My mind, and the places it goes

A couple months ago, one of the other players in the D&D campaign we play in ordered a custom 3D-printed miniature for his character. The campaign has been going for a while and is a lot of fun (and not super-lethal), and this seemed like a cool idea. So I designed and ordered a mini for my character too.

Hero Forge has tools that support a huge range of character races, equipment, poses, and lots more. My character is a monk and one of their standard poses has a kick, so I started with that. I was tickled to discover that, among the many hand-held objects in their catalogue, they have a staff with a flower on one end -- perfect for my sylvan character who does in fact have a Staff of Flowers. She uses a mix of the staff and unarmed strikes in combat, so I put the staff in one hand so the other hand can punch. I ended up with this:

The mini came a few weeks ago and looked great. Alas, at the first game, the top of that staff broke off. Another player attempted a repair, which turned out to be hard.

I wrote to Hero Forge. I said I was new to 3D printing and described what happened. I said I wasn't asking for a remake; the figure had arrived intact and this was obviously my design error. My question was: for the future, do they have or would they consider adding tools that help with evaluating a design for weak spots? Had I realized how risky the staff was, I might have omitted it. (One of the players looked at the break and said something like "yeah, given how they had to have printed this, that doesn't surprise me" -- but I've never done anything with 3D printing before so I didn't have those instincts.)

They wrote back and said this was not the experience they wanted their customers to have, they would remake the figure for me, and before they do, would I like to adjust anything? This blew me away -- I wouldn't have been too surprised if they'd offered a remake at a reduced price or charged me shipping or something, but nope -- they offered me a complete do-over at no charge. I adjusted the position of the staff to give it anchor points at both ends:

The lower petal and both curves of the staff now touch the hair, and the bottom is still anchored at the base of the figure. I had to do a lot of experimenting with shoulder, elbow, and wrist angles and bends to get there, but it worked.

(In case you're wondering: I changed the flower color so that, at scale, it would look less like part of the clothing now that it was close to "hat" position.)

The replacement came today and it looks great! I will happily order from them the next time I need a custom mini.

Shavuot is the holiday about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (matan torah). There is a tradition of late-night study called tikkun leil Shavuot, or colloquially, a tikkun.

The Pittsburgh community has -- I'm told this is very unusual -- a community-wide tikkun for the first few hours, from 10PM to 1AM. There are about 25 one-hour sessions (spread across the three timeslots) with teachers from across the local Jewish spectrum -- rabbis, cantors, and educators; Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative; from synagogues, schools, social services (like eldercare and prison support), and other Jewish organizations.

I went to a session called "relearning Leah" that was very good. We only had an hour and there was a lot of discussion, so we were mostly in the Torah text about her deceptive marriage and children and didn't get much into the midrashim. Something I noticed for the first time in how Leah explains the names for her sons:

• Reuben: "It means: 'GOD has seen my affliction'; it also means: 'Now my husband will love me.'"

• Shimon: "This is because GOD heard that I was unloved and has given me this one also".

• Levi: "This time my husband will become attached to me, for I have borne him three sons."

And then (B'reishit 29:35):

She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, "This time I will praise GOD." Therefore she named him Yehudah. Then she stopped bearing.

The first three were born of, and named for, her distress, and each time God gave her another son. With Yehudah she seems to have come to terms with her situation; she doesn't name him for distress but instead praises God. She seems to be happy with her four sons despite everything. I don't think God would punish her for that, so I think the fact that this was her last son in this batch is more like closure, maybe. Later Leah produces, by proxy and directly, four more sons, named for luck (Gad), fortune (Asher), "my reward" (Yissachar), and "a choice gift" (Zebulun) -- all positive/praise, not distress.

I also went to a session called "Midnight midrash: outlandish stories of Caesars, magic, and mosquitos", because how could you not? This rabbi did "midnight midrash" last year too (different topics) and I really liked his teaching, so even though I try to go to new-to-me teachers at the community tikkun, I went to this because of last year. It was both fun and educational, but I think I'd have to reproduce the handout to explain why.

I changed synagogues last summer, so this year found out for the first time about Beth Shalom's traveling tikkun. After the community-wide one ended, about twenty of us headed to our rabbi's house, where we learned some Rambam on laws related to teachers and students. Around 2:30 that ended and about eight of us headed to the home of a congregant who planned to study all night and then, with whatever stragglers were left, go to the dawn holiday service before crashing. This congregant's tradition is to study a different minor prophet each year in detail. This year it was Habakkuk, which I probably hadn't read in its entirety since I was in high school. Unlike many prophets, Habakkuk isn't preaching to Yisrael; he's exclusively interacting with God and he initiates. I would summarize it as: Chapter 1: why is this bad stuff happening to us? Chapter 2: don't worry; God will afflict the people who are afflicting you and you'll be ok in the end. Chapter 3: a psalm in praise of God. There are, of course, a lot of details in there, and we had a good discussion that I can't summarize. We reached a natural pause around 4:15, at which point I was fading, so I left at that point (I was not the first, at least) and I don't know if they dove into more commentaries or looked at something else. I wonder how many made it to the early-morning service.