richfiles

I suppose the reason I was noticing my AC last Saturday, was because it was constantly running, and my apartment was constantly heating up. By Sunday, it was awful, and by Monday, I'd nuked my bank account and bought a new AC, as it was very clear that it was not working anymore. To be fair, I got 8 years out of it. It was just a pain to install. Also a pain... My best friend and mother both had their ACs fail them. All on the same day. Hottest this year, of course. Helped my friend install his, and my mother's is a central air unit, so someone has to come out and look at it.

Woke up with acid reflux... Really regretting not taking that antacid last night... And I get the compressor noise... Fine... But why the heck are the simple blower fans in an air conditioner SO LOUD! I've heard so many fans and filters with quieter high speeds than the medium speed of every AC I've ever owned! Is it not beyond reason to ask AC designers to consider reducing decibels a design feature?

Negative things... nEgAtIvE tHiNgS! Take Two I called it that they'd stick their foot in things back when they first bought KSP. Take Two is going to continue to tighten the reigns around KSP 2, and I don't like it. That's all I have to say about that, cause anything more and it will just make me sad and angry.

Cabin in the Woods was a great movie... Too bad 2020 has thus far had the brilliant idea of trying to re-enact as many of it's scenarios as possible... So, more waiting for Chinese parts. More tracking shenanigans. One item was ordered on May 22. It arrived on May 28, a mere 6 days from China. I'm shocked... Ehh... And apparently so was tracking. It said the package had not yet even shipped out, and as such, I didn't have the button to confirm receipt of the order. Do you have any idea just how hard it is to get through tech support when a bot filters most questions out, and you're complaining about the fact that you DID receive the package, and that everything is perfectly fine and quite awesome... but you still need help... >Here is our FAQ, if you still require assistance, please describe how I may help you. "Yes, I need help with a problem on your website" >Please describe the nature of the problem. "I received a package but tracking says it never shipped, and I can't confirm receipt of the order" >Do you wish to request a refund for a package that did not arrive? "No, The package arrived! I do NOT need a refund." >If you received a damaged package, you can open a dispute "Here" to request a refund. "No refund! I can not Confirm receipt of the order! The Confirm Order button is missing. >If your package has arrived safely, and you are satisfied with the product, click here to see how to confirm receipt of your order. "No! I can't confirm receipt because the button is missing. There is a tracking error." >If you received the wrong product, you may request a refund by opening a dispute. "Tracking says the package did not ship. This is an error. I have the package." >Do you wish to request a refund for a package that did not arrive? "Help" >Here is our FAQ, if you still require assistance, please describe how I may help you. "Help me..." >Do you wish to request a refund for a package that did not arrive? This went on for a few cycles, till I found the magic combo of words to move past that stage and into an actual help ticket. It was resolved pretty quickly, fortunately. As for the remainder of the parts, one order has garbage tracking that may not update in a timely manner (as in, it too may not update till after I receive the item.), and the other's tracking says the destination is Romania... Even though it *clearly* displays my correct address below. The good news is I look to be on the final stretch toward finishing my custom mechanical keyboard, after literal years of it sitting, unfinished, merely because I don't know how to program the thing. Unfortunately... Well, I just told y'all 'bout the shipping oddities.

I hate when people activate the "Make an Offer" button on ebay, but then are clearly not interested in ANY offers... Item for sale for $40... I see it's been listed at least twice in the past, with no bids... $40 isn't actually a bad price. Asking only $3.86 for shipping... I click the Make an offer button and offer "How about $40 flat, shipping thrown in." Turned down in a matter of minutes. What, did you think I was gonna offer you $60, and beg for your personal acceptance and respect? Why activate the dumb button if you're clearly not actually interested in any offers made!

