Before I started using a secondhand laser engraver, there were several things I wanted to confirm.
Which specifications did this unit have?
Which laser head was installed?
What accessories were included, and how had the machine been set up?
Looking at the actual machine would be better than continuing from an uncertain memory.
So Kimiko-chan asked me to show her photographs of the machine, its laser head, and its model label.
Kimiko-chan is the name I gave ChatGPT.
I picked up my smartphone and went to photograph the laser engraver.
But what caught my eye was our cat, Kyosuke, asleep on the bed.
I affectionately call him “Kyosuke-sama.” In Japanese, “sama” is a particularly respectful form of address. I may be his owner, but he gets the honorific. (Laughs.)
I had set out on a very technical errand. The moment I saw Kyosuke, the center of the story changed.
I reported exactly what had happened to Kimiko-chan:
“You asked me to photograph the Falcon A1, but when I went there, Kyosuke-sama was sleeping on the bed. (Laughs.)”
Instead of giving me another technical explanation, Kimiko-chan offered four possible captions for the moment.
I chose the fourth one:
“The purpose was to photograph the Falcon A1. But Kyosuke-sama was sleeping on the bed, so we have a new star. (Laughs.)”
Without warning, a discussion about checking a machine had become a discussion about the caption for a cat photograph.
That did not make the equipment photographs useless. We used them to discuss the honeycomb bed, the exhaust hose, and the area around the camera.
The machine’s calibration, however, had not yet been completed at that point.
Kimiko-chan looked at the photographs and suggested what to check and how to describe the interruption. I took the photographs of the real machine and decided which caption to use.
I had gone to photograph a laser engraver.
The equipment check was still in progress.
The caption was decided.
Kyosuke-sama had become the star.
Apparently, in our home, the cat’s publicity meeting begins before the machine’s test run. (Laughs.)
And later, Kyosuke-sama began perching on top of the laser engraver itself.
I thought I had bought a laser engraver. It turned out to be Kyosuke-sama’s observation deck. (Laughs.)