What does everyone like to do besides FIRST stuff??
 

I live in a small town and there is not a lot to do, but I still find some fun stuff to do. I was just wondering what everyone else likes to do when they are not busy with FIRST stuff??


Katelyn

Radio controlled cars. I build them, drive them, break them, and then fix them. I also make custom frames.

I've recently found that I like photography.
heres some recent pictures.
note: im a beginner, so dont expect too much :)


oh, and I like webdesign & music. (see graphical link in signature)

See avatar:D

What?
Who likes doing FIRST stuff?!
pshaw...

I like reading and being on mi computadora...

Hey i used to live by county stadium, in Milwaukee, well before it was knocked down, and I have two brother's and we would take our remote controlled cars down to the stadium parking lot, and drive them. That was a lot of fun.


Katelyn

listen to music and rollerblade.

and hang out with chubtoad.

:p

I like to blow stuff up.
:D
Dance Dance Revolution is taking alot of me and friends time this summer.
Also 12 player Halo, LAN parties(Total Annihilaion, SC, Tribes), teh pool, and random chillings at peoples houses.


Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~~
::whoomp::

[quote]Originally posted by Wetzel
[b]I like to blow stuff up.
:D
Dance Dance Revolution is taking alot of me and friends time this summer.[b][quote]

hahaha yeah Ive done both of those things today....but I play street hockey also

Camping, 4-wheeling, hunting, and the other typical middle of nowhere farming community activities.

Oh i love going 4-wheeling up north on our land. It is so much fun. We actually do have tractor's (did i spell that right...hmmmm??) it is cool to ride those too. It is fun to go up there and just kind of kick back and relax for a while and do whatever you want.

Katelyn

I like to draw/sketch/paint and write.

I like to play Solitaire and other computer games. Also during the summer in my free time I have been trying to watch all the anime I can from my brother's collection.

Two words:
Roller Coasters.

All day, everyday. I love roller coasters.

Jeff - I want to play you in Total Annihilation. 'Round here, I'm known as Teacher because I school my family. I want a challenge. I bet I suck.

Hmmm...I am so scared to go on roller coasters. I really want to go on some, but i am so scared. Not exactly sure why but I am...one of these days I am gonna have to go to Six Flags Great America, in Illinois, and have some fun. Gosh...the last time I was there was in 8th grade, and I was too scared to go on any rides then.

Katelyn

Go to Wisconsin Dells and ride Zeus and Cyclops at Big Chief's Carts and Coasters. They're two relatively small wooden coasters, but they're some of the best in the country ;)

Then, go to Great America and ride Viper and Raging Bull, two more of the best.

Hey I did ride those, and I loved those. The one's at the wisconsin dells. They were so great. But I am really scared to go upside down. Everyone keeps telling me, oh that is the best part, but I am still scared.

Katelyn

go on an upside-down roller coaster, and you won't even realize your upside-down until the train is through the loop. then you say, wow this is awesome! and you go on again and again and again and...

He he...LOL Thanks I think I will, cuz i definately want to.

Katelyn

Oh, going upside down is for wimps.

It's all about the AIRTIME baby!

You know the airtime is good when your seat becomes an added safety feature and only gets used when the train stops :)

cedar point is the place to go for rollar coasters mmmmm....:) rollar coasters so many rollar coasters :p
btw i liket to read but don't ask me what

isn't six flags great adventure coming closer to the number of roller coasters that cedar point has?

oh well, cedar point is awesome, wish i could go back sometime soon...

Cedar Point is THE place to go. Beats any other park I've been to hands down. (PS don't pay the gate fee, it's ridiculous. Get your tickets at your local Parks & Rec service for $31.) And as for LAN games, you've gotta try Unreal Tournament. Other than that I like to mess around with programming. Oh yeah, my absolute favorite thing to do is hand wash dishes at a local pizzeria for minimum wage. jk of course...

LOL...don't we all love doing dishes...

Katelyn

Roller Coasters are amazingly designed!!!
 

Me and my friend jason got stuck on a roller coaster in SF Great Adventure, so while at almost the vertex of the first hill, we're talking to the attendent (I love you Jeff, he is a god among men) we were discussing the physics and fail safe's of the coasters. They are amazing. I always thought that the coasters had some sort of power within them, but they rely fully on PEg=mgh turning into KE=1/2mv^2. All of the brakes are pneumatic/Hydralic. We got stuck because the power went out and Jeff told us that the cylinders would automatically activate to stop the car at the end of the ride. Also, since the cars rely on gravity, if power went out in the middle of the ride, it wouldn't matter for us because of gravity!!! I soooo want to work for the people that design the roller coasters.

