Sometimes a service call can awake a bunch of stuff for me. It usually takes me a day or two afterwards to absorb & formulate what took place, - not only inside the machine, but inside myself as well. If this kind of thing keeps up, the machines and I will become one and that will surely be the end of that long term peculiar relationship.

So Monday night I had the brilliant idea to do two service calls after work.  The first one for an original Alexander Amusements client I have had on my client list since 1991, and then one for a MAACA member that I appreciate very much, a fellow human being, - TerryZ. So the cumulative result of that night was sort of a "that was then, this is now" scenario. Thus offering up a perspective spanning over 30 years of home service in one night for my brain to try and process. If every post in this thread had a title, I would call this one "Long Lost Service with a Smile Revisited" but that is only a detail, right ?

Context is vital to these stories, and the general climate around here is not good, and I don't mean just the weather in Montreal. Some people feel it and know it, and others see it and ignore it,- regardless, anyone with half a brain can see that things are slowly falling apart, even if they don't admit it verbally and/or publically. Slowly and subtly, in and around us, in small little ways that are easy to ignore for now things are becoming unstable. Some contribute to the decline, some fight it, but the inevitability of entropy will have to fulfill itself. It may be time to prepare for the crunch that will no doubt emerge from all these seemingly harmless short sighted actions usually promoted by those who know how to profit from the growing social uneasiness that these former actions create. Uneasiness makes individuals look for compensation, and on the flipside, happiness & contentment doesn't usually bring on the need to compensate. And since compensation is offered in so many forms, sizes, shapes and intensities at various outlets near you, it is easy for those who have put aside their humanity to profit from the results of this growing uneasiness in the general public which is elevating a sense of hopelessness for more and more common folks. A content and healthy population is not good for big business, - insecurity, frustration, being unhealthy and fearful are very profitable however.

Christian knows this well. I first met him and his brother in 1991 when he called the small service company I had created after university to do home service on pins. Many operators at the time looked upon my business and laughed as a venture that was doomed to fail. Most of those operators are gone now, and I get a real kick when the the occasional call comes in from some of my first home service clients that looked in the yellow pages over 20 years ago to find someone who would go to their house and fix a pinball they had been given or acquired quite cheaply through some long gone operator looking to make space in their warehouse. Things have changed, and rightly so, as they have to. How they are trending is where the trouble awaits in my observations. The direction which change is taking lately has got me thinking a mile a minute and making me wonder about what I can do to soften the looming impact on those I care for.

My service rates back in 1990 were 28 bucks to show up and 32 bucks an hour. Well that looks funny now, but at 27, I did pretty good with my little '82 Sentra and what I had in the trunk. "Have tool box will travel" was the motto and with this I managed to live off fixing people's pins from 1990 to 1993 at that rate without ripping anyone off. I lived with a roommate in a great big apartment in Cote St. Luc and had a solid chance at building a good life for myself. Again things change, fall apart and come together in another form, that is the only constant you can count on - change.

There is no real surprise in the cycle of growth and decline, and if you know your history from something else than just what the mainstream media wants you to know, you understand that the rise and fall of systems is a natural and necessary cycle, much like growing older and dying and leaving the playfeild open for the next generations. Nonetheless, it remains no fun at all to have to live this for most of us who know and understand the inevitability of decline. We also need to keep in mind as a consolation to this inevitability that having fun will exist in crisis situations as well as in celebratory times of growth, it seems a necessary ritual to hang on to in order to get through these extraordinary times.

Christian lives in Pierrefonds on the north west shore of the Montreal island now. When I first serviced his Bally em pinball back in 1991, he lived in St.Lambert and always managed to live well running his small business as a photographer. He is still with his wife and two sons and still runs his own business. And what I mean by "well" is not totally dependent on having alot of money, as this culture promotes and values as a pivotal ideal. It is an empty culture we live in for the most part, and will likely be seen in the aftermath of its glory as a violent, careless and degrading culture by whomever is left here to build things up again.

So now Christian had acquired a "Power Play", the same working machine that I had sold to his brother for 250$ working back in 1992 when a friend of mine and I bought a retired operator's workshop full of videos and pins for 400$. 13 pins were in the lot and that was one of them, the others were also early SS pins from the big three. The video games numbered over 45, so I still think that the 400 bucks was irrelevant in a way to the old man, he really just wanted someone to clean up his space and take out the trash sort of speak. So my business partner at the time Nick and I took three days to empty it out and move alot of it to the dump or to the south shore basements and garage we rented. Our real reward was all this stuff we loved to tinker with. It was scary how much crap there was, and I think that Nick needed this type of occupation more than I did. He had just lost his Domino's pizza franchise and was as equally confused as I was and was looking for something to do. So we sold, repaired cheap pins and videos until his girlfriend came and got him out of that fringe scenario.

