Archive for the 'Shopping' Category

Resolution-

Published by Helen on February 8, 2009 in Environment and Shopping. 6 Comments

We’ve had our latest coffee maker for about 2 years. It still works - kind of - but the lid has water trapped in it and about half of the time you have to unplug it and plug it back in to be able to turn it on. Oh yeah - and when you pour coffee it makes a puddle beside your cup no matter how you hold it or twist the lid. The one we had before it lasted about 2 years too. I started looking around online for coffeemakers that would last for more than 2 years - but that ’s not all! Since I was making a list of possibly unreasonable demands I also added:

1. Makes hot coffee - I want to be able to put milk in it without it going lukewarm.

2. Makes strong coffee.

3. No plastic parts in contact with water/coffee - I can taste it and know it isn’t good.

We’ve used a french press (strong, but not hot enough) and tried the cold brew method (strong,  great for iced coffee , but a hassle for not-hot-enough coffee.) I’ve had everything from a $20 Mr Coffee to a $70 stainless thermal carafe coffee maker.  I know this all sounds whiny and spoiled - waaah - feel sorry for me with my coffee maker problems! But really it is just one more example of the disposable crap mentality that I don’t want to be a part of. I don’t want to buy a new crappy coffee maker every 2 or 3 years, I don’t want to throw away a  broken crappy coffee maker every 2 or 3 years. I could quit drinking coffee, but then I could write this post about crappy pencil sharpeners, crappy dishwashers, crappy cars, crappy socks - this is bigger than the coffee maker. I just want something that does what it supposed to and does not need to be replaced regularly.

Okay - deep breath -  in my studies on the interwebs I came across electric percolators. Several reviews I read mentioned that the percolator in question was purchased to replace a percolator that had died after 30+ years of daily use. Others mentioned how hot the coffee was - or how strong! And guess what? A lot of the percoltors I saw had no plastic parts! I looked around on ebay but didn’t find anything reasonable, so finally I chose a percolator on amazon and put it in my cart but didn’t buy it right away.

A few days later I found this percolator at goodwill:

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I thought the cord was missing, but it was wrapped around the stem inside. There weren’t even fingerprints on it - it had never been used! It was $8.78, I feel like I have a piece of artwork in my kitchen, and it makes steaming hot, strong coffee. If you visit me in the next 30 years I’ll offer you a cup.

Video Game Update

Published by Scott on April 27, 2008 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

We got some new additions to our ever expanding retro collection this week:

sega saturn

First up, an awesome deal for a Sega Saturn that I found on craigslist. The woman I bought it from said it was her ex-husband’s and she just wanted to get rid of it. For $30 the package included the console and cords, two controllers, a steering wheel accessory, and a handful of games. The games are mostly old sports titles, which I don’t have any interest in, but the keepers include Virtua Cop (needs a light gun though), Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and The Need For Speed. There was also a pair of sealed Japanese imports, Godzilla and Virtua Fighter 2. I’m going to try to sell those and put the money toward a mod chip that will allow us to play burned copies of Saturn games.

ps1 plus gold finger

Next, another Playstation. We already had one but this is an earlier model with a parallel port. That’s significant because it also came with a Gold Finger Game Enhancer that plugs into that port and allows you to play backups and imports.

It’s kind of crazy because you have to trick the PS into letting you play a burned copy. You do this by booting up the system with an original disc first and then swapping it out with the game you want to play. All the while something has to be jammed in the lid open/close sensor so it thinks the lid is closed.

Anyway, I’m thrilled to be able to play some of those old titles that go for pretty significant amounts of money if I were to actually, you know, buy them.

garage sale tv

And finally, Helen scored a cheap tv from a garage sale so we can play these old systems and actually see what’s going on. Our NES, SNES, PS, and N64 were all connected to a tiny little portable dvd player through a four way A/V selector. It served its purpose but this smoky smelling old box is so much nicer. I had to buy an RF modulator because it didn’t have any RCA jacks, but that little spike to the initial ten dollar price tag was totally worth it.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 2: Dreamcast

Published by Scott on December 24, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 5 Comments

I’m really excited to officially break out the Dreamcast tomorrow. I already had a sizable stash of games to go with it but I’ve picked up a few more since then. One title I really wanted to get was Sonic Adventure. I got it but what an ordeal! I took a chance at half.com and bought it from the person that had it listed cheapest. This seller only had feedback from four people, but all were positive. Turns out he is selling bootleg copies of games and trying to pawn them off as discs sent to reviewers.

