hamster

After having re-watched a program on the NASA Mars rovers, I began thinking back on my own adventures in robotics, and thought I might share a story.

When I was about 9 or 10, I decided I was going to make a robot. This was in the early days of my education in electricity, and, well... I went the hard route. The robot itself consisted of an old Avon cardboard box that was about 25cm by 40cm, and about 15cm tall. Not that big of a box, but a decent size for my robot. I started by installing an axle through the center of the robot, and attaching some wheels to the axle. To balance it, I crafted a head that consisted of a caster sticking out of the front with another cardboard box head. It was fairly fancy for a 10 year old.



At this point, I noted I had a flaw, namely, my robot needed some form of locomotion. Around this time, thanks in large part to a visit from my aunt, I had spent a lot of time going to garage sales, and I had acquired a collection of electrical gadgets. I installed some lights in the head, and cut a hole out the back and installed a ionizer fan sticking straight out... you know, like some kind of jet turbine. Not that it worked to move the robot, but I could plug each thing into the wall and look at the blinking lights.

I realized with a start that I needed a control panel. So, I snagged yet another cardboard box, and some heavy duty toggle switches. Each electrical cord ran out of the robot, was cut, and spliced through a toggle, and then off to a wall outlet. As a result, I had about 4 electrical plugs coming out of my cardboard control panel. I had not realized I could just have one and wire them in parallel yet. So, I had to choose which 2 devices I wanted to run at any given time, or find a power strip.

Now comes the fun part. I was out in the garage, and had one wire left, the one for the fan. I grabbed my cutting dikes and clipped the wire. There was a bright flash and an exploding noise, and the lights went off. I looked at the cutting surface of the dikes and discovered a large crater where the wire had been. I suddenly learned a lesson: always unplug the cord before cutting.

Now I had a problem. My folks had no idea I was playing with electricity at this point. The breaker panel for the garage was in the locked workshop part that I had no access to. I had to come up with a plan. I spent hours trying to break in, and failed. My dad found out the power was out, and I claimed that I was not involved. That worked pretty OK, until he found the dikes. Ooops.

Needless to say, my first robot disappeared shortly after that. Poor robot, I hardly knew you. I was given a stern lecture about messing with wall outlets, which kept me from messing with them for about, oh... a week maybe.

These days I get shocked a lot less (gah, high voltage DC hurts the worst), but I still strive to blow something up often. Compare and contrast this story with my wind sail experiment where I gave lots of thought to locomotion but none to control systems.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

Time for another short work of fiction. Hang on!

The day was starting out in the most odd way possible. I had just jolted out of a deep sleep, to discover myself pinned to the bed, sweating. It was back. Last time the... creature... had found me, it was when I was hiding on the golf course out by the lake. It had come to me, roused me out of my hiding place, and informed me in no uncertain terms its intent to play through. What a dick. And now, here, on my chest, grinning down at me. I could smell its breath. I was fairly certain it was German.

"What is the meaning of this!", I roared. At least, I tried to roar. It was more of a squeak. The creature grinned at me, its revolting lips curling up into some caricature of a sneer. It leaned back, and chortled. The situation was still not making any sense to me. I attempted to sit up, and suddenly discovered I was alone in the room. No poof, no sound, just.. no creature, as if it was some bad cut of an old Hollywood movie. I mopped at my brow, and surveyed the the room in the dirty light. My shoes were missing.

Not again.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

Preface: After the 30+ hours of driving I did over the Thanksgiving weekend, I had a chance to catch up on a ton of podcasts and spend a lot of time inside my head. The two combined, and as such, I decided to write this, inspired by listening to The Moth podcast. This is a short non-fiction story from my life.

A lesson in history

While in college, I bought a Jeep. Not just any Jeep, but a beat up '64 Wagoneer, from a junkyard. Yes, someone else had the good sense to take the thing to the junkyard to dispose of it, but I was entirely unable to keep from purchasing it. I really like the old truck, even though it currently is just sitting around waiting for me at my parents house. We've had quite a few adventures together, and I'm sure one day the adventure will continue. The adventure I bring you today is from when I was living in Los Alamos, NM.



