Wow. That is one milspec disturbing chair.

It would be only mildly discomfiting if it didn't have the slack mouth hanging open and inviting. It's like the chair is asking for deposits in the ugh bank.

I kind of wanted it before I described it that way. Now I don't. I still approve of it though.

Cpt. Tim: One time some friends with mealworm eating pets managed to lose one of the super-giant mealworms without noticing. Some time later I found a big black beetle trundling around my kitchen.

The super-giant worms aren't even supposed to be able to mature. The world needs more impossible mutants. I took it outside and let it fly away.

I'm no entomologist, I just have a penchant for bugs and massive compound names, but that looks like an especially handsome Darkling beetle of the Tenebrionidae.

They're neat!

Do my eyes deceive me? Is that TSA employee really hauling out the Lurkers Support excuse cannon?

I guess it's true that everything old is new again.

This thread prompted me to dig around some more. I still really like the idea of the ReadyNAS NV+, and I'm still considering trying to find one for the original price, but I also discovered that Promise now has a device that seems to compete pretty directly -- the NS4300N. It seems to be new enough that I cannot find any actual reviews of it, but it is included on the NAS performance charts at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com. It's got pretty middle-of-the-road performance, but it's also less than half the MSRP of the ReadyNAS.

I'd post a link to it, but Promise's website appears to be brain damaged at the moment (which does not inspire frothy gouts of confidence). For my purposes, the feature that makes it interesting is that it can grow the array as you add hard drives in the same way the ReadyNAS can. How well it does that, whether it requires homogeneous drive capacity, what OS it runs -- these are all things I do not know, but am keenly interested in.

I'm pretty seriously bummed that Netgear jacked the price way up. I was looking at getting one of these, never quite got around to it and now it costs 1.8x as much as it did when I first started looking. When I was first looking at these they were $550-650 for a bare box. Absurdly, the bare system is now only $50 less than the 4x250gig version.

I'm probably just going to build my own NAS at this rate. Bah.

Cory, do you by chance remember if they had old west guns there too? I'm thinkin' Colt Peacemakers and Winchesters. I've been off-and-on toying with finding a range that's got some so I can have a bit of practical experience.

(I'll do anything for research)

#14: Jack, I'm having a very difficult time buying that you believe what you're saying.

It's incomprehensible to me that you could actually not understand why people would be pissed off by this.

This happened to a friend's father. He was pulled over and given an order to appear at the police station. He was absolutely terrified, but then when he arrived at the station, they had a little 'party' for him and gave him a commendation for his driving. I don't remember what all they gave him, though I recall it was a token sum of money and -- I think -- a miniature flag.

This was in Saudi Arabia and my friend's father was on a foreign work visa.

Ah, those were the days.

I'm pretty sure I grabbed this doc off a BBS because it was some kind of deal, looked at it and promptly filed it away somewhere.

Epic heroism in the reading, Cory. By the end I wanted to scream and jump out the window.

Gnoodles:

I did mention that there were probably better places to get them. I didn't even look at the price -- the link was only intended as a 'this is the type of thing you need'.

And yeah, I think the set I got was $12 with the driver handle in a nice locking box.

I've gotta agree with Jack. This is a sweet little gizmo if for no other reason than that it can be put on a shelf with the drive and ignored. Sometimes a dedicated device is a great deal more desirable than a multi-tool.

#17, Pork Musket:

The main thing you'll want to do for taking apart all kinds of fidgety little things is get a good set of screwdrivers, like one of the sets with 'security bits' offered here
(first link I found on google, there are probably better places to get them -- I got my set at the local Fry's)

For most of the hard drives I've ever come across you just need a Torx bit. It looks like an asterix. Apart from that it's pretty simple to disassemble a hard drive, and the platters really are excellent for wind chimes. Sadly, newer drives no longer oxidize as beautifully as older ones. There was a time when the platters would change color with extended exposure to the air, but the don't anymore.

The one thing to watch out for with taking them apart is the magnets. They're really, really strong and you can easily get pinched by them. If they're allowed to snap together they often shatter. Plus, do not drill or cut them with a rotary blade. When heated to decomposition, neodymium telluride becomes a fairly significantly toxic vapor.