Addy. So sorry, hope you have some good books to get you through the week. Be sure to remind him he is no longer a "single" dork.

nocar

I credit my love of engineering to LEGO Technic. Back when my folks were willing to spend fifty dollars (this was about oh, close to a decade ago) on a single Lego kit, it made me a very happy Homer. I built one recently, and with my almost twenty-one years of knowledge and *ahem* wordly "wisdom," I was amazed at the sheer quality of the LEGO components. I would have to agree that in this case, you get what you pay for.

A couple linkies:

My favorite building toy store:
[www.constructiontoys.com]

and something I have to say is at least as cool, if not cooler than LEGO Technic:
[www.fischertechnik.com]

Enjoy, Jesus. I'm painfully envious :3

SonOfMagicFact

My goodness. Thats a huge set. I'd love to get that, but I'm sure it is quite expensive, and I really don't have the space for a huge lego ship. Also, I'm not a starwars fan to begin with... if it were something unique/original I'd be more likely to get it.

weggles90

oh my jesus (diaz)

heh i got the collectors star destroyer a few years back...

it was the biggest at around 18 pounds and 3,000 pieces

took me three days to build by myself

whew...godspeed

canfezplay

Dude, that lego set looks sooooo fun! Haha I remember when the 350 piece sets used to be the biggest thing you could buy, and I thought I was so lucky when I got the castle one out of the knights series. But still, even grown up (slightly) I gotta say Lego's are one of the best, if not the best toy that I've ever encountered.

SomeoneUKno

How much ?

id3379

Yikes!

Vagabum

I envy you...my parents think I'm too old for LEGO and won't buy it for me anymore =[

And working to get money is not an option =[

teexcue

this is a great pre xmas gift. I hope you make the 1 picture an hour of your progress, and then add music by Carly Comando.

dysthymia

HEEEEEEERE'S JESUS!

oo0cyst0oo

@nocar: yeah what he said.
Single....yeah, "single." man, you probably said it better and everything.

I like the Shining look.

oo0cyst0oo

To be continued? The suspense!

Roflcopter_Down

That's good and all, but can you get it to run Linux?

But seriously though, that thing looks sweet. I'd love to get one if only to have an assload of Lego blocks to cannibalize into other projects.

DisposableInterloper

@warkrismagic: damn timezone eh?! always makes me confuse

Amiash

I just now noticed this, but..

wtf timezone do you guys use for your posts? I'm in Jersey and its 2AM Tuesday the 18th. The times for all the comments seem right, but it says Jesus posted this 6 hours from now at 8AM today. What gives?

warkrismagic

Isn't that bloke a bit old for this sort of thing?

nincompoop

I hope you are that stoked when you are 500 hours into it.

faust1200

[shop.lego.com] - 499$ and you too can time-lapse your life.

HotShotNN

This video will help picking up chicks. Especially the licking.

BTW, who's house is that? Looks too clean for a tech head.

freakshow1

I got this a couple months ago and it is a really sweet model, but the ventral hull could use some help staying attached.

Anyways, I did the full-geek thing and built mine wearing Star Wars shirts and watching Star Wars DVDs. I was able to get through all three prequel movies, both Clone Wars DVDs, and all three theatrical cuts of the original trilogy (seemed wrong to watch the remodified Special Editions when building a set that celebrates the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie) on the first day of building (wearing a t-shirt of the LEGO Star Wars 2 video game box art), and the lone Droids DVD (about half the series) and R2-D2: Beneath the Dome on the second day of building (wearing a Skywalker Ranch shirt). Total build time: 18 hours, 44 minutes, not counting breaks between DVDs (used to snack, rehydrate, etc.)

The biggest hindrance in building this thing is that they bagged them for packing efficiency which means there are some parts that are bagged by themselves in a single bag, and other parts that are spread across as many as a 10-12 different bags containing two different mixes of parts. A set like this would seriously benefit from the new trend of construction-packing the parts, where each bag will be numbered based on where in the construction process you use those parts. Start with all the #1 bags, move on to the #2 bags when instructed, and so on.

I'm thinking of tearing it apart and rebuilding it next year, but I'm going to make it a lot simpler this time around by disassembling each section into its own pile, so I don't have to search for small parts that are mixed in with over 5000 other pieces. Basically, I'm interested in seeing how long it takes to just _build_ it, if you don't have to either pre-sort the parts or paw through a huge pile for five minutes while looking for the last piece you need to complete the current step so you can move on to the next one.

Purple Dave

@jesusdiaz: I so envy you.
I want that thing, too. But my exams are coming up.
Dammit.

mangochutney

I'd cry just looking at that thing. There's no way I'd have the patience to build it.

