The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I’ve got a ‘short list’ of pinball machines that I want to own someday. That list looks something like this:

• Funhouse
• Cyclone
• Black Knight
• Pharoah
• Star Trek: The Next Generation

There are more.. but those are the ‘top priority’. Earlier this week, a Star Trek came up for sale only a couple of miles from my house at a very fair price. The owner had done a partial restore and had taken very good care of it. It plays 100% and looks great – but there is a cracked ramp and a couple of minor cosmetic issues.

ST:TNG is considered to be a player’s game – it has one of the deepest rulesets ever created in a pinball machine. There are so many modes, subgames, easter eggs, and goals that it takes years to master. Unfortunately, even though it is one of the best playing machines ever – it doesn’t go for a premium price because of the theme. Quite simply, some people just hate the theme and won’t buy it because of that. That’s good for me, I guess..

I’m picking it up on Monday – and I’m not to thrilled about it. It’s a widebody so it barely fits through doors – and it’s 285 unforgiving pounds. Ugh.

To make room – I’m selling two machines immediately. My Flash and my Elektra have to go. The Flash is $450 (works perfectly), and the Elektra is $600 – also in perfect working condition. Drop me an e-mail if you know anybody interested..

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I’m feeling pretty good about my Christmas prep this year.. I was able to finish on December 23rd – a full day ahead of schedule! In general, the crush of humanity anywhere near anyplace that sells anything is overwhelming.

I don’t have any desire to go on a rant about Christmas – since this isn’t supposed to be a ‘topics’ blog, but I do want to make a couple of points. I’m even going to skip the obvious one about the true meaning of Christmas.

1) Could we please, please, please wait until at least after Thanksgiving until the “season” begins? I don’t want to see garland in September ever again. Thank you.
2) There is a lot of really bad Christmas music out there. Mariah Carey, anyone?
3) You can buy a boxed set of any TV show in history whether anybody wants to remember it or not. Here’s Exhibit A:

Doogie Howser Season 1

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Top Ten Ways Geeks were Bad This Year (from BBSpot.com):

• 11. Used GOTO
• 10. Recommended the use of Internet Explorer
• 9. Programmed Robosapien to steal
• 8. Scratched strangers iPod Minis when they weren’t looking
• 7. Started a flame war because they were bored
• 6. Uploaded mislabelled MP3s of Wham!
• 5. Didn’t ground themselves before working on a friend’s PC
• 4. Used genius for evil, not good
• 3. Voted for cliché entry in Fark Photoshop
• 2. Told user that the ‘Any Key’ was the big button on the case marked ‘Power’
• 1. Recomended review at Tomshardware.com

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Sorry that it has been almost two weeks since the last update.. it’s so hard to escape the black hole of December! I thought I’d fill everyone in on what’s been happening during my disappearance..

Christmas planning is going well – we’ve got my family visiting for the holiday. I usually don’t get a lot of shopping done until the week before Christmas – and this year was no exception. That always makes for a last minute fire drill, but it helps keep me focused on the task at hand.

I spent last weekend with some friends at an annual guys weekend in Fargo. Usually we make Dr. Paul drive to Minneapolis to visit us. Annually, we return the favor and drive north to visit him. It was a hardcore guy weekend, too. For most guys, this means beer and watching sports for 3 days. We’re all nerds – so it meant 3 straight days of playing games, eating spicy food, and random put-downs. We mostly played Magic: The Gathering but we slid in a board game as well. It wasn’t the best weekend of playing I’ve ever done – heck, I got beat up on. It’s still fun – but I will get my revenge next time. Stasis, anyone?

The Winter Solstice was yesterday – and it always brings mixed feelings. On one hand, there is no day of the year that is more ‘winter’ than that day. On the other hand, it means that we start the downhill slide to summer – and that makes me sad. I always get happy on the Summer Solstice because it means the days will start getting shorter and winter’s on it’s way! Yes, it’s twisted – I know.

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Seasons Greetings to one and all…

As 2005 draws to a close, Heather and I are busy with our typical pre-Christmas activities. Heather is embarking on her annual Christmas tradition of assembling multiple Christmas puzzles, and I’m procrastinating about writing the annual Christmas letter. I’ve been so successful that I’ve made it nearly ten years since the last one.

Heather and I had a lot of adventures during the year. We started the year with a ski trip to visit the Mark and Julie Picha in Colorado. Our next journey together was to visit Heather’s brother Todd and family in Orlando in May.

