Holy Cow! I counted 34 people using my usual routine of talking to people and jotting down names and factoids. And I estimated 24 more who will have to remain nameless because I was overwhelmed. The latter came for the board game event from 7 to midnight. That’s 58 total. And I left early.
Don and Peggy opened the doors of 10Bit at 9:o’clock for Art-in-the-AM. Militiza came later with coffee. Don had to leave early for a dentist appointment. Dentists don’t usually work on Saturday, but this was a special deal called “Crown Day” where they offered a deep discount to certain select customers if we would come in on Saturday. Arooga, Arooga. Warning. Warning. It was the nightmare dental equivalent of a barber school. Rookies, trainees came out of the woodwork and invaded my mouth. If Stephen King needs a title for his next novel, I will suggest to him “Crown Day”. I’m pretty sure that two hours in the chair for a single temporary crown is a new record. They gotta practice on somebody, I guess. Sigh.
When I got back around 2 PM, the place was hoppin. Jeremy was huddled with Micah, left in picture, Eddie, standing, and Xavier, foreground. Xavier is going into his junior year at Wagner High School. Saturday, he built a computer tower from scratch, with his teeth. Xavier’s mom and little brother were out shopping. They brought takeout supper for X and Jeremy and then went back out to the shopping fields. Micah had his MAC partitioned with Windows. He had it loaded with Solidworks, which he knows and uses, and MasterCam which we’re going to learn in weeks to come. Eddie just blew into town from Klamath Falls, OR. He’s working for AmeriCorps, which is like the Peace Corps, only domestic. I showed Eddie the grandfather 3D printer, but it was acting up, not making good contact with the SC card. Eddie calmly took the controller apart, spotted the trouble, fixed it, put it back together, all in 5 minutes. Whoa. Who? What? have we here?
Kevin was jotting equations involving bow-fiddle symbols (integration) and drawing square waves and I don’t know what other waveforms. Sue and Eddie were unimpressed, I think, but Micah was ready to sign up for the class.
Andres got 4 of his 5 motors turning, got his thermistors putting out plausible results, got his power supply bolted down. His robotic club buddies Jonathan and William did some necessary cable management tasks and left early but Andres labored on into the night. His Dad, Daniel had to come and drag him home. So close. So close. Anybody got a spare motor driver board? That’s what Andres needs to put this project over the top.
Joe and Pearl popped in for a few minutes. I showed Joe a curled and failed print, and he advised that we should be setting the bed temperature on the MakerBot to 90 degrees C instead of 110.
GnuDon held another class in the studio with Cameron. They worked with infrared on the Raspberry Pi. Also in the studio was a fellow PhD candidate name Hong. She’s working on a chess playing robot. Did I mention? Some really smart people hang out at 10Bit.
Matt G brought another drill press in from his shed cleaning day. It is similar to the little press that we already have, but the new chuck works without a key, the operative word being “it works”.
The next picture is a selfie of a few 10Bit habitues around one of the game tables.
Jaime is at 5-6 o’clock. She is Jeremy’s GF, down from Austin for the weekend. She prepares people to take the GED, teaches for an outfit called LifeWorks.
Mike G is at 7-8 o’clock. He spent some of Saturday attending to his on-line MechWarrior habit, and he discovered the wonders of the AppleTV. He streamed AC/DC for the edification of the rest of us.
Greg, 9-10 o’clock, and Salina, 11-12 o’clock, came mid afternoon to hang out and stayed for game night. Salina just got back from a trip to New York.
Chris 12-1 o’clock would never, ever miss game night.
Don, white Q’tip wisp at 4 o’clock was trying to stay out of the picture.
This ensemble was joined later by Keith.
Some notable first timers crossed our threshold Saturday.
A middle-ish age couple Paul and Amanda are new in town from Houston. He had been a member at a hacker space there. She sews. They were in and out in 10 minutes.
Jonathan and Edgar are two young dudes. They sort of came for game night, but James got hold of them and he converted them to be 10Bit touristas. They’re hooked, at least Jonathan is, and he promises to come back with his dad in tow.
Joey and Corina came late for game night. Joey took pictures (they’re probably on FaceBook by now). He also brought a 2 x 4 sheet of Masonite and proceeded to pare it down on the table saw and then flop it onto the laser cutter bed for a long slow silhouette cutout of a rope dancer. This was alleged to be for a baby shower? Ask a stupid question.
Like I said at the top, the regulars added up to 34. And then came the Game Night people. I estimate 24 more as of 9PM. They were planning to go till midnight and who knows what the night was going to reveal. The gamers are refugees from construction-torn Geekdom where they ordinarily would have met. Gamers come bearing snacks and drinks and games and they know how to throw a party. I didn’t catch names. But we at 10Bit were proud to be able to accommodate them.
Don S
This and other reports are archived on my Pi server:
smelle Click on 141.