I’ve never rally been accused of being a part of the crowd. But for Mother’s Day I usually cheap out and give my mom a piece of jewelry that I made (its cool - I’m really a jeweler, but you knew that), or a plant that she will manage to kill in short order. So I’ve been sitting here trying to come up with something new and different..

Then I looked at the soup I just spilled on my shirt and it hit me. Ever since I quit the day job to live the glamorous life of an entrepreneur, my wardrobe has been modeled after Charlie Harper on Two and a Half Men. Shorts and a bowling or Hawaiian shirt, even in 10 degree weather. I just don’t go outside.

Hawaiian shirt for Mother's Day

The quest had started. Find my mom a Hawaiian shirt for Mother’s Day that she will love.

She is a green freak. Really, you should see it.. Anyway, I found this awesome lime green women’s Hawaiian shirt at Wave Shoppe. I like their shirts and they even have them in size “Fluffy” for guys like me (I might have ordered one for me while I was there, I’m just sayin’). Anyway, I think that this Mother’s Day will be awesome. Not that every day isn’t awesome, but this should surprise her. Now I need to figure out how to hide it under a pastic plant or in a jewelry box for when I give it to her.

If this doesn’t make me her favorite son I don’t know what will.

Wife is out of town.. Kid is out of town.. I finally get to relax with some decent music played loud enough that the dogs left the room..

I have several arcade games here in my man cave. An old Ms. PacMan that gave up the smoke a while back and I have yet to repair, a mostly non-functional pole position at my brother-in-laws, and my pride and joy, and a Super Space Fortress Macross that almost no one has ever heard of. In my search to fix the Ms PacMan for my wife I came across this arcade PCB at JammaBoards.Com.

60 in 1 Multicade

The 60 in 1 Multicade Jamma PCB. What you get is a new JAMMA compatible pcb loaded with 60 classic arcade games. PacMan, Galaga, Dig Dug, Xevious, and more. As yo can see form the photo the multicade pcb is about 1/4 the size o my Macross pcb. Installation was simple and took a little more time simply becaus eI needed to move the mounting supports for the small pcb.

Some minor adjustments to the verticle and horizontal controls for the crt, and a couple of dip switch settings and I was up and running. Total install time, less than 15 minutes. I’m expecting future upgrades to take less than 10 minutes now that I have it figured out.

The Macross pcb is going in to secure storage until I can get a couple of spare JAMMA cabinets. The Ms PacMan will continue to collect dust until I decide it’s worth fixing. And my wife spent 2 1/2 hours playing Frogger the night I got it all set up.

If you are in to old arcade games, this is a great way to get some fo the classics and not fill up your basement with cabinets. You can the the pcb for about $180 and pick up JAMMA cabs for $200 to $300 and there you have it, and arcade in a box. Now I need to go set the new high score on Galaga.

Pong S-4000

Serial # 150836

Processor: GI AY-3-8500-1

I found this in my dad’s attic a long time ago.. I even remember when we first got it and how it lasted all of about 2 weeks before no one would play against me.. Then another 2 weeks before no one at all played it..

K-Mart’s entry into the Pong market was this great little box. Powered by either 6 C Cell batteries or a 9v adapter, this machine had several functions and settings.

Based on the General Instruments “Pong in a Chip“, the S 4000 featured 4 games, Practice, Squash, Hockey, and Tennis. There were also switches for the Speed (fast/slow), Angle (amateure/pro), and Size (large/small paddle). The controllers are on 4 foot cords and feature a slider instead of a paddle.

I had it plugged in to an old black and white TV just to make sure that it still worked, it does, and wound up playing it for about 4 hours.. How sad is that?? Maybe just one more hour.. .. .. .. .. ..

I just finished reading Sex.Com by Kieren McCarthy and the #1 takeaway was something we have known for a very long time, Network Solutions sucks as a registrar. For those of you unaware of the drama, here is a very brief history:

• 1994 Sex.Com was registered by Gary Kreman
• 1995 Sex.Com was transfered to Stephen Cohen by NSI (wrongfully)
• 2001 Sex.Com was finally returned to Gary Kreman
• 5 more years of drama follow until everything is finally settled

Sex.Com was the holy grail of domains in the early days of the internet. There were no search engines to help you find what you wanted and most people found things by simply typing domains names in to their browser and hoping that it went where they wanted. With the huge number of pervs in the world, sex.com became a license to print money. Money in the millions of dollars.

Kieren pieces together the years of courtroom drama, constant changing of lawyers, and staggering amounts of money spent to determine who really owned Sex.Com. The story itself can be dull and a bit boring, but it shines a light on the early drama of owning domain names. This could never, or at least I’d like to think never, happen with a modern registrar, and this case is one of the primary reasons for the rules that we have in place today.

The book also shows how indifferent Network Solutions was to the entire ordeal. In a historical example of NSI’s arrogance in the early days they could have resolved the entire issue in a matter of days, but in an effort to protect themselves and their monopoly on domain names, they chose to fight against the person that they should have helped. For those of us around in those days it’s a shock to see how hard they made it for us to do anything “except” for one of the most important, or at least valuable, domains on the internet.

If you are a fan of early internet history you will find this book to be a good read. But I wouldn’t recommend it to a casual reader unless you like crime dramas.

I’ve always been a big fan or rifles. The bigger the better. But somehow I think the military got it right and decided that this particular rifle was just a little too big.

This 155mm bad boy fires a 0.1 kiloton nuclear, equal to about 10 tons of TNT, warhead about 3 miles down range. Not quite far enough to get it beyond the kill zone for the lucky guy that pulled the trigger. Nicknamed the Davey Crocket, it fortunately never saw action beyond a few test shots in 1962.

Misfit Domains

I admit it, I collect things.. Comic books, swords, cars, domain names, whatever I feel like at the moment.. I always intend to do something grand with whatever I collect, but in most cases they just end up collecting dust and making my wife mad..  With me restarting everything  around here fresh I was going through my domains, wow, it’s amazing what you end up with  when you set things to auto-renew and forget about them..

My old company, that hasn’t been in operation for 6 years or so, NeoTek had a website. I saw that and thought, huh, been paying $12/year for 6 years so my wife can keep her email address that she used when she was publishing engineering papers. I thought I would just let it go. Then I realized, hey, that things has been mine for 11 years, why not “do something” with it.

But what to do?

Cheesy link directory? Nah, already have a few of those.

Porn site? That would be cool, but I like my stuff and I have a sneaky feeling the wife would take all my stuff and send me out in to the cold naked if I did that.

I could start another silly blog like this one.

Then I thought, hey! I haven’t been an affiliate, uh, specialist yet. I could do that. I could sell things like Slankets on it and then when the next big thing came along I could move on to that and eventually build up an As See On TV empire of useless crap! Everyone loves useless crap, that’s why it sells so well.

Yeah, that’s the ticket! I’ll be an affiliate Guru and just watch the money come pouring in. Or maybe not. Anyone have a great idea for an old, unused, domain?

Prince Planet

Prince Planet, the boy from the far away planet Radion, has been sent to earth determine if we are worthy of joining the Galactic Union.

I’ve decided to do my anime fanboi development on Squidoo rather than here while I try to figure out what “here” is going to be all about. If you are in to anime, anime history, or just like watching cheesy old cartoons, take a look at my Prince Planet Lens on Squidoo.