What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I started a team!!!! ahhhhhh! My worst mistake, even though its one of my greatest accomplishments.

then there was that time when i bent the robot arm....


shhh, nobody knows it was me. ;)

i got to know anton, and became an honorary rambot.... scary stuff....;)

I call this story "The Fallen Superman".

The year is 2000. The place is our HQ at an undisclosed location on the Newport RI Navy Base. More specifically, the field we built. Anyhow, my common way of getting from one side of the field to the other was leaping Superman-esk, extending myself, and swinging off the bar (actually, I was also able to walk under without hitting my head, but that's not the point). So one time, in front of a group of girls, I did my leap, and extened myself. Unfortunately, the swinging off the bar never happened. I missed and, fully extended, hit the ramp front-first.

Well, the girls got a good laugh, and I did as well after I caught my breath. Now if that's not making myself look idiotic, I don't know what is.

There was that time when the 2000 robot (the one with the 9 foot long arm) fell on my head...

how to make mercury rain
 

Our 98 robot "Navarone" had a spring loaded vertical "gun" made of two nested PVC sections with a trigger mechanism. It was designed to go under the "ladder logic" field and pop up under the other team's balls sending them flying so they couldn't score. The section which popped up went about 4 feet over the height of the bot. It was a lethal projectile restrained only by the metal frame of the machine.

While building the machine we were trying different tensions on the spring mechanism and had the robot on top of a shop bench in our woodshop. We set it off.

The shop fluorescent fixtures are about 6 feet over the benches-

Nuff said..

WC

Last year we forgot that the lights in our workshop were only 1 foot higher than the goal. Well.... One day we decided to test out our robot balancing on the ramp and well....yeah.... there was glass everywhere.

fell down stairs
 

Last year at the nationals the last day, and I was sitting in the bleachers waiting for the finals, when I notice some of my team members were saying they wanted to go and get me wet. And I didn’t want to so I started to run down the stairs and went to fast and started to loss my balance and I ran into a couple of chairs and broke them then I spun around and cut the top of my knee right off. It hurt a lot. they had to call the Ambulance and it took for ever for them to show up, and when they did they went to the wrong place.:mad:

Gotta love an efficient EMS system......



Sean
(who wonders why he said that considering he is an EMT)

Gee, Carolyn, I didn't know that you remembered... :D

-dave (still feeling VERY guilty that you got sucked in as a relatively innocent bystander - after all, it was targeted at Alisha and Joanne!)

Ummm... There was a little incident with a Disney monorail that I started on the Sunday after the Nationals last year....

Jess....Do you want to tell this story for me??? I don't want to tell it for fear of reprocusions from possibly affected FIRST teams!

"I don't care if they're late for their planes; we're not going to be late and that's all that counts"!!!!

There was that small little incident involving duck tape and a door...

Then the Geo hubcap incident...

And a few others. :p

Ya I had a good one...welll all the things I do end up stupid and well the team calls me Blondie becuase I'm so stupid, But last year (2001) I was on that ramp bridge and well I was jumping on that metal part at the end and it busted...all the guys on the team got a really good laugh but we had to quickly fix it for our leader was on her way to test to robot on it! It was reather funny! but there are many more becuase I'm a brunet but act like a blonde!:cool:

i didn't do this but a kid on our team jumped off the dragon that goes over the pool at Port Orleans in disney. Lets just say that the owners were not very happy and we almost got kicked out

Why do things like these have to happen in front of people?

No comment.

Found It!!
 

Taken From another post recited by Jessica Boucher:

"::sigh:: Elgin was our "responsible adult chaperone" our last day in FL...and we were on the monorail from Magic Kingdom to Epcot and he decided that he'd hold onto one of the top panelings, which proceeded to come loose in his hands (turns out it was the emergency exit, and if it had fallen any further, the alarm wouldve tripped)...soooo, he had to hold it up alllll the way to Epcot...I wish I had my camera"

Then Jess and the other people I was with had to flag down an attendant when we got to the next terminal and he had to come in and fix the monorail. That caused a bit of a traffic jam resulting in ~4 monorails being held up that day. :D :D

So I'm sorry if anyone here was in one of those monorails that was stuck on Sunday last year!!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

things like these happen all the time, but it's only the stuff that happens in front of people that you hear about. :D
If you did the "falling superman" by yourself alone, would you ever admit to it?? ;)

Stupidest thing is to come up with a custom control instead of joysticks. For the 1999 game, fiberglass molds were we a makin, and bowling alley wax were we a sniffin. Not smart.

