Man, that sucks you have to deal with liquour laws stemming from the founding of your state. I'm lucky here in Missouri. Anheuser Busch ruled the land in Missouri and we don't have any of that blue law stuff any more or separate liqoure store from grocery. Alcohol laws are really laxed. When I vacation in Florida I still can't believe I can't get a bottle of rum from the liqour isle in the grocety store because it doesn't exist.

That's probably enough for a small handful of people. But if *everyone* is after those resources, then those resources will disappear very quickly.

Just look at how quickly the shelves were completely decimated in stores when the pandemic first hit.

The Corporation I worked for purchased a million dollars worth of Satellite phones to be ready.
My friend the IT Manager slept in his office that New Years eve as his cohorts all over the World did the same.
He said he walked out the next morning and called the Main Headquarters.
"Everything OK?"
"Yeah, everything good"
He put the phone in his desk where it set for 14 years, when he gave it to me for scrap.
This thing was cool! Had all the accessories still packaged in a nice leather bag.
Then checked on what it would cost to activate it. 20 bucks a minute? If the cell system shut down who would I call?
Sold it after showing off, paid for Christmas that year.

But you can 50 cent drinks certain nights at the ABC Bars. Plus many of them rotate. Plus you are in Florida.

Where it's hot as FUCK!!

Yeah,theres that. I stayed in Florida long enough to learn the tricks.
Disneyworld? Go at night, less hot,crowded, see the fireworks and parade.
Go the ABC bars during the day, then home to air conditioned nap.

And home of 'florida man'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Man

Confess that i got drunk and had a fat ol time last night.

Didn't realise i was enjoying myself quite as much as this though.

confess1 (resized).jpg

Don't remember sitting on the toilet playing the harp.

Because it's Hot as FUCK!!

My sister in law was working as an IT manager for a large insurance company during Y2K. The whole department had to be on site and ready to deal with problems instantly overnight on New Years. The company had installed large generators to run the whole building in case the power grid went down, had Port-A-Johns in the parking lot in case the municipal water went down, and provided the employees with flashlights in case the power and generators went down.
Her comment was that if it got to the point where she was going to the Port-A-John by flashlight, she was going home because she wouldn't be able to do any IT work anyway.
Then nothing happened, and they all wasted their New Years just being there.

Started hoarding this time last year. Use something, replace it with two more. Now have supplies for 5 Months. Not just food, everything else.
But its not enough, never will be.
Garden season is here and after canning tomatoes and everything else can add 2-4 Months.
Looking at an alternative water system, Have a well so either buy a generator or manual water pump.
Yeah, no generator, never needed one. But the propane powered ones are interesting. Diesel is always better but high priced.

If I remember correctly it was on a weekend. Would love to hear more Y2K stories, crazy times.
I bought a 2000 Millenia Countdown clock, looking at it right now. After it hit zero I kept it and reset it for the Mayan Calendar apocalypse count down.
May get some use out of it again soon.

That is number 23 in the book "100 signs you may be an alcoholic"

Yes, i'm what's labelled as high functioning alcoholic. I've drank beer every day for nearly 40 years but always kept a job, now run a successful business. Never taken time off because of alcohol, don't drink before 10am or when i get off work, don't drink spirits generally etc. A man has to have rules.

I don't need signs to know.

It was on a Saturday.

Monday morning the 3rd I was in Chicago to pay for and pick up a Big Bang Bar from Lodan Electronics ( used to be the Capcom building ). $8K, I had $6300 in cash. Figured to write a check for the rest.

The whole company was waiting before powering up their computers. So I never go the email to bring it all in cash. The owner of the company was on vacation. They called him and he said "no check".

The man there, a former Capcom employee, said he'd take a check after he could check to be sure it would clear. Which was fine with me. I was there and figured to leave with the game or the money, I wasn't going to return to Chicago again to get it.

Four hours later headed home with the game. Opened late that day.

LTG : )

The only problem I ended up with from y2k was extremely small.

