Now I’m wondering if I’m the only one who has participated?

Have you ever been to or participated in a tractor pull competition?

I work with a guy that's around retirement age, and says he's planning on retiring in a couple of years. He claims to not need to work because he's financially secure. He constantly complains about our company to anyone who will listen, or can't get away. It's especially bad when our boss isn't around.

He’s the most negative person I've ever been around. He's a proud asshole that hates everything and constantly retells stories about how everyone else was a dumbass except him in past jobs. He hates doctors until they fix something that's ailing him. He hates all of his and his wife's health problems. He hates new cars and their technology. He hates "foreign" cars and complained that a salesman showed up at his house in a NISSAN!!

Did I mention that he's MAGA?

The worst part is that he's holding our company hostage because he developed a complex piece of our equipment, and he's the most knowledgeable about it. If he left tomorrow, we'd be temporarily screwed until we hired someone new to figure it out. But, our boss is reluctant to just fire him even though he agrees that the guy is a cancer. Worse, we can't hire someone that would eventually be his replacement.

Any ideas for how to get out of this situation from a HR standpoint? He is literally holding us back. I fear that if we fired him, he would sue us. 🤦‍♂️

I have to admit that these days, if my training plan says to go easy, I don’t try to catch. If it’s a mix of hard and easy efforts, I’ll do gradual increases in effort to try and catch. I once spent a while chasing a flashing red light up a hill on a night ride, without gaining any ground, only to realize it was probably an Amish person on an e-bike. And, this was like 10 years ago, before e-bikes were so common.

If you’re out on a ride, and you see another rider ahead of you, do you try to catch them?

#cycling #BikeTooter

Complete with hail! ⛈️

I do believe we’re about to have our first thunderstorm of 2026. Heard what sounded like thunder earlier, and just saw a flash of lightning. #wx

Last night, just as I rolled over to fall asleep, I had a sudden idea for a project at work. I picked up my phone and added a reminder for the next day upon arriving at my office with a brief description of the idea. That way, I could let my brain relax instead of thinking about it all night. This is definitely not the first time this has happened, but it’s a method that has helped me remember good ideas.

I can’t be the only one who does this. How do you capture ideas that you have at odd times so that you don’t forget and can do something about them later?

(Boost for reach)

I should clarify that this macro doesn’t do anything beyond automating the conversion steps to get from a mesh to a solid. Then, if desired, automating deletion of the source mesh object and an intermediate shape object after the conversion given that they’re no longer needed. There is nothing magical that will repair bad meshes or any other errors.

After you’ve run the macro, you’ll have a solid that you can use for Boolean operations or you can drag it into an existing Part Design body to become a base feature for further modification.

For best results, make sure your mesh is manifold, or repair it by other means before attempting conversion.

#FreeCAD

I see lots of new #FreeCAD users expressing frustration about the process of importing and converting mesh files (like STLs) to be inconvenient and/or unintuitive. While I have my own opinions about whether you should be trying to modify STL files in the first place, I have found myself doing it from time to time because of the nature of the #3dprinting file-sharing ecosystem.

That said, even though I don’t particularly find the process of conversion to be particularly difficult, I decided to try and help FreeCAD users perform all of the operations with one click.

You can download my macro here: https://codeberg.org/chrishuck/Mesh_to_Solid

Import a mesh, select it, and run the macro. There are some options you can choose from, mostly for clean-up. I turned them on by default because I figured most people would just want to see the final object at the end.

Let me know if there are any issues or if you find it useful.

#DoingBetterTogether

On this #freecadfriday, I finally got around to designing a paper towel roll holder for the stand I use in front of my bike that’s attached to the stationary trainer. For probably a year, I’ve wanted this so that I could blow my nose or mop up sweat off the bike, etc…

I took inspiration from a few other designs I saw around the internet. The hardest part was getting the thickness of the curved beam spring to provide the right amount of tension against the roll. It took me 3 iterations to get it just right. I effectively decreased the stiffness by 50% with each iteration, but I had no idea what would “feel” right to begin with.

A little #3dprinting, a little hardware, and a piece of PVC pipe I had around to make the spindle. We’re in business.

#MadeWithFreeCAD

Here are some of the result from my #CFD analyses yesterday. I know there are several CFD examples of converging-diverging nozzles, but I’m curious to see how if has a significant effect in my application. It’s kind of crazy how quickly you can iterate on a design using these tools. Small design tweaks can have significant impact.

A part currently printing is based on these results. I can’t wait to try it out in a few hours. More to come…

#freecad

Spending some time on this #FreeCADFriday doing some CFD. I got it working on my Linux machine because I didn’t want to have to run a Docker container on MacOS.

#FreeCAD

In this episode of @shanselman’s podcast, there is a moment near the end where they discuss the relationship between junior and senior engineers, and how senior engineers need to let juniors know that they are going to make mistakes because they made them themselves, even in a senior role.

Things like accidentally deleting production. Any senior engineer that claims they’ve never accidentally deleted production data at least once in their career is a liar. I will fully admit that I had to go to my boss 20 years ago and tell him I deleted the top level assembly model of a machine we were designing. We went to IT and asked what the most recent backup was (thankfully, the day before) and got it restored.

A few months ago, one of my junior engineers couldn’t figure out why his design changes he’d been working on for a few weeks appeared to be gone. We tracked it down to his not paying attention when undoing a checkout of some models, and it also roped in the stuff he’d been changing because of references. I didn’t berate him, but simply tried to help him understand what happened. He had to redo the work, but it should serve as a reminder to be careful. I even relayed my own mistake of the past to reinforce that it happens to all of us.

This is a good episode for every level/type of engineer.

https://hanselminutes.com/1021/cheat-codes-for-junior-engineers-with-kat-excellence

When you make #coffee, do you:

Nothing like driving 1000 miles in two days to start your work week. I spent only about 1.5 hours in the chemical plant this morning to do our test fit before making the return trip. I’m a little tired of driving right now.

In celebration of 100 years of the #Goodyear #blimp, there are three of them flying over downtown #Akron for three days this week. I saw them on my way home from work, but these photos were taken while I was out riding my bike. They practically flew over my house at their westernmost as they flew in circles.

#BikeTooter #blimpspotting

Riding down this street in #akron is really something. The full tree canopy hasn’t even come in yet.

#BikeTooter