When you do this long enough, not having to work for a few days is all the reward you need to make Friday exciting.

Hmm I know there used to be the issue with the aluminum beds being warped – mine is like that but was resolved with some layers of aluminum foil under the glass to flatten it out. And I do hear occasionally of someone getting a unit with an incorrectly cut rail length, but they’ve always just called Creality and gotten a replacement without any hassle. I haven’t heard of anyone having trouble with their customer service though, so I’m not sure what changed there, but that’s unfortunate that you had trouble with them.

I do agree about the hit-or-miss quality though. My own experience was the first glass bed I got from them was absolutely fantastic, nothing else beats the adhesion I had there. Then after a few years when the coating wore out I ordered a new one from them… and nothing will stick to that bed without using hairspray/glue/etc, so what’s the point? I finally settled on a slab of G10 with a PEI sticker which has worked well, but just the fact that the two glass beds which should have been identical says a lot about their quality control. I would say anyone getting an order from them should not expect a working machine right out of the box, however replacement parts have been easy to obtain for most people. And since you have to assemble these yourself, you definitely need to pay close attention to the online videos (I used the one from Tomb of 3D Horrors) to make sure everything is properly squared up, otherwise you’ll have nothing but trouble if you just slap them together.

Appreciate the link! Glad to see that both my mastodon and lemmy instances have already blocked their content.

Agreed that time is money, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time on mine. I think the worst time-sink was after converting to direct drive and basically having to start from scratch on all my slicer settings, and then working out cable management to reclaim my Z height. At one point I was playing with faster speeds (thus the dual-Z upgrade) but eventually I want to switch to a 0.2mm nozzle and try to dial in miniatures (HO scale trains). I would be better off switching to a resin printer for that but I don’t have an option for good ventilation so that’s not really a consideration right now.

I’ve always wondered where this comes from, the thought that a person would spend a huge amount to upgrade an Ender? I spent maybe $100 upgrading mine until I screwed up and fried my motherboard, but even adding the extra $60 for a decent upgrade I’ve still spent less than the original cost of the printer, and way WAY less than the cost of a Prusa. At this point the main upgrades include a direct drive and dual-Z to handle some NinjaFlex. I’ve always considered ABL a waste of money, and every other upgrade was just things I printed myself. You certainly can’t beat the reliability, I mean my printer has been sitting idle for nearly a year and I just fired it up a couple weeks ago to print some new items – no leveling or anything else, I just loaded up a spool of PLA and off it went. So what exactly are people spending these exorbitant amounts of money on for upgrades?

Thanks! Guess I should look through the available filters list more often.

I’ve been running uBlock Origin forever, didn’t even know reddit had ads until people started complaining, but it’s never done anything for these stupid cookie warnings.

Ever since sites started doing this, StackExchange has been the one constant thorn in my side. “We’ll only ask you once” and yet that popup has appeared every single time I have visited the site, and I’m there quite frequently for programming questions. Other sites like StackOverflow were able to store a cookie containing my selected preferences, but SE seems to ignore my selection and I finally gave up even trying to click on the banner years ago.

Funny thing is, I checked them again after reading this article, and suddenly there is no cookie banner on the page. Hopefully they finally got it fixed and this isn’t just some temporary fluke.

as long as someone else has an even more horrible life

My parents always knew I would be a disappointment, they just didn’t count on that being a positive thing! ;-)

Where I work at they decided the “office” people need to keep a presence just in case some random person walks in off the street and wants to ask questions. I’m the IT guy, I have no intention of talking to anyone I don’t support, I have no knowledge to answer any questions about our business that I could offer, and my office isn’t even near the front desk where I could hear anyone come in anyway … but yeah it totally makes sense that I should have to drive in a couple days a week to a place where they make me pay for parking, just to sit at my desk all day and answer emails.

Of course there’s two reasons why I haven’t made a stink about their idiocy. First is that in doing my job, it really is helpful to others if they know they can meet me in person at certain times to fix issues that can’t easily be solved over email. The second is that I can see my retirement on the horizon (about ten years away), and in the last ten years the place I work has made a huge contribution to my 401A, so much that it has already passed everything I’ve put away from previous jobs. If I can hunker down for another decade, I won’t even need social security to retire comfortably, and that’s a really good thing since Trump and other Republicans have already stated they are trying to eliminate it so they can justify collecting fewer taxes from the rich. I may be one of the last generations that can afford to retire and I’m not taking that lightly.

It’s funny that most people forget OTA TV still exists and that you don’t need to pay to see a lot of shows. For the cost of one month’s service fees you can get a decent amplified antenna, but if you’re near any large cities that broadcast you can get a cheap cardboard-sandwiched antenna for less than $10 and requires no installation. It’s cool to see some people are taking advantage of the open spectrum and newer technologies.

Seriously, has everyone forgotten what a “phone” is? I mean I have trouble hearing and don’t like to hold long conversations on the phone, but it’s still one of the quickest ways to get in touch with someone.

I’m afraid there’s nothing new about this, it has been going on for a long time. What I do believe is happening is now that every idiot with a cell phone can jump of sites like lemmy or reddit, we are simply seeing a lot more examples of the problem. Pretty much like when camcorders became affordable to the general public, we suddenly saw all kinds of police brutality videos and some people thought this must be a recent trend when in fact it had been occurring all along.