I ran into Kurt Schaefer again with a piece of wood that was a tad more charred than if it had come off one of our lasers. he explained, "yeah, I had this xy-table from 15 years ago and I've been switching out heads on it. decided to try and make myself a laser." "so you bought a tube and attached it..." I knee-jerkily suggested. "no, it's the cheapest laser around. I attached a magnifying glass to the head. and I use the sun."

"see here, I thought the break in the first 'e' was from the sun moving by the time it got back to the start. to test that, I did another 'e' a little slower and the gap turned out larger."

as he left, he mumbled something about gathering sun motion charts based on earth location and factoring compensation into his code.