Leinninger.com

Apparently, summer happened. We were so busy, I’m afraid we missed it. So much was going on that we just didn’t notice!

Gina interviewed with a number of Universities and Research Institutes across the U.S., but decided to set up her new lab at Michigan State. She’ll start there in June 2012. We had a full and successful race season. A lot of the gremlins in my race car have been cased off and it performed very consistently, though we all agree it’s time for a new engine and upgraded transmission. I survived and enjoyed my first full year working in downtown Detroit. I’ve yet to drive to lunch and did more waking downtown than I would have imagined a year ago. We also completed our basement theater (with the only exception of an anamorphic lens for our projector) and game room. We even upgraded to a Sony ES 3D projector. We had a late summer/early fall trip to Florida with my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew. Gina had to present some of her work a a big conference, but it was a good excuse to hang out in a rental house with hot tub and pool. We even made it to the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom despite some sickness on my brother, nephew’s and my parts.

We’re looking forward to settling in for the winter and enjoying our theater while preparing to finish the bar area! If I’m really lucky, I’ll find some time to update this blog a little more often!

- Duane

I met Shawn O’Grady while visiting the University of Michigan 3D lab. He’s the rapid prototyping expert on-site and does some amazing stuff during the day. However, a chance mentioning of Lightwave 3D on the Amiga had us talking about our affinity for the 20-year old multimedia powerhouses before the end of my visit. A few weeks later, Shawn came over to our house and tried to revive one of my Amigas (a 2000 w/ Video Toaster). The computer was DOA, so he hooked med up with his beautifully restored and updated A2000 and I gave him my A4000T. All-in-all, I just wasn’t using the A2000 he gave me and I thought it should go back to Shawn. This past weekend, I visited Shawn and got to check out his amazing collection of Atari, Commodore, and other retro hardware.

Shawn has updated his “museum” a fair bit since these photos were taken. I thought I knew just about everything from the history of Commodore/Amiga, but he has machines I never knew existed including the Commodore plus/4 and Commodore 16! Just about every Atari console and computer system were also represented. He has a few rare/odd finds including the Mattel Aquarius and Coleco Adam computer systems and a handful of game systems only found in Japan.

To cap it all off, Shawn had an old Super Cobra arcade cabinet made by Stern that he wanted to give to a good home to make some room in his garage. I gladly accepted it and will be restoring/updating it for MAME duties in our theater’s game room!

- Duane