Oh, yeah, there was also that one time where someone blew up the robot.:rolleyes:

On the way to the Philly Alliance Regional in 2000, I was driving a Suburban full of my team mates, one of the engineers was sitting shotgun navagation. If you've ever come at Philly from the south, you take I-76 into the city, as we were this day. Between 6:30am and 7:30am is rush-hour, and it was currently about 6:50am.
Ahead of me was gridlocked, so I stopped with a comfortable space between me and the van infront of me. The group I hauled that day tends to listen to loud music... who doesn't when they are surrounded by a bunch of teenage robotics members?? Let's just say that it the music was so loud I Couldn't hear the screaching of the tires behind me, and the base was so heavy that I didn't feel the bump, either. The gridlock cleared up, and I began to pull away when the engineer next to me said, "Hold on a minute, Jake, I think we've just been in an accident."
So I stopped, put the 4-way flashers on, and got out to see what was going on. Sure enough, there was a little compact car that had been sandwiched between my Suburban and a Mini-Van. To my dismay, the occupants of the Mini-Van were all members of my team.
If you were in that traffic jam (and I know some people were, 'cause we were asked if we saw the horrible traffic on the way in), I am sorry for the poor driving of some of the members of my team. Thankfully, driving a robot is much different than driving a car.;)

A miscivious engineer who is also the brother in law of our advisor and a couple of us students smuggeled a couple of water guns into the philladelphia regional last year. well when we were about to turn them on a fellow student our advisor came around the corner. needless to say we almost got kicked out of our hotel. Yes I am using my screen name instead of the real thing for fear of being reccognized. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

why i really got dumber over the last two years
 

Ok. I guess I may as well tell my same stupid story I've had to tell a million times and I'm sure you've all probably heard by now..

Freshman year at nationals I was with some of my team mates hanging out at the wrap party and we were like five minutes or somethign from curfew. Being the trusting person that I am (and lazy as well), I let my friend Bryce give me a piggy-back ride to the front of EPCOT. Well, after a while we saw an EPCOT worker coming towards us, probably to yell at us to stop, so he let me get off. Well, for some reason or another I fell and concked my head really hard on the brick ground. I thought I was fine but then my head really started to hurt. That same EPCOT lady saw me fall and came over. Soon she had called over several of her co-workers who in turn first had my friend Rishan call our adult sponsor back at the hotel tehn called the Disney paramedics. I felt so dumb. They asked me all sorts of dumb questions to see if I was with it, but I had no clue what was going on. They figured out I was fine to go and stuff but I was totally scared. I had to have two people help me walk to the bus back to the hotel because I was so dizzy. To this day I still don't trust Bryce, even though I know it wasn't his fault any more than it was mine.
(This whole incident explains why last year I randomly stopped and stood at one place at EPCOT..that was where I fell..it's kinda creepy)

this is more of a team embarrassment.. Qasim decided to get up and dance around at the Chicago regional and he preceeded to lose his wallet.. Woody called him up in front of everyone and gave it to him and he procedded to act like a moron. He also did this at nationals.... but we set him up for that one!

Yeah, you're not in it. ;)

I give you full credit for what was a most excellent shot. And how J.R. managed to get me completely soaked without a single drop touching anyone else, while I was standing in the middle of a crowd of people, impresses me to this day.

-dave

-----------------------------------------------

Try to live your life as if you have to prove that real life is stranger than fiction.

Cheers to JR...

I think I'm glad that some of your students helped you say that your laptop was ruined. I think you and the rest would have gotten at least one more bucket. Ahhh, memories.

And to continue on Carolyn's. Remember if you prank someone, don't prank Dave Lavery. He will get you back, and ten times worse!