I just dropped a new order for parts for my perpetually delayed DIY mechanical keyboard and my Kerbal Instrument panel. My last order appears to have never even shipped out at all. Very annoying, but given the ongoing craziness going on in the world, I can kinda understand that some places might not be able to fulfill orders. Still, it is beyond excruciating to wait for an entire month before finding out nothing's gonna show anyway, cause it never even got loaded onto the slow boat. Each failed order is another month of delay... Even worse, just because I have extra free time, or the inclination or ambition to sit down and work on a project now, doesn't mean that will be true when the parts I hurriedly ordered actually arrive a month later... Or two months, as is this situation, thanks to being forced to re-order...

I just had an absolutely hilarious idea... I kept a brushless motor that was part of an early prototyping/evaluation run for an aviation manufacturer, back when i worked my old job at an old employer, back in 2006ish. That motor was intended to adjust the control surfaces of a refueling boom on a fuel tanker jet. The company wanted to try a direct control system, as opposed to the traditional hydraulic controls. I kinda want to see how low a voltage I can actually operate it at... It might need too much voltage to even spin, in which case, It won't be suitable, and it's kind of a dumb idea, cause the motor is SO overkill for the application, but I kinda wanna see if I could make use of it for my tape meter. No reason other than that I already have it, and it just so happened to use a resolver for commutation, which happens to be a type of absolute position sensor, something I need anyway. That one early production motor would have sold for about $5K if it's leadwires had been just an inch longer, and would have directly driven control surfaces... LOL... And I'm thinking of using it merely to spin a tape meter! Honestly, I had other motors that were much smaller, and much more suited, but i don't know if I kept any... Many of them went to a scrapper when I moved back in 2012, and none of those had resolvers. Those motors went into other aerospace applications, but definitely aren't nearly so massive... I once considered building a scooter with that refueler boom control surface motor! I never did, cause it would have been a lot of effort, and I needed high voltage to get good torque. If I can get just enough torque at low voltage to spin the tape though... Maybe... Regardless, I just dropped a new order for parts. My last order appears to have never even shipped out at all. Very annoying, but given the ongoing craziness going on in the world, I can kinda understand that some places might not be able to fulfill orders. It's just excruciating to wait for an entire month before find out nothing's gonna show, cause it never got on the slow boat. Each failed order is another month of delay...

Just bought a ruler with bubble levels and a set of those stepped universal drill bits (needed to drill drainage holes in plastic). I bought these for the sole purpose of coaxing the universe into allowing me to find the ones I already own.

Power went out, literally as I was getting ready to sit down and finish soldering circuit boards for work... Oh well, I'll listen to my phone play some youtube talk channels and fall asleep to that. Stream ends 3 hours later, I feel myself drifting off... CLICK!!! WhiiiiiirrrrRRR!!! *BEEP!* hummmmmmmmm Lights come on... Gah! I'm AWAKE!!! I'm awake... I need a NAS for my over half dozen hard drives... A NAS backed far away and in some closet, away from where I sleep. I need to either re-cap my speakers, or replace them, as the hum is enough to drill into one's mind when you haven't heard it long enough to mentally block it out. Dang, my printer is LOUD when it starts up! WHY DOES MY CLOCK MAKE THOSE NOISES!!! It's a CLOCK! It beeped louder than the PRINTER! Back to bed... to get up early to do some last hour soldering.

