men are just as guilty. They don't know anything. I want that pinball machine. They get it. They get it home. They don't know how to work on it. That's why they hire you. True, but I'd say men in general a little more... Okay, you're going to get yourself in trouble. Be quiet. let's just say the four female listeners that we have are going to be offended and now we're going to have none is it her story or history George that's all I want to say are you done I crack myself up George anyway the logic brain and the head and heart let's just end this story folks he doesn't have the full answer he just strung you along for 10 minutes he doesn't have a resolve to this so stay tuned do you have another story I do you want a couple quickies do you want a long one I'll give you a quickie I've never been asked that by a man okay You know what?
    45:39
    You can go to a certain dinner party if you ask that question. All right. You know what? We were doing so well. I know. We were doing so well.
    45:54
    Oh, boy. Folks, you need to ask yourself the question. Why do you listen? Exactly right. Why do you listen?
    46:03
    And it's gotten better. Every week it gets better. I need to put a public service in here. Sure. I don't know what our schedule is going to be like between now and the end of the year. Hectic. Right. We'll do a couple of shows, but we're probably not, like this one, we're not going to adhere to every two weeks. Yeah, that's good. We just got a lot of junk going on. So be thankful that we're at least recording. I get thankful. Thanksgiving. And you know what? I'll be honest. I have three years of, you know, previous shows.
    46:37
    These shows, once we get to, like, December, people are doing other stuff. The last thing they're doing, unless they're in a car going to grandma's. Yes. They're not listening to podcasts. Right. So our listenership goes down. Okay. Maybe this year not, but we'll see. So you have another story. I do. Tell one more story. One more story. I mean, how long is our... No, I think... 49 right now. Okay. Okay, you can tell them the story. I'll tell them. Here's a quickie. So this is a no fear working on. Now, again, with the... Didn't we do this once before? Never did. Yeah. I don't think so.
    47:15
    Huh? Oh, well, yeah, we went there. This one, when someone, he bought it. Yeah, we did. He bought it from, yeah, he bought it from some shyster guy that said, yeah, here's a beautiful picture. There's no fear. Come get it. This isn't the thing with the pickup truck where the guy pulls up. Yeah, yeah. We did talk about this one. the pickup truck. Here is... Right? Okay, well... Here's absent-minded as I am. We had to do more. Well, we had to do more. So this is... Right, wasn't this the debate and switch where the guy's got a really, really nice No Fear, and then he's got the No Fear in the back of the truck? That's one of my house. And your customers just jonesed in for the game, so he bought it? So he bought it, yeah. And now he's pouring a lot of money into this game, where if he was smart, he would have saved himself a whole lot of time and money. I wouldn't say... Not smart. The guy is smart. He's just not as... No one's an expert at these things, so it's kind of a newbie thing. Everybody's guilty of it. You're being polite. He must listen.
    48:07
    He loves the game. He grew up in the game. He wanted the game. So I know we talked about the game, but here's the thing. I designed this game, and I cannot believe that Steve Ritchie is part of this game. He made this game with some other people, designed it. I don't understand. What do you mean you don't like it? Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't like it. Here's why.
    48:28
    It's almost like Star Trek Next Gen. He does the same thing with this game, but differently. Start to the next gen, you start the game up from scratch, replace the batteries, whatever, put the balls in there. The game will automatically shoot out three balls. It shoots it out so it puts it in the locks for you before you even start a game. Then when you do multi-ball, it comes up right away as no waiting for the multi-ball to happen. Same thing in No Fear, but only with one ball. But instead of neatly going where it's supposed to go, it shoots the ball out to an angle and tries to go up this center ramp in the center. and the angle is just like, it has to be on a wing and a prayer to make it. That game has to be exactly level the right pitch and the right level left to right and everything has to be tight so that when the ball hits it doesn't rattle around. I had it pretty good where this guy had it last time I was there for Day Spa version 1. He moved the game to a different room.