But back to Christian, whom I will describe as a sort of finiky client who is very much into details that don't matter. A sort of guy who would like everything to be perfect, and even when it is close to being that, still manages to find something to be fixed or improved. He would nit pick at things to keep me around longer than I had to be there and would pay the time regardless. I like the guy, he has a calm disposition and good conversation, and I think that like most married men he wants some company once in a while. I don't feel sorry for him at all, he has a nice family and a calm lifestyle, but I can't help but think that boredom must set in on this quaint scenario more often that not. So he calls me occasionally to go service his pins that aren't really broken. He does this about once a year, just to chat and fiddle with a few things that really are minor. But this time we had a blown rectifier on his power supply, so I was able to charge him the full rate without feeling like I was called over to chat, catch up on current events and get paid for talking.

Then off to Terry's new home, (he has moved recently) but was conveiniently close to the first call. I was starting to feel tired by the time I got to Terry's but we managed to look at his bingo and get it to sort of do its thing, but just not enough to play. Also fiddled with his Recel which gave me a run for what was left of my energy. We found two broken wires on the last ball relay on the front relay bank on the motor panel, but by that time I was so inefficient that Terry said he would take care of soldering them back once the week-end rolled around. I gave him the parts he ordered from the "fishstore" the week before and he insisted on paying me the regular rate, which I instantly refused to collect since I really didn't fix anything. We came to terms as I congradulated him on his beautiful new home. And when I asked him how he liked it, he simply answered, "If my wife is happy then I am happy." I loved that line. The fact that this was pivotal to his opinion makes me think that there is still hope for a future of sorts for those who can look out for eachother, and that hope is to be found in caring about something else than ourselves and personal profit. And as for those who have people like Christian, Terry and myself in their sights as their next meal, I will not let them consume me because I want nothing that they have to offer, and as long as I can stay content, who cares about anything else except the little highs and lows which colour up your time.

All this to say that big is bad/bloated, and small is sustainable and quick to move, providing you stay off the big fishes' radar.

Robert A. Baraké  (R.A.B.)

Sometimes a service call can awake a bunch of stuff for me. It usually takes me a day or two afterwards to absorb & formulate what took place, - not only inside the machine, but inside myself as well. If this kind of thing keeps up, the machines and I will become one and that will surely be the end of that long term peculiar relationship.

So Monday night I had the brilliant idea to do two service calls after work.  The first one for an original Alexander Amusements client I have had on my client list since 1991, and then one for a MAACA member that I appreciate very much, a fellow human being, - TerryZ. So the cumulative result of that night was sort of a "that was then, this is now" scenario. Thus offering up a perspective spanning over 30 years of home service in one night for my brain to try and process. If every post in this thread had a title, I would call this one "Long Lost Service with a Smile Revisited" but that is only a detail, right ?

Context is vital to these stories, and the general climate around here is not good, and I don't mean just the weather in Montreal. Some people feel it and know it, and others see it and ignore it,- regardless, anyone with half a brain can see that things are slowly falling apart, even if they don't admit it verbally and/or publically. Slowly and subtly, in and around us, in small little ways that are easy to ignore for now things are becoming unstable. Some contribute to the decline, some fight it, but the inevitability of entropy will have to fulfill itself. It may be time to prepare for the crunch that will no doubt emerge from all these seemingly harmless short sighted actions usually promoted by those who know how to profit from the growing social uneasiness that these former actions create. Uneasiness makes individuals look for compensation, and on the flipside, happiness & contentment doesn't usually bring on the need to compensate. And since compensation is offered in so many forms, sizes, shapes and intensities at various outlets near you, it is easy for those who have put aside their humanity to profit from the results of this growing uneasiness in the general public which is elevating a sense of hopelessness for more and more common folks. A content and healthy population is not good for big business, - insecurity, frustration, being unhealthy and fearful are very profitable however.

Christian knows this well. I first met him and his brother in 1991 when he called the small service company I had created after university to do home service on pins. Many operators at the time looked upon my business and laughed as a venture that was doomed to fail. Most of those operators are gone now, and I get a real kick when the the occasional call comes in from some of my first home service clients that looked in the yellow pages over 20 years ago to find someone who would go to their house and fix a pinball they had been given or acquired quite cheaply through some long gone operator looking to make space in their warehouse. Things have changed, and rightly so, as they have to. How they are trending is where the trouble awaits in my observations. The direction which change is taking lately has got me thinking a mile a minute and making me wonder about what I can do to soften the looming impact on those I care for.

