dayton is not in ohio

Today I officially became a nerd. I was called by that name on occasion in middle school, but the truth is that while I possessed the dorkiness of a nerd, I couldn’t do any of the cool nerdy things that a true nerd does. Today, I graduated, by making this:

Now, to be fair, I am not a high ranking nerd, I have a long way to go before I make a fridge that can retrieve a cold beer and throw it to me from across the room while I lounge on the couch (and it will never happen wearing a Dook shirt). But this is what makes me a nerd (note the italicized terms): I built a circuit that uses three TIP-120 transistors, a 24vdc power supply, and an Arduino micro-processor to individually control the lights on top of my homemade communication tower. I wrote the code to make the lights flash out my wife’s name (as a test) in Morse code, which I then uploaded from my Mac to the board. All that, and I know what it means, too.