In July, we joined Kermit and Susan Erickson and nearly 20,000 others for the second half of RAGBRAI – the Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. We biked nearly two hundred miles over the three days and gained a new appreciation for how flat Iowa isn’t.

In September, we celebrated our one-year anniversary. Everyone says that the first year is the hardest. If that is true, we’ve got many great years ahead since the first year couldn’t have gone better or been happier. We visited wine country in Sonoma, CA over Labor Day weekend to get away and enjoy a little ‘fruit of the vine’. Later that month, we took a 5-day trip into the Boundary Waters with Wally and Shannon Tufvander.

Heather and I weren’t always able to travel together – Heather traveled to Hawaii, Seattle, and New York City for fun – and many other places for work. I made a nearly two week trip to India in November for work – but I was able to enjoy some sightseeing along the way.

Somehow with all of the travel, we were able to make progress on our house. Though our house is still mostly white, due to the help of family and friends we now have several rooms painted and it is really coming together.

Heather continues to amaze me. She completed her third year at The Gift Certificate Center and was able to find time to play tennis twice a week, participate in two book clubs, join a bible study, compete in four triathalons, and run a marathon. Along the way, she took up knitting and perfected the art of apple crisp.

I spent a large portion of the year downstairs in my lair – the basement. During 2005 I took up restoring vintage pinball machines and worked on fixing up 6 machines over the year. I also enjoyed gaming with friends, tinkering on little projects around the house, and training with Heather on our bikes to prepare for RAGBRAI and her triathalons.

We were fortunate enough to host all of Heather’s family at Thanksgiving. 14 people came over for Heather’s first full-scale feast – and all went away happy and full. For Christmas, we’ll be hosting my side of the family.

Heather and I are very thankful for all the blessings we received during 2005 – good health, good times, and great friends and family. We hope that life has been as rewarding for each of you and we wish you an even more prosperous 2006. Should your journeys take you anywhere near Chaska, please feel free to visit – our guest bedroom is always avaialble!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

With Love..

Mark and Heather Teskey

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This from today’s story about the repeal of the Hennepin County smoking ban:

Isis Stark, the American Cancer Society’s advocacy coordinator, was more blunt. “Exempting bars from secondhand smoke protections is like exempting coal miners from black lung protections,” she said.

What person over the age of about 6 can’t figure that out?

I’m not sure if it’ll make a difference – and I feel totally hypocritical for posting this given my strong anti-activism stance, (I seriously considered a rally to protest activism once!!) – but here’s a way to start changing this madness:

Does it bother you when someone blows cigarette smoke in your face? How about if someone did it everyday, all day while you worked? That’s exactly how a lot of bartenders and restaurant workers feel.

Secondhand smoke does more than bother their eyes – it can cause cancer, heart disease, and asthma.

Our Governor and legislators must protect all our workers from secondhand smoke by making Minnesota Smoke-Free!

Just click on the link below to send a free message to your Governor and legislators.

Freedom to Breathe

Git ‘er done.

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How stupid are we?

Hennepin County commissioners have voted to partially roll back the county’s 9-month-old smoking ban.

Bar owners said the ban was economically crippling, particularly for bars located near Hennepin County’s boundaries with counties that did not ban smoking.

Let’s diagnose this.. how many bars are we talking about here? 75? For argument, lets say 100. 100 bar owners suffering. That’s sad, true enough. One could probably expect some risk when you base your livelihood on vice.

It’s not nearly as sad as the thousands now re-exposed to class A carcinogens. Don’t you think it would make more sense to put the statewide ban in place to re-level the playfield? No, that would make too much sense.

F$%*ing idiots.

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After a conversation with anderiv.. I decided to tweak my iTunes signature a little. This one is a little less disjointed and a little more representative.. and you can still clearly hear “The Booty Song”.

Here is my updated iTunes sig:

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I’ve never had much luck explaining what my musical tastes were.. and apparently neither has Jason Freeman, creator of iTSM – the iTunes Signature Maker. iTSM examines your iTunes metadata and builds a little mashup of your favorite stuff – defined by ratings, # of listens, most recently listened, and other criteria. It’s not terribly musical, but I have to admit – it’s pretty representative of what I listen to on a day-to-day basis.

Here’s a link to my musical signature:

What does yours sound like? iTSM can be found at: iTSM

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Here’s the perfect way to show off your lost ’80s childhood from spending too much time in video arcades during the Christmas season. Way of the Rodent has a collection of vintage arcade Christmas shirts. What is a vintage arcade Christmas shirt?

I’ve got the Q-Bert Christmas tree on the way to the T3sk3y compound as we speak..

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