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Poll: What part of town do you live in and/or work? (results are public)
You do not have permission to vote in this poll.
Downtown/Browne's Addition
16.33%
8 16.33%
Northside Spokane
26.53%
13 26.53%
Mead Spokane
0%
0 0%
South Hill/Edgecliff
8.16%
4 8.16%
Spokane Valley
36.73%
18 36.73%
Prairie (Palouse/Rockford/Latah/etc.)
0%
0 0%
Deer Park
2.04%
1 2.04%
Cheney
4.08%
2 4.08%
Colville/Chewelah
2.04%
1 2.04%
Post Falls/ Cd'A Idaho
4.08%
2 4.08%
Total 49 vote(s) 100%
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Hello: my name is...
02-13-2013, 12:24 PM, (This post was last modified: 02-13-2013, 12:33 PM by Sean.)
#1
Hello: my name is...
So everybody here is (presumably) in the greater Spokane region. Great! Now what?
...What if you don't know anyone either here on the forum or when you look outside your window?

Introduce yourself here!

About me:
My name is Sean. I'm 30 years old, married with 2 kids. I grew up in the Newman Lake/Stateline area, but now I happily reside in the Northside area.

Job:I am a toolmaker, by trade. More specifically, I design and build injection molds for the medical, electronics, automotive industries. I've got a pretty good handle on CAD, CAM, machining using a surface grinder, mill, and EDM.

My hobbies include: Electronics (or at least pursuit thereof), audio engineering (Live mixing), listening to music, and anything pertaining to further automation/networking of industrial machinery.

...That's it for now. I look forward to getting to know a few of you guys and starting to network. I think Seatown has a super unfair advantage of having a bunch of maker/hacker-spaces and it's good that someone finally had the motivation to start a local scene on the web.
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02-13-2013, 01:35 PM,
#2
RE: Hello: my name is...
Hello Sean, it's great to meet you.
Reply
02-13-2013, 05:39 PM,
#3
RE: Hello: my name is...
(02-13-2013, 12:24 PM)Sean Wrote: Introduce yourself here!
Hi Sean! sorry you missed the first meeting, some of us have gotten to meet each other in person. But I think this is great idea for everyone to meet.

Hello My name is Dan and I am a Nerd...

Work: I wear several hats- My background is IT, but have since moved into management, but I still maintain the IT hat to stay sane.

Family: Married 10 years this summer, no kids.

Fun: I have always enjoyed tinkering and building.. for my 15th birthday my parents bought me a worm drive saw Smile still use it today.
Robotics/Automation are very interesting to me. I have messed around a bit with CNC on a hobby basis. I would love to build a robot/other that has a purpose (rescue, discovery, etc)
-Dan

"If you didn't build it, you will never own it." - Barton Dring
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02-13-2013, 07:42 PM,
#4
RE: Hello: my name is...
Great idea Sean.

I'm Nathan. I'm 23 and live right in the middle of Downtown. I grew up in Kettle Falls and then on the Northside of Spokane. Graduated from EWU in 2011 (BA in Business and Accounting). I currently work in an entry-level part-time job, which leaves me a lot of free time to do online classes (Coursera, edX, etc.) and work on programming projects. Unlike most people here I'm more of a software guy and have limited hardware experience, but would like to branch out and become more familiar with the hardware side. Most of my experience is in backend web development (LAMP, Rails), though I'm in the process of rounding out and expanding my programming knowledge. Current projects include getting better at domain-general productivity tools like shell scripting and vim, getting more experience in Ruby and Rails, and learning functional programming (ML, Haskell) and Lisp (maybe also some Erlang and Prolog thrown in there somewhere). I'm also studying somewhat in the general direction of AI research, but that's a vague long-term goal. That said, I do also think that robots are really cool, and look forward to learning about CNC, CAD, etc.
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02-14-2013, 06:46 AM,
#5
RE: Hello: my name is...
Thanks Clint, Dan, and Nathan. I'm super stoked about this site! I've wanted a local makerspace for about 5 years! I just haven't had the resources.
As far as meetings go, Sunday @ 1pm may not work this month. I most likely cannot make it. Between OT at work and my 2 kids <1.5yrs, my wife need me at home to help her.
The internets are great for me though, since I can in/out on breaks @ work!
Later...
Sman
P.S. Don't forget... It's Valentine's Day.
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02-14-2013, 09:36 AM,
#6
RE: Hello: my name is...
My name is Pete and I live in Veradale (Spokane Valley). I'm married and have 5 kids.
Software Engineering is my main trade. I've worked for several startups here in Spokane and now work for one based in Utah from my home doing iOS app development. In between startups, I've worked for a couple of Las Vegas based gaming companies building software platforms and games for slot machines.

Aside from work, I enjoy learning new skills and making things. Recently, I restored a 1930s era metal lathe that my dad had in his garage. Now I just need to learn how to use it...

I'm excited to see this group really get going. I've been looking for something like this for a while!
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02-16-2013, 09:09 AM, (This post was last modified: 02-16-2013, 09:14 AM by davidf.)
#7
RE: Hello: my name is...
My name is David, and I live in North Spokane.

