Don't even try to use the word lousy around me or I'll write you a long paragraph about the origins of that word and why it is highly offensive even though you need a history lesson to even have an inkling of thought about what it meant 5000 years ago. Give me a break.

It’s getting ridiculous….it’s really about how a term is used in context. There has to be a term for certain things. You can soften it by saying mentally challenged or whatever you want but you can still use it in a derogatory way….for example: what’s your problem…are you mentally challenged? As opposed to what are you…retarded? It’s the same thing.

People are just too damn sensitive….it’s not the term you use but the context that is offensive.

Anyway let’s get back on track and watch the drama unfold.

I remember when Howard Stern went PC and he changed the names for two regular guests, Gary and Wendy the retard. Both of them said they liked being called retard and didn't want to change their names, it was their identity. I thought that forcing them to change a name that they preferred was more offensive than assuming every retard is offended by the term and not allowing them to go by the name they want.

I used the word spaz on a youtube video I posted and got a long diatribe about how spaz is offensive to some group... being offended on behalf of someone who isn't offended by the word is always going to be bizarre to me. You could even argue that assuming an entire group of people are offended by a word is offensive in itself. Are they not individuals?

It was originally named that back in 1949 and hasn't been called that for 30 years.

"1992 - The Association changes its name once again to “The Arc”, deleting the word “retarded” from its name as a result of input from self-advocates."

Wasn’t there some sort of scam or something...???!... ................Joey

Someone got delivered a game. It appeared to have some soot on it in places. Another guy claims to still be doing with the possible accomplice Kris Donohoe. Its unclear what his involvement is in the scheme if any, but it seems they both have warehouses on the same lot at the very least. Their games appear in the background of the other guys photos. Kris acts funny if you bring up Steve. All very strange.

Maybe this is reading too much into it but that soot on the machine is kind of strange... just a little smattering at the top, as if someone wiped their hands on it.

The buyer didn't mention if it had a strong smell, but I would expect more than that if it was in a warehouse that was on fire bad enough to burn 30 machines.

It's likely some were more damaged than others but you'd expect the smell to be horrendous if it was in there during the fire and subsequent extinguishing.

Where is the latest info coming from? Is there a new thread on KLOV? If so, can somebody provide the link.

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/steven501-aka-steve-salmon-from-oregon-do-not-buy-scammer.509653/page-17

Nothing...if you were born before 1990. But again...when you call your friends retarded because they're acting like idiots, that's fine. If you call a special needs person retarded, then that just makes you a dick of the highest order.

I'll be in Harper's Ferry Friday. I'll be sure to wave as I pass your house.

For certain posters on this thread saying that scammers are only in the vintage arcade market, the Pinball Basement thread is a timely warning.

It fucks up the ignition timing in my Nova.

That's not a scam - that's stubborn incompetence mixed with no ethics. Different beasts...

Pinball has plenty of scammers both flat out trying to scam people out of deposits and those selling misleading crap.

Next up for debate: Mirco playfields, scammer, incompetent or indifferent?

Yes. “Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words shall never hurt me.” Pretty simple.

and as for the whatever this person is? it was there all along.. in attract mode!

117033B3-F62E-4C65-BE8D-F4DC16427F81 (resized).jpeg

Poor customer service combined with culture clash. A vendor that doesn't take ownership of their prior faults. A vendor who communicates poorly and doesn't do a good job buffering his native culture vs others (AKA he comes off as blunt and lacking empathy because of his directness). He's probably in a strong legal position with his OEM arrangements and not willing to take the hit himself to correct the end-user issues. Stubborness probably keeping him from accepting the outcomes of his product.

So call him heartless or stubborn or something else? But out to dupe people? nah... But he's taken the hardline vs 'doing the right thing'.

That's not a scam -- that's a question of priorities.

Hell, I thought fucktard was the OK version of retard???

What's so terrible about being from the island of Crete anyway?

Thank you for posting that. I didn’t know that could be offensive, and it’s easy to find something else to say in its place.

You reminded me of something that happened at my gun club last year.

We discovered damage to one of the berms (the wall of dirt that stops the bullets), then discovered tire tracks across a field-- they were intentionally evading our video surveillance system to dig lead from our berms. So a couple of members decided to stash our vehicles where they couldn't be seen, and sit in the clubhouse in the dark one night. Sure enough... they showed up. So they called 911, explained the situation, and asked them to enter the property without lights and sirens. Within a few minutes, there had 7 cars-- a dozen or so cops-- on the scene. They quietly walked them across the property to where these guys were digging. They had work lights and music going, and never heard the cops coming. The criminals just about crapped themselves when the flashlights came on and the guns came out. LOL.

