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.

Filed for disability

Finally finished the disability report with Social inSecurity, and then
filed the application for benefits. Might have trouble with that,
though. I dunno.

I don't know what's going on with the unemployment people or the union.
I'm supposed to hear back from them at some point - I was expecting
something from the union sooner than later. Oh well. No news is good?

Random thought: Filtered water tastes good.

Anime with bunny girls is definitely good, so some of my favorite anime
has bunny girls. ^_^ Or we can say that when I find out an anime series
has bunny girls in it, I tend to like it, or at least the episode(s)
with them in it. ^_^ Close behind that is china dresses and certain
styles of swimsuits. So, whenever there's an episode where they go to
the beach, I call that the Swimsuit Episode. Nya hahahaha!!

I need to find the power supply and signal cables and such for my Atari
2600 jr so I can test the 2 cartridges I bought at flea markets lately.
I don't know if I had Star Ship already, but I know that I have it now.
And the rare Spy Hunter by Sega cart. I think that also uses 2 joysticks
- I didn't get an instruction booklet with it, so I'm not sure.

Some of these ghost hunter clubs with websites have this annoying
javascript trapping of the right mouse button, mainly on pages where
they present WAV files of EVPs they've discovered. I don't freaking care
if you claim a copyright on it, let me play the clips the way I want
to!! Good thing I have a download manager so I can grab those clips and
play them as I like _anyway_. :P nuts to you people for that annoying
script. I prefer to load the main page and then open new tabs for
various links from that.

I miss working with my friends. I don't miss some of the assholes I had
to deal with, like pRick. Heh.

My lot of Cardcaptor Sakura cards that I eventually listed on eBay for
$1 and then relisted once for $1 drew some attention, but people
"forgot" to bid on it. Oh well... I'm not listing it again.

Latest changes

Doh! Anywho, with the latest accessing via the puter to add the pic, go back to my "6:25 pm" post and now you can see the video linked there from Youtube. I've also edited the last couple of months of postings, fixing line wraps and all. I don't think I'll go back to fix it all - too much tedious work that really I might do in bits but not all at once. I have a clip for for the first Sailor Moon Super Famicom game with the secret tessen of Invincibility that I have finally uploaded!!

What is it about the image in the coupon ad for Isaly's ham???

Comment to try to send to Isaly's:

Hey - I don't know what it is with the photo or image you use when you put a coupon in our local paper for Isaly's chipped ham, but it bothers me. It's like the kid holding the sandwich (which we can figure is made with Isaly's ham) has his arms and elbows stretched WAAAAY out wide abnormally, you know? And then there's the girl on the right, and it seems like the African-American boy on the left you can barely see - like he was added as an afterthought or something. Please - you have to change this image. I mean, yeah, it sorta screams that kids like Isaly's ham. Who doesn't? OK, some people may never end up eating it, but still, that image is like - there's gotta be a better way to get the idea across. I think if even I were to hold a sandwich like that, it'd be a pretty stupid image to show people.

First post with an image and I had to reset my password to finally get back into my blog via the 'puter... Because I do most of my postings of rants via email. Thanks for the comments - keep them coming.

How to remove Shockwave Updater Icon

It seems Adobe with its Macromedia thingy has been at it - adding things to their stuff that people don't need.

Take for example, Shockwave Player. The latest, version 10, comes with an updater that for some reason puts an icon on your taskbar. It's different from the usual stuff you know should be there. You can't right or left click on it. It sits there mocking you.

Oh yeah? Do the 3 finger salute - control, Alt, Delete - in XP and bring up the little task manager. Find "PostUpdater.exe" and End Process. There'll be a little scary warning box, but still say Yes. Now, on our system, the Shockwave Updater icon doesn't disappear immediately, so I do the salute again and then just exit out of that. Usually it goes away right then.

So what is it? If it's where it's supposed to be - windows/ system 32/ Macromed/ Shockwave 10/ directory, then it's safe, essentially. Some people have reported false anti-virus positives with other copies not where it's supposed to be. I imagine it's some automagical updater in case Shockwave suddenly needs to be updated.

Sorry, Adobe. Let me decide when to update Shockwave, thank you very much. Our system had Shockwave version 8 on there as well!!!

So anywho, as long as the process has terminated, go find the directory where PostUpdater.exe is and rename it. I used the "nxe" extension. Close all windows and restart the system. Now this time it shouldn't come back.

One word of note - when I shut down the system the first time after this restart after renaming the file and getting rid of the Shockwave Update icon, there was some warning box that flashed up for a microsecond before the system shut down. It might have not been anything, but I wanted to know what that was. I turned on our 'puter again, looked at it load the way we're used to and then re-shut down. The warning box did not pop up again. Hmmm.. Oh well, maybe it'll show up next time. (shrug) I hope it doesn't.

The file I renamed appeared as a 52K file, btw.

Might freaking finally have another job!!

It was just before 11 AM when I was entertaining my 2nd niece with some Sailor Moon video games on my Super Nintendo when I finally got a call on one of my applications! I went in for what turned into a preliminary interview as the guy who I would be working with (sorta like the head guy) was busy with unloading a delivery that just came in. I guess this part would take an hour or 2, so I guess I'll be waiting for another call early next week.

They need people!! and they can use my previous experience! I did mention my Asperger's, and said that mostly it shouldn't be a problem - they probably won't even notice I have it. But once they show me what they do and all, I can pick it up pretty quickly.

