Wednesday 3-6-24 Dance Day & Having Fun

 

Beautiful Day

We had a beautiful day with the high of 81 degrees. We spent the day hanging around the house and having fun.

I attended three virtual square dances. First was Di Green and Terry McCann's Weekly Plus at 10:00 for an hour. Di and Terry took turns calling five tips to 13 participants. When Di called the third tip she worked on Crossfire in different positions because Ange requested the help. Di and Terry always do an outstanding job of cueing the moves through out the dance and this helps a lot. If a dancer asked to go over a move Di is more than willing to do so. I had a super time dancing with friends.

Second was Ett McAtee's Weekly C1 at 1:00 for an hour. She called four tips to 15 participants. Today was National Oreo Day so Ett did three Trivia questions in between the tips about Oreo. Tage from the Netherlands said they were boycotting Oreo cookies because they make them in Russia. They don't agree with the war. Ett said she didn't know and she was sorry. Taga also said they have their own Oreo cookies, they are called Domino. I had fun dancing to Ett and with friends.

Taga virtual background of the Domino cookies

Ett's virtual background of our Oreo cookies

The third dance was Dave Eno's Weekly C1/A2 at 6:00 for an hour and a half. Karin Rabe and Greg Moore helped Dave call the dance. The format was three tips of C1 and three tips of A2. During the C1 tip Karin and Greg called they worked on Cross and Roll. Dave worked on Relay the Shadow. The last tip all three called together. We had 8 participants in both the C1 tips and A2 tips. In between the A2 tips we did a couple of Trivia questions. One was about Oreo. I had a great evening of dancing to Karin, Greg and Dave and with friends.

While I danced Larry worked on setting up my new virtual reality headset. Now we can play together or by ourselves. He ordered a new headband for the new headset because the original one is very uncomfortable.

Larry's virtual headset

New headset and extra battery

I played three pinball games in both virtual reality and 2D. It was a lot of fun seeing the difference. The games were Big Buck Hunter, Fish Tales and Twister. In the virtual reality version of Fish Tales the water is moving and there are fish swimming by. There is also a large grab that walks by. Very cool.

Big Buck Hunter in 2D

 

 

Big Buck Hunter in virtual reality

 

 

 

Fish Tales in 2D

 

 

 

Fish Tales in virtual reality

Twister in 2D

 

Twister in virtual reality

I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Experts Only Mini of 5 games. It took me 1 hour, 27 minutes and 54 seconds, which put me in 20th place in my group. Then I played Angry Birds.

I worked out for a half hour on the Wii Fit and with Synth Riders. I continued working on the diamond painting of Winnie the Pooh & Friends.

After the last dance we watched the next episode of the 13th season of Vera. Then I watched The Bourne Ultimatum and  the next episode of Father Brown. I ended up doing 17,500 steps, which put me in 2nd place in my group.

     

Tuesday 3-5-24 Virtual Reality, Games, Dancing & More

 

Happy Tuesday

We had a fun day. It got up to 85 degrees. 

We started the day out by attending Di Green and Terry McCann's Weekly A2 dance at 10:00 for an hour. Di and Terry took turns calling five tips to 15 participants. The last tip Di worked on Motivate from different positions because it was requested. She walked all of us through the move. Larry danced with me and we had an outstanding time. 

I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Two Game Tango of 20 games (10 Pyramid and 10 Tri Peaks). It took me 1 hour, 43 minutes and 11 seconds, which put me in 18th place in my group. Then I moved onto playing Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds and Friends.

I worked on a diamond painting project, Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

Winnie the Pooh & Friends so far

While I was playing games Larry continued learning more about virtual reality rooms. One of the programs that came with the headset is called Horizon Worlds, you enter into a common room and from there visit different worlds. He has tired it a few times but had not really figured out how it works. Today he was in the program and a gentleman walked up and started talking to him. Larry explained he had no idea what he was doing so the gentleman explained a few things and Larry asked him some questions. 

When you are using this program you appear in the program as an avatar, kind of a cartoon character that you design to represent yourself. One of Larry's first questions was how did he appear, everyone was "walking" around but Larry was sitting on the couch. The gentleman explained even though you are sitting down the program shows you as standing, as you move around it appears you are walking. 

