SlikStik Classic = Arcade Goodness

So with this year's taxes, I decided to make "smaller" purchase that is for the family, though the girls may not use it as much as "we boys".

I purchased a SlikStik Classic for the computer setup on our TV. Now games are a blast, using a real arcade panel with joysticks, trackball, spinner and pinball buttons. It's totally awesome!

Ninth Wheel

So now, I'm the ninth wheel in the family.

Christopher has a girlfriend (or more).
Anthony has a girlfriend.
Amanda has a boyfriend.
And now, Daniella has a boyfriend.

I suddenly feel lonely again. But hey, I was productive this weekend. The boys and I built a dog house from scratch. I took inventory of all my computers laying around and in the process, found an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro video card (which has a DVI port on it). This became the TV computer's new video card (performance increase was phenomenal). And now we have truly HD connectivity. In a few days, something is showing up (this year's "personal tax purchase") that will make the TV computer very.. very.. fun..

Family Time

This weekend we celebrated Amanda (and her friend Laura's) 17th birthday party at our home. Lots of pictures online per the norm...

I discovered, while offloading the pics from my camera, that the videos Amanda and Chris made a few weeks ago were still in my camera. They only posted a couple to YouTube that I recall, but there were several MORE, which I now have and can use to extort favors later... one in particular was where Chris was "The Crocodile Hunter", and... hunted... me. In my chair. Using my laptop. I was not aware they had filmed this, so it was very funny to me. ;-)

Daniella has been electing to work extremely long hours lately, so I barely get to see her anymore (and when she is not working, she opts to go out with friends, so parental warning bells are going off...). Hopefully she hasn't given up on us totally yet.

It's amusing to watch "who" is viewing the webcam here at Malena central. Sort of reverse-voyeuristic. :-)

Starcraft 2? Hmm...

I'd really like to believe that this article implies that Starcraft 2 will see the light of day, but I'm weary that it may mean the first-person game (Ghost I think it was called) may be what's hinted at. Starcraft was fun!

Wikipedia Antics

Holy heck. I participate in maintaining multiple articles on Wikipedia, and until now had no problems.

Now that I'm formally posting an entry that I know more about than anyone on this planet... the history of Orbiter Online, my BBS and ISP, I'm sudden getting friction from "the powers that be" who very quickly removed my entry as a "possible advertisement".

So now I'm reading through pages and pages of Wikipedia guidelines to try and iron this out. I've emailed several Orbiter users, in the hopes that some of them will help me out, though the links I've sent them both are now bad thanks to those manipulating the situation at Wiki's site, and if the users in question are not familiar with Wikipedia, they're not going to be able to do much to help me.

One person stated that since Orbiter has no ranking on Alexa (a "very recent" web ranking mechanism in the timeline of the internet, especially considering that Orbiter it over 12 years old) that this is part of the reason why Orbiter should not be included. So, by that guideline, if you do not rank on Alexa, don't bother posting your site or web page to Wikipedia because "it's not worth it". I am especially disturbed that something that is dictated by AMAZON.COM is causing me this grief.