The Sega Dreamcast can play cd-r’s but all of their games were released on the unconventional gd-rom format, which can hold up to 1.2 GB of information. The disc I got from this shady dealer was most definitely a cd-r. It says so right on the transparent ring in the middle! I know from poking around an underground game sharing network that Sonic Adventure is too large to fit on a regular cd-r. I could have downloaded the same free copy this person did, with deleted cut scenes, music downsampled from stereo to mono, and who knows what else hacked out. That’s not what I wanted and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for it. I didn’t call the guy on his bullshit but did tell him I thought I was buying the official release and requested a refund. He gave me my money back without argument and I soon found a “Buy It Now” deal for the real thing on eBay for about the same price.

I read about a similar scenario on the racketboy forums, did some sleuthing, and discovered they were talking about the same fellow. He’s got lots of rare Dreamcast games listed for cheap on both half.com and Amazon. So buyer beware! Here’s a comparison of the copy (left) and the official Sega release:

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I had a much happier experience purchasing a lot of Dreamcast sports games on eBay. I was looking to buy one of the 2K hockey games, which go for next to nothing by themselves. For twenty bucks (including shipping) I found not only that game, but seven more titles plus two VMU memory packs. That was an excellent deal, especially considering that the VMU packs normally sell for around $6-8 each plus shipping. The games came with their instruction manuals and jewel case inserts too. Score!

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I also bought a VGA cable from the racketboy store so I can plug the Dreamcast directly into a computer monitor. I haven’t tested it out yet but it’s supposed to offer a clear, crisp picture. And finally, I found a third party light gun for a couple of bucks from Goodwill so I can blast some zombies in House of the Dead 2.

Santa’s Bag o’ Video Games Part 1: SNES and N64

Published by Scott on December 23, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

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I’ve been stockpiling games for about three months now and have to admit the Christmas haul is ridiculously large. We’ll have enough “new” retro titles to occupy us for a long, long time. Here are the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games that will be under the tree and some brief thoughts about each:

SNES

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Yoshi’s Island
We have both of these fantastic games for the Gameboy Advance. It will be fun to play them on the big screen.

Super Mario All-Stars - I talked about this one in a recent post.

Super Star Wars
Spider-man & Venom: Maximum Carnage
These are both supposed to be difficult but very good.

Street Fighter II: Turbo
Mortal Kombat II
Final Fight
I have been a Street Fighter II: The World Warrior junkie for the past couple of weeks. I’d never been a fan of fighting games before but all of a sudden I’ve developed an appreciation for the genre.

Shadowrun - A highly regard role playing adventure.

Donkey Kong Country - Platformer with everyone’s favorite oversized video game gorilla.

Starfox - I’m curious to see how this series began. I know they put in an extra chip for this game to push the graphics of the SNES to the limit.

Uniracers
Stunt Race FX
These arcade trick/racing games look fun. There’s a good review for Uniracer at racketboy.

Mega Man X - I have never played any of the Mega Man titles so I’m looking forward to checking one out.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles In Time - From what I’ve read this is a good co-op beat ‘em up. Ray especially likes those kinds of games.

Super Game Boy - Not a game but an adapter cartridge that allows you to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games on TV through the Super Nintendo. We only have a few of those games but I thought it’d be worth checking out.

N64

Starfox 64 - I was really excited to find this at Goodwill. I was seriously considering buying it online before it magically turned up last Saturday. It’s an on-the-rails flying space shooter, just like the best parts of the two Starfox games we have for the Gamecube. Unlike in those games though, he stays in his ship the whole time.

Pokemon Stadium - We have Pokemon Colosseum for Gamecube and I expect this is probably pretty similar. It wasn’t well received during its release but I couldn’t pass it up. We love Pokemon!

