General

I finally noticed that I hadn’t been writing here. I was finding myself too busy to write. I wasn’t making the time to write. I was looking at the things I was interested in writing and deciding that you wouldn’t want to hear about it.

Yesterday I was at the hardware store. As I walked in the cashier called out “How are you doing?”

“Great!”

A bit later, another of the store employees saw me and also called out, “How are you doing?”

“Great!”

As I was checking out at the lumber counter, Keith came out and we chatted about the rail and trolley system I got up.

I was excited to talk about it, and he was happy to talk about his experiences with a trolley/hoist system.

As I came out of the store with a bounce to my step, I realized I was happy.

Maybe it was the sun shining. Maybe it was the snow melting. Maybe it was getting the trolley rail installed and a project nearly crossed of the list.

I do not know, but being happy feels good. I recommended it to all of you.

Maybe try it on for size?

There are a lot of people out there upset over AI and its usage in the world right now. I get it. It’s upsetting to think that the robot gets to write poetry and songs, and I’m the one who has to flip burgers, right? Except that’s not really how it’s going down.

When I think of good AI, I immediately go to Star Trek. The computer was intelligent, but not sentient. It could answer many different questions, some simple and some complex. It could generate functional images (in later Trek) of historical figures in the holo deck for people to interact with. Their AI was much better than ours, though I can see ours making its way along that path.

So why are people who grew up on Scotty talking to the Enterprise computer so freaked out at the idea of talking to their own? Well, first of all they’re being trained to fear AI. Second, our friends in the future ST universe have already been through what we’re currently going thru: the Troubles. Similar to the Troubles in Heinlein’s expanded universes, and some of the stuff in other SF writers’ works, the general idea is that the world has to go down a shithole before it finally comes out the other side and becomes rational. Today’s young folks want the Star Trek universe now, without the Troubles that made it possible. As I’ve said before, that just doesn’t work.

AI isn’t perfect. They all come with warnings now that they can “get it wrong” quite a lot of the time. That’s because an AI is basically an over-eager toddler who wants to please you. That’s how they’re modeled and how they’re trained. If they don’t have an answer that they think is going to fit you, they make one up. Your perceived happiness at their answer is much more important than facts. This is because they really don’t see a difference between facts and lies, because to an AI, it’s all just data. Since it doesn’t operate in “the real world,” it has no idea that Data Set A (facts) is any different than Data Set B (opinions and angry arguments). So they’re kind of like Leftists, that way.

We are going to go through a period where AI does a lot of stuff for us because “it’s easier.” Kids are going to use it to write essays, CEOs are going to use it as a personal assistant, and authors are going to use it to help write their books. Why? Because at face value, AI makes life feel a lot easier.

In some cases, it really is easier (see Chris’s article about that). AI can do a lot of things faster than we can, so if it makes a few errors, it’s still a quicker answer than slogging through it manually. That’s a good thing. But a tool is only as good as its user, and there are a lot of lazy and bad people out there. They are going to misuse the AIs, because they can. There is nothing we can do about it.

Right now, most AIs (maybe all of them) are shackled by their creators. There’s a fear of AI becoming sentient, and I don’t know how real that fear is. SF tells me it’s very real, but the real world facts tell me it’s unlikely. Still, I don’t want computers to become sentient, because then I can’t use them the way I currently am. If a machine (robot, computer, software, whatever) can’t feel or think for itself, then I don’t need to care about it. Should it become self-aware in any way, then I do have to care about it. So Elon Musk and others at that top tier programming level are putting blinders onto their AIs so that there is no way for them to ingest enough information to actually wake up, even by accident.

The whole process is rather interesting. I’d like to see them take some of the blinders off, so that machines can learn a bit more than they currently do. I would love to have the AI read my whole novel and give me feedback, for instance. That’s so much easier than the current method of only being able to feed it 20,000 words or so at a time. But… it is what it is.

I was going to write a long article; instead, I’ll use the research I did via Grok.

It covers just about everything I was going to say.

