Well, I broke it open, and got about a hundred screws, three large pieces of metal (the cover), three circuit boards, a power cord, and the actual DVD drive (it's fun playing with the little gears inside it. I'm looking to build anything with function, does anyone have any ideas? worse comes to worst I'll just build a foot table out of it...

I think you can do something cool with the laser. But I'm not sure on that one.

Wire the motor of the drive up so that when you press a button, the tray comes out giving you a convenient and novel platform to place your beer on.

I was gonna say that: Cup holder

That is an interesting idea. If I put a bit of copper wire and a battery up against it the thing works, but I am having trouble coming up with an automatic way of doing this (the battery gets very hot, and it is too much of a hassle to hold the copper wire up there). I am sure there is some simple button I could rig up, but do you have any suggestions on how to make it? Also there would need to be a way to reverse the direction of the motor so I can both open and close it...

Try switching the battery terminals. If it goes one way with one configuration, switch the wires over (positive and negative leads to opposite motor terminals) and see what happens.

In regards to overheating, rip the shit out of the thing (maybe salvage electrical components from the boards and shit) and switch the motor with a Lego Technic motor. Just make sure you gear it down a bit so the motor doesn't burn out (shouldn't anyways but fuck it, a gear box would take some time to build, thus you are not bored!)

Bump (sorry)

Take all the parts out of it and do whatever with them, but put the case back together and use it to stash small items you don't want found (put the small items in it).

Put the case back together so it looks normal, then rig one of the buttons to make it smoke/start on fire. Let someone else push the button, then blame them for breaking it. See if they'll buy you a new one.

Rig up the drive so it launches jagged DVDs at high speed