I signed up for the Motley Fool newsletter awhile back, the one in Mondays VicAd with the dumbest investments.
Yesterdays newsletter was interesting so I did some research. Yes it is, very interesting.
3D Printing
It is not printing on a piece of paper, there just isn't another word for it currently.
Industrial 3D printers cost over a 100K, commercial printers about 20K, about five are marketed now for home use at about $1,500.
As of now 3D printers are used in every field imaginable, defense contractors, auto manufacturers, medical implants and bone and tissue replication, a kidney has been successfully made and transplanted using this techonolgy, jewelry creation, there is even a chocolate 3D printer that can make any image into a edible chocolate treat.
So far 3D printers can build anything using a CAD program in human bone and a few organs, metals, ceramics, glass, composite and other plastics, wood, paper and chocolate, butter and sugar.
The reason for the title of this blog is because this technology has the ability to replace the labor cost of manufacturing almost anything. It is a additive manufacturing process, where something is made from the ground up with zero waste for drilling, milling, boring ect, and zero need to manufacture new tools and dies to change a products design.
Search for yourself about 3D printing or see...
http://www.economist.com/node/18114221
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/115503-what-is-3d-printing
Some 3D printers are already self replicating, if one of the parts breaks it can make its own replacement part. I know sounds kinda like the Terminator movie, but the technology is here already and will only become a larger part of life.
Can't find your TV remote? Print out another one! How wild is that?
But it is coming.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Medical costs... Victoria vs. Houston
I have notice a trend in the billing submitted to Mutual of Omaha, plan f provider, since my mom broke her elbow and is still under care.
Two ER visits and a TWO day stay at Detar... Submitted $1750 for the two ER visits, annnndddd get this $60,448.08 for a TWO day hospital stay! The hospital stay charges where found in error, but Detar submitted them. Mom was transferred to Methodist in Houston, $270.00 a day.
The Doctors who visited her in her room at Detar... $250 to $395 a visit.
The Doctors who visited her in her room at Methodist, ( TMI Associates, Baylor College of Medicine, ect.), ... $103 to $250 a visit.
Victoria Orthopedic surgeon, who only cleaned out the infection she developed and did not set the chipped bone.... $1350.00
Houston Orthopedic surgeon, who set the chipped bone, grafted tissue and skin over infected area... $1840.00
Victoria anesthesiologist... $ 975.00
Houston anesthesiologist... $795.00
Does anyone not notice a higher fee charged in Victoria than Houston?
And in no way can you compare Detar to Methodist.
Two ER visits and a TWO day stay at Detar... Submitted $1750 for the two ER visits, annnndddd get this $60,448.08 for a TWO day hospital stay! The hospital stay charges where found in error, but Detar submitted them. Mom was transferred to Methodist in Houston, $270.00 a day.
The Doctors who visited her in her room at Detar... $250 to $395 a visit.
The Doctors who visited her in her room at Methodist, ( TMI Associates, Baylor College of Medicine, ect.), ... $103 to $250 a visit.
Victoria Orthopedic surgeon, who only cleaned out the infection she developed and did not set the chipped bone.... $1350.00
Houston Orthopedic surgeon, who set the chipped bone, grafted tissue and skin over infected area... $1840.00
Victoria anesthesiologist... $ 975.00
Houston anesthesiologist... $795.00
Does anyone not notice a higher fee charged in Victoria than Houston?
And in no way can you compare Detar to Methodist.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Something To Consider, feel free to comment
All the talk and vitriol displayed about ever single thing from the Keystone pipeline project, deciding who is going to challenge President Obama in the next election, who gets HOT funds and who doesn’t, re-districting, recycling, green energy, climate change, pro-life/pro- choice, Catholic, Christian, Mormon or nothing at all, racism or is it not?, section 8, food stamps, illegal aliens and immigration, gay marriage, Republican- Democrat- Libertarian or any other “cause”, all the way down to should the county of Victoria ban signs that have a X on them, they have one thing in common.
Every one of the above has been made a political issue.
If I can ask a simple question… Why?
People of every culture, nation and belief have a different idea of what is right and what is not right, even within every culture, nation or belief system some agree, some disagree.
By making the issues in the first paragraph political, depending on a election, coup or popular revolt, takes away some portion of the affected “Peoples” choice.
After all, governments don’t live together, people do.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
halloween stories ... or not
My daughter and her BF WHERE going to stay at our land six miles NW of Yorktown after going to Western Days... her BF got the heebie jeebes when they went there, so they didn't.
Dakota could have been right... a little local lore...
Our place north of Yorktown is in the area of what some locals call crazy man woods.
The story goes that years ago a family lived in the area and had a "strange" son, probably a treatable disorder these days, but anyhow, they couldn't handle him so they kept him chained and in a cage. He would escape now and then and prowl all around the area, peeking in at and scaring other family s, stealing things and just being a pain in the ass, this was in the late 1930s.
My family bought the land in about 1984 or so. And we met our neighbors...