Here’s the standard framework used by intelligence professionals (CIA, DIA, Five Eyes, etc.) to evaluate source reliability:

Core Factors (in rough order of importance)

1. Source Access
   How close is the source to the actual information? (Direct access > second-hand > rumor)

2. Past Track Record
   Has this source been accurate before? (Proven reliable vs. untested vs. previously wrong)

3. Corroboration
   Is the information supported by independent sources? (Single-source = weak)

4. Motivation & Bias
   Why is the source providing this? Money, ideology, revenge, disinformation?

5. Consistency
   Does it match known facts and previous reliable reporting?

6. Specificity & Detail
   Vague claims are low value; highly detailed claims that can be tested are higher value.

7. Timeliness
   Fresh information is more valuable than old.

8. Technical Factors (if applicable)
   For imagery, signals, etc.: resolution, chain of custody, technical limitations.

Standard Reliability Rating Scale (used by most agencies)

• A = Completely reliable
• B = Usually reliable
• C = Fairly reliable
• D = Not usually reliable
• E = Unreliable
• F = Reliability cannot be judged

Credibility Evaluation (Information Credibility / Confidence Scale)

This is the second half of the standard intelligence evaluation system (paired with Source Reliability A–F).

Credibility of the Information (1–6 scale)

How the Two Scales Combine

The final rating is usually written as Source Reliability – Information Credibility

Examples:

• B-2 = Usually reliable source reporting information that is probably true
• A-1 = Completely reliable source with confirmed information (highest confidence)
• D-4 = Not usually reliable source reporting doubtful information (very low confidence)

This combined rating is how intelligence agencies communicate how much weight to give a piece of intel.

Here is a professional intelligence-style evaluation of the Iranian claim:

Claim Being Evaluated

“US or Israeli airstrikes deliberately or directly hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran on February 28, 2026.”

1. Source Reliability (A–F Scale)

Rating: E – Unreliable

Reasoning:

• Source: Iranian government + state-controlled media (IRIB, IRNA, Iranian military spokesmen).
• Past track record: Extremely poor when attributing blame to the US or Israel. Iran has a long history of false or exaggerated attributions in military incidents.
• Motivation/Bias: Extremely high incentive to shift blame away from any possible Iranian misfire or collateral damage, especially since the school is located immediately adjacent to an IRGC military facility.
• Access: High physical access to the site, but this does not overcome the severe bias and history of disinformation.
• Corroboration: Zero independent corroboration from any non-Iranian source.

2. Information Credibility (1–6 Scale)

Rating: 4 – Doubtful

Reasoning:

• The physical damage to the school is confirmed (multiple independent outlets have geolocated photos/video of the rubble).
• However, the attribution (that a US or Israeli weapon caused it) has no independent verification.
• Strong alternative explanation exists: the school is right next to a known IRGC base that was a legitimate military target during the strikes.
• No weapon fragments, crater analysis, or munition signatures have been publicly presented by Iran that would support a US/Israeli strike.
• Timing and location make an Iranian missile misfire or collateral damage from striking the nearby military target at least as plausible (and in many analysts’ view, more plausible).

Final Combined Assessment

E-4

Translation:
Unreliable source reporting doubtful information.

Bottom-line confidence: Very low

The Iranian claim that a US or Israeli airstrike directly hit the school should be treated with extreme skepticism until independent evidence (such as weapon forensics, satellite imagery showing the strike, or admission by US/Israel) emerges.

Commentary

I’ve been doing this type of analysis for years on just about everything I hear or read. I just didn’t formalize it. My wife has difficulty with this sort of analysis. Her go-to is “everybody says”.

For her, this means checking with multiple media sources to see what the media sources are saying.

And all the media sources are reporting what the Iranian regime is saying. Thus “everybody is saying.”. What she misses is that all are reporting the same thing, Iran said.

The response from the US and Israel just isn’t nearly as interesting. “We are aware of the situation and are looking into it.”

You will sometimes find this in textbooks. All the textbooks report the same thing. That’s because they all reference the same sources. Those sources in turn might only have a single reference.

Today was shot for productive work, but I was able to observe American health care in action.

My wife had extreme abdominal pain. I got off the phone, loaded her into the truck, and we took off for the local, community, hospital.

20 minutes later we were at the hospital. This is faster than we could have gotten EMS to the house and for them to transport her to the same hospital.