I finally got her out... I took her straight to the vet... She's at peace now. She'll never suffer again. God, I'm shaking right now... I feel like I nearly waterboarded myself at the vet, soaking my face mask... So, I figured I could slide a plastic panel under the door, and slide her backwards. That actually worked. God, she was so weak... I put down a towel and laid her in a carrier and went straight to the vet. I knew going that it was her time though... Her and my mother's cat are the only two remaining cats of that litter. My mother had always kept in touch with the family we got them from. The first of the litter passed half a decade ago already. The mother, and the last one that they had kept were gone 2 years ago. My beautiful little sweetie girl was only 12, yet her and my mother's cat were the longest lasting of the entire bunch. Now it's just my mother's cat left. I'm worrying about her now... I'm now faced with an empty room... Just a storage room... No longer a safe space for my sweetie... I should clean up... But I don't have it in me to do it right now. Looking at the aftermath, trying to figure out what happened... I honestly don't know. I can see that she was on her blanket in her cubbyhole near her food. She threw up and voided herself while still on the blanket. She seemed perfectly fine just the other day! I'd just bought her fresh litter and made up everything fresh for her. Whatever it was, it hit her very rapidly... In the time I was away at work. She went to lay by the door afterwards. She never left the door. I'm grateful that she put her head by the crack of the door and let me pet her, while she still had energy. I just wish I could have figured a way into her room faster... I was up till 6am, trying to find a way to coax her to move. I literally crashed, woke 4 hours later, and went back to trying. I finally made that hard call to my mother, to let her know what was going on. I went ahead and paid the extra for cremation. My mother hasn't made one for a while, but she used to make beautiful carved and decorated "faberge" style eggs... She's going to make something to hold her ashes.

My cat is sick. It was very sudden. Belly rubs and ear scritches one day... Yesterday, I could tell she was sick. She's very lethargic. Problem is, she's in the back room, and is laying against the door, and won't move from that spot. Sometimes she moves enough I can squeeze my hand or arm through. Earlier on, she sat with her head by the door crack, and let me scratch her chin and top of her head, but she's since moved so I can't really even reach her. She's a senior cat, so I strongly suspect it's some age related illness, but I just have no idea how to even handle this. My best image of what she's doing is by literally sliding my phone through the door crack and using it to see what he's doing... She is moving around, shifting her weight, getting up and getting comfortable in a new position now and then... But she won't move away from the door... She won't let me in to help... She understands moving out of the way of a swinging door, so I can only assume she's choosing to block herself off. I kinda feel like this is her indoor cat way of walking off into the woods and not coming back... The reason all her stuff is in the back room, is that it's kind her "safe space". When she was spayed, the first time she was out of her kennel, during her recovery period, she knocked something over, startled herself, and ran across my bed and tried to jump over an end table. She didn't make it over, and landed directly on her surgical incision... The pain of that incident left her completely feral from the pain. She absolutely tore me up. It took her 12 hours to calm down... Since that incident, she's had severe PTSD that is triggered when she's startled. I've learned to live with it, learned to recognize the signs of an episode. There's been years of pheromones and prescriptions from the vet to deal with her problems. The thing that seemed to work best for her, was actually to give her her own space. My back room is basically a store room, but I've made it into her personal space. Her Litter, food, water, toys, scratching post... It's all in there. Pillows sit in random shelves and in front of the window, birdseed is spread in front of the window (for her entertainment). There's all sorts of things she can climb, spots she can crawl into and hide... Any time she's ever had an incident, she's learned she can run into her room, if she's not there already, and I'll just close the door behind her and let her calm down. It's her territory... A kind of decompression space for her to calm down and regain control of herself. I also close the door at night, because nothing is as terrifying as waking up to a violent, yowling cat, cause your upstairs neighbor dropped a plate on the floor... I've come to terms with the idea that she's had a hard life... She's a sweetie, but whenever she has one of her episodes, I feel so bad for her... No creature, human or animal, deserves the horror of PTSD, but it still happens to people and yes, even animals. I'd long come to terms with the idea that when her old age caught up to her, that it would possibly be kinder to let her have peace, rather than try to prolong her life. It hurts to think about, but I feel like it's more cruel to keep dragging her along... but this... I don't even know how to deal with this... I can't even reach her right now, and I have no idea how to handle it. I don't want her to suffer, and she's choosing to suffer alone right now... I talk to her through the door, tell her she's a good girl and I love her... Then I give her some space and try again later. If I can get the door open... I'm taking her straight to the vet... But as much as it hurts, I think the more responsible thing is to let her finally have peace. I just hate that I don't have a way to get to her...