    49:21
    And now I'm wondering, now I'm pressing so the game's starting up it tries to shoot the ball, it doesn't make it How long did it take you to get it? Over and over and over again. Right. It wouldn't do, how long? How long did it take you to get it set the first time? Right. A while. Right. And then this time, I did not bring my level or my stuff because I didn't need to because it's all level. Right. As far as I knew. But he moved it to a different room. Now this room is on level. So now, I don't have any of that stuff with me. He also has really small feet on the back there, not the long ones. I forgot to bring those with me. Oh, levelers? He didn't have the three inch ones? Yeah. The tiny ones. The two inch ones? Yeah. Yeah, a little inch and a half, whatever they are. Not too good. Go for the front legs. Whoever sold him this freaking thing, I'd like to take him outside. Okay, so you're back with him. So back with him. But I did. Oh, and he was missing a spinner. He was missing the no-fear spinner, the game. So I actually ordered one of those. Marco had those. Yeah, he told me. And that came out beautiful. But, like, he sold this game with all this stuff missing. Oh, and the burnt-out magnet. The magnet was burnt out. I put that in there.
    50:23
    This game sounds like a whole ball of fun. this is yesterday so i so so i put the magnet in there and then i'm trying to test it and it's like i'm testing with the others three there's two other magnets there's a left a middle and the right man in the back very similar to the getaway high speed the getaway it makes the ball go around zoom zoom zoom there's three magnets right so this is three magnets as well and they do a similar situation one of the left magnet one was was burnt up um so you're able to buy magnets oh Oh yeah I bought them I didn know that they all different So I bought I bought I guess I bought a bunch of left magnets for it just so I could have them But I thought I bought universal magnets So I bought a lefty magnet for this game
    51:06
    Because I'm a lefty, George. So I put that in there. And I'm going to test if I'm using the, because I attached it and I still got no magnet working. It's like, okay, probably if that blew, then the transistor blew as well. Because that makes sense. It burned up, so it burned up the transistor that controls it. But just for shites and giggles, let's plug that into that lefty magnet into the right magnet feed and see what happens. And I got nothing. Okay, let's try the middle magnet feed. I got nothing. It's like, all right, let's try one of the – Why? Because it's wired differently?
    51:41
    Oh, George, give the boy a cigar over here. You are correct. Now, I was thinking I'll try one of my other magnets in case maybe I have a bad magnet. So I tried one of my other things, put it in there. Still no go. Then I had to – let's look at the connectors. It's a three-pin connector. The other ones use pin A and C. This one uses pin A and B. There you go. And it ain't happening. It's like, okay, that's why it won't work, but it does work. Okay, so now I go, so let's go in the back box. Now I went upstairs and told the guy, because we hit our number five. It's like, oh, we're getting close. People say, are you almost done? It's like, you know, they kind of wonder, like, why so long? Well, they're looking at the clock going.
    52:19
    They're looking at the gas pump meter. The gas pump is going. That's even a better analogy. You've got to fill the tank. Ding, ding, ding. Right.
    52:33
    It's like my lawyer. Every five minutes. 500 bucks a minute. It's not quite that bad, but trust me, you know, when you're on the phone with a lawyer, you better be very sustained. You better know exactly what you're talking about. Because if not, and you hem and haw, man, you're paying for every minute. You don't say things like, so how's your day going today? No, no, no, no, no. No, it's we're done the call. How are you doing? Oh, okay, right. That's what I used to do in my lawyer job. Yeah, we're done now. Right, we're done now. Hit stop. Right, right. No more, no more money. Right.
