More madness

Our daughter Lisa as I have often mentioned, is heavily into crafts. When we were visiting she showed me her new 3D printer. I’ve always wanted one but thought they would be in the thousands of dollars. Well, they’re not necessarily.

Then I thought why would we get one? What would we print? I started off thinking about hydroponic parts and so far we haven’t stopped adding to the list; not just hydroponics, but tons of other stuff too.

Then I wanted to know how to design this stuff. I don’t really need to, because there are thousands of free plans to download off the internet. However, I’ve always been fascinated with creating stuff so I downloaded a few CAD (computer-aided design) programs and got started.

We waited until Mexico before ordering the printer online and after a couple of weeks, got one. It’s a Creality Ender 3 and had to be assembled. It took about two hours and after I hooked it up, set it up and started it up. I tried their test print…total failure. I was sure it was because of the humidity so I ordered a dryer box for the filament.

No matter what I did I could not get it to work properly. After some communication with the supplier, I gave up and took it apart to return. I then ordered the same brand that Lisa uses although a less expensive model. I can’t get it in Mexico so I asked Rod and Sue if they would bring it when they drive down. They said it would be fine so I guess they have earned a few margaritas or maybe rum and cokes.

There is an awful lot to learn about this new hobby; fortunately, it’s not too difficult. Everything can be answered by Google and I use that a lot. I have to know about the types of plastic filament to use, temperatures, and a thousand other things. For instance, humidity can affect the printing process as the filament absorbs moisture. The humidity here right now is between 65 and 90% so that’s why I thought it was the problem.

It was so hot today that we saw a bird blow on a worm before eating it.

Remember the phone that I had so much fun with? Well, the fun continues. The other day the screen started to do strange things and finally blanked out altogether. I took it to the PC Doctor Luis, who said that the battery had been installed improperly and it pushed up on the screen causing the problem. As I hadn’t touched the battery when I worked on it I doubted that was the problem. The fix was over $200 so I said no I would get a new phone.

Back at the casa, I checked it out and it looked as though the battery had swelled a bit and did the damage. I had had enough by this time so I got on to Mercado Libre, the Latin form of Amazon, and ordered a new iPhone.

It arrived within two days and I looked forward to getting it updated. I couldn’t get all the info from the old phone so I relied on iCloud. It started off fine but then the internet kept quitting. By this time I was fed up with phones and decided to go back to smoke signals. I think I just wanted to set fire to something.

I contacted Mercado Libre and filled out a return form. I had to wait two days for the supplier to respond so I decided to wipe the phone clean and load all my apps manually instead of using iCloud. Dang me, it worked! I think I overloaded it with all the crap I was trying to download. Anyway, it’s working great now and I love it. It’s a great improvement over the old one. However, I still have to download all those apps.

Oh! And by the way, Mercado Libre has locked my account for some weird reason.