I'm Jason Mayes, Project Engineer. I've been at D.M.C. now for almost three years. I really love the project work. I love being able to come in and do something different every week. Projects are always changing, new technology, new programming languages, new platforms. I think at the end of my first year, I had counted up and used twenty-six different platforms languages, or devices, so roughly once every two weeks, I was learning something completely new.
I really enjoy a lot of the projects we get to work on. Right now, I'm doing one that's from the ground up. It's a machine build, so I get to be very creative in the ways I program it. I really enjoy the chance to put my own kind of flair on the architecture and build it up, and the see something come up from drawings to machine turning at the end.
I really enjoy LabVIEW. I like the structure LabVIEW has. I like being able to visualize things. I think being a mechanical engineer, LabVIEW to me is a natural expression of programming.
Just recently, I got interested in useless machines, which if you've never seen one, the point of a useless machine is to turn itself off, so you flip on a switch and then somehow the machine turns itself back off. I just completed my first one recently, and I'm hoping to do some more.
I love to backpack. I love to get out west. I've done a lot of backpacking out in the Glacier National Park. I think it's one of the best places. I love to get outside and do things in the city, explore, try different restaurants, walk around, see different places, museums.
Last summer, we took a road trip out west. We did about 4000 miles, stopped at seven national parks, several state parks, and God knows how many tourist attractions along the road. My wife and I just had a great time on the open road.
Once we moved to Chicago, we began the quest to find the best pizza in Chicago. We've gone through probably 40 or 50 different pizza places, and we definitely have our favorites now. Peqouds, I think, is one of our favorite deep dish places, which is great, because it's almost across the street from the office here. It's going to be a big change heading out east, but it's a new city, it will be a good chance to explore. It will be lots of new things we can pick up on, new restaurants to try, new museums to see, meet a lot of new people, a lot of new business opportunities, and I'm really excited about being in a new place and an exciting place for us.