fred67

+1 Dropsy for another great minifigure deal. ... and you're welcome, Janel.

I don't think so... out of all my complaints of using small bins in my sterilite drawers, that's not one of them. I mean, it's true you can't see what's in them, but with dividers you likely wouldn't be able to see everything anyway... and the usefulness of being able to pull the bins out for working makes it better, IMO, than fixed dividers in the drawers. I will admit, though, that I'm trying to move away from those sterilite drawers for storage of parts taking up small volumes... I'm preferring these kinds of Stanley Organizers, the tops are clear, there are two kinds - shallow with smaller bins, and larger with deeper bins, all removeable (which is becoming a prerequisite with me). However, now having about a dozen of those, they are getting hard to keep track of, and it's not always easy to label and organize them well using space optimally. For example, if I have slopes in one, my basic 2x2 slopes take up an entire large bin... but my cheese slopes take up a fraction of the smallest bin that fits in the same case. But if I want to keep slopes together, I have no alternative. I have another one with inverse slopes, and as you would expect, I require the largest bins in the case for the basic 2x2 inverse slopes, yet require little else for the other inverse slopes I have. As such, there's overflow from the regular slopes into the inverse slopes case... so it's just not really "optimal." I'm also investing in the the Akro-Mills "cabinets." Only the ones with large drawers, at this point, since you can divide them (although they don't give you enough dividers). I have two of them and a similar style one with both small and large drawers from another company. I should take newer pictures... but essentially I want the sterilite drawers, without dividers or bins, for the parts I have a lot of. I have a three drawer one with basic 2x2, 2x3, and 2x4 bricks that works really well. Smaller drawers for parts I have a lot of, but not requiring as much space. Then the Akro-mills and Stanley cases for smaller parts. I have several of these that I'd like to get rid of... the worst part is they have no catch at the top, so drawers slide completely out without any resistance (== too many messes for my clumsy old ham-fisted self): I guess that, while I think the little bins are a good solution to the organization-within-a-drawer problem, I'd like to move away from that myself. Edit: Yeah... it's not an easy problem. For example, I have a Stanley Organizer (link above) for tiles, but then PAB wall had 1x8 black tiles... so I got about 150 of them, and while I have a few uses intended for them, in meantime they will not fit in the organizer, so I have to keep them separate. Then there's one-offs that I have no idea what to do with... like one faucet (whole faucet, not just a tap). One winch. One string. One cat. One backpack. Even when there's more than one... am I going to give a whole drawer to 3 lightsaber hilts? What about my printed pieces? They're mostly all one-offs. One keyboard. One extra compass from POTC.... So, it's a game, it keeps evolving.

Ahh, one of the great mysteries of being a LEGO enthusiast... how much will shipping cost on bricklink. The answer, my friend, is like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop... the world may never know. Very few sellers can tell you in advance... think about it, this isn't Amazon... these people are selling mostly very low cost items and never know how much you're going to buy. They could quote a price for a flat rate box, but then you order a baseplate or something that doesn't fit, or you buy just a few too many pieces... Read the store terms - most of them will tell you something reasonable, like "actual postage plus $X handling/packing." If you really need to know, to the penny, before committing, I think you can email a link to your shopping cart from a seller's store and ask how much it will be before you commit to buy, some of them will give you a reasonable estimate. I will say this, though, I've got nearly 100 orders on BL and I never knew ahead of time what the shipping would be (except in rare cases), and never really had a big problem with it. Sometimes it seems the charges were a bit high, but nothing to complain about. It's true I've heard cases of people getting ripped for shipping, but look at the seller's feedback... hundreds of positives with few or no negatives should be a good indication they don't rip you off with shipping.

I use smaller containers, but am not particularly happy with it. These are the more shallow Sterilite drawers, right? I found bins that sort-of interlock (two sides have a lip that, when put next to the same type of bin in the same orientation, hold them together). Something like these: , but cheap dollar store ones. These look interesting: I wouldn't duct tape inside my drawers... I hate "permanent" modifications to things like that, and the residue from duct tape makes it, IMO, permanent enough that I wouldn't want to deal with it. The bins also make a lot of empty space... they don't fit exactly, and even if they did there'd be some wasted space between, but they work fair enough for organizing. I like the idea of bins, especially for smaller parts, that I can take out and work with.

