@bengood921
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I plan to be there on the 11th. At some point you’ll have to let us know what time to show up.
At Q4, we (me n Frost n Walter) talked more about taking Febrovery photos at the meetup at Walter’s house. I had not planned on doing Febrovery this year, and I don’t think I’ll have time to come up with much, but I came up with an alternate plan: I’m going to convert the flying vehicles that I built for Erie into rovers, by adding wheels.
I’ve been working on it in Studio, and of course it’s been more difficult than I’d anticipated, for all kinds of reasons. But as of right now, I expect that I will have four rovers, good for three photos (two rovers are small and identical) for Febrovery, and I’m pretty psyched. I don’t know if Frost plans to bring his construction paper landscapes to Walter’s house.
I still need to post pics from my last trip to Walter’s house, which was this past March. There was a definite difference of opinion regarding interpretation of the build.
>> Yay, I win! What is my prize?
Let’s see, what did I post when I announced the contest? Ah, here it is:
“Your prize is the glory of winning and being able to trash talk everybody who guessed wrong.”
Let the trash talking begin! Also, you get to drive the trolley.
My parts still haven’t arrived, even though it’s coming up on a month since they supposedly shipped. I submitted the parts request the first week of November.
My Tic Tac Toe set came in the mail last Friday. My other set that I ordered with it (since it required a “purchase”) shipped around the same time and arrived the next day. That set had been listed as back-ordered to February, so the question of whether or not I would have still gotten a Tic Tac Toe set if they’d actually waited until February to send the other set will have to remain a mystery.
I assembled the set this evening. Except for the astronauts, the set is quite possibly the least interesting one I’ve ever built. In my Google search (see below), I found the Jay’s Brick Blog article on the set, where they describe the helmet-visor combination as “odd”, so it’s not just Tim @timf I’ve already removed them.
My parts (including the 16×16 plate) came in a single resealable plastic bag, which obviously isn’t how they usually do it, and I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen that happen before. In fact, you can see it in the second photo of the Jay’s article. Also, the Jay’s article talks about how the cover of the instructions doubles as the cover of the box, but mine arrived with the instructions inside, and the yellow box cover exposed (also seen in the second photo). I don’t know how typical that is either, and I don’t know if I should read anything into that.
In step 11 of the set, they add a gem piece and a white tile on a gray roller skate. I’m not sure what that’s about, and not surprisingly, a Google search did not help. At first I thought maybe it was for some kind of tic tac toe scoring tradition that I’m unaware of, but now I’m thinking it’s decoration, representing a domed building? gem? and a rover in microscale. If so, that’s some of the lamest decorating I’ve ever seen, and I’m giving Lego an F for that one. The Jay’s article is saying rover and gem.
The cameraman does a nice job of slowly panning over the builds. It’s great for the builds you’re interested in, although less so for those you’re not.
Early on, the video gets to David Koudys’s large classic space build. I have been familiar with it on Flickr for years and years, but I have never seen it in person or talked to David in any way. At the 10:30 mark, one Tim Freshly can be seen having a conversation with Koudys in the background.
Tim’s display shows up at 1:03:39, and gets about 15 seconds of screen time.
I’m still less than halfway through the video. If there’s any more updates, I’ll edit this post, rather than creating a new one.
It has occurred to me that the contest was supposed to have ended awhile ago. The parts did not actually ship until November 25, and they still have not arrived. They should show up before the end of the week. There is no tracking information given.
The actual number of parts submitted for replacement is: 1114
The winner of the contest is Frost. Pam’s guess was only 19 farther away than Frost’s.
If I can get the photos edited to a suitable size for this website, I’ll post them here.
In a curious quirk of the Lego website, the order page lists the total number of parts as 1112. So I thought there was an error, but I checked the individual quantities for each part, and Lego got them all correct, and they’re all there. And I checked that those numbers really add up to 1114, and they do. So who knows what’s going on there.
This video was posted. I have not watched it yet, so I don’t know when Tim’s stuff shows up. It is not a BTB vid, and I am not familiar with the YT userid of the creator.
A day or two after I got my original code, I was back on the page, and it would have let me redeem points for a second set. I hesitated because then I’d have to place two orders in order to redeem them both, and I was having trouble coming up with one order. And a day or two after that, it was sold out (and instead of saying the number of points to redeem, it said $19.99, which was crossed out).
