My job is cool

I was speaking to a woman on the phone, helping her with some legal stuff, and she asked my name. I told her, and she asked "Are you a burner? I think I met you in New York..." I think she probably met star5 and not me, but it was a fun conversation. I'll try to find her camp this summer, and she might come to my shows or to see the roller derby. Random burner meetings probably happen all the time in SF, but, they're pretty rare and lovely here in the frozen north.

microcontrollers

There's a little interactive art project I want to make- I want to take an existing phone, and have each of the number keys trigger a sample (or mp3, or whatever, quality isn't super important) through the receiver's speaker. If possible, I think it'd also be fun to put a proximity sensor on the ringer so that it rings when someone approaches it. I know this should be do-able with a microcontroller, but I have no experience with them and very little programming experience (though I'm working my way through MAX/MSP, which, while not a true programming language, can communicate with ardunios.)

Any advice or online resources from you Makers?