They were arrested, charged with aggravated trespass, and litany of other charges-- and had their $60,000 truck confiscated. Both got jail time, and were ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution for the damage they had done to the property.

All for lead that we would have let them take for free if they had asked and agreed to fix the berms when they were done.

Hah, that's a good one. I've never heard of anything like that before. Is it like stealing copper pipes from homes? Were they selling the lead as scrap?

Spot price for lead hovers around $1/lb. Selling unrefined scrap lead at a yard might get $0.60/lb. Based on a sample taken from an undamaged part of the berm, and multiplied out over the square footage they damaged, the estimate was that the had taken lead with a scrap value around $7500 over the course of several nights. Had they fixed the berms at the end of their digging, we probably never would have noticed... or cared. But we ended up having to bring in an excavation company to do the repairs, which cost $10,000 (hence the restitution figure).

Geez…they had a good idea but there is a right and legal way to do it…talk to the owner and work a deal if he has no plans to mine the scrap lead and give him a cut and work with him to have the berms fixed properly.

Damn…there has to be quite a few gun ranges by me….gotta see how viable this idea is as a side hustle. Been years since I went to a gun range but I can tell you there is SHIT TONS of brass….so there has to be a lot of lead as well.

Not to keep getting too far off track, but a friend of mine does the lead reclamation as a business. Most ranges, including military base ranges, only need to be cleaned every other year or so. So, business can be slow from time to time. But those cleanings can bring in lead hauls well into the multiple tens of thousands of dollars. The tough part of the business is the equipment used to separate the lead from the dirt, rocks, and other junk in the ground(specific gravity separator, and a couple other machines). He got most of his equipment given to him from a relative of his who had done the lead reclamation stuff for years, but gave up on it. But since it hadn't been used in years, it required a lot of maintenance and fixing to get them working properly. If you had to buy these machines outright these days, you'd be looking at costs firmly in the six figures. Depending on your area, and how many ranges are near you(and how many military bases that have gun ranges), it can be quite profitable with minimal total hours worked in a year. There are even a number of large companies who have sprung up over the last few years who contract out the lead rec work on huge sites like bases to whatever local guys they find who do good work, and their cut is minimal. My point is basically this: High upfront cost, high risk, but potentially very high reward. If my friend could count on 5 jobs a year(at the normal volume he does), he could make about $150k(take home pay) with only working about 12 weeks a year. But that's the problem, some years he'll do 4 or 5 jobs, other years 1 or 2. Needless to say, he has another business he owns, too.

So you're saying someone's words have never hurt you?

They are inclusive, if you think like them.

Its not offensive. Where do we draw the line? Can we say moron? Idiot? Dumb? Those words have very similar connotations and backgrounds. Look, if you polled a million people and asked them if the word "cretin" was offensive and like 1 little baby said yes, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to make an exception for that. If somebody wants to make a personal decision and not use that word, or any word, thats perfectly fine, but don't come in here with some holier than thou attitude and scold me about something pretty much nobody connects to that past history. I think any normal person can agree with some terms that are considered no go's in today's world. F's N's R's, ect. Thats fine, I am totally on board with that. Words that society by and large would agree shouldn't be used especially in public. You can even disagree with the notion that those words SHOULD be off limits, but you'd have to be a real IMBECILE (theres another one) to disagree that overall they just are considered poor taste. Cretin doesn't meet those standards, and its just a reality that words with negative connotations have roots in things we'd consider in poor taste today, exactly why they are negative words.

PS- this is the weirdest tangent on a thread in a long while

That’s a long response to an assumption. Where did I try to shame you? I was thankful to learn that, and now that I know, it’ll be easy to avoid.

Not you, the other guy who got twisted up over the word originally.

Actually, it's not the weirdest . I had this exact argument here a few years ago when I branded our favorite pinball podcaster Special K. I had no less than three people on my back saying this was insulting to slow/mentally handicapped people and they were offended, how dare I. Needless to say , they were offended for those people. Absolute crap. The woke, politically correct police can go sit on a cactus.

I support your position 100%

Lol I do remember that now that you mention it. Honestly, I can see that logic much easier than being mad about cretin, but its still a little silly. Everyone understands the logic behind the word "special" without needing an obscure history lesson. I'm not personally offended by it but I could at least sympathize somewhat if someone was, despite it being a bit of a reach IMO.

