Hello there! I'm back! It's been quite a while and I've been busy with life, it's about time I give an update.
My daughter has been growing and developing like crazy! She's over 19 months old now, floating around a decieving 23lbs and loves to eat. She's also saying about 30 words! Her most common word is "Baba," we are trying to train ourselves to not call the sippy-cups bottles.
She loves running and exploring. The backyard is always a favorite, I built a woodchip-padded play area for some play equipment and her sand box. She enjoys running around the yard and the driveway, which scares my Wife as she is really doesn't want her to trip and get any injuries. The hap-hazzard bouncy run doesn't help things. I have also taken her hiking on some local trails for some walks in the woods, she loves the imersion of the outdoors. Any time an airplane passes by she has to stop and try to locate it.
We recently had some lobster tails which has quelled my nervousness of allergy potential. Neither my Wife nor I have any food allergies, but you never know until you find out. I selfishly was hoping she also didn't have any allergies. At this point I believe we're in the clear, especially with the major disruptive allergies being a non-issue for us, the second allergen being peanuts.
I bought a 3D printer a while ago. When I was in college, the mechanical engineering department had a 34k machine that worked well, but I never got to use. Eventually the industry evolved and I was able to justify getting one. After doing my research and figuring out what my general misison for 3D printing was, I decided on the Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro.
In the past I've used Solid Works and some Fusion 360 for modeling software, unfortunately they are not a viable optoin on my Linux machine. So I've had to learn/hobble through FreeCad. I don't not like it, but it has its quirks. I need to follow a few more tutorials to get to a few more interesting projects that I have.
I build a small table under my network enclosure to securely house the printer. It's solid with only one table leg. I like the location, I just need to organize the area in the mechanical space as fillament spools and other things are piling up.
My Wife isn't the biggest fan of the printer, she has her reasons, however I did finally get around to repairing our slider lock lever which had broke from a stress fracture. The best part about making a custom model, and losing the actual finger paddle part, is that I ballparked the size of it. The size makes it much easier to push, and gives a bit more leverage.
I've printed a few other non-trinket prints for others that I've made are some replacement shelf brackets for my Brother's metal shelf. Tracing pictures isn't the easiest thing, but it worked out! I also designed a new thread spool stop for my Mother's Singer sewing machine. I later found out that I could have just pulled a model from Thangs, but where's the fun in that?
Most of my prints have been in PLA, but I am currently using PETG, I hope to try some TPU soon.
Work is work. I feel like I'm never going to win a job bid. The good news is that the company has several exisitng customers where we mostly just need to provide our proposal and we are essentially the only bidder. Some of the other general contractors that I'm trying to get in with have occasionally provided feedback on where my numbers were, some haven't. I'm thrilled to hear that I am at least in the ballpark. If you've never been estimating, you aim to be the lowest, but if you're the lowest all of the time, you're not bidding enough. Simillarly if it's too high. I have had some bid that I felt very good about to find out that I was the middle bid. The most recent bid I was undercut by the mall's preferred contractor.
I still need to find time and material to help prepare me to get my master's electrical license. Hopefully I might be able to find some more time with my Wife's new Summer schedule on the horizon.
Years ago we replaced my Wife's Arris cable modem/router combo with a Netgear. Recently we have noticed that the wifi has been very slow. Apparently when I bought it, I failed to realize that it was a refurbished model. Of course I don't know what was refurbished on it, but apparently the wireless card on it is now damaged or failing.
The solution?
Keep it and put it in bridge mode.
I'm still waiting on parts, but I have some new equipment coming from Ubiquiti. When I rewired the house, I added cat6 cabling. This is a long-time goal starting to come to the finish line.
I chose Ubiquiti for the UI. As much as I could hope to be a network engineer like Network Chuck likes to preach, I know that I am not. I can pick and choose my battles. I can't wait for the upgrade!
After years of wanting to get into it, I've been paying more and more attention to what is growing around me. I know I have some woodland strawberries growing in a corner of my yard: They're delicious! I also know that I have quite the establishment of ramps as well. I've recently discovered that the "weed trees" that I removed far more than I care to think of, but there are still more on the property, is actually spicebush. I hope to try it at some point soon.
Of course there are the dandelions. I'm mostly feeding those to the guinnea pig, but the leaves are good sauted!
What exited me the most about foraging on my property is that I happened to be walking on my tractor path and something caught my eye like a slap in the face. On the stump of a large oak was a not insignificant flush of chicken of the wood mushroom! It's one of the easiest mushrooms to identify, and is a choice edible. I harvested a reasonable amount and tried some of it the next morning. It was delicious!
In addition, one of my friends who is also into foraging happened to find some morels on his property! We ended up not eating them, but we extracted the spores with the intent to hopefully get more in the future.
Old-ish houses have old problems, mine is no exception. Our kitchen floor had a spongy spot that had slowly gotten worse over the years. I've known about a dodgy patch that I could see from the basement since I installed the drop ceiling.
I finally got around to fixing the problem with some help from my Brother. It turns out that not only was the floor patch not cut to be supported on the joist, the repair was made with 2 pieces of 1/4" cabinet board, basically thin plywood that is absolutley not rated to be load-bearing. We replaced the damaged subfloor with new proper materials, supported the joints, and taped the exposed ceramic tiles. Then it was a matter of finding matching tiles.
Time is a funny thing, but my Wife and I finally found a close enough match. My Dad assisted while I laid the tile. I have never had an issue with a floor contractor that I've worked with in the past (unlike sheetrockers) I DO NOT envy anyone doing tile work, especially when the dimensions don't quite line up with the exising tiles.
Regardless, the 13 tile patch turned out better than I thought. My Wife also wanted to put a carpet runner in the kitchen, so unless you're looking for it, you can't see the repair. I'm ok with that, and now our kitchen floor is acceptable.
Let me know if you end up reading these, I welcome input and communication.
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