To get my creamsicle set, I ended up ordering my Christmas present early, with the idea that it would just sit here until late December, but it’s back-ordered until February (although in the past, I’ve had back-ordered stuff show up way way earlier than what they’d originally said). They have not gone ahead and sent the bonus set separately, so we’ll see if they have a system in place that holds one for me until my order is sent.
I did not catch that there’s no air tanks before Mike K pointed it out. Fortunately, air tanks are not particularly expensive on BL. Even the orange ones are cheap, they used them for the divers in a bunch of City underwater sets recently.
>> I already know I have an addiction to buying lego. Especially Lego Minifigures. Did you really need to package my purchase in a pill bottle BrickLink seller???
That is bizarre. They are wasting space in the package, and I don’t see how a container like that is offering much protection – the minifig is just gonna bonk around in there the entire trip. Maybe if the delivery truck accidentally drives into a river, your minifig will float gently to safety.
>> Real things sometimes cost less than the LEGO version. Here is a good example:
>
>> This looks like a case of “if we list it as free, people won’t be committed; if we list it for a ‘steal’ of a price, we’ll only get serious inquiries.”This is an apples and oranges comparison to me: my Lego piano was bought new, and this piano is used. I think more likely it’s a case of “this piano is in crap condition”, although I am aware that piano prices have plunged in the past 25 years.
I worked as a piano salesman for Trombino’s in the late 90’s, and we had people coming in every week trying to sell us their old piano, and they always expected it to be super valuable, when in fact it was not, and they were always disappointed that we had zero interest. The first thing we asked was when was the last time it had been tuned; if it hasn’t been tuned in twenty years, it isn’t worth much. We didn’t even look at them, and I think I saw them take just one in trade in the year I was there (and I don’t know how that got set up).
Also, we told new piano buyers to not put it in direct sunlight, or over a heat vent, or even against an outside wall, so the photo and the phrase “sun-weathered on one side” is setting off serious alarm bells.
>> So is it that there also another one at Dulles on the dates you mentioned?
>
>> Does anyone go to the Fredericksburg one?The Chantilly one will show up on the website eventually, presumably once the contract with the venue is signed.
The Chantilly one is the big one, and has been running since 2008. Off the top of my head, the LUG had eleven members in our display area last year.
The Fredericksburg one is smaller and is an hour farther away by car. To my knowledge, the only person in the group who has gone to it is me, in 2023. I am registered for 2025 and there is a thread for it:
>> Not entirely sure if getting the (hopefully valid) promo code essentially reserves the reward or what. I guess I’ll find out once I get around to trying to redeem the the promo code I received.
I was wondering that also. Earlier I got in, but then it was a 404 error, and some other weird pages where it only partially loaded. Eventually I got in, found the creamsicle set, and when I clicked ‘Redeem’, it took me back to the waiting room. Eventually though, without me doing anything, the waiting room sent me to the page for the set, so I also got a code. I had enough points for two of them, so I was debating, but Lego decided for me by limiting me to one.
I did not realize (or expect) that I would need to redeem it with a purchase, and I had not planned on ordering from lego-dot-com anytime soon, so I was still looking to see what I might want to buy when Mike K’s post came in. So I haven’t actually tried to redeem the code yet.
It looks like a bunch of other GWP’s and deals became available at midnight as well, so I’m doubtful that the orange astronauts are alone to blame for the traffic jam.
>> It appears this is an Insiders Reward available for redemption with 2400 Insiders points. Goes live 11/29.
Which is right now, and for the past several minutes, I have not been able to get onto lego-dot-com. I’ve been placed in a “waiting room” due to “high demand”, which refreshes automatically every 20 seconds. At first I wondered if the site had been hacked, but I’m wondering if this explains it. Everybody’s trying to get their orange astronauts before they sell out.
I need less than one set, thanks. I would like one each of the list below, the rest will of the set will be available for other people:
Bogeyman, Wolfpack Beastmaster, Steampunk Inventor, Telescope Kid, Jetpack Racer, Crazy Cat Lover, Pirate Quartermaster.
>> I saw this at TJMAxx
To me, the most fascinating part of this is “plus a 32-page mini book describing his surprising origins.” Is this really a story that requires 32 pages to tell? Maybe it is. But I’m not sure I want to gamble $13 on it, considering that it would most likely end in disappointment.
Last year I saw an article online where they interviewed the design team that came up with those eight-foot tall Halloween skeletons, it was billed as “behind the scenes”. But it basically boiled down to “we wanted to make a really big skeleton”. Which is cool, but not really worthy of its own article.