After a bit they went into a puzzle room where his wife was working on a jigsaw puzzle. The gentleman and his wife both answered his questions and demonstrated some of the features. The puzzle room is where a group of people meet and put a jigsaw puzzle together. You can also setup a private room and assemble a puzzle on your own or invite people you know into your room. From there they went to a couple of other worlds which were games.

They ended up spending about 90 minutes with each other.

Playing with virtual reality

The picture above is of the screen on the pinball machine where you choose to go into the virtual reality pinball games. Larry created this screen by finding images on the internet and modifying them to work for this screen. In real life they look fantastic.

I played a few pinball games. I played Cirqus Voltaire in 2D, yesterday I played the same game in virtual reality and did very well. Today I also did very well but I didn't get on the board. Then I moved onto virtual reality games. They were Twister, Black Rose and Tales of the Arabian Nights. Tales of the Arabian Nights is probably the most beautiful of all the games. I was successful in getting all the jewels but failed in freeing the Princess. I did get a high enough score to enter my initials as the 3rd high score. I had fun playing pinball.

Black Rose

Cirqus Voltaire (not in virtual reality)

 

Tales of the Arabian Nights

I worked out on the Wii for a half hour and Gold's Gym for a half hour. I did Synth Riders of a half hour and burned 123 calories.

We have been talking about buying a second virtual reality headset so after dinner we went to Walmart and bought one. Some games allow you to play with other people, I think it will be fun to play together. Unfortunately pinball does not do this.

In the evening we watched Top Gun: Maverick. After Larry went to bed I watched The Bourne Supremacy and Shrek. The movies were out of our collection. I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 2nd place in my group.

 

Monday 3-4-24 Virtual Reality & Having Fun

 

Awesome Day

We had an awesome day. It felt like a spring day with the high in the low 80s.

The other day I mentioned, that the Twister virtual pinball game had different rooms. I'll try to explain what I meant by this. When you play games in virtual reality you put on a headset (Quest 3). Once the headset is on you see what is displayed inside the headset, on pinball you can't see any "real" things around you.  A menu comes up where you select the game you want to play. When the game opens you are inside a virtual room, some of these rooms are minimal, maybe only part of a room with the pinball machine, some stripes on the wall and maybe a poster or end table. On some games the room is far more sophisticated, Twister even has multiple rooms to choose from. The rooms put you inside a tornado, where you can see what is happening around you. From the perspective inside the headset some rooms appear to be a normal size room, others might make it seem as if you are outside and things are made to that scale. These rooms can seem so real, they are amazing. Below are the Twister rooms.

 

Lightening at the far end of a field

A house being tossed in a tornado

 

The field before the tornado

 

Going down the highway during the tornado

 

The floor and posters of the movie Twister

Our floor in virtual reality

The tornado coming towards you

Many of the virtual reality games have to be purchased but all the pinball games are free. Sometimes a pinball game is developed by an individual, he might spend more than a year working on it, other games are developed by teams of people and might still take a year to develop. Hard to believe that it is for free. Part of the reason is they love doing what they do and part of it is to try and avoid legal trouble. Since many of these games are direct copies of real pinball machines including all the artwork if they were to sell the games they would be in violation of copyright laws and could be sued. By giving the work away they tend to avoid this. There have been a couple of pinball manufactures send letters threatening to sue if their games are not removed, the community then removed the games from that company and no longer reproduce any of their work. There are other pinball companies who have no problem with their tables being recreated as long as the table is more than three years old.

We started today out by attending Di Green and Terry McCann's Weekly C1 dance at 9:00 for an hour and fifteen minutes. Di called five tips to 16 participants. Today the songs began with the letter F so when when got back home we celebrated with a fist and raising a foot. She called some four couple moves we don't dance to that often. They were Relay The Shadow, Checkmate the Column and Tally Ho. Larry danced with me. We had a fun morning.

Before the dance I vacuumed the house.

I worked on the diamond painting of Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

After the dance I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Easy Street Mini of 15 games. It took me 22 minutes and 35 seconds, which put me in 10th place in my group. Then I moved onto playing Angry Birds.

Larry took me to Popeyes for lunch. We hadn't been to Popeyes in years and it was nice to return. We shared a two piece chicken plate with mashed potatoes and gravy, a biscuit and a medium drink. We bought an extra biscuit. We had a great experience. The store was clean and the service was very good.

