Here goes.

After saving up months I was finally able to order the flagship prusa printer, the mk3. And low and behold: the waiting did pay off: I could now actually buy the newest, the MK4 !! 🎉

So I did. End of June. Got a nice rol of filament too. Couldn’t be happier. Yes the lead time was a chore but still. In august I would have a very nice upgrade from the mini.

August came: no printer. Backlog. I already sold the mini to my dad. Guess I’m going without one for a week or so, no biggie.

Shipping schedule appeared. Great! Mine was planned for 4/9. Oof. Ok… The first week of September: nope we had to push back a week! Damn 😓

And then last week:shipped!!

Spend a day building the marvelous thing. dreaming what I will be testing first. Planning. Ah great things!!

And then it came: the magic moment of doing the self test. Tension rose, green check marks appeared.. aaah 😌 victory would be mine! Boy oh boy I cannot wait!

Beeeeeeeeep. Bright red screen “loading cell error” 😱

Ok no panic, maybe the cable got loose.. happens.. sure I will get to printing soon; let’s see..

I started testing cables. Running tests. Resetting everything. Re-flashing. Damn the usb stick broke! Aaargh .. ok… Nope. Nothing works.

Onto chat support it goes. Doing the same tests. Filming them. “Hmm I need to ask our MK4 expert” after we both came to the conclusion the loveboard is probably failing (filament sensor is error too)

“We will contact you soon, next week” given it’s Friday at this point.

And now: we’re waiting again. Staring at a broken MK4. Sitting there. Tempting me to dream of my next printing project.

Support was great and all that. They will make it right I trust them. I just wanted to share my story to people who will probably exactly understand what it’s like. To wait. And wait.

1. The article is paywalled
2. This is the gist of it and my options
3. I know we have this financing in please to “lessen corruption, bribing and lobbying” 🤔

This graph shows in MILLIONS how much the total of them have accumulated over the years:

This is the distribution of 78 MILLION for this year

In 2021 zat het vermogen van de politieke partijen met 156 miljoen euro al op een recordhoogte en daar is vorig jaar nog eens een stuk bij gekomen. Samen bezitten ze nu al een schatkist van 165,4 miljoen euro, een stijging van net geen 6 procent en een enorme som geld voor een overheid die zelf diep in de schulden zit en één van de grootste begrotingstekorten in Europa heeft. Geen enkele partij zit in de rode cijfers, integendeel.

“N-VA is veruit de rijkste. De partij van Bart De Wever bezit een vermogen van 34 miljoen euro, bijna dubbel zoveel als PS, de tweede in rij. De Vlaams-nationalisten hebben maar liefst 14 miljoen euro belegd, bezitten een grote portefeuille aan vastgoed en hebben ook nog eens zo’n 9 miljoen in kas.

Ondertussen is zo goed als iedereen het erover eens dat er moet worden gesneden in de dotatie. Ook experten die in opdracht van het parlement een rapport schreven, kwamen deze week nog tot die conclusie. Alleen, de partijen slagen er maar niet in om in eigen vel te snijden. Een werkgroep bekijkt de komende weken of het toch nog kan, maar op minder dan een jaar voor de verkiezingen lijkt het eerder een naïeve gedachte.

Source: "De politieke partijen zijn rijk, N-VA is schatrijk: een blik op hun financiën" https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20230706_97351645

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But yeah… it’s the lower class, the poor, the small business owners and the migrants who take all our money 🤦‍♀️

Reading this truly made me sick. The lack of self awareness of them even more. Don’t get me started on the feeling of helplessness.. sometimes I get the feeling the whoever we vote to represent us, it never changes. It only seems to get worse (30+ year of voting here)

I do believe in democracy but this? This doesn’t feel anything like. Aux contraire!

Now if you excuse me I urgently need to pay 2x the same provincie belasting - but different amounts - for my small home, just because I’m a small Bussiness ower who operates things from my home office even though it’s only a few square meters, I still have to fork a minimum tax for that. Sigh.

Oh and yes the Ki as well………

I mean.. common! 😒

I bought the official dock on sale. While I have other docks that kinda worked, the continued support with firmware updates and an extra excellent usb-c charger sealed the deal. 20pt off helped off course too! 😎

Now I’m dreaming of the day I can use this dock as my go to solution for traveling and even at home use. I have a multi story home, and lots lots of usb-c devices. This will be perfect!

Except.. I also like TOTK a lot. And I have a first gen switch, anyone know a hack to let the switch play nicely with this dock? Just screen hdmi and charging would be sufficient.

The charger works perfectly for the switch, the hdmi.. was a no go with the other docks. Still have to test with this new one but……. I fear it will not. :((

Disclaimer: I haven’t done a lot of research yet. Still in the “how to handle this” stage.

My profile: Senior Full Stack Web App - with own infrastructure in the cloud, unraid locally. HASSOS in a vm.

Q: in September I’m getting solar panels. My parents lended me the money on the condition they can use up the extra energy I set the net. We live in Belgium and that is possible but to do so they have to take it at most 15 minutes after. For normal usage this is fine but I’m talking heat pump and machines and such.

Both houses have a home assistant setup. His is even more automated than mine. Both run on on a decent machine. Both have stable internet (UniFi) and he is paying for home assistant cloud. Atm I am not.

Now I do have a digital meter and just integrated that with my instance. First I made my own cable but then I stumbled upon “slimmelezer+” module and that thing is just fantastic!

Anyway now I have access to real time data. What would you do to get it to the other instance? I do not have a lot of time but I am experienced with webservices and have the servers. This would be read only off course! lol but I was wondering if any of you knew a project or has done this him/herself.

I’m thinking the easiest way would be for me to pay for cloud access and then create a user for them. They can then add my home to their apps. But it would be super duper sweet to fully integrate both houses!

Last week I took the bait and bought some esun pla+ from an Amazon.de sale.

I normally print with Colorfabb of Prusament. Almost for 5y now and never had real issues, especially not with the Prusa Mini.

But now, I loaded a fresh rol and it just… was awful: under extrusion galore even in the first layer! A lot of clicking and clacking.. just 😒

I read somewhere their filament comes “wet”… pretty convenient that they also sell.. overpriced dryers right?!

Anyway I’m going to build a dryer now. Hoping that resolved the issues and this wasn’t all money wasted.. sigh

Anyway I was wondering if someone else had the same issues? Or experience with this brand? How can you know that it’s dried enough? Or can it really only be with testing?

I’m investing in a mk4 soon, this has a direct drive, instead of a Bowden. Will this be less of an issue? I mean I know about the quality issues I was just thinking about that it seems like it just cannot pass properly, through .. and I forgot how it’s named: the thingie that feeds the filament.

Anyway if anything: be cautious with that brand. I wish I had read some more before buying it, I trusted the reviews to much I guess

Anyway sorry for the long kinda rand post.. it has been.. a challenging week.. 🤟