I didn't have much parking at home, and where I worked had a huge parking lot, so I would park my Jeep there, out of the way. This worked for sometime, until someone became wise to my free parking and asked that I move it. No problem, says I. I went to the parking lot, and climbed in. The brakes, of course, went to the floor. This truck is old enough to not have automatic brake shoe adjusters on the 4 drum brakes. Instead, you have to get under the truck and adjust 4 bolts per wheel now and again to keep the pads in position as they wear, and I'd never bothered with that. As long as you drove it often enough, hydraulic pressure would do just as well, but I had not driven in it in a couple of months. So, I sat there, pumping, pumping, pumping the brakes until the pedal started to firm up. I fired the truck up, and tooled around the parking lot, slowly, testing the brakes. It all felt good.

I drove to the top of the hill at the light, waiting to turn out of the parking lot. The light changed, I turned left and accelerated down the hill towards the light at the bottom. I downshifted and mashed the brakes. The brake pedal went to the floor with no perceptible slowing of the truck. The intersection was approaching, with cars already stopped at it, and it had just become obvious that I would not be able to join their stopped state. In the few seconds I had to come to a decision, I had a minor flashback to my youth, a history lesson if you will...

When I was about 9 or 10, I was gifted with a broken lawnmower. I excitedly removed the engine with the hope of making it into a go-kart, but I still had that lawnmower frame sitting around. In March or so, it becomes very windy on the great plains, and I was very bored. These powers combined into what at the time seemed like a great idea: I could use the rolling platform of the lawnmower as my base, and the wind as my engine. I was very excited.

I found a piece of plywood, and bolted across the top of the lawnmower chassis. I removed the handle from the chassis so now I had a flat platform. Next, I cut up some 2x4 pieces and fashioned a mast. I then convinced my mom that I needed a sheet for some innocent purpose; she gave me an old felt blanket. I fashioned some cross bars and stapled the sheet to the mast. I was now the proud owner of a sail-lawnmower.

I pushed the contraption out into the street. The wind was blowing hard, 35-40mph hard. This was going to be awesome. I aimed the contraption down the street, and climbed on. A gust of wind started me rolling, and the steady high speed wind pushed me up to speed. I was thrilled! It worked! Soon, I was going very fast down the street.

Suddenly, I had a minor epiphany regarding my wind cruiser: I had no steering. This was not entirely a deal breaker, but coupled with an even worse oversight, I was doomed. You see, I kind of forgot to install some kind of braking system on my contraption. And I was now doing 25-30mph down the middle of the road. Well, not the middle now, more of an angle. An angle that looked like it was going to terminate into that barbed wire fence not far ahead. It was decision time. With no other options, I opted to tuck and roll off the platform, and let my handiwork complete its maiden voyage by itself. I hit the gravel at a pretty good clip, and rolled to a stop just in time to see the collision. The mast snapped, the sail became embedded in the fencing, and the platform tumbled over to one side. I now had cuts and scrapes, but I was no worse for wear otherwise.

At this point, I was discovered. It seems a kid flying down the street at high speed on a sail craft attracts attention. People came running out into the wind, yelling at me, trying to figure out what had happened. My mom arrived, and after verifying I was safe, relieved me of the sheet, or, what was left of it. I never sailed the pavement again, but a lesson was learned that day, or so I thought.

Flash back to the Jeep. I briefly considered bailing, but this time, I did have steering. I managed to cram the truck into first gear, and slowed as best I could, and then yanked the steering wheel to the left as hard as I could. The truck lurched to the side, climbing up a curb and cutting off all manner of traffic. Suddenly, I was facing back uphill with a small velocity vector, and slowing. It was working! I powered back up to the top of the hill and returned to the safety of the parking lot. I puttered around that parking lot for 15 minutes, pumping the brakes until they actually worked again, and was finally able to safely drive it home. Whew!

So the moral of this story is that if you don't choose to listen to history, you could be, literally, doomed to repeat it. To say that act first, consider later is a solved problem in my life would be a complete lie, but these days I always do one thing before doing something stupid: I check the damn brakes.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

I pulled into the lonely gas station with the sun sinking on the horizon. I had just ridden many, many miles of new roads, new experiences, and I was nearing the 500 mile mark since I set out early that morning. I topped up the tank, and headed for the intersection. Turn right, 100 miles to Monticello, turn left, 150 miles to Monticello. I turned right.

