Kurtis Van Kampen

 Blog!

This will be moved to the front page eventually, but it is here now.

8-31-09

Still love my Smith Glasses!  My great cousin gave me some Smith Factors when they first came out!  Love em!  And they fit the Factor Max lenses.  Since my cuz left Smith, I now have 3 pairs of these!  Needed new lenses, sent an email complaining that they wanted like $70 for new lenses.  Not only got new lenses, but some new frames as well!  Now I have 4 pairs of Factors!  Smith has always been so great with support!  Love those guys!

4 pairs, one loaded with sienna, one with clear, one with yellow and one with amber!

07-15-9

Gotta love Obamanomics!  The White House just said today that unemployment is still due to rise.  In February they said it was to cap out at 8% or some stupid thing.  Well, its approaching 10%.  This whole economic turndown has killed my business.  The types of products we provide are for industries that have been either cut-off, or are running scared.  We will be shutting down soon I imagine, and to do so, I will probably loose my house, let alone the sacrifice my partner will make.  Its a shame, a good 12 year run!  I ran my business honestly, I never screwed anyone over.  The defeat has a large personal impact on me, but I have no regrets and am proud of what I did over the past 12 years!  It provided me with more satisfaction then I ever had working, and sacrificing for someone else!  Cheers to you Input Technologies!

07-03-09

What a day, shipped out a proto-type board for my General Dynamics contract and yesterday tested my FSR (Force Sensing Resitor) cursor control product for Thermo Fisher Scientific.  The FSR works like a champ, and the preliminary build for General Dynamics is looking good!  We dont have the LCD integration done yet, but we should wrap that up next week!

07-01-09

Well, today I received in PCBs for my contract with Thermo Fischer Scientific!  I was nervous, this is the first project I have ever done from ground up.  I.E. i did the Schematic layout, the PCB design, the Microcontroller interface and all the funky pass-through connections they wanted.  The darn thing fired right up, and the FSR (Force Sensing Resistor) to be used as a mouse control works like a champ!  I still don't like FSR's, they are laggy and slow, but they don't take up any power and great for hand held applications like this.  I will try to post pics within a few days...