There are normal ways to spend a weekend.
Then there is apparently the way I spend a weekend.
The video is already up on YouTube and Rumble, and if you watched it, you got at least part of the experience. But looking back at the whole weekend on Monday morning, I have come to the realization that I am physically incapable of saying, “I am just going to make this one simple thing.”
Because that is never what happens.
The Macintosh Classic II project continues to be the perfect example.
What started as putting a Raspberry Pi into an old Macintosh case has now become an exercise in airflow, mechanical engineering, 3D printing, electronics, power distribution, fan control, mounting systems, serviceability, and apparently how many different ways one person can redesign a clip before admitting that a machine screw and a nut may have been the correct answer all along.
This weekend was heavily focused on the rail system.
I have been working on a dovetail-style mounting system so the boards inside the Macintosh can slide into place and still be removable later. Because if I am going to build this thing, I do not want the electronics permanently buried inside it. I want to be able to pull a board out, change something, replace something, or redesign something without dismantling the entire computer.
Which led to the locking mechanism.
First there was the spring clip.
Then there was the idea of printing the spring separately so the print layers would be oriented correctly for flexing.
Then there was the zipper-style latch.
Then there was a force-style latch pushing up from underneath.
Then there were magnets.
Then there was the realization that I could put a nut into the rail, run a machine screw through it, and simply use mechanical pressure to lock the damn thing down.
There is a point in every project where engineering slowly turns into a competition between yourself and the obvious solution.
The obvious solution occasionally wins.
Even that was not enough, because once I printed the pieces and started looking at how the force was being distributed, now I am thinking about spacers, printed feet, washers, screw diameter, nut diameter, and making sure I am not concentrating all of the clamping force into a few layers of printed plastic.
This is what happens when you start treating a 35-year-old computer case like you are designing something for NASA.
And then there is the fan controller.
I have been designing an ESP32-based controller for the Macintosh. Multiple PWM fan channels, temperature sensors, eventually power control, a web interface, logging, NeoPixels, communication with the Raspberry Pi, and probably several other things I will decide it absolutely needs five minutes after I finish designing the board.
Then I found somebody already selling something remarkably close to what I need.
Four fan channels. Sensors. ESP32. Web interface.
About thirty bucks.
For approximately five minutes I had the perfectly reasonable thought:
“Why am I building this?”
Then I noticed where it comes from.
Germany.
So that thirty-dollar controller may not actually be a thirty-dollar controller by the time it travels halfway across the planet to Massachusetts.
Shipping has a funny way of restoring confidence in your unnecessarily complicated homemade electronics project.
And naturally, while all this was happening, my brain was not content with simply working on the Macintosh.
We wandered into material science.
I started thinking about printing hollow structural pieces with internal lattice structures and then vacuum-infusing them with epoxy. Because apparently if ordinary 3D printing isn’t complicated enough, the next logical step is composite manufacturing in the house.
We talked about layer orientation.
Print porosity.
Epoxy infiltration.
Mechanical loading.
And why silicone that smells like vinegar while curing is probably not what you want sitting around electronics.
That last one is actually useful information. Acetic-cure silicone releases acetic acid while curing, which is why it smells like vinegar, and electronics generally don’t need me deliberately introducing corrosive vapor into their environment.
Somewhere during all of this, I also ended up stopping at a bar because the universe decided one of my friends was playing right around the corner from my last rideshare drop-off.
Because apparently the universe also schedules side quests.
I didn’t particularly want bar food, but I did discover that AirPods Pro with noise cancellation make remarkably good improvised hearing protection when you end up around live music.
Then, because none of this was enough variety for one weekend, we wandered through television and movie storytelling.
There was Burn Notice.
There were ideas about recontextualizing the entire series around Michael and Fiona having a daughter that nobody knew about.
There were family secrets, letters to Madeline, Nate’s son Charlie, and the realization that once you introduce one hidden piece of information into an established story, dozens of old scenes suddenly acquire completely different meanings.
Then there was an old vampire-story memory involving a vampire who discovers that everyone around him eventually becomes a monster trying to kill him.
And somehow we eventually arrived at Marvel.
Because why wouldn’t we?
Watching Infinity War again produced another one of those “wait a minute” moments.
Stormbreaker isn’t simply a weapon that Eitri made for Thor.
Thor personally holds open Nidavellir and takes the energy of the star while the Uru is being melted.
Groot then uses his own arm to create the handle.
So whether Marvel ever intended this explanation or not, Stormbreaker is effectively born from three sources.
Eitri gives it form.
Thor gives it power.
Groot gives it life.
Which suddenly gives a surprisingly good explanation for Stormbreaker’s personality later on.
Especially the jealousy.
Mjolnir doesn’t reform for Thor. It reforms for Jane Foster.
Then Thor sees his old hammer again and immediately starts acting like somebody who just unexpectedly ran into an ex.
Meanwhile Stormbreaker — the weapon created specifically for him, during one of the most traumatic moments of his life — is standing there watching the whole thing.
If Stormbreaker contains even a little bit of Groot’s personality and a little bit of Thor’s emotional imprint, the jealous axe suddenly makes perfect sense.
And that may be the best summary of the entire weekend.
I started with a Macintosh.
I ended up discussing mechanical engineering, additive manufacturing, composite structures, electronics, international shipping, corrosive silicone, live music, Burn Notice, vampires, Marvel mythology, and the emotional problems of an enchanted axe.
And somehow all of these things make perfect sense while I am doing them.
This is also why The Gigman’s Life was never really going to be only about driving.
The driving is what puts me in different places.
It pays the bills.
It gives me time to think.
But the gig life is everything happening around it.
It is figuring something out while walking around a hardware store.
It is redesigning a bracket three times.
It is finding somebody already built the thing you are building and then discovering they are six time zones away.
It is pulling apart a thirty-second scene from a movie and realizing there is a surprisingly coherent explanation buried inside it.
And sometimes it is looking back on Monday morning and wondering exactly how all of that happened in approximately forty-eight hours.
The video from this weekend is already up on YouTube and Rumble.
Consider this the written incident report.
No Macintoshes were harmed.
Yet.