>> Eleventeen. Wait, no… Thirty-Twelve!
You forgot my personal favorite, eleventy-billion.
>> Would that include “Most days between posts in Own Thread” at 516 days?
Ha, I doubt it. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything on the threads from Jim R, Kevin M, or Rich M @tcsbgdady @mrmain18 @zaximillian. This is another instance though where I’m posting because I’m not building. Some of you may be aware that my time management grade for Chantilly was D, and my time management grade for Erie was D-minus-minus, so I didn’t exactly have time to post about what I was doing.
>> I’m gonna go with 997. I feel like you may have told me a ballpark number at some point (probably in an email somewhere I could refer to if I really tried, but that seems like too much work)
That’s one of many reasons why this isn’t a serious contest, I was aware that some people would have a slight advantage. Mostly I was thinking of the Build n Chill regulars, since I did a lot of disassembly there last January and December, with near-constant whining about the breakage of parts. I don’t know how many of them subscribe to this thread though @kyle2022 @loganc @mitchsbricks @schaup
Update: I’m embarrassed to admit that I found a >gasp< copy/paste error in my Excel sheet. Presumably all the other numbers are correct, but the cell that added up the grand total was wrong. So we have the correct number now, fortunately before the contest has ended.
Lego emailed me back. They wanted a list with part id’s for each part – you know, the ones that go with each part in the inventory list at the end of the set instructions. I see the wisdom of doing it this way, it means there’s no confusion as to exactly what parts I’m asking for. But it also meant I had to look up the numbers for eighteen different parts, and to my knowledge, there’s no master list. So I had to look up each part on BL, pick a set that contains that part, download the instructions .pdf for that set from lego-dot-com, and scroll to the end to find the part. I started picking larger sets with lots brown in hopes of getting multiple parts per instructions. The A-Frame House was definitely my friend.
I made a new, consolidated spreadsheet, took a screenshot, and sent it to them. While I was typing here, I got two replies, including one that says my parts should arrive in 7-12 days. So now we wait. They also typoed “doe” for “for” in the last email, very professional (thank you doe doing this).
Hi Mark, and welcome. How’d you find out about us? Are you aware that there’s a meeting coming up in December? (It is on the wrong side of Pittsburgh from you, unfortunately.)
>> I’m going to say 1500, but I feel like that’s either really conservative or really high.
Whoo hoo! So I have at least one guess, which means my contest won’t be a total bust. Obviously I can’t comment on the accuracy of your guess without putting you at a disadvantage.
So during the first intermission, I went to lego-dot-com to ask for replacement parts. The current system for missing or broken parts requires you to choose a specific set, and then pick parts off the list for that set. If there’s a way around that, I couldn’t find it. And the problem is, it won’t let you select a greater number of parts than comes in that set. So if you need twenty of part A, and the set you’re selecting from contains two of part A, you’d have to submit a request ten times to get there. This obviously wasn’t gonna work in this situation.
You can also email them, so I did that. It should surprise no one that my email was long and detailed. And I got a reply already. They asked for photos, as expected, but they also asked for proof of purchase for all sets that the parts came in, which I can not provide. I’d already said in my email that at this point I have no idea what parts came from what sets.
I’m about to clear off table space in the Lego room so that I can take photos. We’ll see how it goes.
I am running a contest in this space.
Some of you may be aware that Lego made reddish brown (and also sometimes dark red) parts that were defective, became brittle, and would break during regular use. I’ve been told that Lego will replace the parts if you submit a request online.
Some of you may be aware that I came up with a technique for building large structures using brackets and plates (with minimal or no use of bricks). I did my initial test builds in 2015 and 2016, and I then successfully used the technique in my never-finished Exton 2022 build, Mysterious Planet versions 1.0 to 1.3 (2023), my test build for Ross Park Mall (2024), and Planet Ben versions 1 and 1.5 (2024). All those builds have been disassembled.
In 2015 and 2016 and beyond I bought a ton of plates in anticipation of those (and other) builds. At that time, the cheapest color on BL was invariably reddish brown. I didn’t know it was an issue until several years later, so it’s still unclear to me if prices were low at the time because supply exceeded demand (which is what usually creates low prices on BL), or if it’s because people were staying away because of the risk of breakage, or both. I bought all the parts new.
