Adruino

So are Arduino is coming along well. We ordered a shield that physically mounts onto the board. It came unassembled so I had to spend a day soldering it all together. It was annoying that it was time not spent testing, but it was fun getting to solder again. We havnt had a chance to test it yet so I am hoping that I did not fry the IC chips when I was making the connections. The website has been fairly helpful. I was able to find out that there are unused analogues in so that means that we will be able to test the light. I was afraid that they would use up all of the pins rendering it only able to move but not interact.

Handy men

So through out Campus there has been a lot of construction. I have seen it in process mainly on Goodwin and in Armoury. After seeing the people doing the technical work, not driving the big machines, but the ones that know how to arrange the re-bar, wire the lamp posts, do the small technical work, for several weeks I noticed an interesting thing. Almost all of them had white hair. Does this mean that in our society today, the people that actually know how to build things, fix things not from explicit instructions, but from intuition and experience are all getting to the point that they could retire? I see almost no younger men doing these jobs. And if they are, then they are the ones that drive the machines, being told where to go and what to do. Where does this leave us then when these people retire? All of the engineering kids passing by are hear to learn how to design these systems, to calculate how they will work and how they fit together. But in this field that is not as glorious and business or programing yet glues the world together, who is going into that field and are there enough people?