Felix and Anne Respondeck, a brother and sister that still lived in the house they were born in after their parents had passed away. Felix took care of their cows, drove his pickup to town and bought what they needed. Anne probably never left her little piece of land. You have to understand that neither one of them had every married and lived together in their parents house all their lives. Strange in these days but not so much in crazy man woods I guess.
Anne use to come prowl around our house at night. How did we know? Easy, she didn't own a pair of shoes and in the morning we would find bare footprints in the sand, the soil there is sandy.
She would come over during the daylight and stand at the yard fence and yell "Ello", she did have a accent, and be invited in to ask whatever she wanted. She didn't even know how to use a telephone, my mom had to show her. ANYway...I talked to her one day, this is what she told me...
"There is this old woman, a witch, who lives over there (pointed north), she can make herself look like a 20 year old and she goes to the bars in town and talks men into coming home with her, then she kills them, then she turns old again. She has 23 dead bodies in the house attic, she keeps them."
She also claimed that because her brother Felix had had a stock pond dug on their land, that the digging had set loose 16 dead spirits who now run around screaming, wanting to be buried again. Ohh and the long dead Indian that tormented her until she found his comb and gave it back to him.
I admit, staying there alone I have had a uneasy feeling before, but not ever time.
So was Dakotas fear justified or not?
It is not for us humans to glimpse the other world, or is it?
Dakota could have been right... a little local lore...
Our place north of Yorktown is in the area of what some locals call crazy man woods.
The story goes that years ago a family lived in the area and had a "strange" son, probably a treatable disorder these days, but anyhow, they couldn't handle him so they kept him chained and in a cage. He would escape now and then and prowl all around the area, peeking in at and scaring other family s, stealing things and just being a pain in the ass, this was in the late 1930s.
My family bought the land in about 1984 or so. And we met our neighbors...
Felix and Anne Respondeck, a brother and sister that still lived in the house they were born in after their parents had passed away. Felix took care of their cows, drove his pickup to town and bought what they needed. Anne probably never left her little piece of land. You have to understand that neither one of them had every married and lived together in their parents house all their lives. Strange in these days but not so much in crazy man woods I guess.
Anne use to come prowl around our house at night. How did we know? Easy, she didn't own a pair of shoes and in the morning we would find bare footprints in the sand, the soil there is sandy.
She would come over during the daylight and stand at the yard fence and yell "Ello", she did have a accent, and be invited in to ask whatever she wanted. She didn't even know how to use a telephone, my mom had to show her. ANYway...I talked to her one day, this is what she told me...
"There is this old woman, a witch, who lives over there (pointed north), she can make herself look like a 20 year old and she goes to the bars in town and talks men into coming home with her, then she kills them, then she turns old again. She has 23 dead bodies in the house attic, she keeps them."
She also claimed that because her brother Felix had had a stock pond dug on their land, that the digging had set loose 16 dead spirits who now run around screaming, wanting to be buried again. Ohh and the long dead Indian that tormented her until she found his comb and gave it back to him.
I admit, staying there alone I have had a uneasy feeling before, but not ever time.
So was Dakotas fear justified or not?
It is not for us humans to glimpse the other world, or is it?
Monday, September 19, 2011
There are still some good guys out there
Sometimes you make the right phone call and talk to the right person.
I had a touchscreen monitor go out on a piece of equipment, I called my distributor in Houston and talked to the tech then the parts person.
The parts person said a exchange monitor would cost roughly $450, a new one $1300, but they didn't have any and suggested I call their other locations in Dallas and San Antonio.
Dallas didn't have any either so I called SA, they didn't have any but transferred my call to their tech.
I told him the problem and he asks what manufacturer the monitor was and then says "Does the screen just come on for a second or two when you turn it on and then go blank?" I said exactly.
He says "There are two 470uf capacitors on the board that the power cord plugs into, change them."
Two thumbs up, that fixed the monitor for all of $1.42 and a hour or so of my time.
$450 vs $1.42? That's a no brainier!
I had a touchscreen monitor go out on a piece of equipment, I called my distributor in Houston and talked to the tech then the parts person.
The parts person said a exchange monitor would cost roughly $450, a new one $1300, but they didn't have any and suggested I call their other locations in Dallas and San Antonio.
Dallas didn't have any either so I called SA, they didn't have any but transferred my call to their tech.
I told him the problem and he asks what manufacturer the monitor was and then says "Does the screen just come on for a second or two when you turn it on and then go blank?" I said exactly.
He says "There are two 470uf capacitors on the board that the power cord plugs into, change them."
Two thumbs up, that fixed the monitor for all of $1.42 and a hour or so of my time.
$450 vs $1.42? That's a no brainier!
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Rising From the Rubble
From Odd Todds site,
http://www.oddtodd.com/
A ground view of the World Trade Center site.
Almost 10 years after, like the mythical Phoenix, a rebirth is rising from the ashes and rubble.
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