A typical call night

So I just thought I'd let everyone know how my typical call night goes. I sometimes feel like I am back in residency on call and back in the hospital. Let me start with a few things. I am on call ( meaning I am allowed to go home and answer questions from home, however if a child is born, something doesn't look right, a csection happens that isn't planned, the ER needs a child admitted or just wants a second opinion, I get to go into the hospital) I am on call about 6-7 nights a month - this is how often I was on during residency. I take one weekend call a month - meaning from 730 AM Sat to 730 Am Mon I am it. I see all nursery babies, NICU babies, kids admitted on the floor, and go in a night if they need me - for 48 straight hours.(yes there are no work hour rules for attendings). Did I mention that Peds doesn't have their own call room in the hospital - I have slept on a couch, a random empty patient room, and sitting in a chair/rocker in the NICU.
Here's how it goes:
I see patients during the day in our office and precept NP/PA students or a pediatric resident. I don't mind teaching, I actually enjoy this part. At 430pm I get checkout from the hospitalist or Neonatologist. I glance at the labor board. If there are any mom's laboring and close to delivering, I stick around until the baby is out b/c there is a 75% chance that I will get called with a question about how a baby looks. I then go home and Greg has made dinner for me:) (this is about 530-7). Now this is where my call night goes up or down. I normally get called in at least once for a delivery - labor and delivery calls when they declare a c-section, they see meconium or a baby has a bad heart rate on the monitor. I go back in, attend the delivery, and come back home about 2-3 hours later (depending on how quickly the csection happens). I sleep until 730 AM and then give checkout. This is a good call night.
My worst call night.... I was the hospitalist for the day, saw about 8 newborns, 1 NICU patient and was on for the night. During the day, I attended 3 csections. I admitted 2 newborns to the NICU for phototherapy (no we don't have a bili bed nor do the nurses allow us to put lights on the infants in the mom's room) At about 4 pm I attended a meconium csection and the child had too much breathing problems to go out to his mom's room. I got to manage him in the NICU for 4 hours - he did fine. At about 9 pm a mom comes in at 34 weeks, poor prenatal care and out comes a 4 lb baby. She wasn't breathing well, I intubated gave artifical surfactant to help her breathe better and placed her on our equivalent of CPAP(really powerful oxygen). I attend another csection. At 11 pm the ER calls about a kid that needs to be admitted, which I also get to do - see the child, write orders, see the child upstairs and make sure the nurses don't have any questions. At this point it is about 2-3 AM and I have labs to check on, blood gases to follow for my child in the NICU on oxygen, and talk with parents of my NICU children. Did I mention that I have now admitted 3 children to my NICU (4 is our max - I started with one) attended 6 csections and admitted a patient to the ward. I am so excited to leave the hospital at 730 and check out. My black cloud has followed me to Virginia.
I really enjoy the hospital but I have found out that my colleages rarely get called in and the nurses see me and cringe knowing that their night is going to be bad. I'll keep you posted if my cloud starts to change.

Cabinet is Done! Kind of...

Well after about 3 or so weeks it seems that the Multicade is finally finished. The only thing that is left is a little bit of artwork I'm going to have to order that surrounds the monitor. There will be some light blue artwork to match the front with some pictures of pacman, donkey kong etc. It will be better than just having black surround the monitor.

Anyway, I have done a few cosmetic changes to the cabinet.

1. First and foremost I got rid of that nasty black molding and replaced it with nice chrome molding. I think it makes the cabinet look a bit nicer.
2. Second is that I replaced 2 of the red buttons with a blue button and a green button. Just to add a bit more color. (buttons are cheap)
3. Thirdly, is that I replaced the joystick. It was pretty cheap and had a lot of play in it. This one is a bit more sturdy and precise.
4. I got the red coin reject buttons to light up. Running power there wasn't too difficult as I just tapped into the 12v & ground wires from the wiring harness.

Click on the pictures to get a closer look.



Here is the back of the cabinet. As you can see I didn't do all that great of a job in wire management. I did the best I could and it's really something nobody sees so I just said screw it.


And here is a picture after everything has been cleaned up and it has been moved to its final resting place. That table even comes in handy as my beer is within a small reach while I plug away on Donkey Kong or 1943. Oh, and Christy and I went to a Flea Market last weekend and I got that stool for a cool $5 bucks. Cheapest thing in the picture but it does its job perfectly.


Believe it or not I also tested out the coin mech's and set all the games to 25 cents per play and it worked! I put in 3 quarters and had 3 credits to play the games. Theoretically I could put this machine in a restaurant for wherever and it could make money. Hmmmmmmm

MacGruber got a professional haircut

So Greg and I broke down today and got MacGruber groomed. We walked into Petco and had him washed, dried, cut, fluffed, ears cleaned and nails trimmed. He is one handsome puppy. He needed his nails trimmed and we don't have any clippers for them, hence we got him completely groomed instead of just getting his nails clipped.

Here are some pics of his cute haircut...

Hanging out in the backyard...

Is that a dog barking?

Big Progress & Can See Finish Line...

Well, I decided the coin door needed a little paint so I took out the red coin buttons, taped it up and gave it a few coats of flat black spray paint. I think it turned out pretty well actually. I have some new red push buttons coming anyway as the other ones looked really old and dingy. (picture is a little blury)



I had the whole thing up and running for the last 2 days running on the original monitor from when this arcade cabinet was built in 1987 and while it worked it looked awful. There was burn-in in the screen and the picture just wasn't very crisp. Plus the colors were a little off at different parts of the screen. So, starting today I decided to rip out the old monitor. Here it is after I took it out. The thing had 20 years of dust on it and was disgusting. You have to be careful working on monitors because they hold charges even after they are unplugged. Like 20,000 to 30,000 volts. Enough to ruin your day and even can kill. Luckily I know what to touch and what not to touch and I didn't have any problems thank goodness.


