Sunday 1-1-23 Happy New Year

 

Happy New Year 

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope everyone had a great. We had another gorgeous day with the high of 77 degrees.

We didn't do too much but hang around the house.

I played my games. I did a Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: World Tour Mini of 10 games. It took me 1 hour, 29 minutes and 35 seconds, which put me in 26th place in my group. I played Angry Birds. I read a bit. 

Larry continued working on the pinball machine. Almost everyone who has built a pinball machine has installed two fans that pull air in and two that move air out, this helps keep them cool. Since our machine is a bit smaller, utilizes a smaller monitor, computer, processor and graphics card Larry hoped having a fairly large opening in the back along with a small internal fan would be sufficient in keeping it cool. This has been working well but one of the new games requires the computer to work harder and the computer has been getting hot enough that the internal fan starts running on high, it is very noticeable. Once you move to another game the computer will cool down and the fan with slow. Larry decided it would be best to install a fan to pull in outside air so today he took part of the machine apart, drilled a 3 inch hole in the bottom and installed a fan. He played the problem game for quite some time, the computer fan never turned to high and the temperature inside the cabinet was much lower. 

While he had the machine opened up he upgraded the audio system. He originally built it using one amplifier, two speakers and a bass shaker. He decided to add surround sound so today he added a 7.1 sound card, two amplifiers and a couple of sound induction speakers. You can now hear the flippers and bumpers better, he still needs to add two more speakers (the amplifier for them is installed) but he wanted to experiment a bit before he decides which speakers to get. Adding this equipment also required more power adapters, the machine is filling up. Once he gets the last two speakers and everything installed permanently he will once again have to organize the wiring.

For our New Year dinner we had deviled eggs, ham, potato chips and baked beans. For dessert we continued eating the pecan pie that our neighbor gave us.

New Year's dinner

In the evening we watched Shrek the Third. After Larry went to bed I watched Spider-Man 2 and couple of episodes of Rockford Files. I ended up doing 26,000 steps, which put me in 1st place in my group for the week with the total of 191,099 steps.