The drug store that I used at the time for prescriptions computer changed my date of birth making me over 200 years old.

I confess that I’ve never had a natty light and probably would never have one in the future, BUT if johnnypinball was ever in my neck of the woods I would make sure to have a fridge full of them so he can hang out over here. He seems like a salt of the earth kind of guy that I would get along with very well.

And what is your address?

Actually I always bring plenty with me.

Jay Bird was going to bring some when he stopped by here, I said no need, I have plenty.

Hopefully soon I can travel again. I am just waiting on my girlfriend to feel safe traveling again.

Confess to a conversation yesterday when the landlord was cleaning up some of his hoarding i spotted a 12' alloy mast on his steel rack. It would go well with my canoe with outrigger so i had some 20 minute discussions with him about prizing it out of his hoarders grasp.

My mate that was with me at the time said we were standing there mast debating.

Picture of said mast for veracity's sake.

mastdebate1 (resized).jpg

Dave is in new Zealand. But if you are coming this far then i'll go over with you to see him.

I confess that when I first got up today, I had a really good funny topic to share, the best and the most funny I have ever been.

But I am getting older, and I forgot to make a note about what that was, and anyway, I hope everyone has a awesome day after Good Friday, and a better one the day before Easter!

(sorry I was so short, maybe LTG can fill in now?)

A day or two ago a close relative of mine got very sick. I learned today that they probably about a 20% chance of survival. I don't really think that it's sunk in yet.

20% isn't nothing, though! I'm expecting the worst but hoping for the best.

Docter said that they were in distress, and couldn't give them a sedative because of the brain surgery that they had just received. Hopefully they find some peace soon.

If heaven or some place like it exists, they will be going there, they were a great person. They weren't perfect, but who is, really?

Anyway, sorry for talking about my problems, just needed to vent.

I hope you all have a great evening!

Talk away my friend. We care for you.

LTG : )

Very sorry to hear this but hoping for the best with you, and you are right, 20% isn't nothing, that says there is a chance. Stay strong for your family.

I bought one of those cheap electric/battery chainsaws for one job for an evergreen tree. The gear that drives the chain was acting goofy so took it apart. The c clip was broken. Had to get the job done same day so pulled the C clip off the shooter rod of my F14 and still works great today! It wasn’t a close fit (for safety) but it was an exact fit which is why I left it on. Might even be better quality than the factory one.

I moved a couple games the past few days.
First time doing that in months.
Realized that I'm WAY out of shape and need to start being more active and working out, or I'll be too flabby to move games at all.

I confess I missed you all over the last 6 days or so.

Agree, I confess I found out I am more invested in Pinside than I knew. It is really my only social media.

Same here. Just have a YouTube to track my favorite channels and Dave handles all social media for our Pinball Outpost mostly cause I don’t speak the social media language.

He'll be back soon hopefully. We e mailed yesterday and said he's having issues with his computer too.

I have his cell number around here too if things get worse.

My avatar got lost when pinside crashed, which sucks because I can't find the picture any more.

But dang, I'm glad pinside is back. I didn't quite realize how hooked I am on pinside until it went out.

Is it completely blank right now? And are you on your phone? For me mine is clear on my phone if I login with my laptop everything is fine. I can still see your owl.

Wait a minute I just noticed that might be a different owl?

Maybe you can use this from the cat thing I made awhile back ? Does have a word on it.

LTG : )

catowl (resized).jpg

Yeah, changed it to something new. It's not a big deal, and I shouldn't complain! Just glad to be back online!

The new owl appears more confident just sayin'

Was this it?

40D6EC15-A3D3-4DE7-B521-5242B1B301BC (resized).jpeg

The triumphant return of snowy_owl

LTG : )

I had to get a new computer, last one did awesome, made it around 14 years. I also had to get new phones also, so trying to figure some of that out.

Hopefully soon I can get wound up again!

When our achievement points come back I hope the site remembers that I had 1.2 million points.

