A thing that, just today, I realized is a change in the world which makes me happy: That Anheuser-Busch Inbev stopped trying to make "dilly dilly" a thing.

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

@1994clipart what's the deal with all this clipart?

Slightly sad I didn't make it to Portland Retro Gaming Expo this past weekend. But, honestly, the panini undid a decade of progress with my comfort level in crowds. Social & health anxieties gang up on me, these days.

Instead, I worked on tidying up our own retro gaming space. We'd crapped it up earlier this year with a panic move of stuff from kitchen & attic ahead of urgent house repairs.

So, I carried about 25 sterlite bins up 3 flights of stairs from basement to attic. Some were packed with books (ouch). Also threw out some old rugs, mopped floors, moved heavy arcade cabs around. Very sore today.

Didn't take any "before" photos, but you can see the current state.

This is also where I'm reminded that the glass is cracked on our Centipede cocktail machine, and I need to go find somebody in PDX who does glass replacement for table tops 🤔

@murph Yeah, it definitely didn't agree with a lot of folks

@bnys I keep thinking I should work from down there instead of my office, someday.

Here's a couple of older pictures from last year with the blacklights turned on :)

One cool thing I also got mostly working in the basement arcade is IoT shenanigans with Home Assistant.

I can tap a button on my phone and the blacklights and RGB LEDs turn on, the stereo powers up, and a couple arcade cabs start.

The only thing I don't have under control are the overhead lights, but those are on my list. Also kind of want to cue up Journey's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" as an optional button

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsaPVfze4s

@thegibson @bnys I definitely do 😅

Dang it, now I'm going to have to watch Tron Legacy at work

Bonus photo of Catsby chilling in the basement arcade

@voltur We do! And we also drink cocktails at it

@mdhughes Now I'm going to have to gin up a playlist from the NAS :blobgrin:​

Hmm, now that YouTube is starting to crack down on ad blockers, I'm feeling a need to get more peertube stuff playing on my TV to watch nerdy shit

@craigmaloney IT'S TIME TO BUILD a flexible path to craniorectal inversion

@ArtifexUmbra @bnys OH NO MOLLY

Jurassic Park except it's highly-evolved cockroaches resurrecting humans from DNA found embedded in bubblegum stuck under a 1980s arcade cabinet control panel

@derek careful dining on that honeydew and milk of paradise, it can really get you stuck in those caves of ice

@adrianco That, I'm not sure alas. We've got an Amazon Fire Stick on our TV

@melivia Oh, definitely yes. The cockroaches have evolved but not gotten larger, so the humans are relatively enormous

@Macross Heh, we still have vague dreams of getting a projector screen going down there somehow someday. That was a pretty rad basement feature

@Mossop Yeah, I think that's when I saw it too :)

@Mossop Clearly a good life choice! :D

@jalefkowit @danhon Whenever I see this man nowadays, I'm reminded of this ending to the Choose Your Own Adventure book "Supercomputer"

I feel like more folks should play XCOM and D&D games while growing up to get a more visceral intuition about percentages & statistics

@unwiredben @roguelike_con I got the shirt & socks in 2022 and they are the best

@c0debabe @PixelOccult oh shoot oh dang (clickclickclick)

@PixelOccult Happy birthday to me, then!

@eloquence @badlogic Oh dang, this makes me miss the old Searchspy on Dogpile, back in the day

no

There's a reason why, even back when I re-read Atlas Shrugged in high school & college that I only read Galt's speech the 1st time and skipped it every time after.

@bnys I've gotten very slightly more mellow / defeated about this over the years, but 10 years ago I wrote this blog post to vent about this sort of thing

https://blog.lmorchard.com/2013/02/25/too-long-read-anyway/

It is raining quite impressively here in PDX.

This is simultaneously soothing to me as the weather sussurates through my window - yet also anxiety-generating as I repeatedly re-check my basement. #pdxtst

@technomancy @bnys holy crap, I know right?! :blobwhee:​

And now there's sun. :blobwhee:​ #pdxtst

@nyquildotorg whew there really is some weather round here

@cinja @Macross Oh dang, I remember being terrible at Punch-Out with that thing!

Oh sweet merciful crap, I hadn't even realized they'd really actually name checked John Galt as a "patron saint" in that manifesto until I got to the end

@gilmae they're pulling something, alright

@kevinspencer We were super fortunate to have ended up finding this house with both a basement and a shed with a workshop, both in really decent shape