I just took a hard look at my data storage situation.

In my NAS, an Ubuntu server with 5 1TB disks in a 3.63TB RAID 5 array (is ‘NAS’ the right term for this?  I can’t keep my network storage acronyms straight), at this writing, I have only 271GB free.

On my desktop machine, I have a 256GB SSD for a boot disk that contains my operating systems, as well as 1TB and 3TB disks for local storage.  Between those storage disks, I have <500GB free.

Look, I’m an old DOS guy.  I never adopted the “My Documents” way of life.  It makes a lot of sense to shove big data sets in there in order to keep things organized, until you encounter something like, “Unable to extract xxx-xxxxx-xxxxx.zip because the path name will exceed 255 characters” — well, “C:\Users\Jason\My Documents\” is 29 of those characters.  And the next thing you know, you have things like “D:\!BACKUP\OCTOBER BACKUP” and “D:\Old Edrive\External Disk Backup\” just sitting around.

So, I think it’s time to start the Unfuck Your Habitat club.  But for computers.

I’m going to be spending the next few days organizing my data, taking a hard look at some of the stuff I’ve been hanging onto for years, extract the gold, and organize into recognizable hierarchies.  A lot of this stuff belongs in my Dropbox, forever accessible from any of my machines.  And the rest gets nuked forever.

And this appears to be the perfect time.  Work is slow because people are off celebrating and traveling.  The house is still clean, and unless something tragic happens, nothing around the house needs serious consideration.

If your situation is like mine, maybe this would be a good time to jump in and clean up your computer!

The Neo Candy 29 has gotten considerably more play now that it’s in the house.  Demon Front is an excellent game, but I felt the need to expand my collection of horizontal games.

A local coin-op business hosted a swap meet for arcade and pinball collectors, and I picked up two games.

The first was “In The Hunt”.  This Irem classic is by the team that went on to produce Metal Slug.  Play is difficult, and though I’ve managed to reach the third level on a credit, I’m not so sure about later stages.  This game is fun, but I’m afraid it doesn’t suit me well.  It might need to find a new home if it doesn’t grab me soon.

Next, I picked up Life Force (Salamander in Japan).  I haven’t spent a lot of time with it, but in my first two or three games, I’ve reached as far as I think I’ve been in the past.  It boasts “Stereo Sound” on the title screen, so it might motivate me to build out the 4-pin sound cable I need for many of my games.

Finally, I bought another “not working” game off of eBay.  This one is China Gate, and it’s been a bit abused.  Dirty the least of it’s problems, it has at least 4 crushed capacitors, and there’s a spot where one should be, but all that remains is a leg.  I’ll have to do some research to find out what I can replace it with.  Hoping I’ll get to play it, as the emulation is currently incomplete, though I enjoyed my test run with a half-working bootleg ROM set in MAME.

Otherwise, summer is ramping up and we’re been enjoying some use of the backyard and the grill.

Plans to visit Colorado in late September are in the works.

Things are quiet here, but I’ve got quite a few things worth mentioning.

Turbo is on hiatus.  The replacement board set hs grown it’s own set of problems, and I am putting it on the backburner for now.

The Neo Candy 29 attended the 2011 Northwest Pinball and Gameroom Show, with Salamander 2 installed.  I wouldn’t say it was a hit, but maybe it gained a fan or two.

Since it’s return, I moved the Neo Candy 29 into the house. To celebrate, I bought two new games for it:  Demon Front (IGS, 2002) and ..something else that hasn’t arrived yet.

Demon Front looks like a Metal Slug game at a glance, but it contains lots of gameplay features that make it stand out.  Combo systems, floaty jumps and a powerful pet attack that you level up, and some wicked tough bosses make this well worth the investment.

I’ve been working on a video project for a few months now.  These things come and go, but this is the first time I’ve reached a second draft.  It’s ambitious, but should be a ton of fun, and hopefully memorable to the viewer.

I guess that’s all for now.

I haven’t talked to you in awhile. Sorry about that, I was busy getting married.

Now that things are a bit less stressful, a clean installation of Windows, and a roaring beta of Ubuntu in the works, I will try my hardest to put something interesting up here once a week. I have a lot of content in the works, but nothing really presentable at the moment, so here is some placeholder text to reassure you that I’m alive.