Happy "Dealing With Badly Translated Assembly Instructions" Day.

[HopeHoops]

Good luck, everyone.

My kids are old enough now that if something needs to be assembled, they can just do it themselves. But I've had my share of 3 a.m. - "Fuck it, close enough" nights.

NOTE: The leftover part that looks like a random spare actually IS the most important part you forgot to put in.

[Denninmi]

1. Um, yeah, I can relate.

I bought a telescope back in about 2003 (whatever year Mars had its closest approach in a century), since I've always liked astronomy. It hooks up to laptop with a USB and came with software to automate the process. Once set up, you in theory use the software to tell it where to scan the sky, and it will.

Except, I never could make it work. The instructions were virtually undecipherable. The software installed, but the process of getting the telescope's motors aligned with celestial coordinates had to be done manually, and I couldn't figure out how to do it from the crappy manual.

I've looked at the moon a few times by manually sighting through it, but planets and stars are too small to find that way for the most part. So it sits in the basement.

[HopeHoops]

2. We have one similar. The problem is the high-tension lines near our house - you can't find "north".

With a little guess-work, you can get it aligned. I had it focused on Jupiter with four moons visible.

[AllyCat]

3. I think everything our kids got for Xmas this year involved hours of assembly and/or batteries

We still don't have it all put together so it went in a closet for a rainy/cold day this March.

Thanks for the laugh!

[HopeHoops]

4. Ours are old enough to do their OWN damn assembly now.

But I've been there (and up all night) many times.