This has to be the laziest thing I've ever done. I was sick of my ugly garage door opener sticking to the visor where it would pop off and hit me in the eyebrow every six minutes. However, when you take the case off the battery pops out. So I soldered wires to the internal switch, put the case back on, and VHB'd it under my dashboard with with a switch dangling out.

I understand why old people smoke—like, it makes sense if you were in a C-47 over the Netherlands and then your buddy Stu handed you a Lucky Strike and then jumped out and got blown to smithereens by flak, and then you wrote to your best gal and said "I'm gonna give Mr. Hitler a knuckle sandwich courtesy of ol' Stu", and now you smoke. That makes sense. But I don't get why people my age smoke, especially since I grew up in late '90s-early '00s Palo Alto so with my friends that smoked it was like, hey, you can't use smoking to help you look cool while angsting or rebelling. You gots nothing to angst about. We're all rich as thieves. I'm low class by Palo Alto standards since my mom was a librarian, but I can go literally anywhere else in the country and they will just give me a motorcycle. Our Aibos are made out of fucking platinum, lady, platinum. Why would you smoke.



Anyway, I'm guessing that's a huge problem for tobacco companies. It seems like they're taking all their US marketing money and dedicating it overseas to make Gujaratis and Polynesians chew tobacco like some goddamn relief pitcher, and US legislation isn't moving fast enough to allow Marlboro to make good money in the ol' Humboldt Honeydew... the ol' Tijuana Postholers... the ol' British Columbia Her Majesty's Own Marijuanulated Smokeable Goods. No, they need a new idea. One that combines a healthy aspect that'll appeal to the young people with the "This is America and fuck you" spirit of their moneymaker. And I have it!



THAT IS CORRECT. Beef jerky that you can tear into strips, light, and smoke. Or you can eat it. But if you smoke it, it's like a cigarette except it makes beefy smoke, then you can eat it. This is up there with my Kinect cable car game when it comes to good ideas, because there is no downside.



It comes in perforated chunks, so it's easy to deal with. There could even be an extra-chunky "cigar" version for cigar aficionados who want to stop smelling like assholes. It could not be more simple. Cut, light, smoke, eat: Hambalo's Smokeable Beef Jerky.

I wanted to do this for a while — Game Boy shelf. It's just an Ikea Nornas with a little middle-thing I made out of scrap wood, but it's nice to have all that stuff in one place. Top row, we's gots R. Monkeys' first Game Boy, R. Monkeys' Color, the Color I modified with an Advance speaker and frontlight, my first Game Boy. Middle row, my modified Advance (AGS101 backlit screen), the Advance SP I put together for R. Monkeys to match her 3DS, and my Anniversary Micro. Bottom row, 3DS XLs. I'll probably paint the Nornas white to match the rest of our shelves when I have more time.

I did have time to set up the important stuff, though:

It's pretty nice to have an actual place to do garagey work — for the first time in ten-or-so years, at least. I still need to bring my bins of metric bolts from my padre's house, my Dremel stuff and drill chargers/car parts/etc. are still trapped on the other side of the garage until I can afford proper shelving, and I'll be adding a Hakko soldering station and a scroll saw I've had my eye on pretty soon... but eyy, it's a start.



Edit, two weeks later: Ah, there we go:

I occasionally see people on forums wondering whether Gränsfors or Hultafors Classic axes are better, but the replies are always "I heard this, my uncle said that", and never "I have both, here is a picture".

Anyway, I have (more than one of) both, here is a picture. Gränsfors is a little better. However, the heads on the Hultafors Classics are just as good. The areas where Hultafors Classic is a bit worse are handle finish and the quality of the leather protector, where they are only slightly deficient to Gränsfors. If you have a touch of the hipster about you as I do, you might also be pleased that Hultafors doesn't seem to do celebrity endorsements as Gränsfors does (likewise Wetterlings). Hultafors Classics should cost less than the equivalent Gränsfors, although Gränsfors has US distribution. Gransfors also has a wider range. Neither are as good as Hans Karlsson or John Neeman (which cost more than twice as much!), but both will last forever.

