I've had this cabinet sitting at our house for about 5 years. Maybe even longer, I'm not even sure anymore ! This weekend I had a good friend come over who was happy to help me with this. We're about half way now, with everything working except the joysticks.

We gave up for the weekend because the soldering iron we were using was not strong enough to unsolder the old solder points inside the gamepad we gutted for the project. He has taken the whole controller panel and gamepad with him and promised to try and work on it with another friend, with better equipment. If all goes well he will come back later this week with at least 1 of the controllers working ! 

So far, we have :

Mounted the monitor inside

Connected a power splitter to the power switch on top of the cabinet

Stuck the PC inside and connected the power to the screen and PC

Connected the lamp behind the marquee

Configured the PC with drivers and software. MAME + Roms are installed, but no joystick controllable front-end is configured yet.

Pictures of the process are in my gallery ... Updates coming soon ! stay tuuuned :)

I think I understand online poker now. The trick is to avoid showdowns :) I have changed from grinding the $3 turbo 90 mans to larger multi table tournaments now and keep getting very, very deep in the tourneys. Had a few nice scores the last 2 weeks but keep busting out with the best hand in the end. When the antes start, I usually manage to build up my stack by pouncing on the weak/tight opponents at the table. Often I'll be in the top 10 in chips when I get a hand that I cannot lay down against a reraise (like aces, kings or even AK), we'll get it all in pre flop and I have to take another beat from a weaker hand. Then I rebuild my stack by stealing a lot again, only to have the same thing happen again.

Now, I'm NOT complaining, don't get me wrong ! I just know at some point I will be on the other side of variance and my hands will hold up and I will have monster stacks going into the final table and my hands will hold up there too. The big scores are coming, I'm 100% sure of it. And because I manage to build up a big stack every time before I take a beat, at least I'm not out of the tourney when that happens.

Here's my last few scores at Full Tilt Poker :

Date        Tournament              Buy in    Entries Rank      Prize 
27 Jul 09    Rebuy                    $2.25+   388      5           $165 
25 Jul 09    Hold'em No Limit     $2.25     335      34         $3.01 
23 Jul 09    SupTurbo sattelite   $1.25     73        1st tie    $22 
22 Jul 09    Hold'em No Limit     $3.30     306      3           $110

And I also got $60 on Titan Poker in a $7 rebuy event, places 12th out of 350 players (also on the 22nd of July).

So both a 3rd and a 5th place in 300+ field sizes. Not bad at all, and both times I got it all in pre flop with the best hand. Need to play more volume obviously, but I real life is getting in the way of that :)

I accidentally ...

This internet meme got to me a little late, but whenever I see it popping up again somewhere I still LOL. I'll only give you the 2 best examples about the rar files and the bottle of coke. I think all the other ones are just weak in comparison.

So for you that don't know what this is all about, it all started with an internet posting on 4chan (the start of many internet memes) that went like this :

I accidentally 93 MB of RAR files ..

What should I do ? Is that dangerous ? 

Of course this makes no sense but that's what makes it so damn funny. Then some guys took it further on MSN chat and the following conversation transpired :

I accidentally a a coca-cola bottle ... is that bad ?

Click here for a screenshot of the complete chat log

This conversation is do damn funny I have no words for it. It will always have a place in my favorite internet memories !

If you like these, you can learn more about it over at the knowyourmeme site