Hmmm. Why do I suddenly feel a tickling at the back of my neck, like I am being set up?

-dave

-----------------------------------------

Life is short. Play hard. - Nike

Life is short. Doesn't that stink? -dave

this is just a fine example of the typical idiotic stuff that tends to occur during late nights at FIRST..... in 2000 our building area was a military warehouse...... there was a fenced in area in the middle where they had probably once stored stuff nobody is supposed to talk about........ and on the far end there was an ample stock of random decrepid office chairs
what was the result you are wondering?
extreme bumper office chairs in the battle cage

This is CNN
 

Well, by far the stupidest thing I ever did related to FIRST was punch my team's driver for the match of mass destruction in the face after he notified me that he was blind. You see, a camera happened to be pointed at me at the time, and the video just happened to get on CNN, and I just happened to not get a tape of it. Some things you just can't explain.

Re: Found It!!
 

This is the part where I get to share Walt Disney World's Monorail Evacuation procedures.

In the event of a fire or other monorail emergency, the train will be stopped ( of course ) . . . Guests are then expected to remove the emergency exits (I'm glad Elgin now knows how!) and use a provided rope (it's beneath the seats, or along the inclined portion, I believe) to climb onto the monorail roof. From there, you'd be expected to walk the length of the train, slide down the glass window on the cab unit and walk the beamway to the next station.

Now, keep in mind - the beamway is flanked by two 220 volt busbars that power the trains.

Try to figure out what happens if there's a disabled guest on the monorail, too.

I know it's probably a useless factoid - but think what could've happened if you'd set the alarm off :) It can be a looooong walk back to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot on that beamway. . . it's about 8 miles long.

Mad Props
 

[quote]Originally posted by dlavery
[b]

I give you full credit for what was a most excellent shot. And how J.R. managed to get me completely soaked without a single drop touching anyone else, while I was standing in the middle of a crowd of people, impresses me to this day.

-dave

-----------------------------------------------

I must give my kodos as well. I was one of those talking to Dave when you soaked him. Man, that water came out of nowhere and completely drenched him. Unfortunately I didn't get the full story until the next morning due to a strict chaperone. Dave is definitely not someone to mess with. Too bad you had to learn the hard way!

-Justin

Sounds like something a kid on our team did...

He did a belly smacker off the lifeguard chair at the pool

Okay, sorry to open this thread again, but I got a new one.

This year at the Phoenix Regional Social (at the Arizona Science Center) My friends Krystine, Kendra, and I went out onto the terrace to have some food. Everything was going fine until Krystine dropped a nacho chip onto her seat. Then she got up to go and get some napkins so it wouldn't get on her pants (they were white and she was very lucky to have had the chip NOT fall on them in the first place). She walked over to the table, got what she wanted, and then sat down, completely forgetting that she had gotten up because there was stuff on her pants in the first place.

Well, we untucked her shirt and she walked around for the rest of the night hoping nobody would notice the big yellow stain on her pants (i don't really know if anyone did.... hrmmmm....)

Amanda and (most embarassed) Krys

I definately tried to spike up my hair with glue during the last day at nats last year.

And when we won, I had to go up on stage and huge Woodie and Dean... while the sun was melting the glue out of my hair and it was running down my neck and forehead.

Cute.:(

I'm an idiot (sometimes)... and proud of it!!!
 

Well seeing as I'm not the only one on this thread... here I go...

It began as a simple dare from a fellow friend at nationals last year... he had one of those stupid but cool voice changer thingies... you know the ones they sell at disney? Well we also had access to a phone:D ... and the room numbers to all our teamates... oh... and calls to rooms from rooms were free...

Anyway... we went through the list and placed prank phone calls and messages from our room using the voice changer so nobody... so we thought... could tell it was us...