Every part that has been broken has been saved. I put them in bags, wrote down on 3×5 cards what they are, and except for the first batch, dated them. I can’t find the oldest bags, one would have the initial group from 2016 – probably five parts – and one would have plates that broke during the disassembly of Those Space Plants Aren’t Gonna Water Themselves v2.1 in September of 2021 – probably less than a dozen parts.
I’m pretty sure I have the rest on hand here which are from September 2022 until now, and since it will be awhile since any more brown plates get used again, it seemed like a good time to submit a request to Lego for replacements. So I created a spreadsheet and went through all the 3×5 cards and transferred the numbers so I know what to ask for. I haven’t submitted it to Lego yet.
The contest is: guess how many replacement parts I will be asking Lego for.
Your prize is the glory of winning and being able to trash talk everybody who guessed wrong. Closest guess wins; in case a of tie, higher guess wins. All the parts are reddish brown rectangular plates, of eighteen different types, which broke on 36 different days. They’d been in a variety of ziploc bags, so once they were entered in the spreadsheet, I consolidated them into a 3-gallon bag, until I realized they weren’t all gonna fit, so the overflow is in a 1-gallon bag.
The only other hint you get is that, until I hear otherwise, I am claiming the LUG record for this. Some of you may be aware that I have claimed several Guinness-style records within the LUG. They are:
1) Most Lego rooms visited at residences of other LUG members.
2) Tallest tower built and transported for public display.
3) Most brittle brown replacement parts submitted to Lego.
4) Most lava.One guess per person. Post your guesses on this thread. The deadline for guessing is midnight on November 30, 2024.
Incidentally, I still have plenty of reddish brown remaining from that time period, either cause they survived being used in the recent builds, or because they haven’t been used yet. Either way, a lot of them are very stiff, and so once I start building for Erie next September, I expect the breakage to continue.
There’s an existing thread on this somewhere that was started this year. It was active as recently as this summer.
There’s a couple of articles on the subject that are really good and were posted on BrickNerd in August that I meant to post to that thread but never did.
The best for me is probably January, I can do any weekend. Nov and Dec are busier, and currently not completely decided.
If you go to the brickfair-dot-com exhibitor info, it’s currently the first news item. He’s still working on the contract for next year, and he never starts registration until the contract is in place. I don’t know why some years it takes longer to sort out the contract than others, there’s definitely been years when I got home from BrickFair on a Sunday and registered for the following year the next day.
But he does confirm that it’ll be the first weekend in August. I would have been willing to assume that even if he hadn’t posted it, it’s always the first full weekend in August. That means that in 2025, we’ll start on Wednesday, July 30 and end on Sunday, August 3.
Also – I mentioned this at Q3 and then didn’t follow through (because, Erie, but also because I am the worst) – Dan Pikora contacted me on Discord with a link to a Flickr album of photos he took of our island, and explicitly gave us permission to use the photos for things like The Gallery and Facebook. I’m probably too slow here, since I know photos for this event have been posted to both places and I’m not sure we need more, but the photos are nonetheless available to us, or if you just wanna check them out. I never get tired of seeing my own builds photographed by other people.
Dan is a very thorough photographer, so you might get some angles or close-ups not seen elsewhere. The downside is that he doesn’t curate his own photos, so all the ones that are blurry or too dark or otherwise unusable are all still in there, and it’s up to us to pick out the best ones. (I’ve talked to him about, he’s aware, he just doesn’t have time to do it.)
Also, the album contains the entire island (for a total of 395 photos), since he wasn’t sure where we begin and end. For those who weren’t there but are still following the thread – Steel City LUG photos are 1477-1622, and 1814-1871. (The ones in the middle, 1623-1813, are not us.) *** EDIT: typo corrected, I originally posted 1844, not 1814. ***
I still haven’t posted yet that the Hanlon & Hanlon GBC video for this event was posted nearly three weeks ago (while we were at Erie). Zander’s stuff shows up around 35:50, and his modules get nearly 30 seconds of screen time, which is a big upgrade over the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it treatment he got last year @knb112
I also still haven’t gotten around to watching the whole thing. The person who is functioning as the host here is unknown to me. The link I’m posting should start at 35:47.
>>> for $150 shipped, 27 straight, 2 left switch, 2 right switch, 34 curve – all dark gray 9v. and they threw in 1 RC curve.
>
>>> If we get 3 more to approve the $150 to refund me, we’ll have more to ballast/mils.I approve.
