Thursday Lunch

Stuff we talked about at lunch yesterday.

Byron is making sourdough bread and he brought a cup of sour dough culture for Tracy. Then there was a long discussion about the different kinds of bread and various baking techniques. Tortillas, dutch ovens and special, custom, long narrow pans for making baguettes, were mentioned. No-bake bread and Irish soda bread were also mentioned.

Dennis gave us an update on the design for the new house he is planning on building. He spent six months last year working with one company, but eventually they came to an impasse. He has since engaged another company and while he likes working with them better, they have a different set of CAD (Computer Aided Design) tools. The old company was able to produce 3D views of both interior and exterior of the house at the push of a button, it takes more work for the new company to produce those kind of drawings. 

Marc recommended FreeCAD, a free open source program. Commercial CAD programs typically operate on a subscription model with annual fees in the range of hundreds of dollars.

Marc brought a piece of flexible copper for show and tell. It was about an inch and a half square and about three-sixteenths of an inch thick. From across the table it appeared to be solid copper, but it was flexible like rubber. Turns out it is not actually a new form of copper, it is just a long piece of very thin copper sheet that had been folded accordion style to make this little square. It was part of a cooling system for a microprocessor. Pressed against the processor with a backing plate, the gaps between the folds provided channels for cooling gas to pass through and carry away the heat.

3 Things I Like about the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 3D Printer
Makers Muse

Marc told us about the new Carbon X1 3D Printer he ordered from Bambu Labs. He bought their fanciest model for like $1300. Their mantra is 'it just prints'. It's very fast, has four different spools of material, a camera that watches what it is doing. It will stop if it sees that it is just making a pile of spaghetti. It can also adjust the tilt of the print table to compensate for the printed object becoming uneven. He just sold his old 3D printer as we were sitting down to lunch.

Well, we were sitting down in Malone's, but the waitress never showed up. No real surprise, we had a pretty good snowstorm here over the last couple of days. It would be no big deal in the Midwest or any place that gets snow for weeks on end, but here it's like the end of the world. Everybody just throws up their arms, gives up and just stays home. We waited for like 30 minutes, not that it was any hardship. We were busy discussing the fate of the world. We finally gave up on waiting and walked across the parking lot to Burgerville.

Burgerville Credit Card Machine

Burgerville has the worst credit card machine. I suppose after you've used it a couple of times it would become familiar enough that it wouldn't be a problem, but it's been at least six months since I've been to Burgerville and I had forgotten all I knew about it. The cashier had to help me. Why can't they use the same machine as everybody else? Why do they have to be different? Annoying, that.

Then there was some talk about making RC (Radio Control) model aircraft. Marc described a wing that was built up lengthwise using a 3D printer. The wing was hollow except for a couple of spars running the length of the wing. There are no ribs. On a related note, there is now a kind of plastic for printing that expands like foam as it is printed, which might be very good for making things like RC aircraft. The only drawback is you cannot print as fast as you can with regular material, you have to wait for it to finish expanding before you can lay another bead on top.

Next we tackled modern medicine and its corollary, medical insurance. Why does it have to be so complicated? One answer is that it is a jobs program. We have people calling people to talk about what is covered and why it's not covered, etc. It's a new career path for young people and is required participation for old people, that is if you want to see a doctor for anything at all.

First Presbyterian Church, Corvallis, Oregon, circa 1910

Traci let out the theory that the Republican party is controlled by an evangelical Presbyterian group from somewhere out east. Supposedly there was a schism in the Presbyterian church (imagine that) and they split into two main branches and the evangelicals were one branch. They got started somewhere back around 1910 and have grown larger and ever more powerful ever since. They now have tentacles that reach into every government department. Sounds kind of like my theory about the Democrat cabal that currently seems to be in power. Well, you know both theories could be right, shoot, they both probably are. There are good ol' boy networks running all over this country and on both sides of the aisle. I suspect this is similar to professional wrestling, lots of sound and fury, lots of stomping around on stage, but in the behind-the-scenes, the stakes are much higher.

There was some discussion about whether Biden is competent or not. Some people think his mind is plenty sharp, and all the incidents of clumsiness are just typical for an old man. Pretty sure no one changed their mind on this. Others think he just too old. Shoot, Trump is really too old. Maybe that's how we choose Presidents now? Political campaigns just drive candidates into the ground and only the toughest ones survive.