Im Conner, a Technical Communications student at UCCS, currently on my last year of my degree track! I always enjoyed the aspects of writing and editing, hence why I've ended up in an editing and communications degree. Granted I wanted to be a literary writer at first but that felt a little too far down the writing side.
I currently work as a Research Assistant at the library here on campus, and LOVE how hands on and communication based the job is. Being able to navigate and figure out problems for people is a huge thing to me, and doing it as a job while I get my degree has been even better. Im also huge into editing, so I love doing graphic design work and fixing up documents and programs to make them look pretty. I've done a lot of client work on that front, mostly for the university, in reworking their website layouts. I also have done some work for the local gaming club in designing some posters for events they've done in the past. A lot of my work has been internal, but it has been valuable experience that has served me well over the years.
I've done a lot of DIY but really no DIRECT fixes beyond the occasional realignment of my telescope mirror, which is a whole careful process because of how massive that mirror is. Most of my DIY has gone into my telescope too, like making a wooden mount for my phone to fit in so I have a star tracker built into a manual telescope, as well as creating a counterweight to balance out the scope itself for both photography purpose and for the fact the guiding scope I use MAY or MAY NOT be a little top heavy. Whoops..
Beyond that, the project I'm looking to work with here is all very personal to me, each object I chose means something to me personally regardless of whether or not I may end up using it directly. The plugs, for example, are all passed down to me from my late great grandfather, who was all work and no talk, and owned a farm in the Midwest. He gave us all his equipment in his later years because he knew we could make use of them when he couldn't anymore, and they've been in the garage ever since. Both my backup ideas, the telescope and the bike are just personal to me because I use them both as often as I can, and they tie into my day to day life and the things I value/incorporate into it. So being able to work on any of these three will be much more of a reward than work.
Just to show off my passion a little bit, I'll show off two photos in particular, one of which is the scope itself and the other, a particular daytime shot im proud of.
The scope you're looking at, is a SkyQuest XT8, which all that means is that it has an 8 inch mirror at the bottom, which allows it to see at about 500 times more magnification than the human eye. Imagine being able to comfortably see the rings of Saturn with your own eyes.
That moon photo you're seeing there is the first ever photo I took through this telescope, the day that I got it, I couldn't even wait until nightfall, and the moon happened to be out, so I dragged this heavy tube outside in the heat, set up my eyepiece, and dragged my phone up to it until I got the framing just right. What resulted is arguably the prettiest thing I have ever taken, more so than any galaxy or star I have seen. The moon is such a special thing to us that I feel more people could just look up at every so often.