+1 Janel for a great minifigure trade, and +1 Dino_Bot for a great deal on vintage SW.

Incredible... beautiful addition to any modular city, or even just on it's own... great work!

Y'all know me... know I'm a cheap-megablocks(*) (if you didn't know that, now you do). So having played Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger, using the first generation rules, I thought it would be cool if my son (now 12) got interested. The new rules (4th edition, a.k.a. "4e") are so involved and convoluted that it's driving me mad just trying to create some freaking characters... but I digress... Most of the new rules seem geared towards getting you to buy more stuff... where we once had graph paper, now you "need" to buy dungeon tiles... oh, and city tiles, and nature tiles, and cave tiles, and whatever other tiles they come up with... character creation is so convoluted I'm tempted to subscribe to D&D Insider just to use the online character generator. The also practically insist you play with "Official Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" figurines. Yeah! Right! So I'm wondering if anyone's used LEGO instead. We have all our player characters, with bows, swords, crossbows, daggers, backpacks... all the stuff you need. There's not a lot going on for monsters, but we do have orcs and trolls and dragons and smaller figures, like snakes and spiders and bats and so forth. I also have a couple of dragons from the fantasy era sets, and one really big creator dragon. I was thinking of gridding out a couple of 48x48 gray baseplates and making easy to place/remove blocks for walls and doors... you even have treasure and chests and so forth. For outside, of course, I have 32x32 green baseplates and some of the older style (not brick built) trees that could just be placeholders. So I figured I can't be the only one doing this, and wondered what other D&D fans might be doing. I'll perhaps MOC something up this evening, and hopefully some of you can give me some ideas. YES, I have googled... found some very cool stuff which I'll share in this post/thread, if people are interested. Some of the things I found are not quite what I had in mind - they used minifigures, but kept to the graph paper as a base; much of what I found was just LEGO dungeon scenes... too elaborate, IMO. This one is much more detailed than I'd want to do... I'm already getting bogged down with the new rules, I don't want to get bogged down in the details of putting something like this together, but it is quite cool. It's not quite for D&D, but the checkerboard floor is something I'd want to include; thinking 4x4 to represent a 5 foot square. Edit: I want to make it clear that brickquest sounds really cool, but I was specifically wanting to use LEGO to play D&D, although now I'm interested in brickquest, too. (*) With due respects to Sam Quint from "Jaws."

I think Kung Fu Panda 2 was ok, too... the peacock didn't bother me, with rapid moves and a lot of projectiles he came off as intimidating enough. I also just saw "Kick megablocks," and found it very entertaining and disturbing at the same time... which I think was the intended effect.

Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate it. I noticed when I was building it that it was too thin; it's hard to see in all black, but on the bottom, from about midway to the back, uses these: Which lets it taper slightly towards the back. I simply don't see how, using a straightforward building technique, to make it fatter in the mid section. I'm also not particularly happy with the front, either. It probably does slope too steeply, and the piece on front is not what I intended, but I didn't have the piece I wanted in black. I will definitely be modifying this ship and will post the results... just placed a BL order, but haven't even been invoiced yet. I may start over with a completely different technique... I just grabbed pieces and built this one; I think I will use graph paper to make sure to get the shape right.

I have no idea, but I can tell you they must be doing a pretty good job of keeping it quiet, because the interview was from around New Years 2011... meaning they said they were finishing up and it's been five months since that interview. Some people consider it spoilers, but I don't... I suspect we'll be seeing them soon, at least before 5 is officially released. I'm worried that they'll cut back on production, though... TRU still has 4 on the shelves, and my LEGO Store has both 3 and 4 still on the shelves - and not just a handful... looks like at least 150 of each, and that's just on display, I don't know what they've got in the back. I'm fine with that, I went with my son and we found two more elves (although he kept both ... this time).