On that basis, I think Gränsfors is a little better but Hultafors is the better buy. Gränsfors handles are finished more nicely and they come a bit sharper, but use makes them equal as the handles wear and pick up dirt, and as you re-sharpen them. So might as well go with Hultafors Classic if they make the type of axe you need, and if the seller you find has them at about 10% less or more.

Edit, a while later: A little while after I wrote this, Hultafors started officially distributing their stuff in the US under the name "Hults Bruk". Those have the exact same heads as the Hultafors Classic equivalents (although there are a few new models), the handles are a little different, and they jacked up the prices to Gransfors/Wetterlings levels. So if you like saving money or dislike being pandered to, find Hultafors Classic stuff from overseas. I mean, at this end of the market you're going to be pandered to, but you might as well try and minimize it.

Hultafors Carpenter Axe, with a straight bevel face, and Gransfors Small Forest Axe, a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none deal.

Jeff's power is eternal, unless it's not, which is fine too.

That's what happens when et cetera.

00:15: LadaNivaGTI: i must go, low petrol for generator
*** LadaNivaGTI Quit (Quit: )
00:17: xxUmarov4Life420xx: ok buddy
01:42: xxUmarov4Life420xx: brothers, do you know what song is good?
01:42: xxUmarov4Life420xx: song of kelly son of clark, “stronger”, this is good
01:43: xxUmarov4Life420xx: blasphemous of course
*** vladimirpuddin sets mode: +b xxUmarov4Life420xx
*** xxUmarov4Life420xx was kicked from #freechechnya by vladimirpuddin (enough talk of kelly son of clark)

Late night Chechen ultranationalist IRC is probably "the bomb".

The Element has kind of a weird gauge cluster backlight color. Greeney-bluey white. I thought I'd see about making the gauges and dials light up red instead, because I don't have any real problems to focus on. Fortunately, it was a success despite being conceptually bankrupt.



The gauge cluster comes out in about 30 seconds, which isn't an exaggeration. A little prying, one screw, a little more prying, and four screws. That was nice. The last time I was inside a gauge cluster it was to fix my Mercedes' odometer; you had to screw around under the dash for a while, and that thing had a damn oil line going right to the gauge (features like that are why I think of the W123 as the last, best car of the 1960s). Anyway, for the Element cluster you can just use #74 bulbs, incandescent or LED, in the color of yer choice. I tried some LEDs, but I went back to incandescent because the light was a little more even.



Getting into the center console is real easy, too, and once it's off you can throw another #74 bulb in the shifter. And getting into the HVAC dials and radio is super-easy, too — Philips screws and a little prying. But then the conceptually bankrupt part on my end was that things inside 'em are a little wacky. The HVAC dials use crazy tall bulbs, and the radio uses tiny little weirdo bulbs, so replacing them sounded like a real pain in the ass.



The HVAC knobs and buttons are pretty easy, though, because they used colored filters, which you can replace with Rubylith pretty easily. Obviously it's best not to replace the dual-color temperature dial filter, although in a poignant critique of my mental acuity these days I didn't actually think of that until I had already pulled the thingy off.



The radio's the real dumb part. It uses little those blue guys that go over the bulbs, so I pulled all those off and just covered the light spreader with Rubylith. This was basically an interminable exercise in cutting shapes. In the picture I'm, like, 15% done. It was a real nightmare if you have big dumbass hands like me. I found out that I lost my Exacto knife, so I used woodcarving tools, which probably didn't help much.



Kind of a pain, but I'm pretty happy with the results (although they're somewhat obscured by blurrycam). A lot nicer at night. There's a lot of really long unlit roads to the west of me, so it's nice to have the red gauges way down low.

In three dee.