I have however reclaimed my spare bedroom, which had basically been serving as a large storage closet, and now that I have somewhere to get to it I’ve begun sorting my Lego - and I’ve actually started building again! And not just aimless free-building that the act of sorting brings on, I really sat down with a goal in mind and made it happen:

With Bricks by the Bay coming up at the end of the month I thought I should really make an effort not to show up empty handed this time, and the cyberpunk/future city layout that I’m somehow in the loop on is shaping up to be pretty impressive. My minor contributions will be but a drop in the bucket. But more on that when the time comes. These little mechabikes are called RideBacks, care of Japan of course. It was a good show and I was compelled to take a crack at one. I lacked the parts and patience to make an accurate copy of the on-screen versions, so I came up with my own along the same idea. Still waiting on a bricklink order to build my third one with lime green highlights.

The planet diameter is 3/4″ (at .10″ thickness), the rocket is about 7/16″ long and 3/8″ wide (at .08″thickness). The length from tip to tip is just under 1 3/4″.

I added this to Etsy the other day in case anyone wanted to grab one at cost rather than with the Shapeways markup. Figured it could help recoup some money spent on recent preorders of mine since it’s just sitting on my shelf for now.

(Still no sign of the video clip where I get thrown around by a giant robotic arm though.)

1. Begin painting new door.
2. Remove old door.
3. Paint other side of door.
4. Paint door frame.
5. Install hardware on door (hinges, deadbolt, doorknob).
6. Hang door.
7. Attempt to close door. Notice door stop molding prevents door from closing. Rage.
8. Remove door.
9. Find a pry bar and remove door stop molding.
10. Hang door again.
11. Attempt to close door. Notice giant gap between edge of door and strike plate. Rage.
12. Remove door again.
13. Improvise shims from old door hinges and scrap wood.
14. Hang door again.
15. Close door.
16. Buy new door stop molding, cut to size, and install.
17. Repaint door frame and touch up door.
18. Attempt to lock deadbolt. Notice bolt is misaligned and lock cylinder is jammed. Rage.
19. Remove and reposition deadbolt, and grind a larger opening on the strike plate.
20. Close and lock door. Rejoice.

Subsequent door replacements went much quicker and easier, though I only managed to replace 3 so far (out of 9). But yeah. That was a pain. Looks great now though and everything works as it should, so I’m quite happy. Still not looking forward to the rest of the doors I get to replace, but at least they’re internal doors and much lighter than the garage entry I started with. And now that the old door is off I can turn it into a workbench as planned.

Also, I figured out the mass of wires in my irrigation control box finally, so with the main valve repaired by my step dad and replacement heads of the front sprinkler lines on standby I’m on track to have a green lawn again.

For a while now my widescreen has been acting finicky: when I turn on my computer, it would show the loading screen for a couple seconds, then go dark, but I could still see a faint impression of the image on it so I knew the backlight was having problems. Restarting the system or making a blank white image on the laptop’s screen and dragging it over and full-screening on the LCD it would revive it. Until tonight. Tonight it just gave up completely. No more brief on period, no more faint image, just black. The status light remained green though, so at least it thought it was working… but it obviously wasn’t. And smacking it didn’t help either.

So, I Googled the model number (I-Inc TW191D) to see what could be done… and discovered that the most likely cause is dead capacitors in the power supply. So I opened it up and confirmed the issue. They probably overheated – causing the bulge on the tops – and shorted out. I’m going to look into some new ones and try my hand at replacing them since it’s a lot cheaper than buying a new monitor (and I really hate working with just one screen now) but until further notice I’m stuck. /sigh

Well, someone finally made a full fledged instruction book for the model, so if you have the parts you can make your own. Check it out! There are obviously some variations from the “official” model (the original that everyone tried to copy) but this is to be expected when reverse engineering such a design based on pictures alone and trying to work with your own part collection with as little Bricklinking as possible. And of course some changes were made out of necessity, while others out of personal preference… so feel free to switch up some details as needed. That’s part of  the fun of the ChiefLUG project – building a cohesive fleet of personalized starfighters. And even though you may be late to the party it’s still a great build.

edit: as Remi noted below, the instructions were based off his green variant…

and with the especially limited part selection in green, he got pretty creative with the alterations to make it work. He recolored the instructions to look like the standard MkII Viper but didn’t remodel it to match Andrew’s original.

This is especially funny to me since, as I mentioned in my last post, I recently ordered a couple more Weighted Companion Cubes. It makes me wonder if they printed a few spares for themselves… or more likely they saw my order and thought “oh look, another Portal fan” since I’m sure I’m not the first person to design & order one from them.

I’m still waiting for those to arrive btw. Apparently the new material is in their Netherlands based office, so my prototypes are on quite a journey. I hope I get the order soon, I want to see if I like the material enough to order more before the 14th in case they discontinue the material.

I’ve also got my 2×4 brick drawn up and waiting to order.

Killed my dune buggy.
Battlestar auction was cool.
I bought a damn house!

Cheers to everything up ’til now, and everything to come.

So on Friday night both of my toilets refused to flush and I noticed that water was backing up in both showers a bit. I considered this inconvenient because I rather like indoor plumbing, and with the rain and all it kind of made the backup plan unpleasant. I thought maybe the rain itself was to blame for the stoppage but that was just a coincidence.

Saturday morning I called my home warranty company so they would send a plumber to check it out… and a couple hours later I called them again because I hadn’t gotten a call back. I find out that none of their contractors were available; despite it being considered an “emergency” to them they couldn’t get anyone out until monday. So instead I called up the plumbers who snaked the drains at my moms house. They came out in about an hour, snaked the lines, and discovered that it wasn’t just some easy clog we were dealing with like I’d hoped.

A common problem with old sewer lines is tree roots: they grow down and force their way into the clay pipes at the joints, which were only sealed with tar to begin with, then once inside they kind of go nuts. Over time they plug up the big pipes and waste water can’t get through. If maintained it’s not a big deal, but when left to sit for extended periods of time it becomes more of an issue. Mine, of course, was a pretty big issue.

The plumbers came back Sunday morning with their handy dandy backhoe and made quick work of my lawn. Fifteen feet of pipe replaced – updated to PVC – and a couple of sizable roots sawed off to discourage further arboreal attacks. It only took them around three hours and I was out there the whole time getting in the way. The little inspection camera was kinda slick. All in all $1.5k well spent, even though I’d rather not have had to in the first place…

They joys of owning a home, right?