    53:07
    Oh, yeah. So I went, so I decided to take the main board out of there. I had the transistors on me. I said, okay, this one's a tip 36, okay. Then I said, let's test it out. And nothing looked burnt in the board on the transistor side. But there is something burnt. This big trace going from that transistor all the way to the pin, that thing is all burnt to crap. It's burnt and nasty, but the whole board is perked otherwise. I tested the transistor, tested good. It's like, tested the one that feeds it. That tested good too. All right, can I be this lucky that I'm just going to put a jumper wire from here to here and have it go? Yes, it worked. A jumper wire fixed the trace. And now that works. so the moral of the story is all the magnets in No Fear are different all three are available from Marco or only one don't know the answer to that one ok so we don't know the answer but you can always chop one off the old one and kind of splice it in if you want to the connector this magnet thing seems to be a recurring issue in a lot of these games they burn up again forgive me that's a Williams right yes a lot of Williams games had them although Bally had it too because Bally has Adam's family yeah well I have one in Centaur Twilight Zone but yeah it's true you do have one in Centaur right but that never burns though oh you can get me one don't worry so the only thing left so now I told him the only thing that's left in this thing is driving me crazy I said when you move this game did you play it yet oh I haven't played it yet it's like well you know that shot at the beginning oh yeah it was kind of it was 75% working where it was before. It's like, well, now we're close to 0% working because you moved it. So I'm going to try to level it the best I can. And so I said, I got it to like I think 70%, I think, again. So I showed him. I tried it. As I'm showing him, it shot up that lane on the howl. I did it like two or three times. I said, well, it's working.
    55:01
    It sounds good. I think we're good, you know. Tell me you got a phone call afterwards. No, no, no. Oh, yeah. The big thing you had with this game, too, was this has a talking head like Rudy. The No Fierce Skull in it has a talking head like Rudy from Funhaus.
    55:18
    So every time he goes, hey, put another quarter in. You know, whatever. His little mean little thing, the little skeleton head will talk. Well, he said that it was only moving a little bit once in a while. It wasn't moving all the time. So I actually really rebuilt that too. I got all the parts to rebuild that puppy too. Did you do it originally or after the fact? No, I did that yesterday. Oh, so you didn't do it... No, no. Not round one. No, round one was basically to get a piece of crap to polish up so it's not a piece of crap. Round two was to optimize things and fix all the things that were just wrong with the thing. Man, you get some really.
    55:56
    And I found mouse turds and rusty stuff in the back of the game in the bottom of the cabinet. I said, this thing was stupid. And I said, you know what? I know what happened with this game. Day one, back in the arcade or the pizza joint, wherever it was, this thing had burned out. magnet it probably was blowing fuses or whatever uh they say they pulled it oh well it's all back there we can't get to it too much work something else came out came out put it put it put it in a barn somewhere we'll get to it at some point and it sat there for a long time then this guy the shyster guy who sold this to my customer he said oh found it for who knows what for a couple hundred bucks whatever and then sold to this guy for as a new game I do have another tale of woe about customers going in with their eyes closed buying something. You have a lot of these. I do. There's so many people that take advantage of people out there. So wait a second. We're at the, what, the first week, a little after the first week in November. Yeah. So you're getting into, quote unquote, busy season. Because everybody wants the game. Oh, yeah. Believe me. Grandma wants her game because the grandkids are coming. And then whoever is hosting Thanksgiving is calling you now with less than two weeks to go. Oh, yeah. Yep. Saying, Dave, can you date? And you're going. Where am I fitting all these? You're not. Right. You're just taking names and saying maybe. Yeah. But that's only one. And then a month later, you've got Christmas and New Year's. And it's the same scenario. So is that what's happening? That's what's happening right now. And I'm trying to. It fixes. It's not. People aren't contacting you to redo games. for the most part they're calling you saying my game's broken it's been broken can you come and fix it right and but then i also tell them and your game needs a good day spire as well while i'm there i say i don't want to just hit it and leave because i don't want to have you call me back and whatever so so these are all you know day long things i'm not the guy to get you going no i'm the guy to get you going so i don't come back yeah exactly there you go that's what i do okay but so i'm trying to maintain sanity with all that i try to go out there three days a week in my tech. Well, aren't you going out after we talk about this? I am. After we record? Yeah, yeah. But I'm almost going out every single day now. Five days a week.
