A funny thing happened on the way home from the board meeting tonight…

Gus asked for a ride home, and then he wanted to get something to eat so we were heading to Wendy’s, but I took a completely uncharacteristic turn up Waterloo Street and as I was driving, trying to figure out how to get to Weber, Gus shouted “Stop the car! Stop the car! Rear-projection TV!“

More after the break…

The back-story is this: in November last year my brother, Dave, called me to say there was a free and broken rear-projection Sony TV in the PennySaver and did I want it to build a penny-melting DeathRay like some guys we met at Maker Faire. I got a hold of the owner, but it turned out she was in Listowel. I didn’t think I needed a DeathRay badly enough to do 1.5 hours of driving, so I declined. When I mentioned it to Gus he said I was nuts and that we should go pick it up, but I said another one would come our way. And that’s just what happened tonight.

At the side of the road, in the garbage, was a TV with a perfectly-intact fresnel lens. This is cool and useful because you can use this just like a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays to a very very hot spot leading to 10 kinds of fun. But how to get the TV apart? I had a reciprocating saw and extension cord in my trunk but we couldn’t find any power outlet in front of this building. Fortunately I also had some 1/4″x2″ aluminum angle that we used as a pry bar to crack that TV open like a walnut. We also busted out the 3 projection guns in the base because Gus wants the optics.

Oh, Happy Day!

Happy making,
DW