My background is electrical engineering, and I have focused on industrial automation and control since graduating. I find machine integration to be really interesting: for my last job I designed and programmed several robotic control systems integrating various platforms such as gantry-style Yamaha robots and 6-axis articulating arm robots. I also like to mess around with higher-level programming with .NET and Objective-C when I have the time.

I've been looking for a hackerspace for quite a while and visited Metrix recently. I am not sure what I will work on if I have the space, but I hope being around other people will help to spawn some creative ideas.

Currently I am taking some classes and haven't had any free time, but hopefully I will have free time come May.
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02-18-2013, 07:47 PM,
#8
RE: Hello: my name is...
Hi there everyone, glad to see the group has gathered up some more members in the past couple weeks.

My name's Clayton, and I live with my girlfriend of almost four years and our dog, Bob over in Felony Flats.
A couple years ago I got interested in Arduino, physical programming stuff, and especially RepRap and the idea of open-source hardware. When I'm not working at t South Perry Pizza, I like to play with telescopes and tinker with time-lapse and astro-photography, garden up a storm in our geodesic greenhouse, and just generally work with my hands, create things, and break things Smile

Recent projects of mine include a homebuilt Prusa mendel 3d printer that I am still fighting to get proper prints out of, and an arduino-controlled camera dolly. Looking forward to working with all of you more to get something awesome going!
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02-19-2013, 11:11 AM,
#9
RE: Hello: my name is...
Good day!

My name is David, and I am really excited to have stumbled onto your group! I've been reading about Techshop the last couple weeks, turning it over in my head and trying to figure out how I could help make something like that happen here in Spokane. Read about maker/hackerspaces, too, and decided to google spokane makerspace. Lo and behold Smile

Me: 25, perennially unemployed, dinking around with this or that (gardening, helping friends with projects, dumpster diving for weird stuff and food, taking things apart for fun and profit, amassing tools and materials and organizing a little workshop in my parents' garage [planning for my eventual estate sale]).

Ongoing projects:
- a VW rabbit pickup I'm trying to fix up and simplify (too many wires!) and hope to modify to be an all-around work truck. I'd like to add on-board air via old AC compressor, a "weldernator", good secure storage for a lightweight-yet-robust-and-diverse toolkit, possibly a sturdy inverter/extra alternator/extra battery for 120vac - if I can't figure out how to just use tools with universal motors

- helping my neighbor (Dave Hartman, airplane machinist of 30 years, retired fireman, now at Mackay Manufacturing) clean up his shop so he can quit his job and go to work for himself. Says he wants to teach classes out of his garage here on South Hill (Manito area) in welding, among other things.

- my little workshop, as mentioned above. trying to organize it in such a way that I know where to find and store everything, that it stays clean without any apparent effort from me (proving to be tricky) and is not an assault on the senses (been looking at interiors of modern japanese houses - spartan looks belie fantastic hidden cupboards and cabinets - a seemingly empty room can contain all of a person's worldy possessions)

- studying machining with all the seriousness I can muster (ain't much)

- The Garden! hoping to build some sturdy trellises this spring, finally figure out my drip irrigation system, and someday soon, start working on a rooftop garden (I like heights)
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02-21-2013, 04:55 PM,
#10
RE: Hello: my name is...
Wow, I didn't check the site for a while and activity exploded! Good to see.

My name is Nathan. From the time I was little I enjoyed taking things apart to see how they worked and I wanted to be an Electrical/Electronics Engineer. I lost sight of that desire and right out of high school I had no idea what to do, so I completed a 2-year degree in Precision Machining Technology. I worked as a machinist for a while (manual mill, CNC mill, and CNC laser) and then went back to school for a Bachelor's in Developmental Psychology. Liked my job, but not the pay or paperwork so I went back for a second Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering. I love what I do now.

I am 31 years old and I have been married to my beautiful wife for 8 years (we started dating in high school...so we have been together for 13 years). We just had our first child at the end of November. So needless to say I am pretty busy with a 12 week old son right now. I work in R&D as a Design Engineer in Liberty Lake and live in Spokane Valley. I enjoy hardware, software, and anything that bridges the gap.

I enjoy tinkering with microcontrollers, FPGAs, Linux, Matlab, web development, machining, C#, etc.

Some projects finished include:
RFID card reader (built from scratch...with wound wire and 68HC11) that starts a coffee maker and disco ball with the correct access card (built with a friend)
Built DSP image tracking program that tracks object in front of webcam and rotates a 3D object on a computer monitor to match the yaw, pitch, and roll of the object in the camera view...then added robotic arm to move camera to keep object centered. (built with friend)
Built DSP video recorder that records and saves off a few minutes from webcam when it sees movement (built this to catch which dog was digging in my back yard)
Built many web based tools (raw, ugly tools that are for personal use but do cool stuff)

Current/Never-ending projects:
Benchtop CNC mill conversion
Various microcontroller projects
PSoC project (work related...but doing it on my own time)
RaspberryPi (started last night...a big thanks to Whi7eRa66iT for the RPi!)

As a kinesthetic learner, I think a hackerspace is just what Spokane needs and I am pumped to see this all coming together!
-N8

"I built it because I didn't know I couldn't"
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