This is basically me:

"Le Grille, what the hell is that?!"

ssjmichael

Jesus, good luck! PS I like to lick legos too. ;)

NaughtyBitsGLiF

@freakshow1: Yeah, I'm glad I'm married already. The house is the neighbours'. They had the door open, so I said to myself: "what the hell... why not?"

jesusdiaz

I actually built one at work about 2 months ago. Took me 9 days to finish, but was well worth the effort. People still walk into the office and ask us questions about it. Good luck with that, I was able to finish it in fewer man hours than were slated in the description, but I cannot say the same for the artists down the hall who have still not finished it (they recieved theirs a week before my group got one.)

goldaar

@jesusdiaz: PurpleDave FT?... damn, that was a long read.

NaughtyBitsGLiF

@Purple Dave: You win. :-)

jesusdiaz

@nincompoop: Good luck with that line of thinking. It'll get you far.

@Purple Dave: YEAH! That's what I'm talking about.

The biggest LEGO SW set I have to date is the Hailfire Droid, which took about 2 hours to put together.
I'm staggered by the sheer size of the BOX for the Millennium Falcon. What an awesome project.

@jesusdiaz: You're a lucky man, not only for getting this set but for having somewhere to PUT the thing! IT'S HUGE!!

CONGRATS AND ENJOY!
(Could you show the extra pieces left over when you're done? That's always interesting at the end.)

strider_mt2k

seperate baggies numbered for you?

LORD where's the fun in that! When i used to get the big lego sets i'd dump them all out in one big pile MUHHAHA

phantam

I like the devilish peek at the camera before the licking. Made it seem more authentic. Have fun, Jesus.

Let hope there are no dogs in the neighbors house that like to chew small plastic parts. That will definitely add a curve ball to the assembly.

iPhoneGroupie

Great Video. When he sniffed and licked the Legos, I cracked up. I am sure Addy does not mind the project at all, so long as she does'nt have to help.

Curves

@phantam: I do the same.

@strider_mt2k: Great idea!

@nincompoop: Here's another game: starts with a B and ends with R, has a lot of letters in the middle and makes "KAWABOOM" noise when I use it.

jesusdiaz

You guys...

I had to re-install LEGO Creator on my PC because of this post, but only because I looked in my own LEGO box and was appalled by how anemic it looked.

LEGO Creator is about 10 bucks and good fun on a PC.

strider_mt2k

captian: so many f*cking pieces! so little g-d damn time!! god i love coke!!!

jrghoull

@Purple Dave: Yeah, when I built the Star Destroyer, first thing I did was sort all the parts... [www.flickr.com]

keh

@weggles90: How about this lego:

[shop.lego.com]

misterbleepy

I had the lego Death Star. I was about halfway done when it fell over and shattered, I haven't done much with legos since then :(

archipod

Lego is cool, but I miss playing with my Capsela.

spaceman37

Girlie got me a highly-underrated tech present for Chrismukkah:

Pajamas and time enough to use them

I know what you're thinking - how are pajamas a tech present? By themselves, they're not. But coupled with two days alone in the house during a holiday week home from work, they are the perfect accompaniment to video games.

As pathetic as a marathon gaming binge is, pajamas class it up a bit more than spending the gaming time drooling and stewing in one's own funk while clad in natty boxers and an a-frame tee. Mass Effect, Halo 3, and Call Of Duty 4 - here I come!

(I didn't say it's not pathetic - just slightly classy)

omg-ponies

They have one in the Bellevue Lego Store. Damn thing is HUGE.

freakshow1

Man, I have this on my Amazon wish list. Envy envy envy. Have fun with it, and we're looking forward to the time lapse. Merry Christmas!

banmojo

@omg-ponies: I am also looking forward to a whole day in warm flannel jammies over holiday break. Unlike you, I wont be gaming or gamey, as I will shower, but for one day a year I get to indulge my inner lazy person. (Its only one friggin day and I REFUSE to feel guilty about it.)

Curves

@nincompoop: no one's too old for legos @goldaar: you got to do that at WORK??? @Purple Dave: that would make it too easy. This is a set for hardcore lego gurus!

MasterYong

I picked up the same lego set a while back and finished it in about 2 weeks. I didn't spend all my time on it. A little bit at a time. I eventually got it all finished but the weird thing is that there were a lot of extra pieces left over.

atomic80

Lego's are singlehandedly responsible for helping me give up cigarette's. If I didn't have something mindless to do for many evenings on end, I would have killed someone.

Thanks you LEGO!

I've done the Death Star. After the Christman Maul, I'll look for this one. Looks geekalicious.

FrankenPC

Saw one of these constructed in the Lego shop in Cologne a couple of days ago, that thing is friggin huge! If I remember correctly (already had me a couple Gluhwein mit Amaretto's) the box was something round 580 euro's. They also had the Death Star, Imperial Star Deystoyer, a motorized Walker from The Empire Strikes Back and a lot of other crap. (B-wings, A-wings, Return of the Jedi Walkers,...)