I made a bracket with some extra wood I had left over and mounted the monitor to the piece of wood. I then was able to use 4 carriage bolts to bolt this piece of wood to the supports that were for the old monitor. A little ingenuity and about $4 dollars in hardware later the new 19" LCD screen was mounted and starting to look pretty good. All the games require the monitor to be mounted vertical instead of horizontal so that is why it may look sideways. Oh, and may have noticed the new Multicade marquee I installed. I had to get rid of the old Arkanoid one which just didn't make sense anymore.


Here is the view from the back of the cabinet. As you can see there is soooo much more room back here now that I have the LCD monitor in there instead of that old nasty CRT monitor. You can see the board that the LCD bracket it mounted to and how the board is bolted to the frame.


So.... What's left to do? Well, just a few things...

• Install new red push buttons in the coin door
• Run power to the coin door for back lighting for the new red buttons so they light up.
• Replace black T-molding running along the cabinet. I have some new green T-molding coming which might give the cabinet a little more "pop".
• Run power to the flourecent light behind the top marquee. It also will light up to highlight the Multicade marquee.
• Clean up my mess. I'm surprised Christy hasn't killed me yet with the mess I am making. :)
  

Making Progess Slowly but Surely...

Alright, over the last 2 days progess has been slow but steady. I mostly have just been waiting for paint to dry. I painted the front of the cabinet and have been spraying the control board with a couple layers of polyurethane.

After sanding down the front of the cabinet it looked really rough. You could see 20 years of wear and tear taking its toll.


I gotta say though. Once I started painting it really started to transform into something pretty nice looking. It took 3 coats of paint but I think it turned out pretty well. I also plan on giving the coinbox a little black paint but I'm not in too much of hurry to do that.



As I was doing the 3 coats of paint on the cabinet I put the overlay using the spray adhesive onto the new control board and started spraying a few layers of polyurethane just to give it a nice pretty shine and it will also protect it a good bit. After everything has dried I did a test fit on the cabinet and lucky for me everything fit like a glove. I also added that Multigame decal to the front. I think it looks good there.



So, now on to installing my new arcade parts along with the wiring. This wiring can be very confusing. There are wires for the joystick (up, down, left, right), 4 buttons, Player1, Player2, Coinbox, Power, Speaker & video. Ughhhhh. Just to give you a picture check it out. It took me over an hour just to identify all the wires. :(



I went ahead and put the buttons and joystick into the control board as well. I think it turned out pretty well. :)



And, all this wiring and the game circuit board (not shown in pics yet) needs to go somewhere in the back of this cabinet. I'll be figuring this one out as we go... I'll keep you posted.

Okay so now you know what the cabinet looks like I'll show you what I've done so far.

The first step was to take it apart. I had to take the Controller Board off and disconnect all the old buttons and joystick looking thingy. I also removed the Marquee at the top because I will be replacing that with a new "Multicade" marquee. There are also some light bulbs I need to replace up there. I also sanded the front of the cabinet a little just because it's going to get a nice coat of fresh blue paint before this project is done.



Anyway, here is the old Controller Board that I had take off and removed the joystick, buttons etc. As you can see it's in pretty bad shape and someone carved it up a good bit. I have 2 options here. I can try to salvage this piece and use some bondo to fill the holes, sand it down and then cut new holes for my buttons and joystick OR....



Just replace the entire board and start over, and that's what I did. I went to lowe's and had them cut me a piece of wood to the same dimensions and then sanded down one of the edges to a nice rounded shape. I cut my holes and I'm good to go. I also got some paint to match the new overlay (pictured as well) and painted teh new controller board just so the blue looks real blue once I use adhesive to mount the overlay on top of the board. I don't think I explained it too well but I'll post some pics of the finished product once done.



This is the Overlay graphic that will go on top of the new controller board.



And these are just some of my tools. Spray adhesive, sand paper & polyurethane to give the panel I nce smooth glossy finish.



That's all for now. I gotta go finish the board. I think the blue paint should be dry by now. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

My Arcade Machine Project...

Okay, so I guess its my turn to actually post something on this Glog so here it goes....

While I am looking for a job (still don't have one yet) I started up a new project. I am the new proud owner of a vintage 1987 Arkanoid arcade cabinet. Christy helped me pick up this "beauty" last weekend and boy I have a good amount of work in front of me. My goal is to turn this machine into a Multicade Machine that will play all the vintage 1980's arcade games (60 total) such as...

• Donkey Kong, Donkey Jr, Donkey Kong II, Donkey Kong III
• Pac Man, Ms. Pac Man, Pac Man Jr, Super Pac Man,
• Millipede, Centipede, Gunsmoke, 1942, 1843
  
• and others I can't remember right this second

As you can see from the picture it needs some work but it was working when I bought it so I believe it just needs some good ol' TLC to bring it back to life.

Macgruber turns ONE!!! Aug 31st

I yelled at him for trying to eat the ice cream with the candle lit... that is why he looks scared.


Here are some pics of MacGruber's birthday. I sang him Happy Birthday when we first got up, he got some bones, some stuffed animals that he quickly destroyed and some puppy ice cream with a candle in it (you can buy this at the grocery store - they have plain flavor and peanut butter flavor) Overall he loved it and is one of the best behaved one year old dogs I know - i may be biased!

Macgruber already tore off the ears on his giraffe

Langley AFB

Here are some pics I took of the base one day...

view from the "inn"

the large "inn"

by the bay

circle of flags with some old F15s in front of the hospital

one of the gates

another pic of the flags.

I had a pic on my cell phone of 4 F-22s but I can figure out how to get it on here.