Well, I tried to solder the 8GB memory chip to the adapter board and failed miserably. My hands shake so badly these days that I just couldn't do it. Two of the pads underneath got bridged and I couldn't fix it. I don't have the tools, skill, knowledge, or steady hands to unsolder the chip and try again. My shaking hands are making me really upset. I've always worked with my hands and they've never let me down until today. I ended up so frustrated and upset that I snapped the board in half and threw it away. I'm not proud of this and I normally wouldn't share such things. I think it's important to share failures though. This one is particularly painful for me as I realize I'm getting older and the damage I've done to my body over the years may be catching up to me. I can hardly solder DIP packages anymore. These SOIC chips are just too much for me. I think I'll just get an SD adapter board and use that for software development until I can get a custom PCB designed and pay someone to assemble the damn things for me. It's the same thing, just a different and more expensive form factor. I want an SD cart anyway to add a second SD card to the Pi over GPIO. Most of my work lately has been big stuff requiring tons of strength, so I didn't notice how shaky my hands have gotten. Maybe my hands are just weak. Thankfully I have one chip soldered and a back up plan. 

This project is very exciting and frustrating at the same time. I still have to desolder the entire adapter board and rotate it as I screwed that up a while ago. I'm starting to realize that I'm not interested in the hardware assembly anymore. I'd rather design the hardware then write code for the finished device. Once my Pi 40p laptop thing arrives, I'll start learning PCB development and just outsource it all to a fab house and be done with it. I don't really have the time these days to do prototyping myself anyway. Once the snow hits, I'll probably be working 80+ hours a week as a tow truck driver. I'll have plenty of money but no time or energy. I'll happily outsource as much of this as I can to get it done. Maybe I'll outsource the board design for the prototypes as well, just to get development hardware in hand immediately. I have plans to build up a touring motorcycle and live out of that in the Western US, which would free up plenty of time in the future. That might be a year or so away, so I'll just have to outsource what I can now. I'm excited to have endless days to tinker with this. 

This was a good, but stressful event. I'm out probably $20 worth of hardware, but that's a cheap way to finally be honest with myself and realize I don't want to do this part anymore.