Ten minutes after placing a call on one of our captains phones... she came to the room... she was pretty POed but she forgave us... five minutes after that her boyfriend gave us a visit... he still hates us for it...:yikes:

that was also the night we got caught on the waterslide after midnight with a few others... We only thought that the water had been shut off... it never occured to us that the slide was actualy closed:rolleyes:

Mmmmm.... nothing quite like the smell of rotting threads in the morning. :]

Anyways, here's mine:

When installing the battery for this year's 'bot, I was trying to figure out how much of the Anderson connectors we should cut off. In order to make sure everything would fit in the robot properly, I connected the two ends together. Now, this wouldn't be that big of deal, except I stupidly used the connector I had already stripped the insulation off. Needless to say, while bending and twisting the wires to get them into the proper position, I ended up touching both ends of the stripped connector the robot chassis.

What happened next is left as an excercise for the reader.

hmmm Most likely like recycled Percussion at BAE with Grinders and 55 gallon drums

Hmmm.... dumb things...
Does picking a 130lb. robot with your class ring on count? Well here's a few from my team:
1) Last year, it's crunch time at regionals--the end of the first day, and our robot still barely runs. I turn around and mysteriously vanish, amidst the blare of announcements for teams needing this or that. Suddenly, between all the requests of depsarate teams comes, "Team 990 needs a miracle. If anyone can provide a miracle, please see Team 990." My entire team turned beat red as laughter rolled out of the pit areas. Let's just say I got a slug in the shoulder every day of the school year after that from one of my friends.
2) One of our guys, Aaron, shaved his hair this year, much to the dismay of his parents. Part of his punishment, apparantly, is his current lack of a go-tee. I also remember getting the steam room at the AZ Best Western up to 150 degrees... I also remember jumping between the swimming pool (about 55 degrees) and the jakoozi (about 110 degrees). Of course, I had to spend about 15 minutes in the pool when the good looking girls showed up. No one wants to look like a wimp...
3) I lifted my friend Glenn up on my shoulders to look for someone. Keep in mind this is in the pit area among many people walking.
4) Our Physics Teacher, Mr. Johnson, as soon as our robot caught on fire at the end of a match. He was stomping on the afflicted hardware before the refs had a clue what was going on. It turned out that a cable came lose when we flippled on our back (the radio cable), shorted, and caught fire. No major damage, and the wire sat proudly displayed in our pit area for the rest of regionals. When one (of many) teams asked us if we needed anything, I piped up "an oven mitt." That was pretty hilarious.
5) I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not, but a couple of my roommates at the hotel, while perusing through the contents of my laptop, found a rather large folder (or at least they don't remember Mechwarrior 3 taking up a gig of hard drive space), and decided to investigate. I won't get into details as to what the rest of the night entailed for the four of us room mates, but the discussion of fluid flowrates and tissue tension was hit on quite a few times (as the material in question starts with an H and ends with a TAI), as were many other topics of anatomical realism. Ah, our physics teacher would be proud. Well, sort of. The dumb thing in all of this being me bringing my laptop. Imagine someone finding that at the regionals event. :yikes:

Ooops!
 

OK, so I learned the hard way that if current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms, and if resistance approaches zero, amps approaches infinity. In other words, I crossed a wire against the two posts of a robot battery, and found myself banned from anything electronic on the robot for 2 and a half years (still on parole four years later).

Re: Ooops!
 

No wonder you're still on probation. :) If "current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms", then as resistance approached zero, current would also approach zero.:D

i stabbed myself with a scribe... and it went in really far (accidentally of course) :p any questions? hehe

Re: Re: Ooops!
 

Maybe I meant that current is volts over resistance, that would make more sense i suppose.

dumbest..well last year our team built our own goals to try the robot out, they were built just like the ones FIRST had. Well i decided to stick my head inbetween the pvc pipes and pull them apart and let them go ..so yeah they came back and slapped me on both sides of me head. there are tons of other stupid (yet intentional) things ive done...i guess im the team clown *shrugs*

Re: I'm an idiot (sometimes)... and proud of it!!!
 

I was in this 2. Her boyfriend was really pissed he wanted to bweat us. Also at the slide I layed on it and got smashed down and it hurt. First is very fun though.

watch the language symsky!!!

motor
 

metal shavings in a fisher price motor. Lots of humming no movement.

