I drove past Chicago on my way to OS/2

Kristen wanted to do some shopping, so her brother and I got up early and walked over to the Shed Aquarium and Field Museum for the morning to entertain ourselves. One neat thing at the museum was the display of the largest intact dinosaur fossil yet found; Sue. We had to get back by mid-afternoon since I had surprise tickets for Kristen and myself at Cirque du Soleil's traveling performance of 'Kooza'. I've see about 6 different Cirque shows and this was about on par with the rest. There was a dual wheel that was very much like (though smaller) the one used in the Vegas show 'Ka'. After the show we headed to Greek Town for a last family dinner.

Chicago: What harm can one cow cause?

Yesterday we mostly spent traveling to Chicago, meeting with the family for dinner, and hitting the gaming place of 'Dave & Busters' for a little while. In the moring we piled into the rental van and headed to Gary, IN where Kristen's parents bother grew up. It is unfortuate how bad the place had gotten and the desolate feeling. We could tell that both of them were moved as they brought back childhood memories of how the place used to be and what had happened ever since they left. We had breakfast with Kristen'smother's aunt before heading to the dunes at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We walked around for a while and exhausted ourselves a bit runningup and down the dunes. After getting back to chicago, several people went shopping while I walked around and explored a bit, finally making my way to Melinneum Park to the location of the 'Cloud Gate' sculpture in the park. We hit the 'House of Blues' for dinner a a bit of Jazz before finishing for the evening.

Today Kristen and I headed to the 'Taste of Chicago' and enjoyed trying some of the various foods offered by local restaurants and eateries in the street near Buckingham Fountain. Following that, we headed to the planetarium for the afternoon after a brief pause near the field museum to find a geocache. We didn't have a lot of time and quickly went through the exhibits and a movie as we had to get over to the Navy Pier to meet the rest of the family. Our timing as great as well were able to get the seats for the group just as they arrived. After eating, we got in line to board the jet boats for a harbor ride just before the big fireworks boat. We were given some bad seats, so the view was fairly obstructed, but the rest of the group seemed to have a great time and enjoyed the different experience.
The video below was taken from the boat, so there is a lot of jerky movement, but one can get a decent idea of where we were and the view we had.

Close only counts in horseshoes and nuclear warfare.

While the rest of the family heading to the airport early in the morning, Kristen and I drove east towards the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and Badlands National Park for a bit of exploration. the missile site is a fairly new part of the NPS system and only open for a few times during the week. We first stopped by the Delta-09 launch silo that was used as a training site and never held a nuclear weapon during the 30 years the other silos were on alert during the Cold War. I really enjoyed hearing about some of the history of the program, technical accomplishments, and respect/appreciation/fear of the destructive capabilities. We then headed over the the launch control complex to take a tour of the facilities. This is the surface building for the support personal that operated, secured, and maintained the area Minuteman nuclear missile silos. The launch controls were about 30 feet underground in order to protect from near-nuclear strikes. It was neat to see the actual launch controls that would have been used to initiate a devestating strike had the order ever been given.

The next stop was Badlands as we drove the park and stopped at the vistas (with a couple of hikes) to take in the great views. The area kind of reminded me of Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks in Utah. Outside of one hour-long hike, it was a bit too hot to really hit many trails since they mostly tended to be long out-and-back or cross country trails. After getting back to the city we relaxed in the the small water park at the hotel and caught up on some rest and reading for the remainder of the evening.

Holy bat guano, Batman! Our cave stinks!

While the rest of the family headed off to Rapid City, Kristern, her brother, and I headed off towards Wind Cave National Park to do a little bit of spelunking. It was both of their first real experiences inside of a cave, so I figured this little side trip would be a great initiation to test if Kristen would eventually like doing more stuff in the TAG area this winter. I took a decent picture of a fallout shelter sign in Lead that hinted in the state's cold war vunerability when it was spotted with nuclear missile silos and would have been amound the first targets in a new world war. We continued through to Wind Cave after making a few wildlife viewing stops. The tour itself was a lot of fun as it involved a good bit of crawling around, though nothing was really too tight to make it uncomortable for most of the group.

