(no subject)

My manager walked in just before I was about to leave, carrying a big chunk of die-cast metal. Yay, industrial espionage! They want me to open it without damaging what's inside. It's a textbook-sized heatsink, that has been cast to exactly fit the electronics inside, so wherever it has a bit sticking up, there's something tall underneath. But, as I've found in digging away at it, it has ribs that extend all the way down to the single board inside, so there's no easy way to just cut it in half or anything. I'm having to slice it away in 2mm strips around the major components to make sure they're not attached to the heatsink, and then around the perimeter to see if I can free the whole thing from the board. It's the heavy metal version of archaeology.