I’ve been down this rabbit hole and have some thoughts. Personally I’ve been trying to stick to Linux which makes things harder but since you have Mac and/or Windows, you have more options.

First, my main app I use (and why my laptop is still dual boot) is Fusion 360. I have a hobbyist license so it’s free with some limitation that don’t really matter. It doesn’t work great on linux (I’ve gotten it to run with WINE but it seems to crash and not run great) so I’ve been looking at alternatives. However, it works great and will do pretty much whatever you want. Also works well with CNC if you want to branch out into that.

Lately I’ve started looking at https://www.onshape.com/en/ as it’s all browser based. The free version means nothing is private but because it’s browser based, it works with Linux. I’ve just played around with it once but it looks promising.

I really want to like FreeCAD but it’s been confusing to me when I’ve tried to use it in the past. I think I just need to sit down and watch a view videos and read the docs to learn it. I’ve heard good things about it after it hit 1.0 so maybe I need to revisit it. I feel like this will be best to learn long term.

https://openscad.org/ isn’t your standard CAD program but it can be really powerful. I’ve used it a few times but you need to think of your models programmatically and I’ve found this to be difficult for some applications. It’s really cool though and worth checking out.

I’ve found TinkerCAD to be ok for simple things but it seems a bit simplistic for the things I’ve been trying to do.

I almost exclusively use PLA and I’ve had no trouble but all my stuff is indoors. I’ve heard that it doesn’t do as well in the elements so for anything outside, I’l probably look at using petg which from what I’ve read, holds up pretty well outside.

I have an ender 5 which I’ve had to do all sorts of things to. I’ve also had terrible luck getting z-probes to work with it. They’ll work for a while and then just die on me…

A while ago I backed the Phrozen Arco on Kickstarter. It was a mess of a compaign but I eventually got the printer (Over a year and a half late). However it’s just worked and makes nicer prints than my ender 5. I love it so much. My makerspace has a Bambu which seems to have the same results. I love just printing something and having it work and not having to fuck with the printer. It’s been so nice.

I’ve tried it a few different ways and the best outcome I’ve had was using some tubing, like this one: https://youtu.be/yuZ0DA8w9XI

I don’t always do it but when I do, I do it this way from now on. The tube makes sure the filament stays aligned, I also cut the two ends at a 45 and try and join them up inside the tube. Usually I’ll save the ends and then do a few rolls at once, can usually get another few prints out of it.

One of the many reasons I canceled my prime subscription is a lot of stuff was not coming in 2 days.

Shame on these Democrats but does this mean they can release the Epstein files now?

I’d imagine a lot of private jets do fly IFR though which does involve ATC. So even if they fly out of a non towered airport, they probably file their IFR plan with a towered airport and start talking to them once in the air.

Piff the Magic Dragon also had his dog Mr. Piffles cloned before he passed. From what I understand, he tried finding another dog but they never really fit in his act the same way so as Mr. Piffles started to get older, he cloned him and now has Mr. Piffles 2.0.

https://www.tmz.com/2024/11/13/piff-the-magic-dragon-cloned-mr-piffles-chihuahua-dog-magician/

It’s not cheap but I don’t think Tom Brady cares about how much it costs.

If the shutdown continues into the days around Thanksgiving (specifically Wed/Sun when things are really busy), things will get really interesting.

It’s starting to get cold where I’m at… face coverings help keep you warm!

Chipotle is on it’s way out. When they first opened, at least by my work, the food was fresh and decent and could be had for a little more than fast food but not by a lot so it was easy to go there. I wouldn’t say it’s Mexican or TexMex but it wasn’t bad. Changed jobs and hadn’t been there in a while but I was on a road trip and thought what they heck, there aren’t too many options and this seemed like it would be good. The food was not fresh the meat was over cooked, you didn’t get a lot of food and it was kind of over priced… I haven’t been back since.

If I want cheap food, Chipotle is out. If I want good food Chipotle is out. Maybe if I hate myself and want to spend a lot of money for shitty food?

The first individual officially diagnosed with autism was Donald Triplett in 1943. Dr. Kanner (The Dr. who diagnosed him) had noted Triplett’s symptoms, such as social withdrawal and an insistence on sameness, as early as 1938. While not diagnosed as autism, there are historical accounts of individuals with similar characteristics, such as the “Wild Boy of Aveyron” in the late 1700s and Hugh Blair of Borgue in the 18th century.

Tylenol was introduced in 1955.

I dump out the wet tea leaves and give the strainer a rinse right away.

I haven’t been to a fast food restaurant in ages, most restaurants I do frequent are because the food is good and I want to support them. I think I’d be fine as long as there were still grocery stores.

I watched the getting to Blinky from Contextual Electronics and it was super helpful. It covered everything from beginning to end, including uploading files to get a PCB manufactured.

This, we started getting ads and prime was almost never 2 days, usually more. This a long with all the Bezos BS made me stop not only prime but using Amazon all together. I’ve been using Amazon since the late 90s, back when they were just books.

I think using Amazon to compare prices locally is fine, I just wouldn’t buy from Amazon.

It’s my understanding that https://veracrypt.io/en/Downloads.html took over. That said, I’m curious to see what other people recommend.

So I love Debian but it prides itself on stability so packages tend to be older. I think this is good for a server but probably not great for a desktop. Ubuntu came along and was like we’ll be like Debian but newer packages. Everything was cool for a while but then they started doing shitty things. The first that I can think of was ads in the terminal. This was not great for an open source app. Then when you did apt install firefox it installed Firefox as a snap. WTF?!?!? (apt should install .deb files, not snaps). Because of this, lately I’ve decided to avoid Ubuntu.

I used Gentoo for a while and it was great but configuring and compiling everything took forever. I’m getting too old for that. Arch seems like a good alternative for people who want to mess with their system. So it’s become a way for people to claim they know what they are doing without having to recompile everything. (Note: I haven’t used Arch, this is just my perception)

Recently I got a new laptop and I had decided to put Linux on it and had to decide what distro. Arch was in consideration but I ended up going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it’s got the latest but I don’t really have to configure anything. If I had more time, I might go with something like Arch but I don’t really want to do that much fiddling right now.

So take the knife, put your thumb and index finger on either side with the web of your hand on the blunt side of the knife with the sharp side away from you. Squeeze the back of the pit and it should pop right off.