Hi, my name is Tom Bress and I'm a new LAVA member. I'm a Certified LabVIEW Developer working at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I provide engineering support for the lab classes in the Mechanical Engineering Department. I've written a suite of LabVIEW codes for the lab classes, mostly data acquisition using SCXI, CompactDAQ and GPIB hardware. I've recently been promoted to supervise a team that will support the lab classes, design & manufacturing classes, and mechatronics classes in the department as well as a new bio/nano facility. That means new hardware to play with! I'm looking forward to working with the mechatronics hardware and writing applications for that area. I'm also trying to finish a PhD in mechanical engineering on my own time, hopefully I'll be done this summer.

I'll be giving a presentation at NI Week '08 about my journey through the certification process called "From Spaghetti Code to State Machines". I'll be presenting on Tuesday at 2:15. Stop by and say hi! While I'm at NI Week I'll be taking the Certified Instructor training. I've also been working on the LabVIEW Advanced I materials. If I think I'm ready by then I'll take a shot at the CLA test as well.

I've had some experience with text-based languages, but I have to say that LabVIEW is a lot more fun. Part of it is the graphical programming, but I think I prefer LabVIEW because of the types of projects it is used for. I've done a lot CFD and FEA programming, lots of simulations and such. That's useful, but in the end all you have are pretty pictures on the screen. With LabVIEW I get to DO stuff. I reach out and pull the outside world into my computer, measure things, make decisions, maybe send out signals to manipulate the outside world in return. I get to play with hardware as well as software and produce software that is truly useful. What's not to love?

As I've worked my way through the training and certification process I've started to discover the LabVIEW community, and that's what led me to LAVA. I'm glad that LAVA exists, I'm a lone-wolf programmer and I'm happy to have a chance to be part of the larger LabVIEW community.

Welcome home, wolf. :-)

welcome, glad to have you aboard.
Cheers