    58:11
    So no Saturdays and Sundays? Well, Saturdays and Sundays I'm trying to catch up with tech work. I am 14 restorations deep. I give two years of restoration work for customers. Yeah, you said that the last time. And it's like, it's, so I'm kind of like. So we got some games coming up. Yeah, but at this time of year at the Chain of Seas, we just had a nice heat wave recently. Now, like in the 70s, now we're down to the 30s today. This is how people get sick with this change of season. You add some stress into it. You add not resting properly into it. And then it's recipe for getting mojo sick crap. I don't want that to happen to me.
    58:46
    Oh, yeah. And then you add to that, George, you add the little water leak we had. The water meter decided to have a problem in the basement. Oh, no. How bad? Under the workbench, under my tech area. Did you lose anything? No, just a box of old CDs. The box for that. Who cares? Nobody listens to them anyway. Exactly. So, but that required time. It required two days of my time to take all that out of there, get the water back. I thought you cleaned up after you had all your video equipment put in.
    59:19
    No, no. Another part of the basement. Yeah, another part of the basement. This is a different part. You, do, the people who watch Dave on YouTube, why don't you one day just kind of. Pan around? Yeah. I don't know. I think you should. Oh, boy. Because I talk about it all the time, the warehouse and the basement. You know, we make fun of it. But, folks, he's got 10 pounds of crap in a five-pound bag. It'll break the fourth wall, George. Yeah, I know. So, are you done with your stories? I have one thing to end with, if you're done. One more thing, sir. Uh-oh. So I called. I said, how am I going to get a water meter fixed in the house? It was Friday at 4 o'clock. Am I going to get a plumber to do it? I don't know what to do. I looked on. I started to Google it and YouTube it. Oh, that's responsibility of the town or the city. Okay, well, it's almost the weekend. So I call them. Oh, we'll have someone there in a half hour. Great. In a half hour. The guy came here in a half hour with a meter. He took it apart. Yeah, you know why? Because they want their thing. they want to get paid.
    60:26
    Money, money, money, money, money. They want that to keep ringing. Money, money, money, money. Come on, don't be dumb. We'll fix you right up. Oh, hey, it's Friday night. They're going to be home all weekend. That thing's going to be running. They're going to be doing laundry. Come on, come on. It's all about the dollars. Right, of course it is. Of course it is. They weren't just trying to be nice, George.
    60:46
    Yeah, sure. I thought they just cared about me. Yeah, sure. That's what it was. So you're done. Can I talk about another story? Another tale of woe. so this guy came in to change the meter I said oh you have a you're a plumber experience oh no I used to work at a gas station and he's young and so he put it on and then he left and I noticed drip drip drip inside the water meter is inside it's in the house in the basement so I was like okay I saw him work did he put any tape on the thread I'm guessing it's threaded right threaded but no it's a washer It's like almost a washer that goes in and presses up against the washer. Okay. So it's like a compression thing. Compression. Right, okay. Yeah, a washer. Right, right, right. Rubber deal, right? Okay. Problem is, he's... It's not... What I'm getting at is it's not copper. No. And it's not soldered. It's not plastic. Right. Brass with a rubber. And it's got threads on it. Yeah. So you thread it together. Yeah, you thread it. Normally, when you have thread... Yeah. You put the white... White Teflon tape. Correct. Yeah. He said no... He didn't do that. Right. No. He should have done that. Yeah. Because that's, if you don't seat the washer correctly, you have number two, which is the tape that'll keep it from leaking. It's like double protection. Okay. It's like double secret probation. I could kind of do it on the slide, do it myself. I saw what he did. It's not... Yeah, I mean, just shut the thing. You got the meter right on your... No. I mean, the shutoff valve is right here in the sidewalk, right? I got one inside the house. I got it right next to it. I got a ball valve. Okay. so you got a ball down there too but i'm saying the main shutoff get that too right yeah so so anyway what i want to do is i know is he didn't put two wrenches on he put one wrench trying to tighten it it's like you gotta hold it do you say anything i thought he knew what he's doing so i went down there after he's done i put two wrenches on it and i gave it one little done no more leaky right okay so i was having so then all right so that's that's what this is why i've been just out straight then i said well i need to get the snowblower going for the winter coming up. Let's just start that puppy up. It was running really rough. I put the nice gas in it before. I ran it, ran it. Okay, now it's running nice and smooth. Great. Let's try the auger. Hit the auger. Thing died. Okay, what's going on here? Open it up. And I see the auger arm in there. It doesn't look like it's right. Let me spend a day and take this apart. Wait a second. Before you continue, I'm going to make you cry. Okay.
