Moose Coins and discussion of the Hedonic Index

Files:

black 3 mm Cell Cast Acrylic sheet, Chemcast engrave speed 300 power 40 cut speed 20 power 60 three passes

40 mm coin. Moose on one side. The number 4 or 6 on the other

It is fun how quickly you normalize improvements in your personal hedonic index.

Economists use the term to refer to something else, but in my world your hedonic index is your general happiness.

Tony Stubblebine and his partner bought a property in the country. And it needed a lot of work. And he talked about enjoying the incremental improvements in their hedonic index that occured when they did things like a) got a table and chairs b) got a microwave c) etc.

And he wrote about appreciating each of those improvements and not rushing to implement the next improvement.

That was similar to my experience when I moved my tiny house onto Molly and Jay's property. Initially it was way high up, and at a nasty angle, so that in order to get in I had to sit in the door way and then lift myself up.

And when I slept I was mushed onto the front of the structure.

And then I leveled it, and added some make shift stairs. And my hedonic index soared.

But the problem with improvements to our hedonic index is that we normalize them to our standard hedonic baseline, and soon we no longer particularly appreciate the improvements.

clamping system is good so far

Behold how quickly that normalization can occur!

Yesterday I spent some time thinking about my clamping system, and today I thought 'I need a reference so that I can work on both sides of these coins.'

And then I opened the laser cutter and the obvious answer was right there!

I have two files. Each has an engrave layer and the cut layer. I engrave and cut on once side, then I flip the coin over. Putting a bit of beer cardboard under the coin so that it is less likely to fall through the grate, and load the second file, and disable output on the cut operation and send just the engrave on that side.

The Moose coin

The Moose coin words

The coins are 40mm diameters, and that is a good size.

I showed them off at the meeting this evening to general approval.

And I like that.

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