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Since my last post I did, in fact, show up at a local location for the next part of the job. This time we (myself and several other technicians) setup a few dozen computers in a new building that was just about completed. Tuesday was a learning day for me, Wednesday I must have had one too many caffinated mints because I did my assigned computers way faster than the other two guys. I was more than a little tired at the end of the day but I thought it was worth it.

On Wednesday I ended up odd man out (didn't speak up fast enough) and two of my co-workers went home while I and a few others helped load a bunch of stirophome from several hundred LCD monitors from an upstairs office to a truck outside. I definately wasn't dressed for such an occassion or expecting this. I was really hot and I had the wrong shoes so my feat really hurt. But I'm not whining. After all, I'd rather have the extra time and build up the proverbial karma then leave early or not be there at all but at home playing a computer game or making blog entry....oh.

Anyway I was supposed to do more HDD replacements Thursday and Friday, but after showing up to the location I learned "local IT" didn't know we were coming so the job was cancelled for both days. And again I say "employment feels a lot like unemployment". I got a call offering a job (with no interview ;) on thursday too, before I found out it was cancelled. The job offer was from a staffing firm who said "I need a yes/no right now, you start tomorrow or Monday at the latest". So I had to turn it down. Now I'm not sure I did the right thing.

I was originally told this was only a 4 week long thing. I'm two weeks into it and I've worked a grand total of three days. What the hell good does $15/hour do me if I work three days in two weeks?! Bah! Maybe it's "temp-to-hire" and I will be offered at the end or something. I don't even know what will happen at the end. Will the original company call me? Will I just keep getting more schedules as if I work there? Who knows. I should probably ask.

In other news my latest irrational interest is still going (collecting Atari 2600 games). I bought 7 more games just yesterday (Friday, when I would have been working likely). I paid $16 for 7 games, which comes to ~$2.30 a peice. Yeah, it's a bad price. I realize this. At least my collection is that much larger, right? I now have a staggering 14 games. Only about 986 left to go ;-). Or if the list on Atari Age is any indicator there's approximately 850 games out there, which means I have about 836 left to collect. May as well be a thousand, I mean jeaze. I'm certainly not going to be paying more than a $1 per cart from now on though. I'd like to collect but not that badly...

In other related news (eh?) I spent a large portion of yesterday, while not working, looking at The Atari 2600 Portables Site. As the name implies this guy has transformed real circulating 2600s into work portable systems. He even has several different versions. The latest edition he has is way better than the first and he's even improved battery life significantly.

But wait, that's not all. He's also worked on making a bunch of ther consoles portable. Besides the several revisions of the 2600 portable, so far there's the SNES and PS1 portable editions. The PS1 actually doesn't have any cover over the CD, it just sits there and spins. Works too.

He's seems to currently be working on a portable NES which he admits will much harder due to the sheer size of the carts. So instead of using an actual NES and gutting it he found these pirated "NES on a chip" type toys. Kind of like the joysticks with Atari games built in you just hook to a TV (found at Radio Shack etc.). But these actually pirate/bootleg stuff presumably off the boat from some Pacific Rim location.

He decided to use these things as his base for the portable NES. He figured out it actually had a pin alignment in line with that of the Japanes version of the NES, called the Famicon. The only difference between the NES and Famicon is some sort of lockout on the NES and the number of pins involved. He also found out some how that the very early games (Gyromite, Duck Hunt etc.) actually had the connectors for the Famicon inside the cart followed by some sort of attachment to make it work with the American NES. So he smashed up Gyromite and made his own converter. Of course there's soldering involved and any number of other complicated things that are easy to screw up.

Now I actually did a google on these pirate NES game things and found out it's all kinda shady, way too expensive and something like 50/50 chance it won't work or will have something wrong with it (or will blow up in your face). Also I actually found a vendor selling these in the open and without shame at the flea market I like to frequent. I didn't ask how much however. So why do these people get away with such a thing but the DMCA likes to sue 12 year olds and low-income grandmothers? Wow, I hate how that sounded.

But I digress. I likely won't ever build a portable NES, out of pirate NES-on-a-chip toys or anything else.

The only thing that would be really cool is the portable 2600. Then if nothing else I could take it with me to the flea market and test games before I buy them. Then say "give me this one cheap: it doesn't work! (see)". Just don't want to get mugged and have some one steal it is all. The other thing I would do is make a "home brew sega nomad".

The Sega Nomad, in case you don't know, is something Sega released a few years ago that was something like a Game Gear/GameBoy but took and played Gensis games. However anyone who has asked about making a Genesis into a portable on the "2600 Portables" site forums will get "you know about Nomad, right?" in response. Well ok I want a home brew nomad then. The flea market has about 3 Genesis at every other vendor apparently. So I could use one of those as practice instead of ruining my one perfectly good 2600. Did all that make sense? Doubt it.

Also on that subject my 2600 does in fact work. Turns out the AC adapter was hosed so I went to Radio Shack and bought a new adapter. For $20. That was way too much but I did learn the 2600 works. I also learned I already had a perfectly good AC adpater with the same voltage and polarity as the original 2600 AC adapter but with the wrong power connector (the original AC adapter has a connector that looks like a mini headphone stereo jack). So I took the expensive replacement AC adapter back and with the help of my Dad soldered the Atari connector onto the other AC adapter. Wow, what a hacker.

Now all my games work of course. That'd be too much to ask :)

I remember I did buy an Atari 7800 a few years ago. I didn't realize at the time it would compatible with 2600 games (which I know now). So I can still test 2600 games if I break my 2600 system or whatever.

I think a portable SNES would be cool also. Although I let someone borrow my SNES with all the games and it got "stolen" (which I may or may not believe) so I would have to start from scratch to even use or test it. And those games still aren't too cheap either.

And, of course, I was saddened by the death of beloved President Reagan. I was too young to really appreciate him at the time but I know he did do a lot for this country and the world. He will be sorely missed.
  ¶ 7:47 PM