In the afternoon we had a home grocery delivery from Walmart. Larry brought the groceries inside because I was working out. When I finished I put the food and stuff away.

My workout was a half hour on the Wii Fit. I really enjoy working out in virtual reality using Synth Riders. Today I worked out to seven songs for about an hour and burned 181 calories. The songs were I Love You Then, It Ain't Right, Nightmare Cure, Delight, Light Up The Night, Imperfection and Empire. Each song has a different routine to hit the balls to. I did each song twice. While I was working out with Synth Riders Larry stood in front of me for a long time and I never saw him because I was in my room.

The pinball games I played today were Twister, Cactus Canyon and Cirqus Voltaire. While playing Cirqus Voltaire I joined the cirqus but didn't defeat the ringmaster. It was a great game and I got on the high score board, I came in 4th. 

Cirqus Voltaire

Cactus Canyon

In the evening we watched The Suicide Squad from our movies. 

Larry stayed up past his bedtime playing with a new virtual reality program. The program is very cool, you put in an address or place you want to see and using Google Street View it takes you there. Larry put in the address of the home I grew up in and it put me right in front of the house. It was like standing in the street looking at the house, you can turn around and see all the neighboring houses and even move down the street. Larry stood outside his mom's house and waved. He also went to Yellowstone and looked at some of the places we have visited. The pictures are not live, the month and year they were taken is displayed and if there is history you might even be able to go back in time. The oldest views Larry found was 2006. This is all based on Google Street View and they have only been around so long. This is a very cool program. 

There were lots of reviews on the program, people loved that they could see things like the Eiffel Tower and The Pyramids of Egypt, places that they will never get to visit in real life. Many folks talked about spending hours and hours using it. This program cost $10 and you can use it as much as you like, there are very few things you can do today for $10.

After Larry went to bed I watched Dolittle on Freevee. It starred Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Dolittle. I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 4th place in my group.

   

    

Sunday 3-3-24 Just Having Fun

 

Just having fun

We had a great day of having fun. It was a warm day with the high of 81 degrees and wind. 

The wind didn't keep the birds away from building their nest in the birdhouse. They were gone for a couple of days, it had gotten colder, windy and little sun but they came back yesterday. It still amazes me how they build their nest just using their beaks. The two birds work very well together. One of them brought a long stick and had to maneuver to get it to fit in the small hole. The birdhouse is about half full of leaves and twigs. 

One of the birds

I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Pyramid Mini of 5 games. It took me 21 minutes and 3 seconds, which put me in 36th place in my group. That ok, it's just luck of the draw. Then I moved onto playing Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds and Friends.

I played last week challenge in pinball The Sopranos. I didn't get a new high score but I did very well. I came in 38th out of 70 participants. After the time expired at 12:30 pm Larry changed the number of balls from 3 to 5. I played the new challenge, Twister. My first high score was 463,939,150. Twister is a very cool and has multiple virtual reality rooms. Before I played Twister Larry asked me to look around and he changed the rooms. This was so cool. After playing the challenges I played Attack From Mars. I played a great game I got all the spaceships for Germany, France, Italy, England and the United States and I attacked Mars but I still didn't get on the board. This is the first time I had ever got all the counties so I'm very excited about that.

Twister

 

Attack From Mars

The Sopranos

I worked out on the Wii Fit for a half hour and a half hour on Just Dance 2014. I danced six songs for 20 minutes and three other songs for 10 minutes. I worked out with Synth Riders for a half hour and burned 123 calories.

Six songs for 20 minutes

I worked on the diamond painting of Winnie the Pooh & Friends.

Winnie the Pooh & Friends

Larry played with virtual reality in a theater atmosphere. One of the movies he experimented with was Black Widow so in the evening we watched it on our television. It a Super Hero movie and is very good.

For dinner I cooked a frozen pizza on the grill. It was a Great Value Rising Crust Supreme. We hadn't done this in a long time and it tasted good. After Larry went to bed I watched Twister and The Bourne Identity. I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 2nd place in my group for the week with the total of 123,654 steps.

Our dinner

   

 

Saturday 3-2-24 Mowing, Games, Diamond Painting & More

 

Beautiful Day

We had a gorgeous day with a lot of sunshine. The temperature in the morning was 45 degrees and the high was 82 degrees. 