My service rates back in 1990 were 28 bucks to show up and 32 bucks an hour. Well that looks funny now, but at 27, I did pretty good with my little '82 Sentra and what I had in the trunk. "Have tool box will travel" was the motto and with this I managed to live off fixing people's pins from 1990 to 1993 at that rate without ripping anyone off. I lived with a roommate in a great big apartment in Cote St. Luc and had a solid chance at building a good life for myself. Again things change, fall apart and come together in another form, that is the only constant you can count on - change.

There is no real surprise in the cycle of growth and decline, and if you know your history from something else than just what the mainstream media wants you to know, you understand that the rise and fall of systems is a natural and necessary cycle, much like growing older and dying and leaving the playfeild open for the next generations. Nonetheless, it remains no fun at all to have to live this for most of us who know and understand the inevitability of decline. We also need to keep in mind as a consolation to this inevitability that having fun will exist in crisis situations as well as in celebratory times of growth, it seems a necessary ritual to hang on to in order to get through these extraordinary times.

Christian lives in Pierrefonds on the north west shore of the Montreal island now. When I first serviced his Bally em pinball back in 1991, he lived in St.Lambert and always managed to live well running his small business as a photographer. He is still with his wife and two sons and still runs his own business. And what I mean by "well" is not totally dependent on having alot of money, as this culture promotes and values as a pivotal ideal. It is an empty culture we live in for the most part, and will likely be seen in the aftermath of its glory as a violent, careless and degrading culture by whomever is left here to build things up again.

So now Christian had acquired a "Power Play", the same working machine that I had sold to his brother for 250$ working back in 1992 when a friend of mine and I bought a retired operator's workshop full of videos and pins for 400$. 13 pins were in the lot and that was one of them, the others were also early SS pins from the big three. The video games numbered over 45, so I still think that the 400 bucks was irrelevant in a way to the old man, he really just wanted someone to clean up his space and take out the trash sort of speak. So my business partner at the time Nick and I took three days to empty it out and move alot of it to the dump or to the south shore basements and garage we rented. Our real reward was all this stuff we loved to tinker with. It was scary how much crap there was, and I think that Nick needed this type of occupation more than I did. He had just lost his Domino's pizza franchise and was as equally confused as I was and was looking for something to do. So we sold, repaired cheap pins and videos until his girlfriend came and got him out of that fringe scenario.

But back to Christian, whom I will describe as a sort of finiky client who is very much into details that don't matter. A sort of guy who would like everything to be perfect, and even when it is close to being that, still manages to find something to be fixed or improved. He would nit pick at things to keep me around longer than I had to be there and would pay the time regardless. I like the guy, he has a calm disposition and good conversation, and I think that like most married men he wants some company once in a while. I don't feel sorry for him at all, he has a nice family and a calm lifestyle, but I can't help but think that boredom must set in on this quaint scenario more often that not. So he calls me occasionally to go service his pins that aren't really broken. He does this about once a year, just to chat and fiddle with a few things that really are minor. But this time we had a blown rectifier on his power supply, so I was able to charge him the full rate without feeling like I was called over to chat, catch up on current events and get paid for talking.

Then off to Terry's new home, (he has moved recently) but was conveiniently close to the first call. I was starting to feel tired by the time I got to Terry's but we managed to look at his bingo and get it to sort of do its thing, but just not enough to play. Also fiddled with his Recel which gave me a run for what was left of my energy. We found two broken wires on the last ball relay on the front relay bank on the motor panel, but by that time I was so inefficient that Terry said he would take care of soldering them back once the week-end rolled around. I gave him the parts he ordered from the "fishstore" the week before and he insisted on paying me the regular rate, which I instantly refused to collect since I really didn't fix anything. We came to terms as I congradulated him on his beautiful new home. And when I asked him how he liked it, he simply answered, "If my wife is happy then I am happy." I loved that line. The fact that this was pivotal to his opinion makes me think that there is still hope for a future of sorts for those who can look out for eachother, and that hope is to be found in caring about something else than ourselves and personal profit. And as for those who have people like Christian, Terry and myself in their sights as their next meal, I will not let them consume me because I want nothing that they have to offer, and as long as I can stay content, who cares about anything else except the little highs and lows which colour up your time.

All this to say that big is bad/bloated, and small is sustainable and quick to move, providing you stay off the big fishes' radar.

Robert A. Baraké  (R.A.B.)