Comment Well, Crap (Score 1, Interesting) 206
I've been reading Slashdot for years, but I don't think I've posted less than half a dozen times, and think all of those were probably a single line.
Not only did I do something that pisses me off royally when I see other people do it (giant blocks of text with no whitespace), I compounded the idiocy by not using the 'Preview' button.
I'm really annoyed at myself, mainly because this was the first thing I'd read on Slashdot that I actually felt I had something which I could contribute, and then I went and screwed up the posting. I'm guessing a lot of people are like me, and when faced with a giant chunk of text, just skip it and go on to the next post.
Luckily I saved a copy in case the form conked out in mid-post, as has happened numerous times before. So if you skipped the first one, now you can save your retinas and read this properly formatted one.
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Did you know the company actually doesn't want you to call them Legos? I think they prefer something like 'Lego bricks'. They get all uppity when it comes to trademark names.
Anyway, I had a pretty good stash of Legos when I was younger. Currently my sister and I are both in our mid-thirties with two kids each, and our Legos were sitting alone in some boxes in our parent's basement. One day my dad decided that those Legos should be in the hands of his grandchildren, so he set to work.
He could have just roughly split them in halves and sent them to us, but he's far too anal retentive for that. No, first he organized all the bricks by color. Now this wasn't a ridiculously large collection like some people probably have, but it's still maybe 4-5 cubic feet of Legos.
Then once he had that done, the real fun began. He pulled out all the instruction sheets we'd saved and started pulling out the blocks for them. I'm not sure what he sent to my sister, but I got one big set and three smaller ones, all nicely segregated in their own little Ziploc bag. Of course that was along with the other six bags of bricks, neatly organized by color.
Whether it was luck, or maybe him remembering that it was my favorite, I ended up with the Galaxy Explorer. Just a few weeks ago my 3 1/2 year old was bored, and I told him about this cool rocket ship we could build, so I pulled it out and started putting it together. The instruction booklet has all these cute little check marks next to all the pieces; my dad marking off what he'd found. Occasionally there's an 'X'; something that was missing that I needed to go find a substitute for. As it was, my finished Galaxy Explorer had some odd white plates underneath and a few other out of place bricks, but it was good enough.
My son played with it every night after our youngest went to bed. (Didn't want him eating any carelessly dropped bricks.) It didn't take him long before he'd progressed to a new favorite method of play: pulling the heads off of all the minifigs and making neat little stacks of them, along with little rows of legs and torsos. I'd think there was something wrong with him, but I distinctly remember making little stacks of minifig heads myself.
Much to the chagrin of my wife, I've used this as an opportunity to start buying more Lego sets, which is great, because he can't really follow directions yet, so I get to put them all together.
Not only did I do something that pisses me off royally when I see other people do it (giant blocks of text with no whitespace), I compounded the idiocy by not using the 'Preview' button.
I'm really annoyed at myself, mainly because this was the first thing I'd read on Slashdot that I actually felt I had something which I could contribute, and then I went and screwed up the posting. I'm guessing a lot of people are like me, and when faced with a giant chunk of text, just skip it and go on to the next post.
Luckily I saved a copy in case the form conked out in mid-post, as has happened numerous times before. So if you skipped the first one, now you can save your retinas and read this properly formatted one.
------------------
Did you know the company actually doesn't want you to call them Legos? I think they prefer something like 'Lego bricks'. They get all uppity when it comes to trademark names.
Anyway, I had a pretty good stash of Legos when I was younger. Currently my sister and I are both in our mid-thirties with two kids each, and our Legos were sitting alone in some boxes in our parent's basement. One day my dad decided that those Legos should be in the hands of his grandchildren, so he set to work.
He could have just roughly split them in halves and sent them to us, but he's far too anal retentive for that. No, first he organized all the bricks by color. Now this wasn't a ridiculously large collection like some people probably have, but it's still maybe 4-5 cubic feet of Legos.
Then once he had that done, the real fun began. He pulled out all the instruction sheets we'd saved and started pulling out the blocks for them. I'm not sure what he sent to my sister, but I got one big set and three smaller ones, all nicely segregated in their own little Ziploc bag. Of course that was along with the other six bags of bricks, neatly organized by color.
Whether it was luck, or maybe him remembering that it was my favorite, I ended up with the Galaxy Explorer. Just a few weeks ago my 3 1/2 year old was bored, and I told him about this cool rocket ship we could build, so I pulled it out and started putting it together. The instruction booklet has all these cute little check marks next to all the pieces; my dad marking off what he'd found. Occasionally there's an 'X'; something that was missing that I needed to go find a substitute for. As it was, my finished Galaxy Explorer had some odd white plates underneath and a few other out of place bricks, but it was good enough.
My son played with it every night after our youngest went to bed. (Didn't want him eating any carelessly dropped bricks.) It didn't take him long before he'd progressed to a new favorite method of play: pulling the heads off of all the minifigs and making neat little stacks of them, along with little rows of legs and torsos. I'd think there was something wrong with him, but I distinctly remember making little stacks of minifig heads myself.
Much to the chagrin of my wife, I've used this as an opportunity to start buying more Lego sets, which is great, because he can't really follow directions yet, so I get to put them all together.