Oh don't worry about me, I'm scarred for life. I've been called a Wangdoodle, Hornswoggler, Snozzwanger and even a rotten Vermicious Knid but I enjoy playing Wonka, it's a great pin.

It'd be one thing if "you" personally insulted someone or their family but in most cases people have too much time & not enough hardship in their lives. They worry too much about how others act & say.

A term I learned recently that I like a lot is "luxury beliefs". If you are upset that someone used a word you don't like when you can reasonably infer that their intent was not to use it in the way that you dislike, then maybe you should reflect on that a bit. If that's the worst thing in your day you should be happy about it, because I guarantee people who don't know where their next meal is coming from don't give a shit about language that may or may not offend a group of people they are not part of.

What really bothers me is that people who are offended in this way never seem to look at the intent of the speaker. There is only ever one intent and yet there is an infinite number of interpretations of anything anyone says. Literally anything can be offensive. Rather than focusing on the worst possible interpretation of how a word is used why not focus on the intent of the speaker and why not lean towards giving the benefit of the doubt rather than saying the use of this word is offensive to me in every context?

And that's not to say people shouldn't try and curtail language that can offend. I grew up with people calling things they dislike "gay" and have made a big effort to get that out of my vocabulary because I think it's an ugly way to use the word. But that's my choice, and if I did slip up for some reason and it just came out I would hope that people could understand I didn't actually mean anything about homosexuals, it's just an artifact of the English language.

If I offend someone, I'm introspective, the opposite of taking the easy way out. I'm happy to put in a ridiculously TINY effort to better my understanding and use of my language.

I don't get offended by the language of others. I actually appreciate hearing ignorance as it has steered me away from dealing with subtly awful people in business and personal affairs.

Age of emotion vs. age of reason.

This was on the radio yesterday, reminded me of this situation..

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Oh that band that used to clutter up all my Craigslist searches back when I was looking!

I hate that band for that reason and that reason alone.

CL has search modifiers that you can use, you know. You can use symbols to eliminate specific words. My arcade search is "arcade -xbox -1up" and that removes all the posts that have "xbox" or "1up" in their title. Very handy.

But what if I wanted arcade games that were in a warehouse fire and survived????

I am blocked from all threads about the scam. Someone's feeling got hurt.
How did so many get scammed out of so much? Seemed like a simple question to me. You would hope site admin would be on the lookout such things.
I was expecting Tombo to explain the situation, when he found out and what was being done. His reaction sparked my fire. Total Karen.

Some folks don't need to post daily for attention like some tictok school girl. "Like me! Like me!, I'm smart and pretty!"
Some folks search, find our answers and get on with our day. When you know what you're doing, you don't need much help.
Some folks have a real life and jobs, outside of games. Calling me a nutjob hurts my feelings? Own a mirror? LMAO

I am only a member of KLOV as a member of VAPS. I actually practice Vintage Arcade Preservation. Many of my finished pinball and arcade games are given away free. I sell a few pieces, but most are found happy homes with a new collector to expand the hobby. Maybe I'm a nutjob for not being a greedy bastard like all the rest, right. In about 20 days, I'm giving away another $3000 worth of games. We have enough money to keep us happy, so we share some with others. What are you doing for arcade preservation? Besides keyboard captain.

And old Chuck, thinks I'm ScammerSteve. Really? You don't learn punctuation overnight. I do respect Steve for scamming so many in a short time. It's hard to find so many suckers in one spot, and keep the racket quiet. Almost like there was someone on the inside...
If you go back and read the exchange between Steven and I, you'll see I got all up in his head. He's peeking out windows, looking over his shoulder, as he should. Make him think there's a posy coming for him. Stress and paranoia can eat a drunk man inside out, and we know he's a drunk.

About 100 people scammed for about $110,000. (admin) Nothing to see here, move along, you have no permissions.

Bro I think you were just in trouble because of your absurd conclusion that Tombo the admin was complicit in this scheme and the guy accusing you of being Steve was poking fun at that notion.

Updates are slow but it sounds like 4 games have shipped out now but none have been received.

Steve claimed 10 more are coming but STI said they hadn't heard anything.

Steve also said he can't return people's money like he wants to because his bank account is locked due to fraud claims, but one user's bank said they can't pull the refund because his balance is $0

And of course the insurance adjuster is coming to do an assessment "next week". I have a feeling it's going to be "next week" for the next few months but we shall see.

Oh cool.

So in other words: zero progress.

My thoughts exactly......the more this guy can keep everyone in waiting, the longer he has for his entire exit plan with all of the money.

This guy Steve sounds like a total mongoloid.