I'd be asking her if you'll be finally getting support from her only after she's made you into the poor and needy first... She has an obligation to support those she employs first, before making some big attention grabbing showing of spending what remains of your earnings on charity, especially when it's obviously being done for clout. As for myself, I helped my brother again, wiring lights for another tractor. This time, he was installing a factory optional cab onto a vintage tractor. All his tractors, till now, have been open seated cabless models. In the late 50s and through the 60s, cabs were becoming an option on more and more tractor models, and living in Minnesota means cold winters. He did not want to have to plow the driveway of snow in an open tractor again, so he tracked down a cab that would fit that model, and installed it. It still needs some work. Gonna have to completely rebuild the heater and the air circulator. I need to connect a single wire to make the windshield wipers work, but the important thing was the lights. Can't use it at night if you can't see. Just like the last time I wired a tractor for him... I forgot my multimeter at home... ... ... ... ... I can't belive I've done that TWICE now... Well, like last time, he had a simple automotive light probe. All it is, is a probe with a light bulb, a pointy metal tip, and a long ground lead with a clip. His little boy got a hold of it... And broke it. So now I had NOTHING to test with. I checked it out, and determined that the ground wire had been broken, but I couldn't tell where, so I pulled out my soldering iron, cut a new lead from the ONE spool of new wire he actually had, and made a new lead. Now it worked perfectly fine. I asked him to clip it to the negative of the battery, and I started probing the light switch on the dash panel... And nothing looked right. Things were on when they should have been off. Some things didn't turn on at all... Nothing made sense. I got some connections that were working made, and I got the first lights to light up on one side, but not the other. By this point, I'm 3 hours in, after chasing nothing but problems and confusing faults. I thought, maybe the lights aren't properly grounded. Cab was repainted, so it could be the bolt isn't touching metal, so I decided to connect a direct jumper from the light's ground to the battery ground where the probe was clipped to... ... Folks... Did you know, tractor engines are big... Big enough that they need a little extra juice to crank... When I touched the wire to the negative terminal of the battery, the wire seared the pattern of the wire strands into my finger tip, along with firing off a huge spark... I asked my brother... "Does this tractor have a second battery?", to which he replied, "Yeah, why?" I immediately knew what had happened. "And what's the configuration?", to which he replied, "It's a 12 volt system with two 6 volt batteries in series. It that important?" "Yeah... You clipped the probe's ground lead to the center negative... And the new brand seared into my fingertip tells me I just touched a 6 volt, high amp battery directly to ground." This explains all the erroneous readings I was getting. My probe wasn't attached to ground. It was attached to +6 volts. It meant that none of the measurements I'd made were done properly. Once I also had the probe properly grounded, I was able to test power going out to the lights... and confirm that literally 4 of the 10 lights on the cab were already burned out. Did we have replacements? Nope! We had random tractor lights strewn about the workbench and on old fenders and in boxes of old tractor wire harnesses, and salvaged from an old planter... Nothing was new. It was scavenge this and test to see if that's good, and will this scrap of wire reach... That was how the entire night went. I hope this wire is a heavy enough gauge for that light's current draw. I think this wire will reach. Does this part even work? Install it and find out. There was one singular moment that just... infuriated me... The cab had a segment of wire harness that passed from the inside to the rear outside, where the rear lights are mounted. The ends of the wire were old, brittle, and unusable, but years of grease had protected the wire closer to the grommet the wire fed out through. The wire need only about 2-3 inches trimmed off, and I could splice in new wire. The wire inside the cab was in perfect condition, and even fed to where I needed to splice it in with the harness leading to the flashers. It was literally perfect... It had gotten late, and my brother doesn't usually stay up that late. He said the wires were shot. I had tested and confirmed they were fine, and I only needed to trim out the portion with the rotted out insulation. He... He wasn't gonna be wrong, for anything... He stubbornly cut the wires off, flush with the grommet, the moment I tried to argue they were perfectly fine, making them entirely unusable. I. Was. Livid. Unfortunately, it added an hour to my work, and forced me to settle with a TERRIBLE, and VERY SHODDY solution of feeding the wires out through a seam in the grommet around the bottom rear window. He thought I would just feed new whirled hole... He never even looked at where they came through. The wires were internally fed through two sharp bends, and the only way to access it was to fully disassemble the cab, and access it from underneath, hence the shoddy through the seam of the window's rubber seal. An extra hour, it added! All cause he was stubborn, and was