This was a fun little project. I've always wanted a nice wooden toolbox. More-so recently, because the plastic Craftsman one I got in 2006 has started offgassing a very distinct odor that's like a stoat drank a lot of sasparilla, peed, then died and began to rot. Unfortunately, nice wooden toolboxes are very expensive. Seems like it's new Gerstner, old Gerstner, fake Chinese Gerstner, and "other". So I went with "other", and found this Neslein one for a good price. Good quality -- box joints and all -- but it needed a little work. A few of the drawers needed a little glue at the back, and all the liners were pretty nasty. So I did some gluing, and some re-lining, and now it's pretty nice. I was gonna re-do the finish in a moisture-cure urethane, but after giving it a good clean I think I'm okay with how it looks. All I guess I'll do is fill those holes on the front, and clean up all the external metal bits. Worked out well -- good stuff for not too much money. Holds all ma' chisels. Here's a little gallery.

Yes, it's EVEN MORE CAT PICTURES.

Interesting week.

Galvanic corrosion inside an 11 month-old Western Digital hard drive enclosure. Real shitbutt design there.

Aw yuss, got my new little computer put together.

Hoof, what an excellent weekend. Two sodas, two sandwiches, and Mario Kart. The Wii U is a ton of fun.

I finally got a chance to try Virgil's Special Edition Bavarian Nutmeg root beer. I still think plain ol' Henry Weinhard's is slightly better for drinking (unless you're an HFCS snob), but this stuff is awesome. Maybe it's tied with Henry. The best one for root beer floats is River City.

So yeah, I'm productive and whatever.

Fun little weekend project. We picked up a Game Boy Advance SP, since it's the best way to play Game Boy Color games (you can put the Advance SP AGS-101's backlit screen in a regular advance, but I dig the folding. Beats a frontlit GBC, too.). R. Monkeys' 3DS XL is a pink over white model, so I decided to make the Advance SP match her XL. Pretty simple stuff; I picked up a new shell (direct from whatever Hangzhou factory is still cranking them out), and just swapped the bottom case, lid, and hinge covers/rubber bits. I probably should have gotten new pink shell parts, since the Chinese stuff didn't match up very well with the original Nintendo bits, but apart from that it's not complex.

Incidentally, a great five-minute mod for a Game Boy Color is to drop in the speaker from an Advance SP. You just nibble away a bit of the GBC's speaker surround to make room for the new speaker's contacts tab, then just solder the wires right on and drop it in. Good stuff. Here's what I mean by "nibble", and a comparison of the new and old speakers.

Here are some further beeptones, because I have not put things here in a while! The Dusty Springfield is more of an "inspired by", I must admit.

The first step is to wrap it in bacon. That is the key to all the other steps, of which there are none.

My project to replace all plastic panels on a half-plastic car continues apace, as evidenced by this cameraphone picture which drastically underexposes the area in question. They're actually pretty reasonably-priced. The downside is that by spending a lot of time polishing, removing, and generally looking very closely, I've now discovered about four tiny dents I didn't see before (including one on the metal part of the rear fender), but which have convinced me that, because they were doubtless caused by fellow apartment-parkers, civilization is ending and all remaining bipeds are worthless and destined for the fine mesh screen. But at least I have a new bumper, grill trim, and "bottom silver thing".