PS
If anyone goes to SF Great Adventure, take a look at Batman and Robin, The Chiller, it is powered by linear induction, so what me and jason were thinking is, 'what would happen if the power went out while the car was gaining speed, (the roller coaster doesnt have a hill, it goes from 0-60 in like 2 seconds), but if the power went out, wouldnt the car not have enough power to finish the ride and get stuck somewhere, wheres the fail safe of that???


Shrey and Jason (Ulibrium)
Team 920

Oh great, people are trying to convince me to go on roller coasters cuz they are so fun. Now you come and scare me with... well what if it gets stuck...ahhhhhh....LOL...J/K

Katelyn

well, there's the brakes that stop the car when it's coming back. and those can't be all magnets, because then if the power goes out, someone gets really hurt. so, i'd assume that if the power goes out and you're on the acceloration part, some sort of pneumatic brake clamps on and stops the train quite fast. if you're up in the air, uh, i guess that they could somehow stop the train (maybe on the uphill) with something not dependent on electricity, and then come up and make you walk down.

what roller coaster did you guys get stuck on at great adventure? when i went last year, nitro was having major computer problems (they fixed that eventually) so the train kept stopping at the top of the hill. then i went opening day this year, and stupidly went on the great american scream machine. new operators and old roller coasters DO NOT mix. it's worse than oil and water. me and my brother get on the train. we go up the hill, down the drop. we make our way to the first brakes (before the heart loop thingy), and those brakes didn't even fire, so we rocketed through there, and that really hurt my back/neck. then, we get to the final brakes (before the station) and the train came to almost an immediate stop. then we sat there for about 15 minutes while they got people who knew what they were doing to fix it. it was kind of interesting though, because the person behind me was trying to squeeze out of her harness, and then a guy came over and yelled at her. then she was like, stuck in it for a while :p.

Re: Roller Coasters are amazingly designed!!!
 

Cedar Point is overrated. Their coasters, while many in number, are lackluster in performance. The only thing worth riding at Cedar Point, I think, is Magnum XL-200 (Airtime!).

If you want a really good coaster park with high caliber rides, Great Adventure, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and Six Flags Worlds of Adventure can't be beat.

Nearly all roller coaster braking systems default to an 'activated' position if power is lost. This is usually achieved by a spring-loaded mechanism that brings the brakes into place, whether they be skid, pinch, or magnetic brakes. If you were riding a coaster with a midcourse brake run (MCBR), and power went out, the train would stop on the MCBR and you'd have to be evacuated from the train at that point.


The Chiller has a set of pinch brakes along the launch track that are closed immediately after the train is launched from the station. They open again when it returns, but act as a failsafe in case of a power outage or misfire.

Should the train gain enough momentum to complete the Tophat (on Batman) or Cobra Roll (on Robin), and there's no power for the Linear Induction Motors atop each spike to accelerate the trains backward, they will each come to a stop (after a lot of rocking) at the lowest point of the ride, which is located between the zero-g rolls and the tower.

That's called valleying. If though the train is launched, it still relies on its kinetic energy and all that jazz to complete the course.

Here again, you'd be evacuated from the train. However, to fix that problem, the train must be disassembled and moved via crane onto a truck, and then moved again via crane onto the storage track located behind the station.

This happens more often than you might expect.

As a final note; getting a job with a roller coaster manufacturer is exceptionally difficult. They're very, very small companies who usually employ no more than a dozen people of varying trades. Some of 'em are family run, too, which makes it even harded to get a job with them.

The big ones are:
Arrow Dynamics - currently in bankruptcy protection
Bolliger and Mabillard - of Monthey, Switzerland
Custom Coasters International - in Pa.
Giavanola - also of Switzerland
Vekoma - of the Netherlands
Intamin - of, erm, the Netherlands, I think.
Premier - of Maryland.
S&S - of Utah
Setpoint - also of Utah
Chance Morgan - of Wichita, Kansas, I think

There are other, smaller manufacturers, and many, many companies that manufacturer flat rides, as well. That's just a sample :)

Ian - Most roller coaster braking systems aren't magnetically driven. However, all Intamin coasters (Superman: Ride of Steel, Millennium Force, Xcelerator, California Screamin', etc.) are magnetically braked. Similarly, Intamin's drop rides (Drop Zone, Acrophobia, Giant Drop, Tower of Doom) all rely exclusively on permanent magnets as a powerless, failsafe braking system.
Nitro's computer system is very finicky. It loves to trip sensors for no good reason. The train stopping at the top of the lift is just to prevent block incursions, which are bad, bad, bad things ;) Finally, consider yourself lucky for getting a ride on the Great American Scream Machine with the brakes off! Quit yet whinin'!!

Hey, your Sun Catcher photo is really cool. What's your camera? Over the past year I've really gotten into photography. Here's a few of my favorites (I'm just a beginner too, and I don't have these on my web site, I just posted them on a digital camera forum):



Sneakers

Wish

Web

Other than my interest in photography I do a lot of writing and reading (bookstores are better than chocolate). I tend to do too much of everything and not enough of one thing (I make jewelry and dream catchers and other arts and crafts things, and I've bought way to many musical instruments that I know I will never teach myself to play... I get bored too easily).