A small smattering of southern Utah mesas crowded the horizon to my right, a line of mountains to my left. A quick hand check on the sun showed 2 fingers to the horizon: about 30 minutes of daylight left. Already, the reds of the desert were going into subtle overdrive, balanced against the dark grey of the storm cloud holding fast to the mountains to the left. I opened up the throttle, hoping to put on a few more miles before it all went black.



The road out here was in good shape, but isolated. Rolling plains, random mesa vistas, lack of traffic. As the sun faded, my brain went into overdrive scanning for deer, the biggest hazard to the lone biker, flying over the pavement on some random back road.

Soon scanning for deer became a background task, and the monotony of the ride slowly sunk in. Long distance biking is a balance: you get to see some amazing things, ride some great twisties, and sometimes... you get to spend a lot of time inside your own head, phasing out the boredom of just putting down the road. You find yourself digging up the little problems of the day, the week, and attempting to solve them mentally. For me, this means working on mechanical designs in my head. It's always slightly frustrating to do this, as you can't really test any solutions until the trip is over and done with.

And then you are in it: the meta trip. You find yourself already composing that blog entry, how you will word the story to your friends, what you will do when this is all over. Now you are just an observer, not experiencing as such, but just there for the report, to be delivered to the eager consumers of arm chair adventure.

I waffle on this point for a while: to plot out the story now, I'm just boiling it down to an observation, instead of an experience. If I can quit thinking about the story, and just live in the here and now, I truly become part of the experience, something savoured and enjoyed, but the details bleed away like a distant mountain peak, leaving you with just the feeling, the mood of the adventure.

My sound system, a battered iPod shuffle named 'MotoShuffle', finally winks out after 10 hours in the saddle, leaving me with just the wind and muffled roar of the mechanicals under me. The wind tugs at my legs, my arms. Now with the sun gone, my world is two pools of light cast onto the rushing ground in front of me, revealing shapes and signs that whizz by. the beatiful valley is gone from my view.

It's getting colder now, without the thermal boost of the sun. The storm on the mountains is picking up, lightening is no longer a distant flicker, but something that lights up the mountain side for a split second, as I strive to try to take it in before the light is sucked from my view. I've turned east now, headed up the mountain. The cold finally gets to me, and I pull off to the side of the road.

So far I have passed all of two cars in 100 miles. It's just me out here, me and the road and my machine. I'm loathe to turn off the bike, for then even the rumble of the engine and the bath of lights will go, but I need to get into the bags. The bike stops suddenly as I rotate the key, the lights flash off. Another lightening bolt, reminding me to get the rain gear out too.

Why am I out here? Mile number 700 has come and gone, and I'm on this lonely highway, no cell reception, nothing, and in the dark, it's just a path to an end point. I know ahead I will find rain, and who knows what kind of road conditions. Then I remember: it's the thrill of the challenge of the adventure. To conquer it all. To say that I completed this, where others would turn away.

I get back on the bike, and fleetingly, hope that it starts. Of course it does. I'm away now, riding up some twisties in the dark, with the random flash of light giving me some hints of what lays ahead. I take it easy, and slowly crest the mountain.

The rain begins. A drop here, there... hard to say when it started, but it's going now. I can see the lights of Monticello ahead, down below, halos in the distance due to the water. I ease down the mountain road, rain thudding onto my pants, jacket, helmet. I can feel the cool wetness of it blowing by my chin and neck, which, while exposed, don't actually get wet.

Now I'm in it, the lights of the town. The trip counter has hit the 800 mile mark, and I'm just starting to think about how tired and hungry I am, now that I have beat the road, the moutain, the weather. I procure gas station food, and head to the hotel to meet up with Brian. I drag in my bags one at a time, wet, tired, sore, looking forward to some rest for the next day's adventure, as Brian tells me how he conquered his own adventure.

So now I've written this narrative, reported to you, allowed you to experience my private adventure in the deserted back country of southern Utah, I realize: sometimes sharing makes it all seem much better in retrospect.

I hope you enjoyed this. Go out this weekend and have an adventure, yeah? I'll be looking for your reports from the road.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

This is going to be a somewhat random post, but that's how it goes sometimes.

I was listening to Car Talk today in the pickup, and they were talking about some of the results of a contest they held in regards to the worst road trip ever. This was mostly about the car breaking down a lot or whatnot, and there are some impressive stories. I'd enter the contest, but these are moldy podcasts from May, so... kind of out of the loop. Instead, I thought I would share some fun stuff here with you guys.

