arduino arrived

WAIT, WHAT HAPPENED?
so i got the arduino in the mail today. went with the inventor's kit from sparkfun. $95. this one.

WHY DID I GET AN ARDUINO?
i had a few ideas in mind for a while and never knew how to make the connection between the "map" i have in mind and the real world. i knew what my - let's call it project - needed to do from an end-user perspective, but how the heck put this into reality? the arduino makes that bridge. it's the missing interface.

WHERE DID I HEAR ABOUT ARDUINO?
i first heard about it here, in a chaos computer club express podcast. it's about tinkering in the 21st century and how to spread out knowledge about how products really work. i googled arduino and first didn't know what to do with it. went back to that site a few months later. started to get really interested in it. finally understood it's meaning for me (i have some basic c++ knowledge, know how to use a computer, know how to bend metal and use a file, or saw, or a soldering iron, like anything r/c, have some product/project ideas, etc) and decided to order it.

WHY THE HECK ARE YOU BLOGGING ABOUT IT?
since arduino is open source, i thought i'd be a good citizen and report back what i learned, try to inspire others with what i do, and share my code. at this point, i'm learning to crawl, so don't expect too much. i have big plans though. lol.

WHY DID YOU CALL IT "THE MISSING LINK - ARDUINO BLOG 2890001"?
i did a google blog search and that turned up two million eight hundred ninety thousand results. i added one. which makes my arduino blog arduino blog two million eight hundred ninety thousand and one. i even have a screen grab to prove it.


OH, AND BY THE WAY...
i just spent two hours on photoshop extracting the red and green crossed leds from their background, so i will make that my signature logo. like how? like so:

welcome to the site.