absolutely right, and not this guy he brought in to do the wiring, cause he don't know wiring himself... I really wanted to chew him out. It took every bit of my willpower to not just explode at him... I repressed my rage, cause all I knew was I didn't want to start an argument over something that can't be changed anymore, not that late... UGH! I just wanted to finish... I DID make it very clear his actions had added an extra hour to my work though, and I did force him to look where the wire came out, and that I couldn't "just run a new wire through", not unless he was willing to unbolt the entire side panel of the cab (he was not willing). I didn't argue with him, but I made sure he knew it was his fault for tacking another hour past his bedtime! Oh, and there were two other fundamental issues that just made the day absolutely drag, that simply couldn't be fixed, due to circumstances... First, was the very nature of the cab itself. The cab was a factory option. It bolted on in place of the traditional seat, and had a wiring harness that plugged into a socket inside the dash board panel. Unfortunately, the tractor had been rebuilt at some point, and the original wire harness was replaced with one with different connections. The cab had itself also been stripped, sandblasted, and repainted, and no longer even had it's wire harness. I had to figure out how to make it all come together, but what also made the day a literal pain, was the fact that the cab design was an add on to a machine that originally did not come with a cab. The position of the ladders, the doors, the wheels... It was all awkward at best, and straining at worst. Imagine an overweight, middle aged dude swinging around, climbing up and down a set of monkey bars for 10 hours, and you get a VERY good idea of what I was doing in and around that cab. To say I was suffering bodily pain for the next three days, would have been an understatement. On a bright note, it was probably great exercise, and it made me notice my burned fingertip much less! The second major inconvenience was the lugs and fast-on connectors... Some of them were perfectly fine. I have a very good crimping tool... Unfortunately, the local shop carries a brand of crimps that are abominably BAD... You insert the correct gauge wire, you crimp it using the correct position on the crimper... And the crimp just pulls right off the wire with the slightest tug. Now, this post is quite a bit later than the actual day all this happened... It was the evening before Easter when I actually did all this work, so literally a month ago. The thing is, all the shops were closed earlier than normal, either because of the craziness with shutdowns going on, or just because it was the evening before Easter... I had a limited number of crimps to use, and they kept failing. I was forced to cut "filler strands"... Extra bits of wire to take up additional space in the crimp. For whatever reason, the wires all had to have a tight fit BEFORE crimping, or the crimp would fail, and the wire would simply pull out. GOOD crimp connectors DON'T FAIL like these did! This was TEDIOUS, METICULOUS work! Feeding multiple wires, plus filler strands, into a crimp, while holding the crimp in a crimper... This took time... FAR MORE TIME than ever should have been. If I had all my tools, good crimps, and nothing went wrong, and basics such as "are all the parts I'm putting in even good in the first place?" dealt with, this would have been a 2-3 hour job, maybe 4 tops. Instead, it took me from 5 pm (17:00) till 3 in the morning, a full 10 hours! That's right... I didn't finish till 3 in the morning. I literally only had ONE WIRE to crimp, and plug into a socket, to get the wipers going too, but I was just too tired to even realize how simple wiring it up would have been, and it just... never clicked in my head to do it. I had nothing left in me, and still had to drive home, and STILL had to wash up before going to bed... My brother kept asking me if I was cold. I was not. I was too busy climbing up and down the cab and bending in odd ways to reach wires. When packing up my tools at the end of the day, I noticed the window of his shed was open... Apparently that's just open. always. glass is gone. I exited... to a snowstorm! I had NO IDEA a snowstorm had blown in! I guess that's why my brother kept asking if I was cold. It was literally freezing outside the shed, and not much better inside. I just didn't notice cause I was working. Ultimately, I had to drive home at about 30 MPH (48 km/h) (or 13.2 m/s, in kerbal preferred units ). I had to carry my tools in (I don't trust leaving tools in my car), wash up, and eat something, as I'd gotten into "the zone" and did that 10 hours of work straight, without stopping for anything. So why then, with all that hassle and fuss, did I wait a month to post this? Honestly, i've been busy, and the time when it was fresh on my mind, I also spent just lying nigh motionless in bed till the afternoon, cause, you know... the monkey bars cab climb thing and the 3 am thing. I had circuit boards I needed to make for work too, so once I was able to move again, I worked on soldering those. What made me come back this this and think about it again? While I was soldering boards, a dry, crusty flap of something peeled off my finger tip. It bore the unmistakable imprint of copper wire strands... It was the dead skin from my burned fingertip, finally peeling off and landing on my workbench... It all came rushing back to me. Battery cooked my fingertip pretty good!