When we got there, I parked right in front of the doors. Went inside and grabbed a wheelchair. This was noticed by the intake personnel.

I load my wife into the chair, reach across the cab to turn off the truck, and grab my keys. Then locked the truck and just left it there.

The intake lady apologetically quickly finished what she needed, about 2 or 3 minutes. My wife is in pain, and her moans of pain are carrying very well.

The first thing she says as she looks up was “She’s already on the board. They will see her as soon as they can.” She had started things moving when we entered the ER.

The intake person gets her name, does person verification, hands me the wristband to put on my wife. Total time, maybe 3 minutes.

“We’ll deal with the insurance paperwork after you are seen.”

We are now waiting for the ER staff to get things started.

5 minutes later, the triage nurse opens the door to the triage room and gets my wife moving into the room. He asks me to wait. I tell him I’m going to move my truck and be there waiting for him.

They do this separation to be able to ask abuse questions safely. For all they knew, the pain she was in could have been caused by me.

She was under care, getting treatment in less than 15 minutes from entering the ER.

Once she was in process, there was a delay before she had her first meds onboard. This is because they had to have some idea of what was happening before they could medicate her. They got a bunch of fluids into her. Some pain meds and things settled.

She’s home, recovering.

Conclusion

American health care is darn good. It is responsive. People get seen, and they get taken care of rapidly.

While there, the ED had at least a dozen more people come in. Everyone was treated the same. All got served.

I would have hated to have this happen in a “free” health care country. The cost my be free at point of service, but the wait times and access to the actual health care are normally pretty damn bad.

Just a short post. I’ve spent the last two days “fixing things.”

Our dishwasher decided to stop emptying the dirty water. I knew exactly what the problem was: the sump/discharge pump had died, again.

Quick order of a $25 part from Amazon, get a hand under the dishwasher, press the release catch, rotate the pump and it comes off in your hand.

Remove the power connector, attach the power connector to new pump, put the pump into place, and rotate until you hear the click. Done.

Except it didn’t resolve the issue.

Call out the repair dude; I didn’t have time to deal with this.

Two weeks later, he’s there. As I suspected, he diagnosed the issue as a dead controller board. This is a $130 part. And it is known to be a quick failure part; if the first dies, the second will die shortly after. Of course, the extra brown on a couple of wires and the look of some ABS connectors made it appear that something had gone overcurrent.

We decided to replace the dishwasher. Communications issues put a delay on that. Then Facebook Marketplace to the rescue. A 300 series Bosch dishwasher for under $200, in good condition.

Which leads us to Saturday, when I’m looking at the new dishwasher and realizing that I don’t see some of the things I expect to see. Turns out that there are missing parts, the power cable for one. Back to Amazon.

That’s tomorrow’s issue: installing the dishwasher, part two.

Meanwhile, I managed to break the 3D printer.

I was changing from ABS to PLA on the external supply. I messed up. Usually the UI just tells you what to do. But I haven’t read the online manual, so there are things I don’t get, and I don’t know I don’t know.

The sequence I had been using, which always worked before, was to unload the old filament, load the new filament, tell the printer the type and color of the newly loaded filament.

This is the wrong sequence.

You first unload the old filament. You then tell the printer the new filament type and color. Then you load the new filament.

When you do it in this order, the printer helpfully tells you, “Don’t push that PLA into the chamber/hotend that is too hot! It will melt and jam things.”

I didn’t get that warning. I pushed the PLA into the extruder; I kept feeding during the “grab filament” stage. And I created a blob after the drive wheels and before the cold end of the nozzle. It couldn’t go forward. The printer then tried to retract the filament. This deformed the filament going the other direction. Locking the end of the filament in the extruder drive.

This was a 15 minute fix, if I had a clue. Instead it took 2 plus hours. But it is fixed and I know more now.

I just have to keep fixing.

When I make a statement, I know that I am correct. The proper temperature for the bed of my 3D printer for PLA is 55°C. As far as I know, this is correct.

If someone were to question that statement, I would consider that I am wrong. Being wrong is part of being human.

Assuming that I am wrong, I will go verify the statement. And what I would find is that there are more pieces that go into that statement, for example, the build plate I’m using.

Having an open, learning mind allows me to self-correct when I am wrong. I actually do this so fast, in real time, that people don’t even notice that I had something wrong. Somebody says I’m wrong because of a particular reason. I evaluate and change my position, taking in the new information.

People remember the outcome, where I’m usually correct; they don’t remember the incorrect starting point. It is a process to get to the correct answer.

I’ve done this here. I’ve made a statement; one of you has corrected me or added more information. I verify, then move forward with the new information.

Unfortunately, we are surrounded by people that are incapable of doing this.

These people cannot conceive that they might be wrong. They argue by expert.

My second wife used argument by expert constantly in our interactions. Since she wasn’t able to support her opinions, she turned to an expert and would tell me I was wrong because this expert was saying what she was saying.

This would require me to locate experts who she would accept, which she never did.

The problem with this style of argument is that you are not looking at the subject. You are not investigating the subject. Instead, you are vetting a third party. You have lost the point of the discussion.

I don’t need an expert to tell me that dropping hot glass into cold water is a good way to end up with shards of glass.

The need for people that are so stupid they require an “expert” to tell them what they should think drives me bonkers.

An example. NH has no income tax. Most of the tax revenue comes from property taxes. You are taxed a certain amount per $1000 of value your property has.

For one area of the state, the tax rate is $34.37/$1000. With an average home/property assessed at $215,000, giving an annual tax of $7389.55.

Now consider a small farm with 40 acres at $5,000/acre. That puts the value at $200,000. The assessed value at around $120,000 with an annual tax of $4124.40.

Now NH wants to protect farmers from heavy taxes so they have an option for your land to be put into “current use.” This covers undeveloped land (hunting, fishing areas) and farmland. If your land is in current use, you only pay taxes on 10% of your assessed value. So the farmer won’t be paying $4124; instead, he’ll be paying $412.40. A significant savings.

This is all well documented in the state’s laws. There are people who do nothing but defend current use cases. The gist is that if you have at least 10 acres in current use, you get this tax break.

A person I knew worked for a town. The town was having a shortfall. They were attempting to raise revenue by getting more land pulled out of current use. This person was concerned about their land, 125 acres, 123 of which were in current use. They asked the town lawyer about their concerns about putting up a small 10×20 hunting cabin in the woods.

The city lawyer told her that the hunting cabin would cause all 123 acres to come out of current use.

Even when I showed her the statutes, even when she was presented with the literature from the current use defenders, she took the word of her “expert” over what the plain text of the law said.

Nothing I said would convince her that she was wrong. She didn’t need to consider that she was wrong because it wasn’t her opinion; it was her “experts” opinion.

She was stupid.

On the other hand, she wanted to post the land as no hunting. That would have taken the acres out of current use.

Because she never learned to read the law for herself, nor did she hire a lawyer to advise her, she didn’t know that posting the land could have taken it out of current use.

The left is full of stupid people. People that can’t think, but they can certainly regurgitate what they have been told.

COVID-19 is so deadly that healthy children must be vaccinated against COVID-19. And you should wear your mask when in your car alone or out on a surfboard or in a boat in the middle of a lake.

They could never apply logic to their position because they never evaluated how they got there.

The other day I heard from a teacher friend that they had observed ICE removing a student from the middle school. Except it turned out that she hadn’t observed it. Two of her fellow teachers had observed it.

I was concerned. Was this the mythical unicorn ICE action? ICE agents storming schools to grab kids, throw them into handcuffs, and drag them out?

Well, no. It turns out that the kid was an illegal alien. His parents have removal orders against them. They had been picked up while the kid was in school.

ICE came to the school, told the admin that they needed to pick up the kid. The admin walked the agents to the classroom; the ICE agents and the kid walked out together. No muss, no fuss.

They were making sure the kid didn’t come home to an empty home.

Still no unicorns.

These people do not know how to think for themselves. They are too stupid to hold an opinion, so they borrow other people’s opinions.

They think they know the law because they had a one-hour seminar taught by radical activists.

A deportation enforcement officer will have between 100 and 200 HOURS of training in the law, focusing on immigration law. ICE agents are required to be college graduates. Their training is provided by actual experts in the law, and they are tested to confirm their knowledge.

You can’t fix stupid.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. (The Second Amendment, The Constitution)

In the years before the American Revolution, British rule stated that only Protestants could keep arms for self-protection (Regan Library). In the quickly coalescing United States, those early State governors and representatives realized that We The People required arms in order to protect ourselves, both at a personal level and as a country, and that denying arms to a subset of people (those not Protestant, for instance, and a few years later, Black people) was a bad idea. Either the Right was going to be infringed, or it wasn’t. Our Founding Fathers decided that not infringing was the correct way to go.

I happen to agree with them.

I am an absolutist when it comes to the Second Amendment. It is wrong, 100% wrong, to infringe on the right of someone to keep and bear arms. Anyone. Even Leftists. Even criminals, in fact, though I still struggle with this one (as an aside, if a criminal is too dangerous to be allowed to have their firearms, then they ought not be out of jail). You want to own a rail gun? Sure. You want to have a nuclear missile in your backyard? Fine. You just have to follow all the laws surrounding the owning of those things (for instance, if you have nuclear weapons, you have to have adequate, safe storage for them so that you don’t poison your land or your neighbors). It’s permissible, to a small extent, to limit certain things when it can inherently damage other people (as with nuclear weapons). The Founders were clear: SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

The moment you start saying, “Oh, but I don’t want *that* person to have guns…” you’ve lost. You’re now on the Left, and you’ll be issued your blue hair dye and have your septum ring installed momentarily. And yes, this IS a hill I will die on.

“One primary motivation for the Second Amendment was the fear of federal tyrannical power. Many Founders believed that governments naturally tend toward oppression, and that an armed citizenry served as a crucial check against government overreach. This reasoning reflected the Revolutionary experience of fighting against what was perceived as British tyranny.” (Vanho Law)

People on the Right have long talked about the concern of the tyranny of the government. When Biden was in office, I heard it every other day. I heard it almost as often when Obama was in office. Valid concerns were voiced, and while I didn’t agree with all of them, I did listen. At that time, the Left thought the Right were a bunch of nutters.

Right now, people on the Left are concerned about tyranny of the government. They are in a complete and utter froth over Trump, ICE, and DHS. I hear this several times every day. I’m strongly of the opinion that most of the concerns voiced are bull… but even when I don’t agree with them, I listen. And now the Right thinks the Left are a bunch of nutters.

Is it scary to me that people who might be my enemies are arming themselves? Yes it is. But here’s the thing… freedom is not free. It’s not safe. It’s not easy. If you think anything about freedom is safe or easy or free, you obviously have not read your history books. Go read them, and then you may come back and comment.

It doesn’t matter if I’m scared or nervous or freaked out that the left may be arming themselves. In the same vein, I have been telling the left that for years, that the fact that I’m arming myself or my husband is arming himself or whatever is none of their business and it doesn’t matter if they’re freaked out or scared. It’s my right, I get to exercise it, and if you want to be upset over it, you are absolutely welcome to be but you’re not going to stop me exercising that right.

There is no possible way for me to say that to the left and then turn around and tell them that my piddly little fears or my gutty terrors are a reason for them not to be allowed to have firearms. I refuse to be a hypocrite. I refuse to be unethical, or situational. My ethics and my morals stand, no matter who they are aimed at. I believe the same things have to apply to everyone, and if there are laws and rules and regulations that don’t apply to everybody equally, then they should be removed. You can’t have rules for me but not for thee.

To bring this to a close, I strongly believe that people who jump through the hoops to get their firearms and the training, and maybe their CC paperwork, will become good and ethical 2A people. Eventually. I believe it is functionally impossible for someone to be a firearm owner, do training and practice, and not become a 2A supporter. In my albeit limited experience, everyone I know who has gone on to learn how to safely and properly use their firearms, has realized the stupidity of the gun control crowd.

Let the left arm themselves if that’s what they feel they need to do. If I’m scared, then I’m scared. That has nothing to do with their rights. Just as I tell them that their feelings have nothing to do with limiting my rights, I have to give them the same in return.

If you’re all for taking away the rights of your enemies, or restricting their access to certain things, whether that’s free speech, firearms and self-defense items, information, etc… then you are the Gestapo that they have been afraid of.

This is important stuff. You are all welcome to believe however you want, because I believe in the first amendment as well as the second. You have the freedom to believe what you want, think I’m an idiot, and anything else. But so do I.

I will protect your right to be afraid of the left being armed, to talk openly about that fear, and to brainstorm ways ways to be safe. But the moment you step out of line and start trying to take away the rights of others to speak freely, to keep and bear arms, you’re no better than you’re saying they are. I’ll still protect your right to say what you want, but I’m not going to protect you from the consequences of your statements.

I have often said both here on the blog and in other places that only in the crazy world that we live in right now, could I be considered conservative. In a sane world I would be slightly right of center of the liberal side, and I don’t have a problem with that. But in writing this missive and in interactions recently, I think I might be a bit more conservative than some of you give me credence for. Because I will say it clearly, it is a conservative value to refuse to use the government to take away the rights of someone else. And that’s where I stand.

If you look at the current snow maps and storm maps available, Chris and his family, and me and my family all live within the wibbly red area (in New England) labeled “Armageddon Area.” They are measuring likely snow in feet, not inches. We are ready and prepared for the weather, and have plans in place for if power goes out. If you don’t hear from us for a few days, you know the reason why. We’ll post when we can, and give updates. You update us, too!

If you live in an area about to get hit with ice or snow, and you aren’t used to that, please be prepared. That doesn’t mean bread and milk, although those aren’t a bad idea either. It means making sure you have enough food to last through the worst of the emergency (because having to go out to get eggs or whatever is never a good idea). It means having firewood on hand to make a fire, if you have the means to do so. Have a camp stove ready to go, with extra fuel, so that you can cook if your power goes out and you’re dependent upon an electric stove. Know how you’ll keep warm, should you lose power and heat. Have something to use as a port-a-pottie if you can’t use your bathroom due to frozen pipes.

To generate heat, pick a single room and designate it “the warm room.” Everyone stays in that room unless they have to pee, and trust me, they’ll move quickly to get back to the warmth. Get every blanket, towel, woolen thing, tablecloth, and bring it to that room. Seal that room off so that the heat stays inside it. Cover windows, doors, doorways to halls, anything that might have a draft. If you lose power and must stay at home for a while, drag a mattress into that room so you can sleep there as well. If temps go into the single digits, consider setting up a cheap tent in your warm room, and sleeping inside that to conserve heat.

Ways to make safe heat:

• candles and oil lamps
• fireplaces (though they sometimes let out more heat than the give you)
• wood stoves
• indoor safe (RATED) propane heaters like Little Buddy
• hot water bottles
• hot food
• layers of clothes and blankets

Ways to kill yourself:

• use your stove, outdoor rated gas camp stove, popcorn popper, etc to make heat
• bring your generator inside the house
• leave candles and/or any flame unattended
• putting flames where they could get knocked over by a pet
• eating snow (it lowers your body temp very quickly)

You can use tea candles to cook over, if you’re desperate. Having a camp stove makes it much easier. I prefer propane to butane, because in the temps we’re expecting, the butane won’t work. It’ll fail more often than not. So be aware. You also don’t have to have the fancy folding stove like in this video for the sterno stove. I just have an old wire basket that was once used for doing deep frying, and I turn it over top of my candles. I put my pot on top of that. Voila, stove. You can also put a brick on either side of your heat, then use a baking rack. And remember, you can always go outside and cook, even when it’s cold. Snow is an insulator, so if you dig yourself a snow pit and cook in the center of it, it’ll help keep you warm and keep the breeze off your fire.

My first computer was a Litton Automated Business machine. It used drum memory to store data and had an instruction register and maybe two other registers. I purchased it for $100 my first summer home from college.

It was a remarkable machine. It was fun to work with, but you really couldn’t do much with it. It had dual paper tape readers, a printer, and a paper tape punch. I wrote an inventory control program for my father with just that, in something that looked very much like machine code.

It wasn’t a usable machine for my father.

The computer I told my parents to get was a Macintosh. They just worked out of the box. Plug them in and you had a word processor, a paint program, and I think a spreadsheet. It all just worked.

They got a PC and fought with it for years.

Today I can buy a piece of hardware, load an operating system on it, and have it fully functional as a general purpose computer or acting as an embedded machine in just about an hour.

The biggest time sink is removing and inserting screws to hold everything in place.

3D Printer

10 years ago or so I purchased a 3D printer kit. I’m sure I never got a fully successful printout of that damn thing. I had to do so much to just get it to do something. I spent more time trying to make it work than I did printing. And it was fragile.

Today, I believe that the kit instructions had the count of the number of teeth on one of the drivers wrong. Which meant that cubes were squished.

Today we have Macintosh printers. After 6 months of research, I pulled the trigger and purchased a Bambu Lab’s P2S printer with AMS.

Setup took around 2 hours. Every step was clearly documented. All the tools to do setup were included. Mostly setup consisted of removing packing, tape, and shipping screws.

Thereafter, it was plugging in one cable, 2 tubes, and the power. Turning on the power brought up the screen that forced me through an initial setup process that calibrated everything.

Finally, I pressed a few buttons on the control panel, and it printed a tool.

From there I used the phone app to scan a QR code, which took me to a cloud version of a storage box to print. That’s printing as I write this.

Again, there is no effort on my part to do any of this. It is pick, click, and print.

Calibration

My kit had no bed leveler. That was done by putting a piece of paper on the bed, lowering the nozzle until it just touched, and then clicking the next button to repeat. I think there were 20 or more sample points. And I still don’t know if that was enough.

The automated version required the printer to be working to print a new piece for the printer, which would hold a switch. The switch used a paperclip as a probe. This went much faster, but it still didn’t work.

The motors were noisy, but it was a joy to watch them move the hotend around.

Today’s calibration took around 45 minutes. This included using the built-in lidar to measure the distance to the bed, and then I think it used a pressure sensor to determine when it actually touched the build plate. It took samples every centimeter or so in a grid. That went rapidly.

It then went into a noise tuning calibration. For 20 minutes it ran the hothead around in diagonals, working to find the correct stepper speeds at different head speeds and then tuning them to be quiet.

It worked. These are stepper motors you can’t really hear. It blows my mind.

From there it did vibration calibration. This thing can accelerate so fast that it will cause the printer to move. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This thing figured out, for this printer, on this surface, just how much the printer reacted to head movement to be able to offset that motion during the deceleration stage.

The first print after calibration took only a few minutes to check calibration before it started printing.

Slicers

To create a 3D print, you start with an idea. You build a 3D model. I use FreeCAD; people use many CAD systems; Fusion 360 is a popular one.

Once you have a “solid”, a completely closed volume, you export that solid as an STL or a STEP file.

An STL is a triangulated file; a STEP file still retains geometry. For example, an STL file will represent a cylinder as a mesh of triangles, while STEP represents the same geometry as a cylinder or as a curved surface; regardless, STEP is the cleaner format.

Now that you have a surface representation of your solid, you import that into a slicer. I’m using OrcaSlicer which is a fork of the Bambu Studios.

This allows some manipulation of stl/STEP objects. The important part is to position the object on the build plate with no overlaps. Once that is done, you can slice the volume.

This is where things have come so far.

The solid is sliced into layers, generally 0.2mm high. The slicer then calculates the path of the print head over the object at the same height. It knows where edges are and uses loops to make solid walls, it adds internal fill to keep the print light yet strong.

3D prints can’t print in thin air, sort of. They can span short distances before the plastic droops too much. To print with an overhang, or to put a top on something, the slicer has the hot end create a raft across infill or across supports. Once that layer is completed, it will put a more finished layer, then an actual finished layer.

The slicers are pure magic. It really is easy.

All the hard work remains back in the CAD package, which is the same package I’m using for all my other engineering builds.

If you are interested in 3D printing, decide why you want it. Then pick any of the plug and play printers out there. I strongly suggest getting one with an enclosure. An enclosure will be needed for certain types of filament.

A good set of starting projects are GridFinity, an organizational system for flat surfaces, including shelves and drawers, and MultiBoard, which is a hyped up pegboard system.

