Intel China's Modding Expo

Arrival and preparations

Arrival in Beijing was (like much of the trip) an execution of both perfection and utter disaster. We all touched down timely and in one piece, which was a nice start to the trip. After flying for eight to twelve hours each, it felt good to be on land again. Intel met us at the gate with a welcome sign and a pick-up crew, so none of us had any trouble getting to our destination.

Unfortunately, our belongings were of a different story. Geoff’s luggage ended up “somewhere else.” He has assured me since this point that (much like one of our modder’s passports) it wasn’t “lost,” but instead “mislaid.” Apparently there is a difference.

The mods were the true tragedy though. Out of the five mods that were shipped over there, only three arrived in any reasonable facsimile of the word “whole.” Upon arrival on Sunday, each modder had to go to the office and assess the damage to his baby. Like any good parents, we did something to assuage our grief by racking up a $750 USD bar tab in the hotel lobby.

Magnus knew to be concerned on the state of Puzzlebox 2.0 due to an MSN conversation he had with one of the reps, who was asking how to pull a cord out of a fan inside the main chamber. “Oh no,” he said. “The mod is difficult to take apart and I’d rather you not risk that. I’ll fix it as soon as I get there.” The rep assured him that access was not the problem…

Somehow in transit, Puzzlebox got turned into a pile of plexi. It was a miracle that the hardware contained didn’t end up damaged, but it somehow survived. The bigger question was how the mod sustained such damage, when one looks at the shipping container. Of course, if you look at Mikael’s shipping container for the dragon head, you can understand why his was the only one to survive unscathed.

Sangaku suffered some of its own damage when the drive housing snapped, causing the DVD and hard drive to fall down, bounce around, and generally break stuff. One of the wooden pieces of a shoji door got blown out, the video card was toast, and the heatsink had been jarred loose.

Fortunately, the E6600 CPU, Corsair Dominator RAM and Asus Commando motherboard weren’t damaged, but the video card was toast. Thankfully, Nick had the foresight to pack his BFG 8800GTS (the system’s real card) separately and brought it with him. The broken card was just an old Radeon X800.

Hypercube suffered its own minor damages – the beautiful brushed finish on the aluminum was noticeably scratched up, and several wires and lights had jarred loose. Most of them were fixable, but there wasn’t time to get the second rheostat working.

Each mod required some pretty serious fixing work, but fortunately our modders pulled it off. By Monday evening, each was ready to take its place as a showpiece. It only took until shortly after 1:00AM.