It's not what I did today but what I did all of last week and this past weekend leading right up to Monday evening. I hosted my first TOPL league night on Monday and spents tons of time getting my games up to spec and my gameroom spaced out to make room for players.
Literally was up to sunrise each evening Fri to Mon, slept 5 hours and back to the basement in the push to finish. I spent days last week stripping my recently acquired IJ Williams PF down, completely, save for the IDOL assembly and pop bumpers... cleaning, waxing etc. I worked and reworked the raised inserts, ugh. Getting the POA to not stutter and align just right was a chore. Props to Drano for supplying me with his spare POA motor driver board and gearbox in case I needed them! Thanks man, I appreciated having that option. Turns out the stutter was just flipper optos. As luck would have it, the very centre drop target sheared right off late Monday just as TOPL guests were arriving
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Late Friday evening, for whatever reason (I was on a roll?), I felt compelled to install my new STTNG ramps even though they'd been sitting in a box for over a year. That was an adventure. Turns out the Cliffy protectors holding my old ramps together all had to be modded with my dremel to fit my new ramps. Oh, and the installed Alpha ramp sloped just a tad too high and would not allow the Delta ramp diverter to work. More MacGyvering. And when it was all done, I found I installed the switch on the Alpha ramp backwards (duh), and had to pull the Delta ramp apart again after finally getting the blue flap to sit just right. I felt bad because STTNG played fine with old ramps and with TOPL two days away this stole precious hours that I would have spent shopping the BSD I just picked up which was dirty, unshopped and needed opto work. I know BSD is a fave with TOPLites. Still, nice to be done with the STTNG :mrgreen:
I moved a couple games out of the gameroom in the tv/bar area as our TOPL attendance has gone ballistic lately. I just could not see 30+ guys fitting into my workshop come gameroom. Cleaning, waxing, shuffling games around. Moving, shifting, re-levelling each game. Hiding my TZ project in the furnace room, another in the freezer room. Sheesh. I was literally doing pinball stuff and nothing else in all my spare time the past two weeks. :geek: I rarely get the flu but it really got me bad the weekend before last. I was down for the count. Weekend time is valuable and not having those two whole days got me in deep.
Planning and cooking the food, getting drinks for TOPL night... major credit goes to my wife. She did an amazing job and made it all work out. I mean, does your wife go out and by you your beer?? Mine does. Next time hosting should be easier - and I plan to. It was fun seeing the guys enjoy themselves. I have to give kudos to all the members of TOPL that repeatedly host our league nights and playoffs. There's a lot of work to do to get your games and place ready for all the players. I certainly have a better appreciation now.
