x=usr(1536)

Kinda.  I always thought of it as being more along the lines of Donkey Kong meets Frogger, but can see where Q*Bert comes in as well.

FWIW (and I say this as someone who likes the game), it seems like one of those games where someone at Sega's arcade division said, "OK, we've got this isometric graphics arcade game hardware that hasn't yet had its costs completely amortised...  How about something on that hardware with a giant ape?  Giant apes are in right now.  Run off a few thousand of those.  There's gonna be a market for it, no question.  Distributors will buy it in droves right through 1984."

14.55 and still down.  We're at about 55 hours of outage at this point, and neither my wife nor I can work as a result.

The ISP claims that service will be restored by 16.43, which seems oddly-specific.  We'll see what happens.

I'm out of town for the next three days, so will hopefully have working connectivity at the hotel.  She'll still have to go to Starbucks or similar, but that may not be a realistic proposition depending on whether or not she needs to be here to answer the door for a tech.

@digdugnate: I spent a few years in WAN engineering, so totally get the frustration of knowing where the problem actually is in the chain but still being told that somehow it's your fault.  You have my sympathies on that one for sure.

Nope, but they did send a handy-dandy text message stating that our appointment has been pushed back indefinitely because we're apparently having an outage.  The message arrived at 4am this morning.

That's some grade-A troubleshooting right there, folks.

In all honesty, I have no idea as to what actually happened.  Fibre's been checked and there are no obvious breaks, so the problem may be outside of our property or failed on-prem equipment that we don't have visibility into.  Having said that, from the error lights on the ONT they fit the pattern of a cut, so it seems likely.

And now, a rant:

The entire support call to the ISP should have gone like this:

"Hi, are you guys having an outage in our area?"

"Lemme check...  No, nothing like that's been reported.  What are you seeing?"

"The ONT is showing a dead link light and the red ALARM LED is illuminated.  Internal network seems fine, but we have no Internet access."

"OK, checking one more thing...  Yup, can't reach the equipment at your location.  OK, we can get someone out there between 12 and 4 on Monday.  Does that time work for you?"

"Sure, one of us will be here."
"Sounds good, and see you on Monday."

"Thanks, see ya then, bye."

That would have taken all of two minutes to take care of.  Instead, the script full of condescending, insincere conversational niceties and reassurances that the techs are forced to stick to meant it was more like 20 minutes from the time the phone was answered after a 45-minute hold.

Perhaps troubleshooting efficiencies and customer satisfaction could both be raised if everyone involved wasn't being demeaned by this practice.  I'd honestly like to know what percentage of a call is effectively wasted time by use of these statements, because that would translate directly to time customers are in the call queue waiting to talk to someone.

Always liked the art style used between about 1980 and 1982.  The characters were established, but their look was still being fiddled with.

So where's the pogo stick in the sequel planned to go?

@jhd: haven't been in Toronto in about a decade, but you summed it up perfectly.  I like it, but the cost of living there...  Wow.

California or Canada?

@GoldLeader: I love that title 

The year 2000: I'm in a Chinese takeaway a few blocks from work.  The place was pretty busy, so I figured that I had time to play a game on their Ms. Pac-Man cocktail while I waited for my order to be ready.

In the middle of my game, a mother and her young (about 9 years old) daughter were watching me play.  At one point, the mother said something along the lines of, "gee, you're pretty good at that game."  My response was, "I'd hope so; I've only been playing it for 19 years."

That's when the realisation of what I had just said sunk in.

Having got it out of the way 23 years ago, I'm a lot less fazed these days by the idea that I've now been playing the game for 42 years 

If it's a VoIP-based landline, what @bent_pin said.  If it's not VoIP-based, the text will just silently drop.

Also, your phone will explode.

And eaten it while watching Edward Scissorhands!

And an alphabetical order one, too!

Indulging himself at the Eastern European buffet?

Zork off, hosers!

Not here, but at work, yep.  It wouldn't be that big of a deal but I work remotely and consequently can't access internal systems needed to process stuff required for a report due tomorrow morning.

For sheer oddball value, I was going to suggest a Soviet (most of which are really post-Soviet) ZX Spectrum clone, but even those have gone up in price significantly.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/164832475737

That was the cheapest one I could find, but it's non-working and the shipping costs nearly as much as the unit itself.

Do Pet Rocks Dream of Electric Scree?

Ugh.  Been there for surprisingly similar reasons.  You have my sympathies.

Oh, there's definitely at least one option available, true.  But the main reason for mentioning the SCCC specifically was to light a talk-to-Jurgen fire under anyone thinking of getting one; without VCC being in the Atari business anymore, he's pretty much the sole (and direct) source for them these days.

BTW, if anyone is interested in a SCCC, this would be a good time to contact @tf_hh.  This is particularly true given that there's no North American retailer for them right now.

@zylon: Ditto the 600XL 

In that case, I want the next three days to be Cinco de Mayo.  Should make up nicely for how the last three went.  Plus, margaritas.

Did the Christmas ones ever actually stop?

I have a CEM #0 and internal AtariVox.  Let me know if you need any testing.