( Read more... )

----

Whew. Well, that's the update here. Good times, good times...

Originally published at all things snurkle.

The weather is getting colder, and the drivers are turning into mutant morons around here. This morning, there was a big pickup in front of me, which moved to the lane to the left, but left his right tires in my lane, and then looked at me like I was in his way. He went behind me, moved over to the right lane, started into an exit, and then pulled out back behind me and took the exit I was on. What the hell? Don't even get me started on cell phone users, or the morons who prefer to just kinda pull into interstate traffic and speed up at the last possible second. Sheeesh!

It rained earlier this week, and the car crashes locked up most of the interstates. A semi was jacknifed across my commute, and I had to seek an alternate route. Talking with Mike Scott, I've become convinced they have mucked up the concrete suface, putting grooves going with the traffic and thus retaining water, vs across and shedding water. The arguement here is that snow plows would catch the little sideways grooves, but man... when it gets wet around here, the interstates are like skating rinks. Plus, parallel grooves push you all over the place on a motorcycle.

Speaking of bikes, the project bike is slowly coming along. Seeing as I have next to no budget for it, I've been machining parts at work after hours. This works out pretty well for me, and since Amanda works until midnight, no one is yelling at me for staying late. Brian helped me get the tank prepped and painted this week, and it looks damn sexy if I say so myself. I'll post pictures once I get it closer to being on the bike. Going to attempt drag racing this weekend, but I just found out that Rocky Mountain ATV failed to ship my new chain last night even though I ordered before 5, and now I am unsure if I will have one to race on. Turns out that is important ;) I might be able to make the stock one work, we'll see.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

UPDATE: Here's a google map of my journey

So I'm back in the office today, after a week on vacation, and some 4000 miles of traveling complete. I'm kind of easing back into things, and no one has spotted me come in yet, so I think I might have a few minutes before I find myself with 12 new things to do.

I left out of here Saturday before last, slightly sleep deprived from the stressful week leading up to departure. Of course, I waited to the last minute to finally get around to machining up the mounts for my new side cases (start here and click forward), and the bike servicing was last minute and didn't include a valve lash adjustment like I planned on. The usual amount of stress before a trip, I guess you could say. I managed to leave home by 6am, and ran well ahead of schedule. Thanks to the Camelbak, I drank 4 liters of water on my 680 mile ride and managed to arrive just a little before 2pm PDT. Thank goodness for mesh riding pants, I was feeling good despite the almost 100 degree heat in Nevada/California. Other than almost being run off the road once just as soon as I crossed into CA, the trip was fairly uneventful. My fuel economy suffered with the new bags and the 85mph+ average: I don't think I managed better than 38 the whole way.

Mel had claimed we would load the bike and head out to Abq almost as soon as I arrived, so I was kind of hell-bent to get there on time, but it hardly mattered, hehe. The house still needed a lot of work, so I settled in for the night. She also left me my 8 foot by 3 foot in the truck for the bike, only... the wrong way. I wanted a slot I could just ride up into, but she left me the last 4 foot of the truck's width instead. I attempted to ride up into it, but only managed to make it most of the way up the ramp before panicking about hitting her things, coming to a stop, and falling over. Broke out a turn signal, bent a mounting bolt and a bar end, but did no real damage to myself or the bike. Whups! I went to plan B: found a loading dock in town, and used that to ride the bike into a level ramp instead of uphill. Strapped it down with some misgivings about it being sideways, but... turned out to be a non-issue, and it rode just fine the entire way.

Sunday we rolled out at noon. Seriously, noon. We were up until 2 the previous night cleaning and etc, so I can give some slack, but even I was surprised to not make it out on a 800 mile drive until noon ;) (Sorry Mel, I know you were stressed at the time...). It's been a while since I drove I-40 from CA to Abq, so it was entertaining. I listened to a lot of Car Talk podcasts, and then switched to This American Life. I've never been a huge fan of the This American Life, but I discovered that for driving, it has the right mix of something entertaining coupled with the ability to not have to think too hard to make it good stuff to keep you awake on the road. Mel and I talked back and forth via FRS radios, until they died about an hour out of Abq. We finally arrived at Jo's around 2am MDT.

Monday was the party, and the 24 bottles of homebrewed beer I had carted with me on the motorcycle were well received. I can't imagine a better way to enjoy a birthday than surrounded by good friends having a good time, in the middle of a big adventure!