I smiled nice to my girlfriend...now I'm looking forward to unpacking a Death Star or a Millenium Falcon in a couple of days, hopefully... I already got me a Darth Vader keychain thingy to quench my thirst...

tknomel

My son grew up playing with Legos, he loved them, they were an excellent educational tool, I would recommend them to any child old enough not to eat them.
Thanks for this journal, I look forward to seeing the project progress. Thanks,

Fountainhead.

Fountainhead

I really hope he doesn't pour all of the contents into a pile...glad I didn't when I did it otherwise it would've lengthen the amount of time it takes to build it.

keeping it in bags meant I finished in about 4 days (w/about 8 hours of work per day.).

@atomic80: Extra pieces are normal. I actually called a CSA to find that out.

and yeah...
[img.photobucket.com]
totally worth it!

youruglyclone

You look like Ted Bundy in that first frame of the video lol

gizmo_dude

@misterbleepy:
Hahaha, oh wow. That's rediculous. When I get older I'm gunna get a house with one room devoted to lego, it'll have all the giant sets.

weggles90

@spaceman37: Capsula! That brings back memories

Atlantys

@canfezplay:Same here. It was a long weekend of doing nothing but putting pieces together. And it was the Greatest Weekend Evar(tm)

And I bought (at that time, only model of) the Millenium Falcon. But, of course, they released this monster version a couple of months later.

Atlantys

Extra pieces left over from Star Wars sets is what dragged me back into general play with 'em!

My wife saw me building stuff from them and started picking up random sets that were on sale based on them "looking like have cool pieces".

That's ma girl. :)

strider_mt2k

Man... I so want that lego set...I just wish it didn't cost 500$ or I would buy it in a heartbeat

Segretezza

Ok, so I looked up the price on this thing, only 500 dollars for the set. Needless to say, I will be buying this for me and not my kids.

lectric

@jesusdiaz:
Please, that's just a first try, after making sure I had a completely free weekend to devote to this. Go to a LEGO convention sometime next year and you're liable to see a group of people attempting a speed build with this model, as they did with both the UCS ISD and UCS Death Star before.

@phantam:
If you haven't built any of the larger UCS sets, you don't realize the power of the da...er, I mean how much time you can waste searching for specific parts. When I built the UCS X-Wing, it took me 3.5 hours to complete it, and the extra half hour was _wasted_ on searching for a 1x1 round plate that it turned out I was shorted on (I ended up subbing one in a different shade of grey, and ended up with no extras of either color, so my copy is still slightly inaccurate).

The annoying thing is that relatively small sets sometimes come with numbered bags when it doesn't really seem necessary, but larger sets in the same line often don't. And for this set alone, I had 80 _bags_ of parts spread out over about a 3'x5' area!

@strider_mt2k:
Yeah, 24 pounds, and it's triple-boxed when they ship it. One box for the set, one for case-packing (one set per case, which is rare for even large LEGO sets), and one "Millennium Falcon Shipper" box (yes, they had an overpack box custom-made just for this set).

@misterbleepy:
It's not bad, but I've seen cleaner renditions in a much smaller scale. I'm in the same LEGO club as the guy who built this version.

@strider_mt2k:
Try LDraw with the MLCad interface instead. It's all open-source, which means that some parts may never get added due to how complex they are, and part approval can take ages, but even so they have a much larger part library than anything that's been officially released, including many decorated parts.

@MasterYong:
Not to disparage the set, but there are people who have created entirely custom MF models, complete with detailed interiors. This makes many of the earlier versions look pretty bad from the outside (most of them had external construction for the mandible "pits" and were largely monochromatic), but some of the later iterations just blow this away, and then there are people who build _huge_ models, like a working, full-size, glue-free harpsichord, a minifig-scale US aircraft carrier with full fighter complement, crew, and detailed interior, or skyscrapers that stand nearly twice as tall as the builder (and I think I actually shot that photo for Jim).

@youruglyclone:
Many small parts are purposefully overpacked, so that if they "short" you a part, you don't have to call for a replacement. In this set, there were supposed to be 24 each of the 2x4 wings (both left and right) in light-bluish-grey, but I ended up with 23 extras of both, and enough visible in the finished model to know that it was unusual. They did have one bag that contained just those two parts, so I'm guessing the original sort left the set short by one pair, so they threw in a bag containing 24 pairs just to make absolutely certain that everyone got a complete set.

@Atlantys:
Only model? The UCS version is the fourth of five different official sets. There were also two smaller minifig-scale versions (2000 & 2004), a nano-scale version (2003), and most recently a version that only comes as a pre-glued keychain (2007).

Purple Dave