So, the last week or so has been busy, probably won't get around to posting much on what I've been up to here.

Short and sweet is I spent the last week or so up at the store wheeling and dealing, and managed to pick up, among other things, a little gateway solo laptop for nothing but a little legwork. Back at dad's place now, been working mostly on electronics stuff, but increasingly getting financial aid and stuff done for school. Filed a FAFSA, made a bunch of phone calls (on hold with one of them right now in fact,) blabla. Have also registered for the WFR course (did that a week ago actually,) so that's lightened the checking account a teeny little bit.

Finished the layout for the first version of this little USB stepper board last night, will be turning it into fiberglass and copper in a couple hours. Just need to finish up a relatively simple layout for one of dad's projects so we can spin it at the same time. Also goofed around with rebuilding a laptop battery pack a bit last night, took some pictures of the process, but unfortunately I've not been able to track down a place that'll sell just the Lithium Ion cells that I need to the public, so will likely just buy a replacement pack for something approaching a hundred bucks. Suppose that's not a bad price really considering the laptop itself was free :).

The USB stepper controller layout, v1:
(a single axis card for the 4 axis controller, with pads and traces to toss in one of those Cypress USB chips and use the card as a standalone single axis controller.)

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Some will die in hot pursuit
In fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain