Song: N/A
Mood: 5.5
Nightmares: 1
Ghosts: Lots
I need to keep this really short because it’s 1:35AM and I can’t keep both of my eyes open at the same time.
I slept better last night but still woke up a lot, just not from nightmares. Taking those pictures when I do my rounds before I go to bed helps a lot but sometimes I find myself still needing to get out of bed and prowl the house.
I spent a bunch of time today designing a tilting stand for one of my Raspberry Pi boards. I’m still a long way from being able to call myself a FreeCAD novice, but I managed to fudge together a reasonable facsimile of what I was trying to do. Three hours later, it was done printing. Twenty seconds after that, I had this:
So yeah, that didn’t work out too well. I will go back to the drawing board and design something sturdier – something that doesn’t (in hindsight) rely on the weakest possible orientation for the part that’s going to hold stuff up.
I went out to do my homework today and I heard that colder weather is coming so I brought out my heated seat cover and installed it before sitting in the truck for close to 40 minutes. I started to get irritated at myself, feeling once again like I was letting everyone down. I took a few deep breaths, turned the music up even louder, threw the transmission in reverse, and very, very slowly backed down the driveway and out into the street. When I looked back at the garage I could see a puddle of coolant on the floor – I need to fix that or get it fixed soon.
Anyway, so I took a slow drive around the block. Sorry for the poor quality but the phone was in its stand, sitting on the dashboard and stuck to that black pad at the bottom of the picture.
And when I approached home I decided to do it again. Unfortunately, the second time around didn’t go as well and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t quite get back inside before I got hit with a panic attack. God, I hate those things. What possible evolutionary advantage could being able to experience panic attacks give? I get the “fight or flight or freeze” thing, but a panic attack keeps me from being able to do any of those three actions. I hate them. HATE them.
So that wrung me out pretty good – I’m always tired and worn out after a panic attack. Again – not a useful thing at all.
The good thing is I drove around the block twice today. The bad thing is that it ended poorly. I hope that doesn’t dissuade me from trying again sometime soon.
Another bad thing is that I’m having a lot of trouble chasing garage door ghosts today.
On the upside, my new spools of filament arrived today. Lots of PLA, some ABS, some glow-in-the-dark PLA, and some really pretty transparent sea green PETG. I unpacked it and loaded it up:
I just love that colour! Anyway, I set up the print bed and put on the tape like I always use, changed the temperature settings to what was listed on the spool, loaded up a model (I’m trying to make J another post-it note holder), sliced the model, and hit print.
It did not go well. I was hoping that the PETG would behave but it was not to be, and I ended up with a bunch of this stuff:
Over an hour later, I thought I’d hit upon the right combination of settings and told the machine to print again. I ended up with this:
[1]
J was nice enough to stop at the fabric store on her way home from work and pick me up some supplies. Some grey webbing for handles for those bags (man that stuff is cheap!), some bobbles, and a pencil to mark dark fabrics. Thank you for going out sweetie, I really appreciate it!!!
J and I watched another Elementary this evening. This season is really very good. The stories are engaging and the cast is quite good (with one notable exception). I’m glad that it’s better this season, but to be honest, watching the show is secondary. I really enjoy the TV time that J and I take because we sit downstairs, she leans against me, and we watch the show all nice and cozy. We could be watching some ridiculous movie (which we have done on several occasions) and it would still be nice and cozy.
After that, I went back to the printer and tried to figure out ways to make the PETG adhere to the print bed. I ran a glue stick over the green tape I put down on the printer and fiddled around with the temperature. I can now get it to reliably stick to the print surface, but the quality and PETG adhesion to itself is still pretty rough. It’s either too cold and the runs don’t stick to itself, or it’s too hot and there are weird hairy things all over the place. I will get it figured out soon though!
And that takes me to here. I spent far too much time today messing around with the printer. And now I really must go to bed. I know I’m really tired when I keep seeing things moving out of the corner of my eye.
Stay safe.
[1] Model downloaded from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:131697