It always kinda freaks me out for a moment when I am talking to someone and they reference something I’ve written in a blog post.  It takes me a little bit to process that the act of blogging isn’t really a solitary one – that I’m usually interacting with the people who read it.  While I understand intellectually that there are people who read this, part of me^{1 2 3 4 5 6 7}  is nevertheless surprised. See, I was on a conference call tonight and someone mentioned they were happy to hear I was experimenting with a DrawBot. ⁸  ANYHOO!

My order from Adafruit arrived today!  This was my very first order from Adafruit Industries and I have to say all of the parts were packed very well and thoughtfully.  It’s a small thing, but I like how the Adafruit logo is printed right on the external USPS shipping label.  The box was sealed with clear packing tape and then additional paper packing tape was put down over that,⁹ with everything inside bundled inside bubble wrap. ^{10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20}

This order contains my very first stand-alone Arduino. ²¹  It’s an Arduino Uno and it thoughtfully comes with four little rubber feet, several cool stickers, and a little thank you note for supporting open source.

It’s really just as well that the USPS website didn’t update until after 5pm, otherwise I would have been tempted to rush home to fawn over the parts.

1. The self-effacing / self-depricating part wonders … why?! [↩]
2. Don’t you worry gentle reader, that is by far the smallest part of my psyche. [↩]
3. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…  Allow me to bring your attention to Exhibit A. [↩]
4. I suppose you’d probably get more out of this post if you weren’t always poking around in the footnotes trying to see if I’ve written something clever here. [↩]
5. In fact, I really try to keep the clever stuff out of the footnotes entirely. [↩]
6. Boobs. [↩]
7. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury…  is this the work of a sane man?  A stable man? [↩]
8. Hi Brian! [↩]
9. Nothing could escape that box.  Not even light. [↩]
10. Pop! Pop! [↩]
11. Apparently I’m having a very parenthetical day. [↩]
12. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible [↩]
13. I think it stems from my… [↩]
14. Oh!  Shiny! [↩]
15. extreme ADD [↩]
16. Okay, would you like a story about my ADD? [↩]
17. You would?! [↩]
18. Of course you would! [↩]
19. Ages ago I was in the boy scouts and I had, as all good boy scouts do, a copy of the boy scout’s handbook.  Everyone was instructed to write their names on the sides of the book so that they would be able to tell them apart.  I wrote my first name along the side and half of my last name.  Apparently, I got distracted halfway through writing my last name … and never finished it [↩]
20. Thirty years later I’ve more or less moved on.  I suppose I may go back and finish writing it, but I’m clearly in no hurry. [↩]
21. I say stand-alone since there are apparently already Arduinos in my home – in my MakerBot Cupcake powered by a Sanguino and MakerBot Thing-O-Matic rocking an Arduino Mega. [↩]

Yesterday I placed an order with Adafruit and MakerBot for all the parts I’ll need to build a DrawBot.  The MakerBot order shipped that same day and I just got a confirmation that the Adafruit order has shipped.

According to the USPS priority shipping estimates, it should take 2 days for these packages to get from Brooklyn to the SF Bay Area.  I figure it will probably take three.  So, hopefully the parts will arrive on or Saturday.  I’m really excited about building a DrawBot and my daughter is too.  She’s been drawing sketches for me to scan in for when we get the robot operational – so we can blow them up super huge.

Go USPS!  Fly like the wind!