Might have finally figured out the heating problem downstairs

Ever since we moved in here at what I call Maison Ikkoku West (heh), one
thing for sure in the winter was that we have never been comfortable at
all. No matter how much we turned up the thermostat downstairs, it was
always chilly or cold. Cold feet, cold toes - not fun.

Some time ago, one of the guys where I used to work, I think his name
was James or something, gave me these 2 rolls of extra thick rubber
stripping. I think it was for some commercial refrigeration seal or
something. Anywho, one afternoon while working with the 'puter
downstairs, I decided to get these things out of the car and put them to
use. First up was sealing the edges of the front door. Cold air just
gushed around the door. It doesn't help that the front porch isn't
sealed off very well. It was tricky but I eventually used up one whole
roll and a little bit of the other roll in figuring out how to create a
tight seal.

Today, I finally got to doing the same for the back door. Every place I
could see sunlight peeking through, that was also a spot for cold air to
get in as well.

A couple nights ago, I even managed to put some plastic sheeting on a
couple of windows that hadn't got any already. This all seemed to help,
but we were still cold.

The house here has baseboard heaters made by Fasco, but the thermostat
controls are by Eaton. The ones we have are M402 models. About the only
other thing I can think of is that someone messed with the thermostat
downstairs, because the one for my room definitely works. No matter how
high we turned it downstairs, it never got warm enough. It would cycle
off on the maximum setting and it was definitely not 80 degrees!

There are a couple of set screws that you need a special driver bit to
do any adjustment - and fortunately, I have a driver bit that fit.

When I couldn't figure out how to get the screws set, I decided to check
how far the ones in the control in my room look. I also noticed that
there are little black glops on the screws. These glops are not on the
screws on the thermostat downstairs. I guess that's pretty much the
evidence I needed to say someone messed with them.

My guess is that the person who previously owned this place and rented
it out must have included the electric in the rent - and when the cost
got too high (well, it is Ohio Edison around here, the rip off utility
over charging for electric they don't even generate themselves!) he came
in after the apartment was clear (through eviction or whenever he got a
chance to) and must have adjusted the thermostat so it would never get
warm enough. So I observed the look of the set screws in my thermostat,
and duplicated that as best as I could, with adjustments in case the
heaters switched off for some reason.

For the first time, we measured 72 degrees downstairs and it's
comfortable. Now to finish getting the drywall in the ceiling at the top
of the stairs!!

Those Atari 2600 games are still fun

I did something last night I hadn't done in years. I was up until 2 am
checking out and playing some of the games in my Atari 2600 collection.
Some games still suck, some were still fun, and a few I still kick butt
on. Dark Cavern from M Network is one I completely understand. I
remember one time years ago playing it and around 400,000, the game's
difficulty "rolled over" and it got really easy again! I kept on playing
that game, and ran it up to 767,000. I have a photo somewhere of that
feat. Last night without having played it at all still managed to run up
137,000 (the scoring is by multiples of 1,000) without much effort.

Qbert was the only other game I felt I mastered - and my training was on
my Atari 8-bit with the Parker Bros cartridge - on a Black and White TV!
No kidding! I felt when I was practically able to do whatever I wanted
on my computer and B&W TV, it was time to beat the arcade reality into
submission. I skipped college classes that day and spent 5 hours on the
game on one quarter. Heh. I shouldn't have done that.

Some Atari 2600 games still frustrate me. Kangaroo, the conversion from
the coin op, I deemed as "not fun" because of the jumping to the left on
the 2nd board which usually results in the kangaroo falling to her
death. I can do it to the right, but the left? I thought I was doing the
same thing... Can't figure it out.

Miner 2049er - I have BOTH V.1 and 2 of that - the Atari 8-bit computer
version is very playable. There's hidden cheats, too. But the 2600
version has IMPOSSIBLE screens to clear. Someone show me a video of it
being possible to clear it!! At any rate, I hear Miner 2049er on the
2600 is pretty sought after on eBay. I think one collector will flip out
knowing I have the box to V.2 and the box to the Atari computer version!
Gee, did that come on a disk or cartridge?

I found I have Panda's 1983 cartridge of Sea Hawk. I have the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre game, and likely with the booklet, too. I don't
remember getting it in the box.

Many of the games are still just great. A couple recent finds at local
flea markets turned up Star Ship from Atari, and Sega's Spy Hunter. Wow
Spy Hunter is rare!

Tax Avoiders looks a lot like Porky's from Fox. I need to see if I have
London Blitz instructions. ZiMag's I want My Mommy is one of few
cartridges with digitized sound in them. I have 2 Prototypes - Quadrun
and Sinistar.

Ms Pac Man on the 2600 is good, but the mazes are different from the
arcade original - sometimes they look upside down. Pac Man Jr is a
masterpiece.

My nieces are starting to get interested in playing video games. My
oldest niece likes Spyro the Dragon, and she didn't know we had all 3
for the Playstation 1. She prefers playing at our house because we have
a cheat cartridge. ^_^ The older 2 have joined me in playing the Sailor
Moon games on my Super NES aka Super Famicom. I showed them some of the
stuff on my Atari Jaguar, and they've played a little on our Atari Lynx.
I really want to show them the grand-daddy of them all.

I even have an Odyssey2 with modified controller plugs. The original
controllers for the O2 were pretty much useless and stuck to themselves
- the contact switches were of a sticky layer construction. I cut them
off and converted the ends to standard DB9 plugs that use the CX40
Joystick. Heh. All Odyssey2 units should have that, and a mod in the RF
modulator for use with automatic switchboxes.

