Basement cat

Hm, I've discovered that when I'm in the basement in the lab, the black cat hangs around me even more than when I'm sitting around upstairs. I don't know if it means anything. Maybe he's just basement cat. Or maybe he senses wonderful, exciting, dark and dangerous experiments yet to come! Mua,hahahaha! sorry, something caught in my throat there.
( G+ comments after the cut )

Where have all the good drives gone?

Dammit. I don't know what the deal is but it's been YEARS since I've had a DVD burner that lasted more than a few months. The one in the lab machine is now dead, it's an ASUS that I bought about a year ago and it started flaking a few months back. I barely even use the things anymore and still they die.

My main machine upstairs has a Sony that I bought about 4 months ago and the door is starting to misbehave on me.
The drive doors just stop working, they won't open anymore. When I've investigated, I've always found that it's the belt drive that fails on them. I could buy a replacement belt that's a little shorter I guess, that might solve some of the problems, but you'd think they'd have figured out what size belt to use by now. You'd think SOMEONE had.

At this point I'd pay double for an actually reliable drive. But there just aren't any more than $25 or that have anything about them that makes me think they'd be reliable. I've tried ASUS, Sony, NEC, LiteOn and a couple others that I can't recall right now. The LiteOn actually lasted the longest I think.