11/1/11 Tech Shop

Today I got to visit a most interesting place: The TechShop in San Jose. It's a new business, subscription-based, that gives crafty-techy types all sorts of resources and tools to let their imaginations go wild. It has a fully-stocked woodshop, metal shop, electronics lab, industrial sewing area with a full-size quilting machine, 3-D scanners, autocad machines, laser-cutters and some enormous water-cutter that can turn a piece of glass into a gear. Clients include people who are building robots, fabricating parts to restore cars, enscripting detailed plates with intricate details on any sort of material...it's really really impressive. Since they are a new business, they've enlisted my new employer's help for their in-store network and wireless access, including their cool little card-readers by each tool that let each client turn on the machine and verify that they're trained on it.

Anyway, today we had a meeting there, which I tagged along with, and was awed by the array of tools and things there, as well as how very competent and thorough my main new coworker is. I was hired to help relieve her load, but I'm suffering a serious crisis of confidence -- she's just so so much more experienced and capable than I am -- how soon will they find me out?! On the other hand, I have to remind myself that I wasn't hired for what I know, but what I can learn, so I'm trying to do that. Still, I'm keenly aware of how lost I'd be without my coworker and how much I have to learn. The good news is, I'm really happy to be learning it, including things I never expected I'd be interested in, primarily wireless networks.

And I get to go see cool places like The Tech Shop! (Unfortunately for us, but wise for them, their minimum age for membership and using their tools is age 12.)

And bonus: I sure am having fun chatting with Gabriel about RF (radio frequency) and channels and stuff though. It's mostly a terminology toss-around, since neither of us know much about it, though he's a lot better at throwing buzzwords around with confidence than I am! I sure hope I take after my mother more than my father when it comes to intellectual longevity...she could talk about this stuff with him now, and I'm barely sure I can at all.

OK, back to work!!

11/1/11 (cool date!)