The cave had a fairly rich history and quite a few fairly unique formations. Unfortunately it is hard to deal with cave photography due to lack of light the camers can use to guage focus and exposure couple with a tendency to whitewash the subject. We only covered about a half mile in the 3 hours or so we were underground, though with almost everyone in the group having never been in a cave aside from the guide and myself, it wasn't too bad. After finishing the cave we headed back into Rapid City for dinner and then decided to catch the new movie 'Wall-E' which was entertaining. the Pixar short animation 'Presto' that showed prior to the feature's start was the best part of the entire evening. While the movie was alright, I felt they spent too much time on the fat people (which just seemed like an excuse to throw in a few know voice actors). We headed back to the hotel after another long, enjoyable day.

If you're not riding a Harley, you've got rice between your legs!

For the activities today we heading into Lead and did a half-day rental of ATVs so we could ride around the National Forest and surrounding area. Kristen didn't have a lot of luck with her rides since the one she chose coked out about a half-mile from the rental place and the replacement later failing when we were several miles away, but fortunately in a position where I could tow back. While exploring we found a small quarry and definitely took advantage of some of the hills and mud pits, not that anyone wanted to return a clean machine anyway.





After mudding for a while, we headed up to Custer Peak to take in the view, and grab a geocache while it was nearby. I used to have an ATV way back in the days of riding in South Carolina on some family property, however it had been a long time since my last ride and I had a great time. It was a lot of fun to jsut be able to open up the throttle to catch some air after ripping up a large hill. We were all quite dirty and tired at the end, but very satisfied. after getting cleaned up at the house we hit the town for a family dinner before browsing a while, dropping a few dollars in a local casino, and then heading back to the house.

Our land is where our dead are buried

After sleeping in for a bit we awoke to a fairly brisk, but lovely, morning on Terry Peak in South Dakota. Kristen whipped up some breakfast as the rest of the family awoke and started the meander around for a while. Kristen and I along with her sister Trish and boyfriend took a nice hike to the top of the peak. During the winter the ski lifts operate, but being a lovely day the hike was just nice. I know there was a geocache up there so brought my GPS and some travelbugs. the group enjoyed it and had some fun taking pictures on some of the lift chairs before continuing up to the top to take in the view. I introduced them a bit to the geocaching hobby before we headed back down so we could meet with the tour operator around 1PM. Kristen's mom had arranged for a local guide to take us around for the entire day.

The first stop was the Crazy Horse Memorial that is still under construction after 50 years. It is a private project and one of the few memorials or monuments on a scale like this that is not operated by a government body. Even with all the work currently done, it will not be completed in our lifetime. We took the bus tour (which at even $4 per person I would have expected to be more than simply taking people a mile down the road just a little bit closer to the base) and checked out some the exhibits for a while before heading off again.



The next stop was Custer State Park to check out any available wildlife and wander around for a while. There wasn't a lot of major wildlife except a few antelope and a bison or two. but the scenery was stupendous and well worth the drive. I especially enjoyed a section of the park called Iron Mountain road as it had several tunnels specifically designed to look onto nearby Mt. Rushmore as one drove through. This national monument would be our final big stop for the evening. Outside the carved granite faces, there isn't much to the park (no real hiking trails), however Mt. Rushmore National Monument and especially the surrounding area is nice enough in itself to be enjoyable and quite relaxing. We had a great meal with the family for a while before walking around the trail along the mountain base and then heading back to the amphitheater to get decent seats to listen to the evening interpretive talk and illumination of the mountain. The ride back was long, however most of us were able to catch a bit of rest after an exhausting day.

Video arcade Christmas carol: "Chest guts roasting as I open fire..."

In the midst of getting ready for the trip up north for a week, I had been researching the building of a Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. This is basically a computer system that runs gaming emulators to simulate the operating system of arcade games, home gaming consoles, pinball machines, etc. With much of the gameroom complete, I started considering the idea of building one more and more and started scanning Craig's list for some cheap arcade cabinets so I could get some ideas.

On a whim, I searched for the term 'MAME' and found an ad listed. By pure chance I was able to find something that nearly matched my dream machine almost identically. Luck was quite with me as I it seems the owner was just about to have the birth of his third child within the next few days and was in need of a bit of money and the space. So, on Friday morning I started driving at 6AM the 45 minutes to his place to pick up the machine. Sure, I could spend just about the same amount of money plus a few months of work to make my own, but I really don't think that I could do any better of a job that this, so I am quite happy with it.