I started the day off by starting my last diamond painting, which is Winnie the Pooh & Friends.

Winnie the Pooh and Friends

My new weekly challenge, which starts tomorrow is Twister. He downloaded and loaded it on the pinball cabinet. It was one of the easier tables to install. They all take a little longer because he has to install not only the normal table but also the virtual reality version. Once he got them installed and configured he had to play both of them to insure they worked correctly. He said the virtual reality version is very cool. I'll play it tomorrow.

I did play this week's challenge The Sopranos. I didn't get a new high score but I had fun trying.

The Sopranos

We had some dew this morning and our septic system also sprayed the backyard so we had to wait for the temperature to rise and the sun to dry it out so I could mow. The far part of the backyard was getting our of control. Larry filled the mower with gas and got it running. It took a bit because it hadn't been started for a long time. It took me a little over an hour to mow. While I mowed Larry weedeated, edged and blew off the driveway. Then he went inside and replaced the air filters. 

Backyard mowed

Backyard before it was mowed

After I cooled off I worked out with Synth Riders. Today I started working out with new songs. I ended up working out to two new songs, there were other songs available but they were not free, $1.99. I worked out with the two songs two times. Then I worked out with the other five songs I have been working out with. I ended up working out with Synth Riders for 30 minutes and burned 123 calories. Then worked out for a half hour with the Wii Fit.

Working out

I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Spider Adventure of 20 games. It took me 3 hours, 22 minutes and 12 seconds, which put me in 14th place in my group.

In the evening we watched Spider-Man No Way Home. After Larry went to bed I watched Aquaman and Frozen II from our movie collection. I ended up doing 17,000 steps, which put me in 4th place in my group.

 

Friday 3-1-24 Real Pinball, Dancing & Having Fun

 

We had a super day of having fun. The high today was 68 degrees.

I started the day working on my diamond painting of Stitch. I finished it during the night.

Stitch finished

Larry started the day out doing his monthly projects. He backed up the computers and put bleach in the septic.

Larry asked if I would like to go play some real pinball. There is a game place that opened in Killeen a couple of months ago. A majority of the reviews said it was expensive but the facilities and workers were great. They offer bowling, roller skating, 8 pinball machines, lazer tag and arcade games. They also serve food. 

In Austin there are multiple places to play pinball. We decided to go to Pinballz Arcade. It's located near 183 & Burnett Rd. The reviews were good, they had over 65 pinball machines and tons of arcade games. They also have an onsite food truck with a limited menu.

Pinballz Arcade works pretty nicely. They add however much money you want to spend to a card. We started out putting $20.00 on the card and later added another $10.00. The machines cost between $1.00 to $1.50. To start to play the game you tap your card on the front of the machine, the machine will take the cost of the game off the card and tell you the balance. Then your push the start button. We played a lot of games we have and couple we don't have. There was a giant pinball machine where I could barely reach the flipper buttons and the ball was wooden and very slow. The name of the game was Hercules. It was fun to play. We were there for a couple of hours. We ate lunch there, we shared chicken bites, fries and a diet coke. The place was very clean. Many of the machines were old but most of them worked. A few of the machines had flippers that stuck or were slow in responding. Some of the playfields were worn and the mechanical parts didn't work correctly. The workers were very friendly. Overall we had a super time. 

Playing pinball

Creature of the Black Lagoon

Larry playing Godzilla

Some of the pinball machines

 

Playing Hercules

How to pay for the game

Some of the arcade games

Lunch

On the way home we stopped by the UPS Store to pick up our mail.

We were home by 3:30. I worked out for a half hour using Synth Riders and burned 128 calories.

Afterwards I played games. Before going to bed last night I played the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. Today I played the event, which was Event: Klondike Mini of 5 games. It took me 14 minutes and 26 seconds, which put me in 33rd place in my group. Then I played Angry Birds.

At Pinballz I played The Sopranos and Fun House and wanted to see the difference between the real games and virtual reality. I think our games are a lot better. At Pinballz both of these games needed maintenance, The Sopranos has a safe that you hit multiple times and it will then open, that mechanism did not work correctly, on Fun House the sound did not work at all. On modern machines you really need the sounds because they tell you things you need to do.

