I mean, if you are recycling devices that others would have thrown away, I'd say you are not wasteful at all.

I use Orca Slicer all the time on my Debian machine. Works great!

Pretty much all the functional models I use are free. I get them from https://www.printables.com/ https://makerworld.com/ https://www.thingiverse.com/ https://thangs.com/ or I design them myself. Back when I was on Mac I would use Fusion but lately I've been 100% Linux so I've been using FreeCAD and it's way better since v1.0.

As far as paid models, it's mostly been things from https://www.myminifactory.com/ and generally sculpts because I want to support authors. Sometimes it's through patreon but they usually send myminifactory links to redeem.

But yeah, get yourself a pair of calipers and learn a CAD program.

In the northeast US, we have both advent wreaths and advent calendars. The "wreath" we had growing up was metal but made to look like a wreath. (Probably because a wreath is a fire hazard)

I don't see a lot of wreath's anymore but advent calendars are still popular.

Linux (Debian) with neovim. Telescope and Treesitter and the big plugins I use but I use a bunch of other smaller ones as well.

At my last job I did a bunch of Rust, this job I do mostly Go.

Nope, software dev here.... work gave me a budget, told me to pick a computer and I put Linux on it. My Boss (the VP of Engineering) also runs Linux. We're a small company and some people do run Windows but we have google workspace so there hasn't been anything I've needed windows for.

I've been down this rabbit hole and have some thoughts. Personally I've been trying to stick to Linux which makes things harder but since you have Mac and/or Windows, you have more options.

First, my main app I use (and why my laptop is still dual boot) is Fusion 360. I have a hobbyist license so it's free with some limitation that don't really matter. It doesn't work great on linux (I've gotten it to run with WINE but it seems to crash and not run great) so I've been looking at alternatives. However, it works great and will do pretty much whatever you want. Also works well with CNC if you want to branch out into that.

Lately I've started looking at https://www.onshape.com/en/ as it's all browser based. The free version means nothing is private but because it's browser based, it works with Linux. I've just played around with it once but it looks promising.

I really want to like FreeCAD but it's been confusing to me when I've tried to use it in the past. I think I just need to sit down and watch a view videos and read the docs to learn it. I've heard good things about it after it hit 1.0 so maybe I need to revisit it. I feel like this will be best to learn long term.

https://openscad.org/ isn't your standard CAD program but it can be really powerful. I've used it a few times but you need to think of your models programmatically and I've found this to be difficult for some applications. It's really cool though and worth checking out.

I've found TinkerCAD to be ok for simple things but it seems a bit simplistic for the things I've been trying to do.

I almost exclusively use PLA and I've had no trouble but all my stuff is indoors. I've heard that it doesn't do as well in the elements so for anything outside, I'l probably look at using petg which from what I've read, holds up pretty well outside.

I have an ender 5 which I've had to do all sorts of things to. I've also had terrible luck getting z-probes to work with it. They'll work for a while and then just die on me...

A while ago I backed the Phrozen Arco on Kickstarter. It was a mess of a compaign but I eventually got the printer (Over a year and a half late). However it's just worked and makes nicer prints than my ender 5. I love it so much. My makerspace has a Bambu which seems to have the same results. I love just printing something and having it work and not having to fuck with the printer. It's been so nice.

I've tried it a few different ways and the best outcome I've had was using some tubing, like this one: https://youtu.be/yuZ0DA8w9XI

I don't always do it but when I do, I do it this way from now on. The tube makes sure the filament stays aligned, I also cut the two ends at a 45 and try and join them up inside the tube. Usually I'll save the ends and then do a few rolls at once, can usually get another few prints out of it.

One of the many reasons I canceled my prime subscription is a lot of stuff was not coming in 2 days.

I'd imagine a lot of private jets do fly IFR though which does involve ATC. So even if they fly out of a non towered airport, they probably file their IFR plan with a towered airport and start talking to them once in the air.