The owner was an electrical engineer who had built it (and another couple previously) himself and had it quite well designed. The computer itself was a WinXP machine with 2500+ processor, and had the graphical frontend, emulators, and a few thousand games aready set up. It has a blue-lit trackball, 4 player controls, and even side buttons in place for virtual pinball to simulate flipper positions and shot plunger. It is fairly complex and it will take me quite a while to figure it out through a lot of trial and error. Even the 4 coin slots work!

Dad came over to give me a hand in loading and as soon as that was done I had to get back to packing for the trip since I needed to head to the airport with Kristen by 3 o'clock. It was hard not to get a chance to play, but I'm sure there will be time later. I took a few pictures of the rest of the nearly completed room and took off to meet with Kristen at work. I think the place is finally starting to show some promise and come closer to what we've had in mind. there is still a lot of work to do from adding the chair molding to building the shelves behind the bar, but it is all getting closer.

The flights were fairly uneventful even though we almost got bumped in Denver on the way to Rapid City. We picked up the rental car and headed towards Deadwood/Lead and Terry Peak where Kristen's parents had rented a large place for a few days. The GPS worked perfectly in getting us exactly where we needed to be and it was quite nice to be able to drive in and finally get a chance to rest after having been up and constantly moving for the past 20 hours.

When it comes to ruining a painting, I'm an artist.

Well, I finally got the pool table together and it was definitely a time-consuming project. I had to start on the lowest side of the table and put on the slate and spend quite a while going around the thing changing the height or putting in additional wedges. When screwing it it, something would go off-level so I'd have to back it off, reshim, and try again. It was constant, add, screw, remove, reshim, and try again. Then I had to repeat the process on each of the other peices of slate and getting the whole thing into one complete level surface that also didn't have any variation among the pieces. I had some beeswax that I then had to melt with a torch into any of the gaps, groves, and screw holes to fill in any space. Once it dried, it had to be scrapped with a razor and then remelted as needed. Once that was done, the felt had to be put into place, stetched, stabled, and adjusted followed by the bumpers and pockets. the finished product, I think, looks pretty darn good and I didn't have to spend $300-400 bucks to hire somebody else. while of coruse that would have been easier, it is nice to take pride in a solo project sometimes.

We were able to get in one game last night before throwing on some thick drop cloths and starting on the walls. Old wallpaper had to be removed with the walls sanded and spacled. There were several holes throughout the room from previous damage or projects, so I had to redo the wall board, and apply, dry, and smooth the joint compound (repeated three time) to get that fixed up. I didn't think to take picture of the table yet, but it'll eventually come as the project moves along. We spent about 8 hours working in this room today. I need a nap.

If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.

Well, after a little bit of work, I have the ceiling light up and part of the framing for the pool table. building something like this is not very easy. The difficult is exacerbated due to the fact that the floor is fairly off level. I'm pretty sure that this used to the the garage a long time ago before my family had moved to Brandon and was converted to a game room, with the side mother-in-law apartment added, before we purchased the home. As such, there probably hadn't been much attention made on floor or it had an intentional slope to what might have been a drain. In any case, it is taken a few shims under the leg and between the leg and frame just to get the low side level.

I don't think I could shoot a game of pool with even a shotgun.

The game room as be pretty much cleared out of furniture and other junk. We;d been work on it for a couple of weeks trying to list stuff on Craig's List or at a garage sale recently. CL is a great place for classified ads and is a major reason why so many newspapers are hurting so much for advertising revenue. Who would pay $10-30 for 3 small lines of text per day when you can list an item, with pictures and all the space for description you would want for free. When the item sells, the ad can be delete where othewise one may still get calls frow a paper ad.

We'd been looking for a decent pool table for a while and found a system that we liked that include much of what we wanted in terms of look, accessories, and price. I am quite sure that the main thing that caught Kristen's eye was the light that would go over the pool table as it was in the colors and design of Tampa's NFL team. We had driven up to to take a look a few days earlier, but didn't have the time or muscle to move it. Kristen's brother was nice enough to come up today to spend his time to help me move it. Professional movers charge $300-500 to move and install tables, and I can understand why they can demand so much. Even with the slate taken apart in 3 pieces, it is massively heavy. It took us a couple of hours to get it taken apart, wrapped, and secured in the trailer. We had to then move everything into the house when we got back. Hopefully when everything gets set up it'll look pretty good.