Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 30th, 2015 in Star Wars, Star Wednesday(I shortened this weekly feature’s name from “Star Wars Wednesday” to “Star Wednesday” — it’s no less horrible, just shorter.) On this week’s Star Wednesday, I’ll be taking a look at this metal Boba Fett coin bank. I own hundreds (if not thousands) of Star Wars collectibles that offer no real world functionality. They sit on shelves, and I enjoy looking at them, but they don’t do anything. I have shelves and shelves of items like that, which is why over the past few years I’ve started looking for Star Wars related items that I can incorporate into my daily… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 28th, 2015 in Arcades/Arcade Games, Console Video GamesI like being involved in weird and unusual things. Sometimes I get involved in weird and unusual things by saying “sure” when I get invited to such things. Last week my friend Dean invited me to attend the inaugural Track and Field World Championships at a local private arcade. Dean told me a few well known competitors would be flying in from California for the event. He also told me that local video wizard Drew Stone would be documenting the tournament, and wanted to know if I would provide audio commentary for the proceedings and interview the competitors. I said… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 25th, 2015 in MainI learned a lot about computers between 1980 (the year we got our first one) and 1993, and doubled that knowledge between 1993 and 1995. In 1993 I built my first PC, in 1994 I got my first dial-up internet account, and in 1995 I began learning about computer networks. I first gained access to the internet in the fall of ’94, thanks to a generous co-worker who shared his college dial-up internet username and password with me. You must understand how valuable this was at the time, back when people gladly paid by the hour for access to America… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 23rd, 2015 in Star Wars, Star WednesdayWelcome to a new feature here at RobOHara.com I’m calling “Star Wars Wednesday,” in which I talk about a Star Wars item from my personal collection each Wednesday. (Okay, so the column title isn’t going to win any awards for originality…) This week’s featured items are a pair of The Empire Strikes Back mugs, released by Deka in 1980. Deka released a series of plastic mugs and breakfast bowls for all three Star Wars films. Four different mugs were released for Empire: one with R2-D2, C-3P0 and Chewbacca; one with Yoda; one with Boba Fett and Darth Vader, and this… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 21st, 2015 in MainLess than two weeks ago I had never watched a Harry Potter film. I wish I had a legitimate excuse for that. I’m not offended by movies about magic, nor to I dislike mystical, fantasy movies. The first film in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was released less than a month before Mason was born in 2001 and Susan and I were pretty busy. Soon the second movie was released and I couldn’t watch that one before I watched the first one, and then it seems like I turned around and there were eight films and I… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 18th, 2015 in WritingAnyone who has ever written pseudo code using Microsoft Word and pasted it somewhere else knows the pain of the “smart quote,” those curly quotation marks that authors love and programmers hate. From experience I can tell you that WordPress hates them, or at least is inconsistent in the way it handles them. Even when they appear correctly within my blog, WordPress mucks them up when passing headlines off to Facebook and Twitter. So far, the easiest way I’ve found to deal with smart quotes is to turn them off. I disabled them in the WordPress editor, and because I… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 16th, 2015 in MainI’m a bit obsessive when it comes to the things I love. When I first discovered and subsequently fell in love with podcasting, I started a few podcasts and joined a few others until I was recording multiple shows a week. When I fall in love with television shows like Lost or Breaking Bad or Parks and Recreation, I’ll binge watch episode after episode and season after season until I’ve consumed the entire pie — quite possibly while consuming an entire pie. When I decided to collect arcade cabinets, I bought 30 of them. I’ve watched five Harry Potter films… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 13th, 2015 in Console Video Games, MainI can tell you everybody I knew who had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985: my neighbor Doug, my buddy Jason’s little brother Adam, my buddy Jeff’s aunt and uncle, and not long after that, Jeff’s family. At each one of those houses I remember playing Super Mario Bros. I got my Commodore 64 in 1985, the best game playing home computer at the time. The Commodore 64 had great sound, great graphics, and many, many great games… but it didn’t have Super Mario Bros., something some of my Nintendo-owning friends reminded me of on more than one occasion.… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 11th, 2015 in MainI’m a big believer in preventative maintenance on cars. I rarely do it, but I believe in it. We paid off my 2006 Chevy Avalanche in 2009, so I’ve been driving a payment-free truck for six years. My Avalanche currently has 130,000 miles (which is amazing considering how many states it has visited) and I plan on driving a payment-free truck for many more years. Of course payment-free doesn’t mean cost-free. I drove right past the 100,000 mile tune up and scheduled both the 100,000 and 120,000 mile checkups at the same time. Back when I had one my truck… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on September 10th, 2015 in MainAnd, we’re back to blue. An errant php call to an apparently depreciated function (looks like they dropped the reference to e-links/blog roll) was causing WordPress to hang. After commenting out one line at a time 500 times, I finally found the offending line. Long story short, after days of work, I finally have everything back to where we started. Good? Good.
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