Tuesday we were to leave out after dinner, but instead we ended up pushing leave-time to Wednesday morning, so for me, Tuesday was all about sleeping in and bumming around.

Wednesday we rolled out around 9 after a short breakfast. We stopped off at Cadillac-henge just outside of Amarillo (pictures forthcoming), and again at the giant cross at Groom, TX, where we also had lunch at a local place I knew of. The rest of the drive was mildly uneventful. We hit Missouri after dark, and it was raining lightly. At one point, a sudden bright spark shot over the hood and impacted on the passenger side of the windshield, startling me as I started at the bio-luminescent goo left by an ill fated lightning bug. I don't see those things much, so they always are a bit of a surprise, haha. We arrived around 11PM CDT and pretty much just went to bed.

Thursday we unpacked enough of the truck so I could ride the bike out, packed it up, hugged Mel bye and rode out of town and for Stillwater, OK. It was an easy ride. I met up with a guy on a sport bike not far into Oklahoma on the turnpike and we ended up running rather quickly to Tulsa. Wheee. I met up with my folks at the nursing home my aunt is staying in, recovering from a pretty bad stroke. I hadn't seen her in years; I can only imagine what she thought when she saw me. She's unable to talk, but seems to be able to understand what you say to her, and can at least move her right side well. I stayed the night with my folks at their motel, and headed out after breakfast in the morning for Lubbock and my friend Mike.

Friday I messed up. The temperture was about 85-90 the whole way, and overcast, so the mesh gear was helping a lot, and unlike the furnace of Nevada/California, it did not prompt me to stay on top of blood sugar and water like I should have. By the time I hit Amarillo, I was not feeling well at all. I stopped and had a candy bar and put back a bottle of water, and hit the road again. I made it within 50 miles of target when my stomach came unglued and I had to stop. I rested for a while, thought I was doing alright, and suited up to get on the bike when my stomach flipped over. Yanked off the helmet and back into the Burger King and threw up. That was really wild for me. I felt a lot better after, which made no sense to me: dehydration should have continued to make me feel bad, you'd think. I kept on water into Lubbock, and felt just fine by the time I hit Mike's house. Very strange, that's never happened to me. Regardless, that's what I get for ignoring my key motorcycling axioms of hydration and blood sugar, doh! Mike's wife, Lindsay, gave me the wrong address via email, one house off, which made for an interesting moment or two, but I found them. We had dinner, and watched some movie.

Saturday, Mike had a golf game to get to, so I rolled out of Lubbock far earlier than I planned. I was on the road by 6:30 MDT! I rode north and took a cutoff to Raton, NM I had never been on, but rather liked. I stopped in Trinidad and had lunch and relaxed, and hit the road, staying on water this time ;) Just north of Colorado Springs, traffic slowed down as we reached the front of a thunderstorm. I'd already put on the wet gear, so I was set and ready to go through it. I had a moment of laughter, though, as I tooled under an overpass that was currently giving shelter to a half dozen guys riding cruisers and no helmets or rain gear. I turned and gave them a big wave, and they waved back. I wonder who thought the other stupider at that point in time... The thunderstorm was pretty brief, but traffic over Momument Hill was slow, and I missed my arrival time in Boulder by an hour, but 6pm MDT was still very good, considering how many breaks I took. I felt great. We had dinner, went to a picnic, and ended up back at Keagan's Man-Pad. He took me and his girlfriend Beth out for a ride up the Flagstaff canyon in his Subaru. He's been practicing going up it, and I really felt I should be giving him driving notes ala rally car co-pilot style. He's pretty good at it, and I had a great time. I really like Boulder. Why don't I live there? ;)

Sunday I changed my plans to ride over Rocky Mountain National Park and instead took a back way to I-70 and went through the Eisenhower tunnel. The bike rolled over 40,000 miles just before I entered the tunnel, not bad for being 3 and a half years old, eh? I stopped in Dillon and called Rose. She was a tad surprised, I guess I was going a lot faster than I thought too, and made it up there in an hour. I ended up riding up to Breckenridge and having brunch with Rose downtown. Afterwards, I followed her back to her condo to check it out. Sure, it's only 300 square foot, but man... what a view! I can see why she is a tad sad to be moving down to Santa Fe soon. I ended up helping her pack up her flat screen TV while I was there, and left out around 1pm MDT to head north to Steamboat Springs and highway 40 to home. I had stalled getting back on the road just about ride, and ended up playing thread the needle with thunderstorms all the way into Utah. It started to rain on me once near Dinosaur, CO, so I pulled over to put colder gear on, only to have it stop raining a mile later. Ah well. I kept having to switch between just the mesh gear to the cold gear to stay comfortable on the ride into Utah, but it gave me plenty of chances for breaks, candy bars, and more water. I arrived home around 9pm MDT, tired and a bit sore, glad to be home.