Quote:

Well seeing as I'm not the only one on this thread... here I go... It began as a simple dare from a fellow friend at nationals last year... he had one of those stupid but cool voice changer thingies... you know the ones they sell at disney? Well we also had access to a phone ... and the room numbers to all our teamates... oh... and calls to rooms from rooms were free... Anyway... we went through the list and placed prank phone calls and messages from our room using the voice changer so nobody... so we thought... could tell it was us... Ten minutes after placing a call on one of our captains phones... she came to the room... she was pretty POed but she forgave us... five minutes after that her boyfriend gave us a visit... he still hates us for it... that was also the night we got caught on the waterslide after midnight with a few others... We only thought that the water had been shut off... it never occured to us that the slide was actualy closed

oh dear god, Persico...you're going to have to tell me more aobut THIS one...:yikes:

Lazy
 

I was being lazy and needed to test a motor... so i just grabbed the leads and touched the battery.... well, there was a large spark and everyone got quiet... ... Not a big deal, but it scared a few people...

So um.. I'm not sure how dumb this is, but it's definitly my most embarassing FIRST moment.

My team was in the first practice round in Annapolis this year, and I eagerly volunteered to be the human player. I was confussed beyond belief, and everything was going so quickly.. anyways, the announcer was talking about how things were going to work, and he said "I'm going to go 1, 2, 3, 4, go (while pointing to each human player station)" anyways, he repeated himself and I thought that the round was beginning, so I quickly picked up the stack of bins to put them out onto the field. Only, the match WASN'T beginning, and I realized that after about 5 seconds, when I stopped and the bins fell over. The announcer then went on to explain how things were going to work AGAIN, while I felt like the biggest fool ever.


... good thing that it was only the first practice match, so not too many people saw. My teamates are definitly NOT letting me forget it, though.

And of course there are tons of dumb things that I did during the 6 week building period. :)

lol Kristen, our human player did that in a match on Saturday, and lotsa ppl saw....Actually I think one of the other human players did it as well - so it wasnt such a big deal.

Lol.. I kinda did that..

Its the first match of the day, and so the announcer says "1.. 2.. 3.. " (I go) "go! .. *trumpet noise*" ... yeah, I felt kinda stupid cuz Im sure more people than normal were watching cuz it was the first match on saturday.. oh well

Hmm.. actually I think I caused 3 minor penalties for my team come to think of it.. (other occasions though).

As far as dumbest thing I've done.. our third practice match, I set the switches for our auto mode.. test it on our cart.. satisfied about it.. and then I set them wrong somehow. Needless to say our bot went straight.. then turned directly into the railing. Not a good thing at all..

Well...it was at the Great Lakes Regionals...one of the parents from my team wanted me to hang up our team banner...so, having nothing else to do, I grabbed a bunch of zip ties/cable ties, carried the banner up and started securing the banner with the ties...well, me, being amused by random things, decided, "Hey, this would make an interesting ring..." Um...big mistake :D I ended up pulling too hard, and eventually, I realized, "Uh...how come my finger feels funny?" By now, it was a nice shade of blueish red...me...started to panic. Since I was still sitting above the pits, I had to run down the stairs, crashed into some TNT people (Sorry about this!:) ) and literally sprinted over things to get to my pit. When I got there, I couldn't find any wire cutters or scissors...so, I grabbed a screwdriver and pryed it off...luckily, no one noticed this little incident from my team:D :p

Dumbest thing? Well...
 

Helping a team member try to get the pins that spell "Hadji" to win a prize from Team # 279 by trading pins for pins.

Last year... Nationals... I walked around in the pouring rain with lightening striking every 3 seconds with 200 metal buttons on...(but I was ok)

lol :D

The first congo line at GLR...Tripped down a flight of stairs :p ...ran over someone... but I'm really sorry if that was you... :(

lol

Also at the GLR...I got really excited about the last 5 seconds of our team's match...I screamed some random thing out...even I don't remember what it was...:p ...I got some strange looks from my team...and the teams around us...
And I Quote:
"Melissa, Honestly, was that English? It sounded like you said something else..."
End Quote
:D

At UTC I took out the 40 amp breakers in the pit because we were simultaneously working on the wheels and testing the other systems. We all wondered why the robot wouldn't move at all during our next match while the other systems worked, until I remembered about the breakers. We lost the match miserably.

