Too cold to run

It is raining cold, blowing, bird doo today.

Addendum: Not only did it pour Rita leftovers all day all over our city (just like Katrina earlier this month, and Ophelia last year), but it flooded the nearby road (boulevard Hamel, if you have any idea where that is) for a "couple" blocks, good and wet. It shut down the road and therefore all the restaurants and businesses there too.

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I came upon the Mario Opera through Boingboing today, and I can't get over how well it is put together so far. If it ever gets put into a show, I swear I'm going to get a passport just so I can see it wherever it's being put on.

The NES Fix

Having very little to do in the evening and currently very busy hands (despite the blister asplosion), I went about looking for a fix for our old Nintendo system. We have the old "blinking problem" and the "stupid rusted connectors" problem. Many web sites recommend the following things:

1. Clean all connectors with rubbing alcohol and/or spray WD40 to fix the rustiness and dustiness and lustiness.


2. Take apart system, pull out the 72 pin connector, and bend the bottom row of pins up to make it happy again.


3. Chop up the system, and resolder the parts to make cartridges face back/up/left/right or smallitize/bigenize the thing.


4. Buy a new 72 pin connector. End of story.

My fix was basically to derustify/dedustify the thing. It took a lot of sweat and ruined screw heads to make it work, but I think I got it. So far, it has run Super Mario 2, Ultima 3, and Kirby's Adventure without too much hassle. Hopefully, the other games will run just as smoothly (?) so that we can finally use this box again without cursing. (Which is unlikely, seeing how I play action games so badly.)