The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I got a buddy across the island here, Techno Tom, who bought himself a 3-D printer this year. Awhile back he’d helped me retrieve all the information off a computer of mine that died the black screen death. A dead computer is a lot like having your house burn down with all your records, photos, writings, letters, all your memorabilia, so when he managed to worm his way into the guts of that carcass and resurrect the information, it was like a fireman digging through ashes and hauling out photo albums of my life. He even tried to rebuild that house, I mean that computer. And Tom had the relays, the mother boards, the circuits, the sensors and the fuses to do it, an entire room full of gizmos and silicon. But there are limits, even for a genius.

He keeps two servers in his garage. Most of us, myself included, hear the word server and nothing comes up on our cranial screen other than the guy who says, I’m Juan, I’ll be your server. He keeps one dedicated to operating the well for his community’s water system, tracks the tides, the water usage of all the neighbors on that well, the chlorine injection, lab tests, probably every toilet flush up and down the line. It goes without saying he programmed the entire thing, a bunch of black boxes stacked six feet high, a science fiction brain flickering with colored lights over in the corner where some folks might park a car.

A few days ago he showed me his hummingbird feeders, cute plastic things hanging from a tree outside, that he’d made with his 3-D printer. The top screws into the bottom, the feeding spouts project out along the tray, cute flowers adorn the sides. Every bit of it had to be programmed into the computer that runs the machine, then the printer injects molten plastic in a line back and forth for about eight hours to build the feeder. It hurts my head to think of this, the exact distance and curvature of the male thread into the female coil, nothing my brain would handle, not in the years I have left, not maybe ever.

Another friend told me Techno had manufactured a part he needed for his mizzus’ boat’s windshield wiper. Why not? Just plunk down at a keyboard and calculate diameters, distances, whatever it needs, feed it to the machine and voila, there’s the part no longer available in the aftermarket. I was afraid to ask Tom if he’d started buying amino acids, DNA, protein packages and various serums. He just smiled, but when I need a new ear or a better thumb, I know who I’m gonna call.

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