Diddy Kong Racing - Gamespot describes it as “a cross between Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64.” They don’t score it very well but it sounds promising. I’m sure it’s at least three dollars worth of entertainment.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer - The pod racing sequence was kind of lame in the movie but I’ll bet it’s fun as a game.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled crafty postings. . .

Published by Helen on December 15, 2007 in Crafts and Shopping. 2 Comments

To bring you this Goodwill score-

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12 embroidered linen napkins - no stains and they are all hand hemmed and it looks like hand- stitched too. And I have a project in mind for them!

I actually saw these yesterday but they were kinda on the pricey side for Goodwill (about .75 each!) so I walked around with them in my cart for a while and put them back. Last night I got an idea of what I could do with them so today we went back and they were still there. This proves that I was meant to have them if you are a follower of Goodwill karmic energy theory. (Scott and I are devotees.)

Goodwill + eBay = Quick Profit

Published by Scott on December 15, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 3 Comments

super-mario.jpgOn my usual after work trip to Goodwill the other day I was thrilled to find a copy of Super Mario All-Stars for Super Nintendo. It’s an awesome compilation of the first three Super Mario Bros. games for the NES plus the so-called “Lost Levels” (the original Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2) all spruced up with improved graphics for the SNES. I’d browsed around before on Amazon and half.com and knew it went for at least twenty dollars. I snatched it up for a measly three bucks and added it to add to my box o’ xmas games.

Today at the other Goodwill we frequent on our Saturday library runs, I found Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World. This was another compilation for the Super Nintendo that included, as the name implies, all of the games on Super Mario All-Stars plus the SNES sequel for the franchise, Super Mario World. We already have that game for both the SNES and Gameboy Advance. Since I knew the going rate for All-Stars, I figured this one had to be at least worth that much. Why not try to make a little money to offset my many retro game purchases?

I looked up the recent completed auctions for the game when we came home and saw that all of the “Buy It Now” sales went for around $25. Nice! Cleaned up the cartridge, tested it out to make sure it worked, took a picture, and finally listed it for $23.99. Believe it or not, someone snatched it up within the first hour. Talk about a quick turn around! I’m feeling very savvy right now. And did I mention that I love Goodwill?

Helen’s Big Score

Published by Scott on December 10, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments
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Helen called me from the local Goodwill while out shopping yesterday. Seems they were having a little sale. Every now and then they’ll pull out a table from the back and cram it full of a particular item or a group of things that fit a theme. I’ve seen mini-sales for phones, rollerblades and sandals, coffee makers, vcr tapes, and books among other things. This time it was video game consoles and controllers! Controllers were $2.02 a piece and consoles, sans power cords or connector cables, only $8.08. She described to me everything they had and I had her pounce on:

  • NES controllers- There were five of these, which was perfect. We only have one official one plus a pair of crappy third party knockoffs. I have two extra NES consoles that I plan to refurbish some day with no controllers. That little problem is now solved.
  • Sega Dreamcast consoles- I’ve already written about the one I bought myself for Christmas. They’re versatile machines and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a couple of spares for that price. Helen grabbed two of the three they had for sale. I plan on having mine hooked up to my computer monitor so I’ll give one to the boys. Unfortunately the other is in need of repair. It’ll boot up fine but I think the controller port is blown. I guess that’s a common problem in Dreamcasts and a simple matter of replacing a resistor. Sounds like a fun rainy day project to me. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with it after I get it going again. I may give it as a gift to a certain soon-to-be family member who would appreciate the NES emulation.
  • Dreamcast controllers- Duh. Needed these to go with the consoles. Helen bought the four they had.
  • Gamecube controller- We already have four in fine working order so we’ll either keep it as insurance or give it to one of the boys’ friends.

Helen also picked up four SNES games, but I’ll tell about those in a future post describing our obscene Christmas game haul. All in all, it was a pretty awesome day for a retro game fan down to the Goodwills. Thanks Helen!