Ahh! I have to tell you something that may not have been stupid, but it shure was funny!

My friends Alex, Kendra and I went to the Phoenix regional and we decided to use the back way to get to the pit. So, we had to walk around a halllway, and the openings to the stadium were called portals. So, being the dorks that we are, we decided that every time we had go to the stands we said in a very dark, sinister voice, "We have to go through Portal 8!" and we even went so far as to add warp holes. It was like space travel!

haha

-Amanda

Words of advice.... Don't go walking through the streets of Manchester wearing tye-dye(from head to foot), with two hundred buttons on and with two kids with bright green shirts and cow pants... People look at you funny...

Pin Man, I'm the only person at my school (2400 kids) on the robotics team. The school that the team is really at only has about 200 kids. I came to school today with my team shirt on, safety glasses, and my multiple robotics necklaces (screw on a string, zip-ties put together, a string of beads from 668, and the medal for being SVR finalists). I got lots of funny looks but I don't care. I'm the type of person that gets funny looks regularly. ;)

Being bored at one time, I took out some of my Technic Legos that I had for quite a while, and constructed Gearboxes and Transmissions just to see how they would work even though I only have one programmed motor that requires 2 AA batteries and one two-button controlled motor that requires 6 AA batteries to operate. The two-button controlled motor no longer works anymore, but oh well. In addition to that, I stayed up until midnight constructing them in my closet until I had insufficient gears. This is probably the dumbest, dumbest, dumbest thing I've ever done so far compared to my previous post.

Alaina- I got my picture taking atleast 40 times and got about 100000 comments lol... i bet ya you cant beat that... lol

hmmm
 

i must say that walking through central city philly with bright green shirts and doing moe cheers on a plane to florida definitely draws stares and questions... i think the bright green attracts drunk philadelphians... i was walking with some of my friends from 316 and my team, and we got in an interesting conversation with drunk people...mostly about the weather though. hehe 30th street station was always an interesting experience with green hair, hats, shirts, nail polish, and belts with tools all over them as well as a billion buttons, and... MOE sticks...hmmmm

Aww... *is jealous now* :(

:p

hahahah

you spelled my name wrong
 

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

LOL, that1guy is gonna reply to this one, at one of the Lego League competitions we were cleaning up afterwards, we had spent all day reffering, and there were these double doors. LOL, except, the double doors had a pole in the middle of them. I figured like double doors there wouldn;t be anything in my way....yeah, i ran right into it. Yeah......that1guy laughed, LOL, (Ryan you suck!) :p

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Back in the day that our team was #465 (2001) I put a HUGE gash in our 36 inch ball. I put it down walked away and never told any one. I can only say this now because I am one of two members of the team that is still around today.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

So That was you, akuu!!! Oh man I'm so telling everyone.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

just today i was up at my high school when there were no teachers and i accidentally popped the big ball that was given to us in the kit... :D you see i was taking it out of the room that we store our parts in and i put a small hole in it... thinking that masking tape might fix the problem i repared the hole. then so that nobody would notice i tried to reinflate the ball and.....


pop

thats when i figured that people would notice :ahh:

i'll get a pic of the ball (or whats left) up soon...

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

dont feel bad .. i saw someone at nationals in houston do this .. i found it hilarious!!!