More later! FINALLY!! a freakin' call on one of my apps!!!!!!

The meeting on the appeal for the union

After submitting yet another round of applications, I decided to go to the union appeal meeting after all.

I had a chance to say what I could about Asperger's, how my doctor said it played a role in what I did. I was asked why it wasn't brought up before or while I was working there, and I told them it's because for the most part it was just a preliminary opinion and it wasn't a problem in my working there. When the labor relations guy said that if I didn't understand what I did wrong, then there's something wrong with me - I took it upon myself to finally find out what it was. I also felt the statement was very hurtful. He didn't care - it was his job to think for Rick when it came to firing people because Rick can't think on his own.

Asperger's was the reason I was treated differently. The one guy said Rick "had issues" with me - but he never came to me to tell me what they were!! I don't know what I did that made him hate me. All he needed was an excuse to fire me and they chomped on one.

The one union guy Joe said he hadn't heard about Asperger's before I mentioned it to him in that appeal letter they read, so he pulled up some info off the net - it looked like it was from Wikipedia. He contacted the corporate guy about it and my situation. The Corporate Guy - who is NOT A LICENSED PSYCHIATRIST MIND YOU - said he _doubted_ Asperger's played a role in what I did and that _it was too late now_ to bring it up. Yeah, right.

My licensed psychiatrist - I did name them - said it did. People with Asperger's can develop obsessions about things. It can be anything. In this case, it was an obsession with discounted cereal. It would not have mattered if I told someone else or not.

I found out that the thing Rick had an issue with the most was over the gift card.

I have a disability that will affect my capability to hold a steady job and I am trying to file for SSI or SSDI. The "voluntary" statement the loss prevention guy got out of me was entirely coerced and I felt that if I did what they asked, that the issue would be resolved and I'd get to work again. Joe seemed to feel the same way, but Rick being the asshole he is, wouldn't let me come back. Ron H misrepresented his "interests" and intents. I even asked him point blank if I was in trouble and he made it seem like he needed my help. Yeah right, I "helped" him get me fired for unjust reasons.

I made a point of showing them that while the Employee Handbook _mentions_ the Accu-scan policy, the actual policy is not spelled out nor any clear info on what constitutes as "abuse." If I had known that, we wouldn't be in this situation. At any rate, there was an entirely different book used at that July 25th meeting. Ron H tried to get me on the bit of "Employees are subject to the same purchase limits as customers," but they all knew that wouldn't stick. It took them over 2 weeks to figure out what else to call it.

Joe read off a statement that was concocted by the labor relations guy. The only purpose that served was to show what position the store had. There were 3 other people in the rank-and-file members on the board tonight. One was from Boardman, and another from Youngstown. I don't remember where the other woman was from. I don't think they believe I have Asperger's, but then they're not trained to know how to spot it. My doctor said Aspeger's people can hide the symptoms well away from home - but to the people who live with them, they see it as clear as any trained and licensed psychiatrist.

And my problem is, very few people take the time to get to know me past the things I do because of Asperger's. Those who do know me are good friends.

I should not have gotten in trouble for a mistake the store made.

Figured out the blank image search results!

It took me to getting blank pages when trying to load the ad_banner images off karindvd.com to finally realize that Norton Internet Security was being anal in blocking ads - and being a bit too agressive. It blocked images of print ads on one site from its gallery, and was blocking image search results from Google. I had to look up on the net about this, and figured out how to stop Norton Internet Security from blocking stuff I don't want blocked! The software really should prompt people by saying there is content that could be an ad and do you want to block it. Provide a box where you can say Not This Time, or Yes, or Apply my decision to images from this site, or whatnot. Instead I would get blank image search results because some of the HTML content had strings it was detecting and presto - it blocked it.

I prefer it be like Firefox, and let you choose which sites and ads you don't want to see, as well as the capability to BLOCK ADS IN FLASH. ARGH!! Also the ability to grab Flash content from a right click menu!! Why hasn't someone done this?

Also found some images I had saved on other WebTV accounts and finally got them off in some way. One unfortunately was truncated prematurely. Dangit. One was giving me fits. I don't know if it was the email or Yahoo! being anal. This 549K JPG would download in Firefox, but you go to it in My Computer and see nothing. The file would be 0 bytes. I must have tried everything and downloaded the damn thing 10 times. So I took to forwarding the message I sent from WebTV to Yahoo back to myself on Yahoo. Then I forwarded that as an attachment to WebTV where I had the laptop grab it...

This is another annoyance of the desktop. I got Outlook under XP to access my POP mailbox on WebTV only once!!! Yahoo! doesn't seem to have a problem. I can read newsgroups, but I think either AVG, Norton, or Norton Internet Security is blocking access to the WebTV pop server. AVG certainly jumps in and pulls up this window, and everything screeches to a halt. Accessing the pop mailbox for incoming messages times out. One time I got it to work I figured out that IE had to be running. I haven't gotten it to work since.

What the hell am I doing wrong? It's all configured!! Does Mozilla's Thunderbird work any better?

The Laptop - no problem. Dial up and connect, launch Outlook and it does its job. No fussing.

At any rate, I finally got a copy of this 549K image that actually saved. I managed to squish it down to about 239K. It's on a floppy. Yay me.