Sunday 1-18-26 Puzzle, New Weekly Challengs & Bounce Arcade

 

Smile and have fun

 

We had a gorgeous day with a lot of sunshine. It didn't get as cold as the weatherman predicted but it was close. The morning temperature was 24 degrees and the high was 63 degrees. We had a little wind. The temperature was very comfortable.

I played my Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Hard Road Mini of 5 games. It took me 29 minutes and 14 seconds, which put me in 12th place in my group. I played Angry Birds Friends and Angry Birds 2. 

For years we have been refilling our plastic water bottles. Larry decided to try replacing the plastic bottles with stainless steel insulated bottles. On Amazon he found 12 ounce insulated water bottles that came in a lot of different colors. They also came with a strap. He ordered three of them to try out. They arrived yesterday. Larry took off the straps because we probably won't use them. We washed them and put water in them. Today Larry has been drinking from them and likes them. The water gets cold and the bottle maintains the cold. They are a bit more difficult to hold then the plastic bottles, he is concerned they might be easy to drop. We always put the plastic bottles in a koozie so he is trying that with the new bottles. They fit perfectly in our little ice chest.

 

Water bottles

I spent most of the day working on the Cambridge jigsaw puzzle by Charles Wysocki. 

I played one game of Asteroid Outpost on Bounce Arcade. I earned a gold trophy, played two multiballs, mined ten times and was successful twice. I started two modules. I played it for half an hour and had fun. Below is what the playfield looks like and my game score.

 

The playfield

 

Asteroid Outpost

Today is the beginning of a new week so I got a new weekly challenge in pinball. The new game is X-Men Wolverine. Larry downloaded the pinball game and installed it on the big cabinet. Once he had it installed he played the game to make sure it worked correctly. He installed it in both 2D and VR. 

Larry spent a good part of the day on pinball stuff. A new updated version of Time Lord was released today (a game we really like). Larry installed it and while playing it he ran into a problem twice, he wrote the developers to let them know. One of them wrote back thanking him for the input and asking for a bit more information. The problem isn't severe and doesn't always happen so you can still play the game. He also played a game of Pirates Life on on the mini cabinet. He's having a great time updating the pinball games and VR.

He also installed a new pinball game launcher on the Dell test machine. He has it working but there is some setting he can't figure out. He wrote the developer to see if he could help.

All of the virtual pinball software stuff is developed by individuals or small teams of people working together. Everything is free. Most of these folks and other people in the community are thrilled to help. Larry follows a number of online resource boards and whenever someone needs help and he thinks he has something to offer he is quick to offer suggestions. He does this not only on virtual pinball but also other areas like digital jukeboxes, yesterday he helped someone with a Alexa problem. 

Before playing the new challenge I played last week's challenge of Indiana Jones. I didn't get a new high score but had fun trying. My final high score was 427,392,590, which put me in 55th place out of 127 participants.  My first high score was 11,705,590, which put me in 8th place out of 14 participants so far.

 

Indiana Jones

 

X-Men Wolverine

I played three pinball games on the mini cabinet, which were No Good Goffers!, Pirates Life and Transformers. While playing No Good Goffers! I became high score #2 and Transformers I became Grand Champion. I had a Good day of playing pinball on the mini cabinet. Larry's still high score #1, #2 and #4 in Pirates Life. Good job, Larry!

I played another four games on the big cabinet besides the weekly challenges. They were Dracula, Mission Impossible, The Addams Family and Time Lord (in both 3 balls and 5 balls). I didn't get on the board in any of the games but I had a great time.

 

Dracula

 

Mission Impossible

 

The Addams Family

 

Time Lord (five balls)

 

Time Lord (three balls)

 

In the evening we started watching season 6 of All Creatures Great & Small on PBS. Then I watched Iron Man from our super hero collection of movies. I ended up doing 4,000 steps, which included a fifteen minutes workout with a Jazz routine.