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Made final preparations for Thursday's trip to Spokane for Lance's graduation. Just found out that Lance was accepted to the Cedars Sinai EMT program starting this summer. Lance also mountain bike rides and is a rock climber so for you HCers traveling out here to mountain bike Lance will be qualified to stitch you up, apply a tourniquet to your stumps or identify what is left of you after a mountain lion has you for lunch. Cheers!

Congrat to Lance and another to you! Wanted to let you know my buddy created https://medictests.com/ and it's a great resource for EMTs and whatnot. Prolly worth checking out. Xavier is healing from his ACL surgery, but he's gotten hardcore into rock climbing, and also digs MTBing, so... services may be needed.

One last update. Finally got the group photo back from the photographer. Thought I would share. Cheers - mikey

Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's

Happy birthday Shelley!

Very Happy Birthday! Hope there is knot one bad thing about the day, and all is wonderful 😁

Flew to McAllen Tx this morning to pickup a new car for the wife. As they were working on the paper work there was a new recall issued for the vehicle which put a stop sale on it. Took all day, but they were finally able to find out it was for the front seatbelts of vehicles made during a 15 day period in April. They are still waiting for the bulletin that tells them what the fix is so they can release the car. Could be tomorrow, could be a week. 😡. Hopping I can move this picture to the Mindless Consumerism thread tomorrow. 100% Brent’s fault.

Catching up on Melissa's last two albums - On Blue Note Now (yay) 12 Stars by Melissa Aldana (2022) https://album.link/i/1599823297 Example: I really like her style, it is rooted in the moden style with lots of improvisation. and Echoes Of The Inner Prophet by Melissa Aldana (2024 -- Just on Sunday the 5th) https://album.link/i/1727103842 Example: A deeper exploration. I found the overall sound quieter, that being, more moments to let notes breath. Also not in a rush. I really enjoyed this new album.

Happy Birthday, Shelly! (party favour noise of Eratosthenes)

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Teach!

Happy Birthday Shelly! Hope you have a great one!

Happy Birthday Shelly!

Happy Birthday, Shelly!

Awesome that he was accepted! So if you fence with him and lose, he won't let you bleed out?!?

So Brent probably won’t be okay?

By the time the closed loop steppers detect an error it is already too late as it already happened. Always better to have the machine itself running more accurate and perfect cabling and controllers.

Hi Shel! Have fun in Colorado and you'll forget that United Airlines screwed you over before you know it. 🙃

"Map traps" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

Well, I decided I needed to upgrade my CNC machine (replace almost everything from the original machine I purchased). having already upgraded the controller, spoil board, spoil board mounting and spindle it's time to look at the axes .... First I got myself an 80mm diameter er20 ceramic bearing 2.2KW water cooled spindle with labyrinth seals to replace the cheap 65mm 1.5Kw er 11. To fit the 80mm spindle I had to make a new mounting plate. This included experimenting chamfering and threading. I settled on 0.3mm chamfers at 45 degrees and experimented with thread milling. The result I think is ok: (full discloser I purchased tooling plate so the top and bottom surfaces were already machined flat, but all the other surfaces got machined. I have ordered 4 nema 23 closed loop steppers (3NM - about twice the holding torque of the original open loop steppers the machine came with), which will entail replacing most of the wiring loom, removing the existing open loop motor drivers, removing the motors, some software config of the new closed loop drivers and some changes to the controller wiring. The original divers have no error output pin so the controller has no idea if a stepper has an issue. The new drivers include error output pins so they will need to be connected to the controller. (stock jpeg from the ebay listing, I'm still waiting for delivery) I have also replaced the standard 'deep' groove (6001 series) bearings inside the bk12 bearing housings with angular contact bearings (7001 series) as per this you tube video: I also noticed that all the bearing blocks were attached to the machine with m5 bolts despite the blocks being designed for m6, So I plan to replace those bolts and find a way to make new threads in the machine housings. The nema 23 motors are also designed for m5 bolts but the machine uses m4 (on avery axis except Z), again I don't know why fox alien decided to use one size smaller bolts on everything that drives the axes so I will have to machine new back end plates/motor mounts too. After these upgrades and fixes the only original parts of the machine left will be the frame, axe and the metal case the electronics came in. It's so nice to have a cnc machine so I can make parts to upgrade my cnc machine...

I needed a replacement pour over scale after my Amazon jobbie gave up the ghost and the replacement was subpar. Was leaning towards an Acaia Lunar or Lunar S given my experience with the Lunar that got bundled with the espresso maker. I decided to check out the Timemore Black 2.0 based on some input here and a bit of research. It was my first purchase on Aliexpress (Alibaba related...again based on a suggestion here). $43 which is hard to argue with. Took a bit to arrive but not terrible. So far it has been pretty good. It is responsive and accurate. Only thing I'm still getting used to is the Tare...it's a bit slow and you don't know you got it right...you have to have a split second of faith. Also, the springs / mechanisms that allow the scale to move and thereby calculate weight are a big "springy or spongy". Not a big deal but it takes away a from a solid feeling. My conclusion after only having it a week...good for the money. HS

My best friend from high school popped up out the blue. I got a Smugmug message from him. He passed though town on other business and we spent a few hours monopolizing a table at the Southport. I had kind of forgotten that it was from him that I got my, ahem, sense of humor. (although he claims it was the other way around). Which made me realize that it's been way too long since I've even lurked here. So I'm posting and promising to do better

Class D output?

Shee-it. RIP Steve Albini. Dude was more or less never not a dickhead, but one of the most important figures in American punk rock and (I say this with all seriousness) one of the greatest record producers ever. He was also a brilliant graphic designer. Dude was punk rock to his core. EDIT: Got Ninja'd by TMoney while I was finding a properly high rez version of the above.

Holy shit. RIP Steve Albini. Only 61. Absolute fucking legend of a producer. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/arts/music/steve-albini-dead.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini_discography

In the same boat as Carl. Haven’t been spending enough time here - miss y’all. Classes are over though and my life is calming down so I’ll be around more. In the meantime I’m trying to fly to Colorado but evidently our new plane (the one we supposed to be on had some mechanical issues) had too much fuel and they had to defuel, getting rid of 5600 gallons of fuel!? WTF? Anyways, just spend the last three hours on the plane waiting to de-fuel. We’re finally taking off. Thanks United.