I forgot a couple of things: I had modified my 2600 Jr to use the new
switchboxes, and where my power supply was. Also, I was lucky enough for
someone to give me one of those Nintendo NES switchboxes at one point
and I was smart enough to not throw it away! I had been looking for the
one that I got with the 64-bit Jaguar...

The mod for using these new switchboxes is in an issue of The 2600
Connection, and it's rather simple. Place a small ceramic disk capacitor
between the RF modulator and the center output pin of the RF jack, and
add a resistor and wire to the power switch to connect at that same
center pin. It's called a DC Blocking Circuit, and the details were in
an old electronics magazine I was given. This way you can protect the RF
modulator and send 9 V DC down the RF cable!

The RF modulator in the Odyssey2 even had spaces in the circuit board
ready to accept the components - I wonder if Magnavox had considered
this feature but dropped it and their engineers left the intended design
in the hardware anyway? Atari Engineers were like that. Design a feature
and leave it in to be discovered outside the walls of Atari. Heh. I can
see spots on the 4 switch 2600 around the internal filtering capacitor
where you can add a power on LED and 750 ohms of resistors. ^_-

What's nice is that some games I thought wouldn't work on the 2600 JR
do, and I know which games absolutely require the original 6 switch 2600
for some reason. But every game I tried worked fine. Centipede is fun,
Millipede is better and way more fun. Really well done cartridge. Best
with a Trakball.

I need to get a photo of the oddball 2600 variant a friend found he had,
a 2800 or something like it sold by Sears. 4 joystick ports!

A method for my Apex AD1200 to play other region DVDs

Woo!! This is awesome! I don't know how people figure this out, but I
can play DVDs from other regions in my Apex AD 1200. I had to refine the
procedure with an extra step, but I got a friend's Region 2 Dutch
release DVD of A Muppet Family Christmas in all its converted PAL 50 FPS
glory play 3 times on my player and display in NTSC on my TV. (note:
getting this on a DVD from overseas is the only way to see it uncut!)

The steps:

1. Turn on player and load disk. While it's loading the first time,
repeatedly press TITLE on the remote (which makes this a REMOTE HACK
^_^) until the title menu for the disk appears.

2. Eject the disk (most of the remote functions won't work and WRONG
REGION will display, but Eject will be one thing that DOES work) and
reload. This time, press one of the number buttons _other than 0_ on the
remote repeatedly. From my experience, it doesn't hurt to press 2. Do
this and the DVD will play from the top which might be a preview trailer
or whatever. But still, the remote will not function except for a few
buttons, so Eject the disk again!

3. On this 3rd time LOADING the _same_ disk, repeatedly press STEP on
the remote until you see "DVD-VIDEO" displayed. Stop pressing anything
on the remote and wait for the STEP icon to appear in the upper right
corner.

4. When you have the STEP icon, press STOP on the remote repeatedly
until it shows the STOP icon. When you have that, press PLAY and the
disk will play and you have all the functions of your remote, including
turning off subtitles. ^_^

Doesn't require a firmware update or anything! Interesting things for
the Muppet Family Christmas DVD - the songs are not subtitled in Dutch.
The subtitles kept getting turned on from the main title menu, but if
you went into the chapter menu and played the disk and turned off subs,
they do not get turned back on when returning to that menu. There were 4
trailers on the Trailers menu. One was for a Dutch movie called
Chameleon 2, one was in English with subtitles for Kelsey Grammer in a
movie musical version of A Christmas Carol, one was for some live action
and CG movie called Fungus de Bullebak with Martin Clunes (I presume it
was dubbed in Dutch), and the 4th trailer was for the Muppet Family
Christmas itself.

What I find most interesting is the video is the 50 frames per seond PAL
standard, so while this was shot on video, it doesn't have the "crisp"
look of NTSC 60 fps video we get. AND - I don't know if it's because of
the way I have to bring up the DVD, but I have yet to see a do not copy
warning screen like all our Region 1 disks get. Do DVDs released in the
Nederlands get warning screens?

What's also interesting is that while this is a 1987 release by Henson
Studios, someone put their website URL on at the end!

One thing I had heard early on about DVDs is that the actual digital
video data the disks contain would play on any DVD in the world
regardless of the player's video format output. Playing a PAL DVD on my
NTSC Apex player proved this to be true. It's this seemingly restrictive
region coding that tells the player how to handle the data. I'm itching
to try a SECAM DVD. But oh man, I would LOVE to try a Region 2 DVD of
Disney's "Song of the South!"

Latest stuff

My filing for disability is now off and running. The guy from the SS
office called when the letter said they would. He had heard about
Asperger's as well, even knew someone with a little girl diagnosed with
autism. He noted I had no edits in any of the application I did online,
so that was good, I guess.

Even though I read something in Sunday's paper that noted Asperger's is
a disability recognized by Social Security, I still feel I'll get a
fight.

I really want to replace my Cyberhome recorder. Out of the last bunch of
disks, it seemed to randomly choose which to finalize correctly. I did
find out all is not lost when a disk didn't finalized right - IsoBuster
is software that can recover disks like that! I had one burned "bootleg"
DVD I bought in Canada that doesn't work and I hope I can get it
recovered. It's possible to find the files and copy them to your
computer HD (providing you have the room) and then with other DVD
mastering software, re-create the proper additional files if necessary
and burn a new disk that will work.

The Cyberhome doesn't seem to have problems with +RW disks. It usually
doesn't have problems with HP +R disks. I dunno. I should clean it out
or something.