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Bambu Lab A1 mini Gets Messy

The Bambu Lab A1 mini I got in June 2024 hasn’t had and real failures until now, in January 2026, which is pretty darn good. Occasionally a print would fail, but I’d say over 98% of the time it just prints without issue.

The other day I hit print, walked away, and came back to… no print. Weird. I hit print again, or maybe I forgot to hit print the first time? I figured I forgot, and it was user error. Ah, no. I came back to the blob you see above.

In the old days this would have been disastrous, perhaps needing quite a bit of teardown, maybe requiring a heat gun or torch, and I was ready for that, but… I didn’t really need any special tools at all! (I used a needle nose pliers and some small forceps.)

I heated up the extruder and managed to get the blob off, and then allowed the machine to cool and got the hotend off. It was actually too easy. Is this printers in 2026!? There’s a mess, but hey, not too bad…

The area where the hotend clips in had some filament as well, which had to be cleaned up and removed.

It was just too easy! It’s like they added a non-stick surface to the thing. I suppose that shiny metal is exactly that, a surface that filament will not stick to.

And cleaning up the hotend was again, almost too easy! Hell, I fought in the Printer Wars back in the 2010s and it was nothing like the world we have today. I put almost no effort into getting the filament mess off of things. Damn.

Up and running, printing again, after like 15 minutes, and half of that was probably heating up the extruder and then letting it cool down.

The world may be going to shit in 2026 but at least the printers got their shit together.

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Cat Treat Puzzles

There are two cats at our house. Chooch, who is chill and cute and amazing… and Bubbs who is destructive an asshole and… amazing. In a different way. Like, he fucks with things. He gets bored, I guess. Especially at around 2am when he messes with stuff in the bedroom so we lock him out, but then he does crazy shit. So Dana got this Catstages Kitty Cube Cat Interactive Treat Puzzle Toy to try to occupy him a bit. She said it’s the easiest puzzle toy she could find, just to get him started.

It does keep him busy for a bit, so that’s good. And he knows he get treats when he plays with it. But also, 3D printing, so I went looking for ‘cat toy treat puzzles’ and found a few. And yeah, I missed the Cat Toys Contest back in 2023.

I printed Cat Toy – Treat Dispenser Puzzle and chose the Removable Axle for Cat Treat Dispenser Puzzle to go with it. I wasn’t sure what size holes to go with for the treat barrel, as it depends on the size of the treats. I ended up adding a little hot glue on some of the holes to make it more difficult for the treats to fall out. I may even cover up a few of the holes to make it even more difficult.

Overall, this one is a winner though! Bubbs will spin it and get treats to come out. Chooch, well, not so much. She isn’t that smart. But she is smart enough to sit nearby when Bubbs gives it a spin because sometimes a treat will fly out and she’ll get it first!

I also printed Tumbling Treats Egg (Cat Toy) but they don’t seem to be as excited about this one. It requires a good smacking to get treats out, and I think they treat it to gently. I did enlarged the hole with a step bit hoping it might be a little easier for them. We’ll see how that goes.

I have not yet printed Sliding Cat Treat Puzzle but it looks pretty promising, so that might be next in the print queue.

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This is the Pain

I am in pain. It started in November. It seems to happen every year, at the end of the year. In the fourth quarter my body just breaks down, stops working, and hurts. A year ago it was my knee, two years ago it was my neck, and before that it was my foot. It hurts and I hate it.

I end up doing physical therapy, get x-rays, an MRI, medication, and I suffer. I suffer. I often have to stop my activities, pause doing the things I love. This year I had hit 1,400 miles on my bike. I had this goal of 1,000 miles in 2025, I hit it, and was hoping for 2,000 but with only two rides in December I ended the year at 1,955 miles. Still amazing but I wish I had hit 2,000.

I did manage to ride to work for 50 days, which was amazing… And the thing is, I was loving life. Fall was amazing. I was biking every day, getting outside, getting exercise, not driving a car. It all came to a halt when the pain got too bad. There are some periods now when I can barely even walk.

The thing about this pain I have now, which was originally diagnosed as sciatica, is that it’s become so unpredictable, and so painful. I guess the discs in my lower back and garbage, and it’s causing nerve pain, and it’s so, so bad. Some days I am in pain for a few hours, and some days it’s 10+ hours. When the pain is gone I am mostly fine, unless I sit in a desk chair for too long. I’ve been doing the “set a timer, sit and work for 20 minutes, then get up to stretch and move” routine for months now.