So, for those keeping track at home, that's about 1600 miles driving a moving truck, and about 2600 miles via motorcycle, totaling more than 4000 miles distance covered in a week. The bike is doing well, but needs a valve lash adjustment something fierce. I averaged about 40ish MPG on the bike, mostly due to me running 80+ mph the vast amount of the way. I had a great time, and it was really good seeing so many friends who I have not had a chance to catch up with in a long while. I hope I can get out to see you all more often in the future!

Originally published at all things snurkle.

I found some interesting open source software for tracking beer brewing, so... I installed it on the server. As such, I'll be yakking about my brews there, so feel free to check out what is going on at the 'brewery' as it were.

As always, I'm open to suggestions as to what to brew and the like.

In other news, I found some pretty interesting designs for using a small dorm style fridge to chill a couple of 5 gallon Corny kegs, complete with spigots. I sense a project in the not so distant future.

Originally published at all things snurkle.

Today I brewed up an Irish Stout which the kit claims tastes like Guinness, which would be nice. This was my second attempt at beer, the first of which was a collaborative attempt with the GF. That attempt was an Irish Red, which is now complete, bottled, and the first couple of 6 packs are chilling in the fridge. I wasn't feeling great tonight, so tomorrow I will be able to really sample how the Red came out. Since there was some manner of dispute about who did more work and/or the quality of the work in brewing last time, I bought my own carboy and brewed up this batch myself.

This was the first time I used a kit requiring the use of grains in addition to malt extract, so it was interesting making the 'tea' with the grains. The kit (from The Beer Nut) contained the grains, the socks, the hops, yeast, malt extract (syrup), bottle caps and priming sugar. I was rather impressed with the contents, for the $30 I paid. The basic steps I followed to brew were:

1. Fill carboy and my sanitizing bucket with hot water and sanitizer


2. Place all items which will come in contact with the wort into the santizer bucket to soak


3. Boil 3 gallons of water on the stove, empty carboy, fill with water and let cool


4. Bring 2 gallons to 155 degrees with the specialty grains in the grain sock, maintain for 35 minutes


5. Remove grains, remove from heat, stir in the malt extract and add the hops in a grain sock, return to heat, bring to rolling boil


6. Anger GF by letting it boil over onto her stove


7. Turn down heat, maintain boil for 35 minutes


8. Break the smack-pack yeast and set aside for pitching fr 3 hours


9. Cool wort as much as possible, add to carboy


10. Once the carboy is below 80 degrees, take a sample, pitch the yeast into the wort, install airlock, move to the basement

My sample measured a specific gravity of 1.041, and was a very dark color. The wort tasted much like a slightly burnt tea, with a hint of the hops and not very sugary. I'm looking forward to sampling it.

Tentatively, I think I may call this one 'Black Cat Stout'.

Anyone who would like a few bottles, please let me know and I will save some for you. I'm also open to suggestions.

My future brew list so far would be:

• A hefeweizen


• A hefeweizen/ale with blueberries


• Possibly a mead


• An attempt at a pumpkin beer in the fall

This entry is as much a standard entry as it is notes to myself of what I did and where I want to go from here, which is why I detailed everything I did. Watch for updates as the fermentation finishes and I rack the beer into the secondary and bottle it. ;)

Originally published at all things snurkle.

hamster
give me one good reason why we aren't doing this at work: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/100kw_raygun_barrier_falls/

BL
we buy all our laser materials off of them
they're super nice guys

hamster
that's not a reason why we aren't doing it ourselves

BL
probably the .5MW of electricity that the thing requires would be the first reason not to do it

hamster
bah, we can get into power generation
we'll use a bunch of poodles... a poodle-bed reactor

hamster
i need you to start cloning me poodles

BL
i'll get right on it

Originally published at all things snurkle.