The Prusa is Perfect (and That's Almost a Shame)
The Ender is very, very broken.
Like, not “oh no, it needs a new nozzle” broken — more like “the entire hotend assembly is physically bent and I am officially done pretending I’ll fix it” broken. It's not the first time I’ve let go of a printer that gave me more problems than prints, but this one's different. There's something weirdly personal about this one. Like the Da Vinci 1.0 I talk about sometimes — yeah, that printer was a nightmare, but it mattered. Not because of the machine itself, but because of what I built through it. The connections. The memories. The way working on it became a sort of background noise to some very specific conversations, especially with her.
(And no, I promise not every positive memory in my life is somehow tied to her. But yeah, a good chunk of the memorable ones are.)
The Ender’s kind of the same. Not as pivotal, but still something. We talked a lot while I worked on it — mostly late nights, mostly off-topic. And honestly, I think that’s why it matters to me. It wasn’t about the printer. It was about the process. Which is also why, in a weird way, it’s almost a shame the Prusa is perfect.
Like, don’t get me wrong. I needed something that just worked. I got tired of chasing zits of melted filament with a multimeter in one hand and a coffee in the other. The Prusa does its job. It prints everything I throw at it, no complaints. And that reliability? Honestly kind of beautiful. But it also means there’s no chaos. No debugging marathons. No late-night problem-solving. Just clean prints and predictable output.
But you know what it doesn’t need to be? Overdesigned for attention.
Like, you ever see one of those showpiece gaming setups online? RGB everywhere, water cooling tubes wrapped like candy canes, perfectly coiled cables color-matched to the wallpaper. Looks incredible in a thumbnail. But then you find out the thing crashes during Minecraft and the keyboard doesn’t have working arrow keys. It’s all image, no function. Built to impress, not to perform.
That’s how some connections feel. Not necessarily bad, just... misprioritized. When the vibe is all polish and no depth — curated playlists and cute posts instead of actual conversation. And look, I’m not anti-aesthetic. But if the only thing holding something together is how good it looks from the outside? Yeah, that’s not really built to last.
I've said it before, but I used to live by the “move fast, break stuff” mindset. Great for tech. Radios, printers, laptops — break them, fix them, learn in the debris. But people aren’t printers. You can’t just reflash the firmware and expect it to boot clean. The more I’ve grown, the more I’ve realized this isn’t a startup. This is life. And life doesn’t need a flashy beta launch and public roadmap. It needs time. Space. Quiet. You test quietly. You iterate slowly. You build something meaningful — and then, when it’s ready, then you ship.
It felt really good the other day, though. I got to lean into my old chaotic energy again during a small group physics session. Explained something (I don’t even remember what — probably something with too many metaphors and too little curriculum), and someone said it reminded them of “one of those Chris Boden videos.” I laughed. And then I realized… what an honour. To be compared to a semi-famous convicted felon-slash-YouTuber whose content is equal parts unhinged and somehow deeply educational? That’s the energy I aspire to bring to every science lesson. A little chaotic. A little unstable. Surprisingly effective.
That said, I know now not everything needs to be chaos. Not everything needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. And not everything needs to be defined, boxed, or optimized. Some things — some people — are just good. As they are.
And if it ain’t broke?
Don’t fix it.
And if it is broke?
Well… try WD-40 and duct tape. (Just maybe not on people.)
73,
Daniel