My last paid gig was as Varian's MRI surface coil department -- yes, department. I designed them, shopped for the parts, built them, serviced them, their packaging, and imaging phantoms. I didn't even touch a single active component in the probes themselves, but did design some test equipment like a gradient coil monitoring system.
Why am I here? I have know Doug personally since about 1996, and I am smart enough to realize that he is The Man when it comes to technology, if not personal life-extension techniques. The Fukushima meltdown got me EVEN MORE interested in radiation monitoring: there is currently a huge demand for rad monitors, and this market will not decline in my lifetime, if EVER. I am interested in the Altoid project, and I even have a small tin full of uranium-glazed pot shards to use as a test source!
My real interest here is as a grunt -- I can spend hours crunching a circuit board design into a smaller footprint. My latest design is a colloidal silver generator: USB-powered, LED-indicated, polarity-switched constant current with 100V max drive from an H-bridge with auto shutoff and pulsed stirring motor drive in a device about the size of a matchbox. I should have used an embedded uP, but it is mixed analog/digital.