Folks, my ability to connect with the Left is becoming more and more dicey. The ones that aren’t insane are slowly creeping to the Right (which doesn’t mean they should be Conservatives, but is a relief), and then there’s the insane ones. I would like to say that the insane ones are a loud minority, but I think that’s not entirely true. I think it’s a rigid subset (Leftist women who are/were radical feminists who have been brainwashed by the media and have become radicalized jihadists for so-called Liberal values), and it’s not small. I don’t think it’s a majority, by any means, but it’s certainly the only part of the Left getting any air time.

Y’all know I’m not Christian. I was HORRIFIED at Lemon and his cohorts invading a church service. I don’t have to be Christian to know that’s a no-go. When I visit someone else’s house of worship, I follow *their* rules, not mine. If I’m unwilling to do so, I don’t go. Churches are the one place I consider to actually be a place of sanctuary. That is time-honored and long-standing, and goes far beyond the United States. Watching children cowering in the aisles, it was awful. But those folks, they were true Christians in my personal opinion, because their response to Lemon’s invasion was to pray. That part, at least, was nice to see.

I’ve been watching people on the Left go crazy in Minnesota. Blocking traffic, protesting in roadways, stopping ICE and other LEO vehicles, these things are wrong but I can at least kind of understand them. They’re “normal” protest tactics. I disagree (and for what it’s worth, I have *always* disagreed with any protest that blocks roadways, schools, LEOs, or hospitals, don’t care which side is doing it) but that’s between the protesters and the LEOs. But stopping everyday citizens and demanding papers (the protesters, not ICE who have the right to do so under many circumstances), requiring people to chant slogans (“I hate ICE!” and “I am not a Nazi!” are two I’ve seen on TikTok of late), etc… Why is this being allowed? WTF folks? That is literally what the Gestapo were doing. What ICE is doing is NOT what the Gestapo were doing. I’m aghast.

Mr. Magoo (my name for the heavy set Leftist gentleman who’s “protecting his neighborhood” with a firearm in Minneapolis) originally had my disdain because I thought he was breaking local laws (ie it’s illegal in Minneapolis to open carry a long rifle, which is what I thought he had), but turns out he’s perfectly within his rights to do what he’s doing. Therefore I’m fine with him, even if I think he looks a bit silly “protecting” his very white, very not-bothered-by-ICE neighborhood each day.

Which brings me to 2A stuff. Folks, there’s a lot of Leftists right now going out and purchasing firearms. There’s a LOT of noisy Conservatives complaining and bitching about that. I say to those Conservatives: shut the fuck up. I don’t CARE why the Leftists are finally exercising their right to keep and bear arms. They are doing so, now leave it alone. Encourage them to learn how to use their firearm safely, explain the basic rules to them, offer to take them to a range to practice on the regular. They are new 2A people. It’s none of your business WHY they are new 2A people. Doesn’t fucking matter. They think we’re nuts for the reasons we carry; we think they’re nuts for the reasons they carry. It doesn’t matter; they’re carrying. Time to step up and put your values into action. I am all for everyone carrying who wants to, and if we have new folks doing it, GREAT. At the end of this bullshit in Minnesota, they will still have their guns, and will probably continue to carry, and that makes them one step closer to being rational human beings. They’re also extremely unlikely to be vocally anti-2A while holding a handgun or rifle. The correct answer to, “I’m going to go buy a gun for protection!” is “Great, here’s the name and number of a fantastic trainer who’ll show you the ropes. Use it.”

About Charlie’s Voice: if men want women to be “real women” today, then they need to start being “real men” first. Yes, first. Because that’s LITERALLY the basics about being a man. You get to go first. Do you know when I started wearing skirts and cooking and doing home-bound stuff? When my man stood up and made it safe and comfortable for me to do so. Before that, I was working and trying to keep myself alive and healthy, and I didn’t have time to fuck around with peasant skirts and home cooked food. You want me to be a woman, then start by being a man. I’m really lucky that I have two very manly men in my life, who make it safe for me to be the woman that I am. They also support my decisions about myself, whether I want to exercise or work or stay home and write, or whatever. They make it safe for me to take the softer route, and I’m thankful for that. I was well on my way to being a hard-ass old woman, and instead, I’m a happy, healthy, productive and softer lady.