It was appropriate to remove the (very much in anger) threats of violence to animals, but it was VERY WRONG and even possibly irresponsible to remove the entirety of the post. This was a TRAUMATIC event that happened to a cared for creature, and it was caused by another person's apathy and lack of control over his own dog. Some anger is understandable, and the first half of that post describes the tragic event, the neighbor's blatantly apathetic attitude, and the efforts to care for the injured animal. ONLY the last paragraph and final line were inappropriate. I would argue that removing the entire post, and not simply editing out the last half of it (obviously written in anger) is more likely to incite deeper anger in the op, by removing what was an honest effort to vent frustration over a tragic and traumatic event. Venting the events of the tragedy is a means to dissipate the anger over the event, and to focus and ground one's thoughts. My complaint... That post should have been edited for content, and not removed outright. I think that was incredibly insensitive against someone who just suffered a massive emotional trauma.

I hope recovery is as quick and as safe as possible. Good luck, and huge respect for the people keeping the gears of civilization turning, in the face of all the current risks.

At least you don't have to plow out this path in Japan! Here in the state of Minnesota, the most snow I've ever had to deal with was me nearly walking off the end of the roof of a quonset style machine shed (that's a half cylinder shaped corrugated steel structure where we store the tractors and equipment). The snow had built up so thick, that my brother and I didn't notice we accidentally walked onto the roof! It was that deep! I think the snow was up to about the top of the door, blown against the side of the building. It was surreal to just suddenly stop our "lively debate", look down, and see the ground far below!

This is the controller with he small stick at the bottom, right? have you tried using it for RCS? I've always imagined this controller paired with a flight stick for attitude control would be pretty decent for the type not interested in building a controller outright.

Makes me think back to the bag of salty cheesy snacks that I ate back in January, found the bottom of the bag to be kinda gross, looked in, saw light, peeked at the side of the bag, and found a mouse had chewed a big ol' hole in the side of the bag and helped itself to the bag that I had nearly finished. I just gagged merely thinking about it... I also got the quote for my car... $465. NO PARTS for my Kerbal Instrument panel for a WHILE! The engine not firing on all cylinders was a bit of a red herring. The reason is it didn't have enough fuel to supply all the cylinders, cause the fuel pump failed. I realized the oil and fluids all were due for changing too, and a diagnostic got done... Ultimately, the bill ended up topping itself at $563, once all the extras were tacked on! Yikes! It's frustrating... I just applied to a lab, only for the whole stinkin' world to go on lockdown cause history repeats itself... The 1920s called... It want's it's pandemic, economic turmoil, lines for basic supplies, and shuttered bars back. I love the job I'm doing now, but it's just not enough hours to do more than just get by. My entire tax refund has been consumed by catching up on bills (and getting them mostly paid ahead), and now the remainder will be consumed by this car repair. I don't even get to buy the cheap gear sets and position sensors to work on the next bit of my build. I look at my car, see the oil there that's leaking, While my wallet gently weeps I look at the light and I see service blinking Still my wallet gently weeps I don't know why-y my fuel pump failed you Hard to replace the part I don't know how, wear and tear broke you I bought one new for you I look at the wheels and I notice no turning While my wallet gently weeps With hours of labor they must surely be billing Still my wallet gently weeps The pump some-how became impeded The fuel diverted too I knew not how the stall developed No fuel flowed for you I look at the bill, see the digits I'm fearing. While my wallet gently weeps As I'm sitting here doing nothing but paying Still my wallet gently weeps