A whole week. Where do I even begin...

My girlfriend is pretty smart with stuff I had never heard of.

A while back I was getting a ingrown toe nail, and she told me to take a knife, and keep making deep scratches down the middle of the nail, and it would grow back away from the edges. It worked.

I confess she would kill me, but after 24 hours, I am ready to get rid of this smart phone, and go back to a flip phone. (I type all of this on my home computer with a nice full size keyboard). (no way in hell would I type all this on a phone, even if I knew how to use it).

To anyone that types all day on a smart phone, you can have that shit. So far I hate even trying to dial a phone number on that phone.

So anyway, on a new computer now, and at first I hated it, now I like it ok. I think it is bull crap that Word used to be free and now they want 99.95 a year to use that.

I confess I will dig out my old electric typewriter, before I pay them 99.95 a year.

I am just getting old and I am set in my ways.

I would be the old guy yelling get off my lawn, except years ago I had my place fenced in to prevent that anyway.

Pinsiders are welcome on my lawn!

I confess my lawn is not that great, mostly weeds, but they look green, so it looks fine to me.

So now I am on my 4th computer since 1998, and my 4th cell phone since 1994.

Last night I made a whole lot of Word documents, and saved them to the desktop, just to see if in a few days I can use the stuff at all. I really do not want to pay 99.95 a year for stuff that used to be free.

That is the main thing ticking me off about the new computer.

On the other hand, everything is ticking me off with the new phone.

And I was joking earlier about the 1.2 million achievement points.

I confess I would be fine if the points never came back. I have seen others comment about it, so I had to joke about it.

I am just glad that Pinside is back on, and I hope Robin did not gain too many gray hairs messing with all the crap to get it going again.

I missed you guys!

I hope all of you have a awesome week!

It was a shame that there was no warning, so I could have stocked up like for the y2k stuff.

I bet in the last week LTG remembered something else he would love to post?

Someday we need to start a poll for best LTG stories. I like the golf course one best, and the tickets on customers cars 2nd, but all are awesome!

Hey @johnnypinball007, check out openoffice, its free.

I would recommend Libreoffice over openoffice. It's a much more active project than openoffice is.

You both beat me to it - and both options read and write Word Documents.

Made me think of a couple customer stories from years ago.

Every spring I notice the young men and women hooking up and becoming couples. By the end of the Summer an occasional sign of pregnancy.

Had a young man came in frequently to play pinball. His sister not too often. He was playing pinball on the back row one day. She came in and went back to talk to him. I didn't pay much attention. Was reading the funnies and enjoying a cup of coffee.

She left the rear area, not running. But moving fast enough to catch my attention. I looked at her. She looked at me and said, "I'm not pregnant. I have a tumor".

So nice guy that I am I asked her. "What are you going to name the tumor ?" She didn't say and I never found out.

There was a young lady that came in occasionally and shot pool by herself. One in a great while with her Father.

One day she's shooting pool by herself. I'm on the other side on the room in the front by the counter. Talking to a friend.

I was telling my friend that nobody every thinks of their parents being young, and in love, having fun. Nobody likes to think of their Mother bent over the kitchen table screaming F' ME !.

Well apparently this was a little louder than I thought. Over the radio, games, and other people. The young lady ran out of here crying.

LTG : )

THANK YOU for the info!

I love Pinside! Everyone just helps anytime they can!

I know what you are talking about, and I confess that I really hate it when I mess up like that.

So now I have my first smart phone, and so far I feel like a dumbass trying to use it.

Question: When I bought the phone and they were setting it up they asked for my gmail address (which I have never had one), what is a gmail address used for in a smart phone?

I know, I am 10 or 20 years behind in a lot of stuff.

And I confess that while I love pinball I am not that great at it. Jay Bird stopped by a while back and got his name on both of my pins. (not the top score though).

And I confess that this post was a whole lot longer 10 seconds ago, but I just deleted all that.

I hope all of you have a awesome week!