The Summer of Chuff 2016

[HaRuMaN]

Slab leak fixed, and for $500 less than the original quote.  Wewt.   

[Howard_Casto]

Sounds like free video game money to me. 

[yotsuya]

Grail 45 accquired! On to the next record grail!!!

[dkersten]

Planning a road trip to California in a few weeks, and will be spending 2 days in Los Angeles.  I haven't been there since I was a toddler and would like to take in the sights, but I have no idea what the sights are.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Slippyblade]

Started organizing and unpacking after a rather unexpected and sudden move.  Front room of the house has been designated the arcade, per the wife!  Very excited.  Started arranging it last night.  Can't wait to get more machines in there.

Also got a DolphinBar, holy crap that makes WiiMotes easy to use.  Played CarnEvil with it and it works great.

[Howard_Casto]

I didn't even know such a thing existed.  I probably need to get one as my lightguns still aren't setup.  Then I can do some wiimote hacking. 

[Slippyblade]

The DolphinBar has the bluetooth built into it.  It's about as idiot proof as you can get.  It speaks WiiMote directly.  I plugged it into my computer, hit the synch button on the bar, then the wiimote, and it just worked.  Took a bit figuring out how to get MAME to acknowledge it.  Had to set mouse to lightgun, then lightgun to lightgun.  Weird, but it worked.

[BadMouth]

The DolphinBar has the bluetooth built into it.  It's about as idiot proof as you can get.  It speaks WiiMote directly.  I plugged it into my computer, hit the synch button on the bar, then the wiimote, and it just worked.  Took a bit figuring out how to get MAME to acknowledge it.  Had to set mouse to lightgun, then lightgun to lightgun.  Weird, but it worked.

Oh hell.  Not a fan of IR  guns, but I'll give it a shot.
I've already got a wii gun collecting dust and it doesn't require any modification to my cab.
Gave up on it before because of pairing issues.

[Howard_Casto]

I've got some cheap generic wiimotes..... I was thinking of making a break-out connector for it, shaving off as much pcb as I can, so I could put it in gun shells with recoil solenoids, ect....  I just never got around to it. 

[Howard_Casto]

Bah!  Stupid amazon and it's $45 minimum order crap.  I'll wait until I have more to buy so I don't pay 10 bucks shipping on a 17 dollar item. 

[pbj]

Preorder a video game, cancel preorder after your cheap item ships.  That trick still works and I did it for 10 years.

[Howard_Casto]

Not a bad idea.  I wonder if the NES Classic is available for pre-order.  I'm going to buy it anyway.  Honestly I thought the $25 limit was pretty reasonable, but after they raised it to 45 I seldom buy anything from them.  I'm guessing it hurts their business.

[yotsuya]

Amazon Prime FTW!

[ChadTower]

Amazon Prime FTW!

This.  The Amazon truck is at my house nearly as often as I am.


<insert wife joke here>

[pbj]

Yup, and now Amazon Student Prime includes the streaming.  I've been in graduate school for a long, long time.

[ChadTower]

Go watch the pilot of Jean Claude Van Johnson.  Right effin now.  I almost wet myself laughing watching that.  Funniest thing in a long time.

[BadMouth]

Meh, I went without prime for a few months until I needed an adapter cable to prove my boss wrong.
I just couldn't wait an extra few days to prove him wrong, so I restarted prime.

I regret it somewhat.  Amazon used to be great, but now feels like the odds are always in the house's favor.
free Prime Pantry credit?  Sure, but everything that qualifies is more expensive than it is from competitors.
free shipping on a $3 item?  Well you'll have to pay $6 for the prime listing vs the $3 add-on item listing.
I might watch an hour a month of prime video and I'm doing it just to make myself feel like I'm getting some use out of it.
They don't so much reward Prime subscribers as they punish their customers who aren't.
It just doesn't pay for itself like it used to. 

[HaRuMaN]

You just have to game the system like PBJ...  make it work for you, not the other way around. 

[ChadTower]

90% of what I buy on Amazon is stuff that I'd have to spend a ton of time tracking down locally.  Hardware stores are gone, electronics stores are gone, general clothing stores have very little left that my kids actually want.  It's not so much about saving money as it is about saving time.  I'm a lot more likely to just click and buy if I don't have to worry about shipping.  Especially if the item is heavy.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah but here's the thing.... typically those odds-n-ends that you get on amazon can also be found on eBay, for a lower price and with free shipping.  It's ironic that an auction site is a better online store than the world's largest online store.  Amazon usually has the highest prices AND the highest shipping costs.  So if you get Prime you are still getting screwed by paying more for the item.  You also have paypal protection on eBay.  I only buy amazon because I usually get gift cards for some reason or occasionally they will sell something you can't find anywhere else. 

Prime is only worth it for the other stuff they offer and honestly, after a 30 day trial I had watched every free movie in their cache worth watching. 

[pbj]

Customer service experience is a little bit better for Prime customers.  I'm not a couch potato so I haven't burned through their streaming stuff.  Very few of my devices support it anyway.

Most of the stuff I buy from them is cheaper than local stores.  Probably a consequence of living in the middle of a major city.  I cannot speak for the experience in jerkwater towns.

[Howard_Casto]

I wasn't suggesting that I watched a lot of movies during the trial.... my point was most of the free movies aren't any good.  I think I watched 5 or 6 that I had never seen before and the rest were stuff that re-runs on cable constantly, or crap. 

