I'm a sucker for robots and rockets, so I knew I HAD to head over to the Maker Faire last Sunday in San Mateo with my geek pals. I witnessed everything from a gigantic electronic giraffe to the fiery fun of The Crucible. As I ate corn dogs and popcorn, I watched kids battle each other with robots. I saw hippies wiz by on their Segways (I still think there should be Segway jousting). And I had fun running into old pals like Grant Imahara (from "Mythbusters"). I got to show off my LED throwies skillz at the Graffiti Research Lab: Geek Mural. Plus I couldn't help but stand in complete awe at the expansive LEGO train exhibit from the Bay Area LEGO Users' Group and Train Club.

It reminded me a lot of how I wish those county fairs in my homestate of Kansas were. I was a 4-H crafting geek. I wasn't into raising cattle or training dogs for the blind, I was all about making bead dolls and tissue box cozies. Of course, if there had been ANY robotics course I would have dropped everything to take that! After all, the two best pals I could ever want would have been R2-D2 and K-9. But alas, there weren't any robots for me in the dusty midwest.

Thanks to Maker Faire, I could at least pretend I was a kid again. As I snapped photos of little kids dissecting mechanical frogs, standing in front of rockets 10 times their size and giggling as they crashed battle bots into each other via remote control, I couldn't help but smile. It's obvious that a fair like this helps ignite the imaginations of the next generation of geeks. And that's pretty cool in my book.

Be sure to check out this video of the highlights from my geek pal neutron_x.

All kinds of photos from the event can be found here.