MissInformation

<===========>
If a picture's worth a thousand words, what genre would your photo fall under?

but michael, you forget how much it hurts to be pushed into the seat, and then thrown around like a rag doll. true, it was one of the best roller coasters 25 years ago. now, i think it's almost time for it to be taken apart. metal coasters don't age as well as wooden, because there's no coolness factor of an old steel coaster, as opposed to a wooden one. you go on a wooden one because of the legacy and history and most of all, crazy airtime, where as steel ones just aren't that good. or that's how i see it at least :D.

I use a Nikon CoolPix 995 digital camera.
Your pictures are pretty cool. I like the 'wish' one alot.

First, the Great American Scream Machine opened in 1989. That makes it 13.

Second, no roller coaster should *ever* be taken apart.

Third, that's just not true :p Go ride the Loch Ness Monster, Matterhorn. . . Cedar Point's Corkscrew. All have aged very well.

Other than FIRST
 

In the winter I do ALOT of skiing. Before FIRST I was on the Varsity ski team for my high school, and did quite well. Back country is great, but you gotta love those wide open cruisers. Other than that you name it I do it. I'm a pretty athletically diversified individual. Gotta get the excersize in some how, and building robots isn't doing it.

bah, all you roller coaster people are crazy :p

theres something outside of first?

ooh ya there is... LAN parties... going to one this weekend... anyone who has been to one knows what im talking bout

basically, i spend most of my winter vacation (as long as it doesnt interfere with robotics) skiing in vermont and most of my summers windsurfing by my house. i also spend way too much time designing stuff. you might have seen the thread that ian started about out hovercraft. ive also been working on a go-cart recently, but its not coming together very well. last year, i designed a rocket car and tried to make a rocket engine using hair spray for fuel, but i came closer to lighting my hair on fire than to actually making it work.

Hmm...

- digital graphics design (hopefully future profession)
- listening to music
- playing music with my band
- tennis
- computer games

OH...I missed a big thing that I do when not doing Robotics.
I am in another club called Key Club. I am parrt of the Smithtown Key Club. (I made the site.) What we do is help out around the community, raise money for charity, help out at events, and more. It is a great club.

im a boring guy so when i'm not building FIRST Robots I ride my mountain bike all over S.I. NY

um, girls :D yeah, but other than that, computer graphics stuff, beating the crap out of my friends in online games, hanging out with my friends in downtown plymouth, riding my bike, going to work (i don't like it but i still do it), plan for world domination by millions of midgets in tutus with jars of pickles (still working on this one), oh, and FIRST

Let's see ... I don't relly do anything that isn't in some way FIRST related. Like this summer I went to Arizona for two weeks and spent the entire time setting up a camping trip for my FIRST team. Then when I got home, I did some stuff for IRI and finished my 2002 FIRST scrapbook. Now I am trying to set up something with Wisconsin FIRST teams at the Wisconsin State Fair, working on my "secret WI teams project" and trying to figure out a way to get more sponsors for the team for next year. Oh, when I'm not doing that, I'm working on re-doing my 2001 FIRST scrapbook (didn't like how it looked so I tore it all apart at about midnight last night!). Yeah. Life is interesting... kinda.

- Katie

i got to work, sit, get on aim, talk to people, get up, go home,go to sleep, wae up, go to work.....this is my summer

when i'm not doing that i'm helping people w/ FIRST admin stuff

p.s. if u don't believe me im me @ trueyank32 between 10:30 and 5..u'll see

Hey Mike i dare u to ride the cyclone at coney island.....you won't think that all roller coasters should stay how they are

It seems that a few people in this discussion like coasters just like myself. Has anyone ridden X or DejaVu at Six Flags Magic Mountain California or the coaster around the NY NY hotel in Las Vegas? I haven't ridden any of these but I really want to. Or howabout the one around the top of the Stratosphere in LV. :eek:

Evan - if my parents didn't think I get raped by going to Coney Island, I'd have ridden the Cyclone a long, long time ago. Bring it on, baby!

Unfortunately, I haven't been to California in years, so I haven't been to Magic Mountain. I saw Deja Vu at Six Flags over Georgia last summer, but since it's a big giant piece of junk, it wasn't working yet.

The Manhattan Express circles the NY NY Hotel. It's manufactured by Togo. Roughly translated from Japanese to English, Togo means "Concussion" :) Well, not really, but they make awful coasters.

The High Roller atop the Stratosphere is weak, too. Speed: The Ride is a nice Premier LIM coaster, and check out Six Flags Marineworld's new V2 - Diagonal Velocity ;)