[knave]

Pretty nice that we can have one prime for the whole family. I used to easily get to the $25 and even $35 dollar amounts without prime but having it takes away any shipping hesitation and/or remorse plus getting all my crap in one to two days is awesome. I used to just wait until November and use a 30 day trial, do all my holiday shopping at once and then let it expire...then I learned about amazon household...free shipping for me. My Wife uses it for her kindle stuff so we had it anyway.

[yotsuya]

You guys are nuts.  Between my wife and I, our Amazon Prime free shipping usually pays for itself in 3 months.

[vwalbridge]

You guys are nuts.  Between my wife and I, our Amazon Prime free shipping usually pays for itself in 3 months.

+1

[ChadTower]

Customer service experience is a little bit better for Prime customers. 

It's way better.  I can return things with almost zero trouble.  Hell, now that they have Amazon Locker, I don't even have to mail them back.  I can drive to a place 3 miles away that is open 24/7 and return it there. 

[pbj]

The lockers are still in BFE around here, so I haven't dealt with them yet.  Usually I can get customer service to give an instant refund as soon as they get confirmation it ships, and UPS isn't too far out of the way.  $5 credits and 10% refunds come pretty easily, too.

Haven't had a successful price match in years, though.

[ChadTower]

Nobody price matches anymore.  They all have policies but since only major chains exist now they all also have unique model numbers for most items that you would try to have matched.  So that identical 32" LCD has a different model # at Best Buy than at Target so "sorry, not the same item, can't price match".

[dkersten]

If you had asked me a year ago about Amazon Prime Movies, I would have said they are crap (just like Netflix) and the player doesn't work on anything but Apple or Fire, but that isn't true today.  The player works fine on all my Android devices.

I looked at the movie selection last weekend and just in the first hundred, I spotted:
MI: Rogue Nation
Terminator: Genisys
American Ultra
Interstellar
Mr. Holmes
Hot Pursuit
A Walk in the Woods
Transporter Refueled

All those are newer movies that are out on DVD but most haven't aired on premium cable channels yet.
Furthermore, in that list of 100 I spotted:

Oceans Eleven
Twister
Matrix (all 3)
Rainmaker
Casino
Ex Machina
Gremlins
Big Lebowski
Hunt for Red October
...all watchable movies, and you seldom see decent stuff like that on Netflix.  Netflix blows for movies unless you are after the 10 year old straight to DVD stuff.  Netflix is great for Series TV, but Amazon is no slouch there either.  And since they are about the same price, the other stuff (music, books, and shipping) place Amazon way ahead in my book. 

Movies and stuff aside, the shipping alone is worth it to me.  Sure, I can usually find what I am buying for the same price with free shipping (non-Prime) but it won't be here in 2 days.  And even when shipping time is not important (it almost always is), I seldom find items cheaper elsewhere, and shipping is still free on pretty much everything, just slower.  It isn't often I am OK with waiting 7-10 days for something I bought. 

I recently got a month extension on Prime over a $5 set of glasses cleaning cloths that got lost in USPS.  AND I got the $5 refunded so if they ever show up I get them free.  And a few weeks ago I got a 25u rack (about 85lbs) that was missing some pieces, so they shipped a second one free, I took what I needed and UPS picked up the remainder, all for free.  Last I checked, 2 day air on 85lbs is about $150.  That one purchase saved me the entire year of Prime and then some, and if I had bought that on Ebay and came up short, I would have been paying several hundred in shipping to get it worked out.  Took 2 days to get parts and cost me zero.

Last Christmas I found something at Costco for less and got it price matched on Amazon.  I don't look often though, and only call if there is a problem.

[Howard_Casto]

Well pbj, the pre-order trick doesn't work anymore.  I tried it and when I selected free shipping, the option to ship items separately went away.  The estimated ship date on the dolphin bar was November, when the game would go on sale. 

[yotsuya]

Having a party tonight. Got the games fired up in the Casa de Yotsuya gameroom...

[Le Chuck]

^Probably my favorite home arcade, yots does such a great job with that space

[Malenko]

His NBA Jam Dynamo conversion is fantastic.

[pbj]

Well pbj, the pre-order trick doesn't work anymore.  I tried it and when I selected free shipping, the option to ship items separately went away.  The estimated ship date on the dolphin bar was November, when the game would go on sale.

Still works.  You wait it out a couple days and then they'll ship the in stock item. 

 

[Howard_Casto]

I already found a third party seller that did free shipping.  Amazon loses another sale.

[yotsuya]

Whoooooooooo!!!!

So I recently had the very awesome opportunity to pick up my grail add-on kit, the fabled Brasington Multi-Asteroids kit. He doesn't make them anymore, and some people have waited years to get one, so I consider myself very fortunate.

I had some time today, so I went ahead and took the time to install it. I installed the two daughtercards, soldered the wires that needed soldering, fired her up, and.... voila!!! (not walla, mofos)



So now my Asteroids plays Asteroids...


Asteroids DeLuxe....


And Lunar Lander.


Chuffed beyond words!

[Howard_Casto]

Nice!  I keep hoping that eventually all vector games will be put on a single board.

[yotsuya]

Nice!  I keep hoping that eventually all vector games will be put on a single board.

Clay Cowgill is supposedly working on one that plugs into an Asteroids cabinet,  but who knows when that will show its face. In the mean time, this is a kit I've always wanted. Thanks to the awesome Arcadenut for the hookup.

[vwalbridge]

Shaweet!

Lunar Lander > Asteroids Deluxe > Asteroids

Actually, they are all great classics.

[yotsuya]

Shaweet!

Lunar Lander > Asteroids Deluxe > Asteroids

Actually, they are all great classics.

Personally, I would reverse that order, but it's cool having them all on one cab! You can check them out next time you come to Casa de Yot.