With real pinball machines at retail establishments there are always machines that have some type of problems. Many of these machines are decades old and they require maintenance. It is difficult for the operators to keep up with the constant maintenance. Flippers wear out, the playfield graphics wear down from the ball, other mechanical and electrical items wear out or quit. Most places do their best to keep everything working. 

Even individual people who own real pinball machines talk about how much maintenance it takes to keep them working. Many of them purchase new machines but still end up with maintenance. The individual parts can be very difficult to find and expensive. Most individual owners have to learn how to fix their machines because there are not many pinball technicians. Most of the machines weigh anywhere from 250 to 400 lbs making it impossible to take them in for repair, the technician has to come to you which makes it expensive.

With our virtual machine we don't have these types of issues, our playfields always look perfect and there are no mechanical items on the playfield nor any actual lights, everything is software driven and always looks perfect. Sometimes a game will act up but we can simply exit the game and restart it. There is very little maintenance.

Fun House

The Sopranos

 

Real Pinball

In the evening I attended Ett McAtee's Weekly A2 dance at 6:30 for an hour. She called four tips to 13 participants. She worked on Switch Concept and Hourglass Concept. I had a great time dancing with friends.

After the dance we watched an episode of the 13th season of Vera. Then I watched The Da Vinci Code and Frozen from our movie selection. I ended up doing 17,500 steps, which put me in 3rd place in my group.

        

Thursday 2-29-24 Happy Leap Year, Doing This and That

 

Happy Leap Year

Yesterday, while I was dancing Megan from Australia said she knew a gentleman, who was celebrating his 20th birthday, because he was born on Feb 29th. He actually is 80 years old. 

We had another cold day with the low of 42 and the high was 54 degrees. It was windy but not as windy as yesterday. It was overcast.

Larry had a very productive day. A couple of gentlemen from California called him at noon to talk about a jukebox project. They own a business in California, where they sell wall jukeboxes to 50's diners. They are interested in converting some of them into home use. Larry had posted pictures and videos of the conversions he had done on a Facebook builders group, they saw those and contacted him. They talked about what they wanted to do. They agreed to send him one of the jukeboxes to see if their idea was achievable and what it would take. They also asked if the jukebox could be run via Bluetooth. The amplifier that Larry used has Bluetooth built in but Larry had never tried using it for anything.

After the conversation Larry went to one of our jukeboxes and got it to work with Bluetooth and his phone. It works great. Now he'll have to just wait for the jukebox to see how to convert it.

The next project was to checkout the pinball machine flipper button to see if it sticks. He played The Sopranos and the buttons worked great.

Pinball Projects

Last week we got the renewal for our home owners insurance, it went up last year and this year it is going way up, between the two increases it has doubled in price. We have never made a claim on our home owners insurance. The only time we ever made a home owners claim was more than 25 years ago for hail damage. 

Larry decided to shop our insurance around. He started off by submitting an online request to Liberty Mutual (years ago we had this house insured with them), the automated online service said there was a problem and we would have to contact an agent. Larry was not sure what the problem was but the only thing he could think of was something was not right with our credit reports. 

We have never checked our credit reports but Larry knew you could check them for free. He was able to get a online report from Equifax, the report looked great except they had our home address listed as our old address in Austin, we haven't lived there in over a decade. They had our current address in the report but showed we didn't live there. Larry called and was able to get it changed on both his report and mine.

There are three of these credit agencies, they share some information and some they don't. Larry wasn't able to get online reports from the others because the online systems kept indicating they couldn't verify our identity, probably because of the incorrect address. Today he called the other companies, it was very painful getting through the phone prompts. When he finally got to talk to someone their accents made it very difficult to understand them. He found that our credit was perfectly fine but the address was once again incorrect. The changes were suppose to be immediate so next week Larry will again attempt to shop our insurance around.

I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event was Event: Two Game Tango Mini of 10 games (5 games Klondike and 5 games of Spider). It took me 1 hour, 28 minutes and 30 seconds, which put me in 12th place in my group. Then I played Angry Birds.

I worked out on Synth Riders for a half hour and burned 132 calories. Then I worked out a half hour on my Wii Fit and a half hour on Gold's Gym.

 

Working Out

I worked on my diamond painting of Stitch.

In the evening we watched a couple of episodes of Northern Exposure. When Larry went to bed I watched Taken and Hugo from our movie collection. I ended up doing 17,500 steps, which put me in 3rd place in my group.