Archives August 2026

Last night I finally got around to filming my review video for the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro, a printer I have had for at least a couple months. This printer has not blown me away which runs counter to a lot of opinions on the internet which are mostly positive. Much of the review focused on comparing the CP5 to my Snapmaker U1 which is also a tool changer printer. In almost every way I prefer the way the Snapmaker does things.

This morning I was making my lunch and it felt like my nose was running badly which is pretty normal for me. What wasn’t normal was when I wiped my nose and saw red. For whatever reason I had a nosebleed, something that does not happen normally for me. I have no idea why it happened but like most things I will attribute it to just getting old. It’s a convenient catch all excuse.

I had a dentist appointment on Wednesday, an appointment I had postponed twice previously. There has been a major shake up at the office whom I have been client of for close to 25 years. The woman who ran the practice abruptly transferred it earlier in the year. Evidently she had some sort of health issue that prompted it combined with not much need to work as her husband is a dentist as well. To make matters worse, my hygienist that I have had for nearly as long left as well due to some health issues with her son and possibly collateral damage from the ownership change.

The new female dentist is ok but I don’t have the history like I did with the prior one. I had a new hygienist as well. She is a short and old lady named Joe. At first I was skeptical of how she would do but she was fine. However due to her age I certainly can’t count on her being around long term. I had thought I would need to start looking for a new dentist office but for now, the visit wasn’t such a turn off that I feel the need to jump ship, yet.

Now I have another medical change I have to navigate. The on site employee health clinic that I have utilized for 10-15 years has been shut down. There is a new clinic but it is no longer on site and is managed by another organization so I will be dealing with a new RN/LPN. I need to get a physical shortly as a qualifier for our health insurance so I will be seeing how this round of change works out.

I forgot to mention that we got to see Odyssey on Tuesday night, the last night it was showing in Imax in our area. The only option was going back to the same theater where I had the terrible experience watching Spiderman. Luckily the theater was much less mobbed on a Tuesday night than it was on Saturday. The theater did not have residual trash in it this time either. The Odyssey delivered a pretty epic experience, enhanced by seeing it in Imax. I never read the book so the story was new to me. The movie seemed like an instant classic to me, sort of like Avatar or Titanic. It gets a bright and shiny A.

This weekend does not have any big events on the calendar although I really need to film another review video for the V14 Pro. This would be the final wrap up video which I normally put a little extra effort into. I am considering skipping pickleball Saturday morning. My knees although workable, are still not great. I have significant soreness in both of them which includes parts that are painful to the touch. When I tried doing lower body work at the gym this week I had to resort to an abbreviated version as certain movements just did not feel good. The joys of aging never stop coming.

I started off Saturday playing some hot and humid pickleball. I played pretty well, going undefeated. I didn’t notice any tweaks during play but my knees didn’t feel great the rest of the weekend after playing.

I completed printing the replacement T for the sign entering the development. I used construction adhesive to attach it. This was the first time I ever printed with ASA filament and it went great on my Bambu Lab H2S which is able to handle high temperature filaments like this.

Although not a perfect match I think the 3D printed T is close enough that once it is painted to match the other letters I think unless you know it was replaced, you won’t notice it. I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back for this one.

We could not get seats at the local theater to see Spiderman so I got us two tickets to the Regal Gulf Center theater instead which is up near Fort Myers. It’s a much bigger venue. Well we quickly found out it is also sort of a shit hole. We walked into the lobby to an ocean of people. There had to be 150 people in the concession line and nearly as many in a line waiting to get into the theaters. I don’t know if they are just understaffed or just really inefficient. They had ONE person scanning in people’s tickets. The actual theater was a mess too. Evidently they didn’t have staff clean in between showings. I had to remove drinks/trash that were at our seats and stack it in the aisle. We will likely never frequent this theater again. I was annoyed enough with the theater that I did my first Yelp review ever about how badly things are run.

Luckily the Spiderman movie was great. No spoilers but it was really enjoyable especially after the string of so/so super hero movies that have come out the last couple years. The post credits scene was not really worth staying for. Just look it up online. I would give the movie a solid A. We both really enjoyed it.

I gave FSD a significant test. I had it drive from my house to the theater, including finding a space and parking us automatically in the very busy lot. It did so without a hiccup. It drove us the 30 miles home as well without incident. It’s so good now. It is like having an invisible Uber driver available 24/7.

My Sunday other than going to the gym and doing my weekly bill paying session was pretty low key. I had things I could be doing but I just didn’t feel like it. I did manage to get my last character in WoW on my first account to level 90 meaning all 10 are at max level. Now I only have 3 left on my secondary account to go. Elsa had a pretty good weekend health-wise with no significant issues which made me happy.