A fast, but dear friend of mine told me that I should write a book. I don’t know if I have a whole book in me, but I can definitely do notes. I don’t know what it’s going to end up becoming, but here’s a slice of what I’m dumping out of me, in real time, as I’m trying to make this project happen. Maybe eventually I edit & pretty it up enough to be worth something to somebody, in which case a print-it-yourself version would drop here. Free of charge. On the House.

Shoelace life

Here’s a thing that remains a mystery to me, and probably will for all my life. How come some people don’t even notice their shoelaces are undone? I’ve developed a pretty sharp peripheral vision from my school bullying days, so any kind of erratic motion always gets flagged in my head. Here, there, another one.. I try to catch up to them, let them know that their keep-the-shoe-attached devices are malfunctioning, but it puzzles me. Who are you people, to so brazenly step forth one foot a second (roughly) with not a single care in the world and nay a gaze shot down? The absolute, utmost FAITH you have that the ground would still be there when you step is astounding! I’m not built like that.

I’m a worrier. I worry, constantly; what can go wrong, what will go wrong, and how the fuck am I gonna cope with it when it inevitably does? You don’t always see it coming. I was deep in the weeds of trying to piece together the first functioning Fighter; I knew that my plan to make titanium feeds happen before the pen show was SKETCH at best — too many unknowns, too many things unproven, not battle-hardened enough. So I planned a backstop: alright, just in case, I’m going to print some feeds in resin, it’s better to have resin feeds in a pen that works and explain that the plan was titanium, than no feeds and no working pen at all (again). And then I needed to cut a slanted recess into my tanks, to marry them to my printed sections (those were definitely not getting made out of titanium in time, I’ve made my peace with that). As I inserted my trusty crusty flash drive into my printer, with the sliced sections, feed, and little helper gauges, it hit me - this has a Bus Factor [1] of one. One flash drive failure, and I have no tools to print this, I have no way to bring my g-code over to the Roland router.. I mean, come on, it’s not like USB drives are notorious for failing, right?..

But you don’t always see it coming. Armed with the plan to definitely, positively swing by an electronics shop to buy a second flash drive just in bloody case, I left my home on Friday. Blissfully unaware that it would be the last time I saw my dear hand-drawn QR code until the show is over… I’m a worrier, and sometimes staring down at your own shoelaces helps. “I’ve got my laptop, I’ve got cables for charging headphones, phone, all the bits and bobs… got the trackball for CAD and CAM work, got my printed stuff done, I’ll clean it up in the workshop, fit together, it’ll work… Just need to cut the tanks, put everything together, glue it if I must, test with water, then if everything’s okay test with ink… wait a second, INK!”. Yep, I was missing ink. Scrambling, angry that I’m going to miss my express train to Slough, I popped my head into the nearest WHSmith:

— Fountain pen ink. Any. Stat.

— Sorry, we don’t have any… Try Ryman’s? Out, head left, you’ll see it…

Whoever you were, WHSmith employee, THANK YOU! Yes, it was old; yes, it was just the boring, plain as flour blue Lamy, forgotten on the bottom shelf so long it SOMEHOW accumulated a layer of dust thick as frosting on the Easter cake INSIDE the carton box, but it was INK! You can’t backstop and counter-plan everything. But it sure doesn’t hurt to try.

And that USB drive? It never failed me. Still serving. 8 gigabytes of plastic-clad consequence of optimizing the printer's BOM down to cents, with which it got to me. I could've said that it did fail, and my spidey senses of getting a backup one were right on the money, and that would've made for a better story... But you don't need a story, you need a comrade. And I'm here, with you. When the backstop turns out to be unnecessary, and when it absolutely saves your ass.

[1] Look it up.