My car took me to work... My car did not return me home from work. When I started the car to head home, it sounded a bit rough... and it got rougher, then it sounded like it was not firing on all cylinders, and then it got VERY rough and then died. Had it towed to a shop, where I await the news of just how screwed my wallet is about to be... Yet another month with no Kerbal Instrument/Control panel parts, and I guess I'm not building a NAS to replace my TEN year old hard drives, the oldest of my spinning rust collection!

Have you used it as a controller in KSP? I had suggested it as a possible well suited controller for KSP quite some time back, but I didn't own one. I'm actually curious as to how well it works, if you've tried.

I'm buried in circuit boards I'm soldering for work, and I want to finish by tomorrow, but I don't know if I even have the energy to stay awake long enough to do so! For reference... I normally do 25 a week. I have 106 right now. I got the parts Thursday.

I have a digital clock with a pair of alarms that operate a 120 volt relay switched outlet. It's a useful little gadget, for if I need to run something for a limited time unattended. the problem, is that I have to preemptively calculate how long it should run... every 5 hours, it gains a full extra hour! I started it at 7am this morning, and it now shows 1pm, while my functioning clocks say noon! It'd be nice if it... well, you know, could also keep time.

I was tired, thought I'd go to bed at midnight (which for me is early). Decided to watch a model train video before turning in for the night... The guy in the video was talking about track wiring, and how inconvenient it was to crawl under his layout any time he had to mess with wiring. It was at that moment, I knew I'd screwed up... I had an idea. An idea that was screaming at me to let it out. It's 6:30 in the morning. I'm even MORE tired than before, but I came up with this: I'll have you know, that was done with the Mac equivalent of MS Paint. I don't know my way around CAD. That's line tools and fill tools, and rectangle and circle tools... Yeah... The way it works, is you pull the sliding frame out, and let the front part of it fold down and rest against the table's legs. That part folding down locks the rear sliding frame in place. The layout panel can then be folded upwards, from it's forward position. This leaves the entire bottom of the panel exposed, and you don't have to couch lay on your back, or really, do anything difficult. The cable strung up keeps the top panel from flipping backwards. The heavy bracing is all put at the back, to counter the weight of the slide frame when pulled outward. Personally, I'm happy with how it turned out. It's great for single modules, linear configuration with multiple modules, and multi module configurations with outside turns. Inside turns... Are not easy with this system. The only way to make it really work, entirely defeats the whole purpose of building this, as removing a whole module simply is not an easier task than just crawling underneath. It has that one, singular limitation. My best recommendation is literally a cop out... Leave corners alone. build your stuff so corners are super simple, and just have pass through wires that go to the next module. Pick what you want in the corner, and don't ever change it!

I hope your surgery goes well. My mother had weird pressure issues (VERY atypical). I have no idea what happened, but now they're talking about her going in every 2 years. Like I said, very atypical. I hope yours goes perfectly smoothly. Good luck!

Work had a period between two customer's orders where things were very slow... All January... I legit don't have enough for rent coming up in a few days... That sucks. I'm gonna have to hope and pray between his new order, and any other cash I can scrounge up, that I can at least get it paid "soonish", and just suck up the late fee. That's gonna bite. Ain't gonna be no parts bought for the Kerbal controller this month... Or next...

I can't wait to see this develop! I love the work so far!