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Update - Books, Computer, Life

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A few things to report:

1. Books - "The King's Treasure" is moving forward... slowly but surely. It's for the 2.0 kit, so I'm still wondering how 1.0 owners are going to be able to build these robots, but I'm working on it. One idea is for LEGO to do something similar to the Mayan Parts Pack that allowed NXT Education Kit owners to build the robots... another idea is to try and find a Bricklink partner who can package the missing pieces...

2. In addition to the King's Treasure book, I'm also working on another book that may be of interest to some of you - "Build Your Own CNC Machine" - due out around Oct/Nov 2009. Yes, your very own CNC machine... it can do wood, plastic, metal... the book will walk you through cutting, drilling, and all the other stuff necessary to build a working machine (2 feet x 4 feet work surface~!). I'm sure a lot of you can think of ways to use the CNC machine to enhance your robot building :)

3. Laptop - a technician showed up today and got my laptop up and running. Yay. Now I'm goign to wait and see what Dell does to make me a happy customer. Not only did I pay the extra $150 for next-day business service, but I also lost 4 days of work (2 actually since I was able to use a backup PC to do some stuff, not all)... all in all, I figure I've lost about $400 in billable hours plus the $150 extended warranty payment which didn't deliver as promised. I've got to reallocate my destkop PC as the controller PC for my CNC machine, so it's going out to the workshop - now I need a new destkop... nothing super-powered... just a good solid desktop... how about it Dell? A $400 to $500 desktop in exchange for holding onto a long-term customer? I'll keep you informed.

I am glad to be back to writing...

Jim

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