    63:12
    Janice found a guy to service my snowblower. Yeah. he comes to the house yeah he picks it up okay i need one he fixes it yeah and he delivers it okay how much 200 70 no no way 70 give me this guy's number give me this guy's number who is he lives in town so 70 so wow so again that's pretty you know georgie's tip to homeowners georgie takes out a hundo and puts it in his hand yes but he says don't forget about me when i have the two-foot snowstorm and my snowblower doesn't work don't forget about me he goes you call me anytime oh wow i've got another guy so how did how did she find him uh there's a facebook page or a patch page. All right, I need to look this up because I'm going to your local place down the road here. My guy, the guy I used to use, who I bought it from, it used to be, and it's probably more now, it used to be $35 to pick it up, $35 to deliver it, and then it usually ended up being like a $250, $300 bill when it was all said and done. That sounds pretty good because this guy wants, this organization wants, 90 to pick up? I think, isn't it? Right. This guy's a gem. It's 45, 45, and then 105 an hour after that. So you're into it for like 20 bucks day one. Anyway, this guy's great. So I'm stoked. I need this guy's cousin. Right. So I took it apart, and I actually found the problem, and I kind of bent this thing back, this pulley, and then I said, okay, I'm good. But then as I'm doing that, this big spring fell off, and I can't feel like I can get the spring back on. It's like, well, maybe I can run it without the spring. And I run it and it's going, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank. So they must have some kind of tool that brings the two pieces together so you can put the spring on it. Or you're going to take the thing apart even more to get the spring. I don't know. But I've spent way too much time on it already. Was there a trifecta? Wasn't there one more thing, a three thing? Yeah, I took a bunch of acorns out because I need this thing in the garage or a shed, which I don't have for this yet. So we got a little credit. Oh, shed. Shed. We need a shed. You got one for me? No, we're going to talk about that. Oh, sheds. That's going to end the show. All right. Shed. Somewhere along the line, we talked about Grant. Grant, you're like all over this program.
    65:45
    And we didn't know what a shed was in Australia. Well, they call a shed. A man cave or whatever. Right. Or a garage. Yeah. Oh, garage. Shed. Right. But here in the U.S. Our vernacular isn't the same way. We don't. No. We call a shed a standalone building that's in the backyard where you usually put garden tools. You might have a bigger shed where you could put a car or pinball machines or something else. But we don't call it a garage. So I'm learning, you know, I think we keep increasing the number of people that listen in Australia. Number four for us, believe it or not, we're starting to get people listening to us in Sweden. Hooray! They're going up on the number. So, yeah, numbers are good, people are listening, and I guess we could end it here. Well, I hope everybody has a happy and healthy Thanksgiving with your family on a dinner table. It's time to be thankful for what you got in this crazy world.
    66:47
    My name is George. His name is Dave. The name of the podcast is The Classic Pinball Podcast. Stay lit and tilted. I like it, George. Sounds good. Cheers, people.
    67:03
    I fell into a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire. The ring of fire.
    67:28
    Who do you call when you want your pinball machine restored? Dr. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Right. But George, you don't know what you're saying. You're under their control. Hasta la vista, baby.