Today is Veterans day in the USA, it honors the 24.9 million military veterans. We wanted to say thank you to all the past, current and future, men and women who serve(d) in the military. We have a lot of readers who have served or are currently serving around the world and we appreciate their dedication to the USA and always enjoy hearing about the MAKE-style projects you did in the past as well as the present.

Here’s one of my favorite stories from a solider who recently wrote in to MAKE –

I’m an infantry soldier deployed to Afghanistan… long time MAKE reader (and recent subscriber). I’ve spent the last few weeks getting donations of books and DVDs for our MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) Center. During that time we got some text books, and I’ve had the opportunity to teach some of my fellow soldiers a bit of algebra, trig, bio and physics. Recently I found out that some of the guys are interested in electronics and robotics.

We received four MintyBoost kits a couple of days ago. In preparation for a longish mission we have coming up, several of the guys were interested in building them sooner rather than later (so we could keep our iPod’s charged, of course). My wife has been kind enough to send us out some Altoids gum tins, so soon they will have more durable homes… right now they are living in the anti-static bags they came in. There were a bunch of guys wanting to try their hands at it, as many of the guys have never soldered anything. With only four kits and a pretty small room (where our Commo guys hang out, they had the soldering system) they drew straws

Attached are some pics, though not as many as I had intended to take, of the work that was done. A hearty thanks from all of the guys here. They were all very pleased with the result of their handiwork (they all worked without problems). I think that some of the guys are inspired to play around more with electronics. I’m trying hard to bring a little geek light to some of the less geek-endowed among us. Hehe!