Bree and Jan have been making progress building a 3D printer from a kit. Bree received the kit for her birthday, but it arrived only a little before she left for Japan, so she only started assembling it after we returned. The kit, an MK4 from Czech manufacturer Prusa, is quite well-designed and has good instructions, but it’s still a fairly lengthy undertaking. Bree and Jan work on it a little bit in the evenings after Bree’s done with homework.
Prusa kits are known for including a bag of Haribo gummy bear candies. After completing each major step in the assembly process, the instructions will include a directive to eat a specific number of gummy bears. Here Jan and Bree sample their first gummy bears.
Since Angela’s parents are in town, we visit Angela’s cousin Ty and his family on Mercer Island. It’s been a long time – 7 years – since we last saw them, so it’s nice to catch up. Angela’s Chen relations Endry and Victor are in town as well, and Ty’s mother Sue joins in the reunion too.
Evan returns home from his summer internship in Mexico City. He checked two bags at the Mexico City, but apparently only one of them was actually tagged and put on the plane. The other bag is lost. The bag that was lost contains all of Evan’s clothes. The bag that successfully makes it to Seattle contains three socks and giant green dinosaur plushie.
Bree and Jan finish assembling the Prusa 3D printer. When they turn it on, it starts out with a series of self-tests. Bree and Jan are delighted to watch things move around — and sad when the printer fails a test of the printer’s Y axis.
They try various things, but the test keeps failing. An online post from someone who encountered the same problem points out that the printer assembly instructions include a very misleading picture that led the poster — and Bree and Jan — to incorrectly install some bearings for the y-axis. They fix the bearings, turn the printer back on, and happily all the self-tests pass.
Bree selects a sample model for the first test print: a small spatula that can be used to help pry future prints off the printing bed. It feels miraculous to watch this machine precisely deposit tiny bits of plastic filament, layer by layer, and create a new, physical object before our eyes.
Bree passes her driving test! We have another driver in the house.
Bree was initially excited for her AP Computer Science class, but it’s moving very slowly. It doesn’t help that the class teaches Java, a programming language that fell out of favor years ago. And as far as Jan can tell, the programming concepts are being introduced in the most boring way possible.
Bree comes home with her first project: creating a text interface that lets the user enter a person’s hourly wage, the number of hours they worked, and the number of overtime hours they worked. The program then needs to display the person’s total wages.
Somewhere, the adult designing this course decided that the very best way to get teenagers excited about the world of programming was to have them write… a business application for a payroll department.
Liya and her Davenport College suitemates drag a couch outside to the courtyard for a Friends-style photo shoot. From left: Liya, Jordan, Jessica, Simone, Sadie, and Wini.
In the middle of her AP World History class, Bree is surreptitiously playing the New York Times Mini Crossword. She finishes the little crossword — triggering a loud playing of the app’s jaunty celebratory jingle. She manages to stab the Mute button quickly, but not before making it painfully obvious to the whole class — and the teacher — that she had just been playing a game.
Trivia: The jingle is known as the San Jose Strut.
Bree has organized a new school club called Tea Club. For the club’s first meeting today, Bree picks out a black tea from Assam, a black tea blend, a green tea flavored with yuzu citrus, and a vanilla rooibos tea. She also buys cookies to go with the tea, along with disposable cups, spoons, etc. She’s not sure how many students will actually show up, and is planning on around 20 people. 36 people attend! They have a pleasant time talking over tea.
Liya is doing a research project on viruses this semester. She’s investigating “cheating” in viruses: one can think of the set of viruses in a cell as a community. Viruses produce proteins that other viruses in the same cell can use — which leads some proportion of viruses to evolve into slackers that don’t produce those proteins; instead they “cheat” by using the proteins produced by others. After a lab meeting, the whole lab goes outside for a group photo. (Liya’s 7th from the right and her mentor, Asher, is 3rd from right.)