Retro Game Explosion Part Five: Sega Dreamcast

Published by Scott on October 28, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 4 Comments

Just before we took our trip to South Carolina, the local Goodwill got in a stack of Sega Dreamcast games and put them for sale at three bucks a pop. The only thing I really knew about the system was that it was beloved by longtime gamers. Went home and did some reading at Racketboy, a simply amazing retro game resource, and decided I should probably pick up a few in case I ever came across a Dreamcast. I put together a list of recommendations from that site and bought:

  • Crazy Taxi
  • Tennis 2K2
  • SoulCaliber
  • The House of the Dead 2
  • Resident Evil Code: Veronica
  • Sega Rally 2
  • Cannon Spike

After a couple of weeks of monitoring Dreamcast auctions on eBay, I saw what looked like an awesome deal. For $41 including shipping I got a Dreamcast, two controllers, one VMU memory card, two rumble packs, and three games: Quake III Arena, Silver, and Shadow Man. All of this stuff plus the initial games I purchased are my Christmas present. I figure we’d gone a little crazy with the retro systems since June and another one now would be a bit much. Plus it gives me something to look forward to.

I have been sneaking it out after the kids go to bed however. Again thanks to Racketboy and this article, I have discovered the seedy underworld of emulation and ROMS. The Dreamcast will read CD-R discs without any chip modifications, making it possible to play NES games on it. Pretty darn cool. I’ve tracked down all of the necessary software and figured out how to burn a self-booting disc consisting of an amazing collection of NES games.

There’s also a homebrew scene in which people have developed their own Dreamcast games. DCEvolution has free collections of these games where you simply have to download an image file and burn it to a disc. As recent as last year there were commercial releases of homebrew games. Kind of crazy, considering the Dreamcast came out in 2000 and has been out of production since 2001.

And if great commercial games, emulation, and homebrew weren’t enough, techno smarties have long since figure out how to rip backup Dreamcast games. I found a little group that shares torrents of impossible to find or prohibitively expensive games like Ikaruga and REZ. No, it’s not even close to legal but I’m not losing sleep over it. Instead I’m counting down the days until Christmas when I can break this awesome system out permanently!

Some of the other things -

Published by Helen on October 21, 2007 in Crafts and Shopping. 4 Comments

Hazel’s slippers before felting-
Hazel’s slippers after felting-
I made this quilt/tablecloth with fabric I’ve been collecting at goodwill over the last couple weeks.
It is really long!

Close up to show detail of the fabrics.

This Week’s Retro Game Treasures

Published by Scott on September 23, 2007 in Shopping and Video Games. 0 Comments

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Compulsive Goodwill stalking turned up these items:

NES Advantage Controllers
We went to the one of our local Goodwills yesterday and they had an unmarked pair of these out on the shelves. I asked the cashier how much they were and she didn’t know. They’re not supposed to sell stuff that’s not priced so she sent them to the back and said they’d be out on the floor the next day.

We returned today and they were nowhere to be found. I got a woman from behind the scenes to poke around. She found them and surreptitiously slipped them back into the electronics section. They’re not supposed to bring stuff out to customers so that was her workaround. I appreciated it, all the more so because they were only $3.54 each. I expected to pay a lot more.

I didn’t even know there was such an accessory. Basically NES Advantage is the joystick version of the regular controller plus some speed manipulating features. I don’t know if I like it better yet but it’s a cool option to have. They’re definitely solid and responsive.

Hazel and Ray are in the picture above trying them out in a game of Super Dodge Ball.

Spider-Man (2000, Playstation)
They had this a couple of weeks ago but when I looked in the case, it wasn’t the right disc. This time everything checked out so I snatched it up. It’s really fun to play as Spider-Man, swinging on webs and crawling up the sides of buildings. Lots of heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe too. The kids especially like Venom. A nice bonus is the “Kid Mode,” which is the complete game on a very easy setting along with a slightly modified control scheme to make Spidey’s abilities a little less complicated.

Metal Gear Solid (1998, Playstation)
I only knew this game by reputation so I’m glad to have a chance to play it. Great story with a very cinematic feel. I’ve played a couple of Splinter Cell titles and can see how influential it was on that series. It’s rated “M” so I have to wait for the kids to go to bed before I can see what Solid Snake is up to next.

ActRaiser 2 (1993, Super Nintendo)
I’d never heard of this one but grabbed it anyway because I saw it was published by Enix. They have a reputation for putting out good games. You play as some sort of mythical winged hero with a sword and shield. Looks great but it’s really hard. Haven’t quite got the hang of it yet.