I’ve been to urgent care, where I was lying on the floor nearly crying before they saw me. And don’t worry, I’ve been crying at home when it’s been excruciating pain for more than an hour. Again it sucks… it sucks so much.

One thing I didn’t realize about the pain in my body is the pain it would cause my head. I am on medication that can cause dizziness and drowsiness, but also the pain just clouds your mind. It’s difficult to think clearly or focus when part of your body is in such pain. I’ve been missing work, falling behind on projects and tasks around the house, and just… trying to take it easy and heal, because really, I have no other choice. The “take it easy” part is not easy for me… and the healing is not here yet.

I also totally get how someone could get addicted to pain killers. If you gave me drugs that made the pain go away I would want them every time I was in pain. And I’m in pain a lot. That said I am following all guidelines for the medication I am taking because I know that’s the right thing to do. Meanwhile I’ve been using/trying heating pads, massagers, a TENS unit, lidocaine patches, an acupressure mat, and absolutely anything else non-drug I can think of… Some of it seems to help, but it’s just temporary relief.

I’m scheduled to see a doctor soon, and weeks out from an MRI unless we can speed that up. But I gotta say, life is rarely enjoyable these days.

Part of this is getting old I guess. It’s a reminder that disability will come for us all eventually. And it’s also depressing. It’s difficult to not feel hopeless, that you’ll ever be okay and feel good again. In previous years it was bad, but it felt temporary. Right now I am at the point where I am worried it will never get better, but I have to reject that diagnosis and remain hopeful, but damn… it’s hard to do.

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kan.bn Kanban Board

Back in May 2025 I posted about Focalboard which is a task management system you can run on your own as a container application. I also added a note in September about how it lost all my data.

While losing the data is completely terrible, I could have tried to recovered it, but I really didn’t like using Focalboard enough to be bothered. So I went looking for something else, and found kan.bn

kan.bn is a Kanban board, similar to Trello if you’ve ever used it. In fact, I tried Trello a few weeks ago as I used it for work about a decade ago. I guess Atlassian acquired Trello and it seemed pretty enshittified when I tried it. I mentioned in my Focalboard post how Asana, Monday, and Notion have all turned into goddamn AI platforms now so I want none of that.

Anyway, kan.bn is simple. Almost too simple. I’d like to see a few more features, but if a simple web-based Kanban board is all you need, it may work fine for you. I should also note that I’m just one person, and I don’t have a team or anyone else using this. Just like Trello it supports multiple users, teams, etc. but I don’t really need those features.

What I need is a self-hosted web application that I can use to track my projects, assign deadlines, and it would be great to be able to get notifications (email or Pushover, etc.) for tasks I need to do. Some of those requirements are why Anytype didn’t really work for my needs either.

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10K Miles: 10K Trees – REACH GREEN Virtual Challenge

In October 2025 I took part in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge which was organized by Reach Green.

Here’s an excerpt from a post on October 16th, 2025:

Every mile logged in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Challenge plants a tree and builds community. The early success of the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge has done more than exceed expectations, it has validated REACH GREEN’s mission. We set out to prove that when people are given a way to take meaningful environmental action that feels relevant, accessible, and achievable within their everyday lives, they respond.

This month-long challenge invites the REACH GREEN community to collectively log 10,000 miles by October 31. If we reach that goal, we’ll fund the planting of 10,000 trees through our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, REACH GREEN’s first beneficiary. Each mile logged represents a tangible step toward a healthier, more resilient planet, and the restoration of North Carolina’s endangered longleaf pine forests through our first collaborative project.

I was a little skeptical but I figured I was going to ride my bike anyway so why not join in and contribute. I love trees!

I’m not really a competitive person. I mean, I occasionally set goals for myself, but I’m not out to beat anyone. It was fun to watch the stats though, and I was usually between 9th and 12th place in the standings. October was amazing for bike riding. Not too hot, but still warm outside. I rode to work 15 days in October (often talking a longer route home) and was doing longer rides on the weekends.

In the end I came in 9th place (out of 226) with 26 hours of riding and 306.536 miles. Not too shabby! Since I was riding to work that also means it was just over 200 miles where I did not drive a car to and from work, so there’s a double-win there since I burned less gasoline and created less carbon emission from the car.