I’ve been an engineer most of my life – for decades now
I’ve been an ASIC/FPGA designer, ASIC verification,
embedded and application software engineer, and on
occasion, a PCB designer working on satellites for a
couple of small aerospace firms. Got laid off last
year after we burned ourselves through a large contract
on mandatory overtime with nothing else in the work
pipeline. Nearly broke my heart.
I finally had some time on my hands to play with
microcontrollers for my own projects and found you
people, your reams of information and support, and of
course your many, ever-increasing products. I’ve built
several small Arduino projects in a short space of
time, bringing in some old hardware once controlled by
completely different machines, and getting them working
again within hours of sitting down, coming up with
crazy stuff and writing fast little routines in Atmel
assembler here and there – enough material for a
half-dozen show-and-tell episodes, if I had a webcam
and cleaned the workspace. Ahem.
I’ve been touring your Ask An Engineer shows while
building stuff – I’m about at the halfway point now,
watching all of them. It really helps in catching up
to what’s happening with this amazing little
inexpensive I/O-rich boards!
Limor and Phil are a hoot, a font of information,
exactly the kind of people I like, and probably drink
as much coffee as I do. Talking fast isn’t a NY thing,
it’s a sparky thing. Your guests are excellent, too,
especially Collin Cunningham. The science fiction
references are awesome. Phil’s pointed-yet-random
remarks and Limor’s eyeroll replies are hilarious. The
comfortable production values really work. It’s all so
personable.
Your attitudes born from open source thinking has
re-awakened a whole lot of joy in engineering for me –
the whole reason I became an engineer. Your obvious
and intense love for engineering is an infectious and
beautiful thing and helps to spread just how learn-able
it is for the next generation. Keep assimilating!
Thank you for the constant source of inspiration.
My best,
Joe
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