My Precious... Has arrived.

After a year and half of waiting for the right machine, at the right location, at the right time, at the right price, the planets aligned and I was able to get a Home Use Only Lord of the Rings pinball machine.

It was about 3/4 the price of a brand new one, so I basically had to wait a while until people got bored of their brand new out of the box machines. (This one belongs to my friend Justin from NaughtyDog) which he got at the end of 2004 straight from a distributor.

Anyway, my machine is a 1st run, Stern had 5 runs of these with about 4000 machines total produced. This is a longer run than The Simpsons Pinball Party which had about 3 or 4 runs since 2002. I had some doubts about owning a Stern and it's quality at first, but the ruleset is deep and the action is very intense. I think this one's a keeper, but I doubt I will own another Stern unless it is a Simpsons, or if Pirates of the Carribean is a smash hit when Stern releases it in the summer.

Plumbing sucks, I broke the kitchen faucet somehow and had to drop 150 on a new fixture, not to mention 4 hours on my back trying to get the damn thing installed without leaks.

I just got back from New Jersey from a conference with Lucent Technologies and it was fricken cold there. about 30-40 degrees. Something of note, the houses there have some very large property as compared to the postage stamp sized properties we have in Ca. I don't think I could deal with the cold for a whole season.

I need to get back on the bike.