My PS2 slim ate my copy of Shadow of the Colossus back in 2011 and I was SO mad at the time, swore I'd never touch another Sony console. But taking that thing apart to get the disc out taught me how the laser rail works and I ended up fixing three other consoles for friends after that. GameCube kids never had to learn that stuff because their systems just kept working, and honestly that's kind of a curse in disguise. You don't grow when nothing breaks on you. So yeah, I used to think the GameCube crowd had it made, but now I'd take a broken PS2 and the skills that come with it any day.

How did you handle the spots where the laser can't get a clean read though? I tried mine on some exterior trim last fall and it was great on flat surfaces, but the second there was a shadow or I was aiming at an angle it just gave me an error or a number I didn't trust. Ended up double checking everything with the tape anyway, which kind of killed the time savings. For stringers specifically, are you shooting each one separate or did you find a way to batch them once you had your numbers? And did the Tucson sun mess with the laser dot at all? Seems like it would be brutal out there in the middle of the day.