This question is probably crap but I find myself scratching my head.
I'd love to meet other programmers to bounce ideas off of and maybe somewhere down to line work on a startup. (currently, my best friend is stackoverflow... lol)
I am 29 and out of school so I don't have the luxury of hanging out in the computer science building on a college campus. I'd probably get tasered if start lurking around there now. haha.
I've tried craigslist but that seems to yield mostly unfavorable results... (i.e. old people who have been coding for 30 years and think .NET is the only way to do things, or programmers from India who can do just about anything... for $7 an hour)
I've tried to network through my existing list of contacts to see if they know someone who may know someone but it seems everyone in my 6 degrees is a muggle.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that I live in Minnesota where people tend to shut themselves in their homes for 8 months out of the year. This limits the chances of running into another programmer at a coffee house or whatnot.
So, I am hoping you guys(and girls) can point me in the right direction.
I appreciate it.