I wrote first May 16 and got automated response, but no answer. Then again on May 21, and got automated response and no answer. Then on May 26 I wrote a complaint about not getting responses, and also called. I was told they'd send me the pieces (the real pieces, not the old coins), that they'd already sent the old ones after my first email, but apologized for not letting me know they sent anything. I'm glad, because if I'd have just accepted what they sent, I'd only have old coins and not the news with the bars.

You can't just soak them to get dust in hard to reach places, the dishwasher is the best, but I usually just put them in a bowl with warm detergent and let them soak, occasionally swishing with my hand to try to get the "current" to help clean out the harder to reach places. Dump them on a towel, pat them, sometimes tapping to get water out of the tubes, but mostly air drying. Don't dry them with a heater. They should not retain a smell.

Yes... lucky... The sets are too random for me. All the weapons are cool, I've bought from brickarms before, but I just don't need a variety like that.

Very well done... a beautiful MOC, from the stagecoach (wonderful looking and objectively quite accurate, as you've shown) to the driver, horses, and landscape... excellent.

Nice. I built mine last night. I think it's pretty neat; the metal bow and arrow are a bit strange... maybe a piece of art instead of a real weapon. I realize they don't give you the extras just for the hell of it, but it also seems strange that, if they're going to give you extras, it would be something as useless as a bucket handle... but then again, I'm sure some creative types could come up with some use for it. Good review, evilempire22. Nice idea, prateek, perhaps I'll add my own.

+1 Kenny for a great trade!

Yup... old light gray, like the Brickster said... this is where you're going to run into $$$ problems: Minimum $2/each in quantity... and you need 32.

113B DSCF0771 by FredJH, on Flickr DSCF0770 by FredJH, on Flickr Not much to say about it... I've already done a few revisions - made the sails more "billowy," did the masts with bars in them to both make them more sturdy and have something to attach the flags to... I would like to get a red stripe under the deck with the cannons, but unbelievably I have like 10 red right wedge plates of that size, and NO lefts (??? must have been a bulk buy).

+1 jondesouza for CMF for mini black pearl trades.

Welcome to Eurobricks, Tugarin. I wouldn't give up on Star Wars so easily; I'm only really a fan of the original trilogy and I also missed out on a lot of sets while concentrating on other themes. I won't buy those really super expensive sets that I missed, but occasionally come across a used set that seems worthwhile, and also have been really shocked and happy that TLG releases new versions of sets, so in the past year I've been able to get a new land speeder and Slave 1, and while I got lucky on a large millennium falcon, if you did not you will get your chance this year. Most of the really iconic sets have been redone, and I'm sure there will be more to come.

Subject says it... I am seeking: 30131 Jack Sparrow's Boat 30132 Voodoo Jack Sparrow I'm willing to buy or trade (please see my CMF Trading Thread). Thanks, Fred

I really wouldn't know... they didn't qualify "received" with "today" or "yesterday," so it certainly could have been on or before Tuesday.

Both are really nice, very good job LL. I do like the second one better, mostly because of the roof.

I finally got some answers, and this was one of them... However, after writing twice, then writing to complain they didn't answer either of my two requests, and finally calling, they told me my first request had been marked as answered and didn't know why no one had informed me. I'll let part of their response explain the rest: Unfortunately, at that time, we didn't actually have the gold bars you requested available. As of today, however, our warehouse has received inventory of the correct coins & gold bars, and I'm having two packs sent out for you. So... I just have to shake my head, but applaud the customer service... I just wish I didn't have to keep whining about it in order to just get a response.

Since you have joined the VIP Program, you have earned a total 4645 Points. ... and yet they won't respond to my inquiry about getting the chrome pieces... a few cents in parts for someone with 4645 rewards points. Yes, I will have to call. I hate calling, it's always annoying, waiting on hold, they have to pay an operator, they have to pay for the 800 number call, taking up time taking down my information when it's all right there in the electronic communication... maybe I'm just anti-social. At least I will make sure to mention the brick and not just the coins.