real flamingo nightmare

So .. my backorder of parts should have been here a week ago .. I checked in with the merchant and he says they were returned by UPS cause no such person at that address ..
crap.

I think the shipper just took my paypal address and used it, instead of sending it to me personally at the address I sent him. .. Long story, but short version is that my pay pal name is actually 'Flamingo Nightmare' -- a business I used to run. Well .. it's easy enough to change your address in paypal, but not so your name. As in, impossible.
Since I have eveeything shipped to the office where I work, I'm quite sure there was a bit of confusion when the UPS guy gets there and starts looking for a "Flamingo Nightmare" on the tenant list .. and probably the sweet lady on the first floor that re-routed my t-molding told him there was no such company there (it's a government office). And then the shipment goes back.

You would have thought there would at least have been a phone call from the ups guy or something.

This is what I think happened. I received the first part of the order no problem, but my info was fresh in the shippers mind, and I specifically told him to ship to me (not the pay pal name/address) .. and I got it straight away.

Oh well .. another week, at least. I'm ready for this stuff now. Really. I am. I wanna play. :((

photo update

Nice .. no updates here for the last couple of days -- The cabinet moves forward, slowly now.. Photo update with the new paintjob and t-molding. I installed the coin door over the weekend.

Still no spinner and encoder board. I expected it Friday, and still hasn't shown up here as of Tuesday afternoon.

I still havent figured out exactly how I'm going to mount the plex front either. I am looking forward to just plugging in the cp to the computer here and see how it plays though. One of these days .. if the parts ever arrive.

Dell finally got the message to call my cell phone. I spoke with them over the weekend. My problem has now been escalated past the call center to a "technician" I guess that's good news, but I haven't heard back from him yet. la de dah la de dah.

Nothing new on the home front .. I've been bathed in solvents last couple of nights trying to get the weed eater motor running. It sat in the garage for the last 6 months without being started up and its acting up and needs a good cleaning out top to bottom.. not there yet though.

no parts :(

No more parts arrived this week. Disappointing. I was hoping I could spend the weekend wiring things up and then see if it all actually works.

I started cleaning off the old laptop drive which I decided I'd use to run the pc on.
It's just been plugged in as a 2nd drive. So I built the root mame folder and started dropping stuff in there.

I'll still need to do a bunch of tweaking to get the system running but shouldn't be a problem. I just hate to drop a 120gb drive into the mame machine. That would be such a waste. The old laptop drive is perfect - 30gb. I can fill it with mame games and mp3's and still have plenty of space leftover.

There's probably a few tweaks I can still do to the cabinet .. I need to hit the thrift store and pick up some PC speakers. I'd like to find a set with a subwoofer attached. Might get out and look for that today.

Or I might just go sailing. It's been ages since I've been out. Its nice and warm but the sun's not up yet so can't judge the weather .. (5am) If its not raining by midmorning that would feel really good.

t-molding!!!!

The t-molding finally arrived after having been lost in first floor limbo for a week. I'm actually pretty happy .. and it took about 15 minutes to go slap on the few pieces I needed. It looks much nicer now .. and no splinters in the fingers.

I'm thinking one of these days if I ever want to upgrade it might be cool to use some hot blue molding or something .. just buy 50 feet of molding and run around the edges and brighten that box right up.

The spinner and miniPac should be arriving tomorrow or Friday, so I'll be having a wiring weekend. Wow.. good thing, too.. I'm starting to lose steam.

Dell support keeps calling back my home phone every day even after I called them twice and left messages to use the cel phone number. Idiots.

progress update

I just finished putting a new coat of black paint on the cabinet. I scraped, sanded and filled a bunch of holes and scratches with wood filler friday night and yesterday. As soon as I was done painting I remembered I had at least a quart of a really cool purple back on the shelf never opened ... maybe I'll do some trim / graphics with it?

I tweaked the monitor just a bit, raised the back of the shelf a half inch, leaving the front height intact. Now I'm trying to figure out how to mount the smoked plex in front of the monitor. It looks like it will just drop right in behind the control panel but I need to make some little slotted blocks or something just to hold it up in the right place at the top.

The other night I also made a new back door with a hole in it for the monitor to poke out. I had some spare 1/8" stuff that worked pretty good. It wasn't straight on any side though, so I had to do a lot of sanding, planing and fitting to get it to sit just right. Screwed in a little plastic wire holder at the top to latch it in for now, which will probably end up being permanent.

Update on other stuff:
The miniPac and spinner was shipped Friday .. whoo hooo ... I can start wiring next week.

The t-molding has apparently gotten lost as of friday afternoon .. no one knows what happened to it after it was sent back to the central office :(

The new computer is still rebooting randomly a couple times a day. I was on the phone with dell warranty support in india friday morning. We had to leave it hanging when I went to work. They said they'd call back -- which they did yesterday afternoon, but I mistakenly erased the message without writing down the phone/extension to return the call..
Hopefully I can get hold of them tomorrow morning .. the same person I was talking to before. The problem was escalated to the floor manager or something. I have his phone/extionsion, but it doesn't seem to work when I called back.

Dell should improve its phone menu system .. it's very hard to navigate.

i give up

I've had it. I've mounted, remounted, adjusted, moved, tilted, twirled, jammed, twisted, grunted, groaned, and finally ... just gave up.
I literally mounted and re-mounted the monitor shelf seven times trying to make it fit in the cab, at the right height, and try not to stick out the back. I give up on it not sticking out the back. It's just too big, and easier to cut a hole in the back panel than to re-engineer the front.
The inside of the cab is marked with about eight different angle lines for mounting the shelf. The shelf sits on four 2x4 blocks which are screwed into the side of the cab (I'll take them out one more time and glue them in addition to the screws.)
There's a small block at the back to keep the shelf from sliding out the back.
There's also a brace made from three 1x4's that trap the monitor base. Those are screwed into the shelf.
Looks good for now, time to move on.

My t-molding arrived yesterday at the office, but the ups guy delivered it to the first floor, and the girl there sent it back over to the mailroom in the other building. :(
So, now, I have to wait til tomorrow afternoon for it to get opened, inspected, and delivered back up to me on the third floor. What a waste.

Where the hell is my spinner and miniPac??????? I'm ready to start wiring!!

size matters ;)

and I missed it by that much ..

I got the monitor shelf (temporary) put in the cab, and pushed the 21" in there ... and it's too big. I tried dropping the angle of the shelf and everything.

Even uncasing the monitor is not going to give me enough space. As it is, in that picture .. the screen is jammed up against the CP.

Not sure what to do here .. I could pull the CP an inch forward, and then I'd have to figure out some way to fill the gap.

Easiest ... put the monitor up for sale and go looking for one that's not as deep.

As for the temporary shelf ... I want to glue the supports in, not just screws, but the height and angle need to be customized to whatever monitor is going in there.