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

well I'm a senior, so I'm full of stories, some me, some kids who left... anyway, fresman year at the colombia U, NYC regional (2001) one of our team members decided he couldn't sleep at 2 AM so he left the hotel and walked uptow from 110th street staight into harlem, when he came back at 4 AM our mentor was sooooo pissed at him...
another time sophmore year some kids decided to make a crossbow out of 1" square aluminum tube, and the elastic tubing, they used the 1/2" long drill bit as a bolt. the first firing sent the bolt across the room and into a blackboard, the hole is still there.
that same year at nationals we got to space mountan 5 minutes before closing, so we got on, and the line was short, but we werent done, so we came right out the exit and went back on. its not so dumb until you realize there were at least 8 of us doing this, and we rode it 6 times...
this year at final bin bash in NJ I had junk in my pockets that sung around, so I decided to duct tape my pants tight at the knee to keep them from swinging, and tighten my belt. the problem was I left my rear no slack, so when I crouched for the team picture, my pants split right open from zipper to back...
last year I was installing line following sensors under the bot, when I decided to make sure the bracket was extra tight... I severed the wires...
freshman year, one of our team members was told to figure out how to hook up the speed controllers (victor 883's) so he diced to test one. he looked at it and saw no positive or negative marker, so rather than RTFM he hooked all 4 in series and reversed the polarity, blowing them all out. not fun at $112 a pop... (will stop for broke speed controllers)
last year at huston, we forgot saftey goggles, so I mentioned I saw a target on the way there, so I voluteered to go, and took a list, mostly drinks and junk, that I needed to get... it wasnt a little walk, it was 3 miles (round trip) I later found out, and the googles and 20 pounds of liquid refreshment were a pain to carry. the nice part was when I showed up and sold some of my purchase at a markup to other firsters...

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Oh, great I didnt know that you still looked here. :ahh:

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Trying to find someone to do the Truffle Shuffle at the 2002 Nationals.

It failed. The girls I was with and I only found gross icky FIRST boys that would only do that if we did something. We wouldn't saw no Truffle Shuffle.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I'd have to say the stupidest thing that i've ever done F.I.R.S.T. would be one of two things. The first would be up at the Canadien Regional a few years ago. We were staying at a hotel that was also the staying place for a local high school ice hockey team. They called us "nerds" so we decided to get even. Long story short we amost got into a rumble with a full sized team of hockey players.

The second would have to be when I sat in a tub full of ice cubes for 5 minutes as a last minute hoorah for the nat's a few years back...still can't feel the cold below my waist...but the shock value of wearing shorts when it's 30 degres outside is priceless.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

To see someone put a piece of metal (one of those Autodesk wrist bends from Nationals) into the terminal of a battery just because it fit…

PS: The Fireworks were nice

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

hmmm... Krispy Kreme run at 10:30 at night... and a little visit to visit a team in a local hotel...

AND. Allowing the team to know that I was going to tolo w/ our electronics mentor, lol... They RIPPED on him... and consequently me too :rolleyes:

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

*sigh* I went over to a building where all of our electronics equipment was stored. I unlocked the building, turned on the lights, set the key on a table, and walked deeper into the building. I turned around and...surprise, the door locked behind me! I managed not only to lock the key inside the building...but to trap myself inside the building as well. What a night...

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

We broke into our school Auto Shop's storage room. We left a nice apology on the board, though:

Our note on the board

Now, we did have a reason for it (our tools were all locked in there), but still... breaking into a room would count as pretty dumb no matter why you do it.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Quitting my team last friday :(

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

The dumbest thing I've done SO FAR (since I'm a freshman) happened at a festival in my home town. During the festival our team brings out all our robots to demonstrate, play around with, etc., along with a team from a nearby high school. This all takes place under one small tent.
So, the final demonstration of the day came, and I was allowed to drive the National Champion robot of 2002. Great! So I drove that and the other team drove their most recent bot to accomplish a simple task. That task I have long forgotten, but that isn't the point. Near the end I decided to wrestle with the other robot, first pushing it into a solid table,(it didn't fall) and then into a temporary pipe fence. It didn't fall either, but could've gone into the crowd. I got a pretty good word from a person on the other team.
I first didn't recognize what I had done until I had got that word, and looked at the damage, ON OUR BOT. Their bot was O.K. Ours, I don't think, is repaired to this day. Worse yet, that's the National Champion bot. OUCH!

Another thing to mention, there was a poster hanging saying, "THIS IS NOT BATTLEBOTS!"

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Hmmm where to start?

oh yes.

At Canadian Regional last year, I got into a hotel room with two pretty rowdy guys on our team. We stayed up til like 12 playing halo. When it was time to sleep, I put on my jammies, crawl into what was supposed to be a relaxing bed, but turned out to a bed full of ice!!! It was so cold that I girly screamed. (for those of you who don't know what I sound like when I do that, be thankful.) Apparently, those two guys had dumped about two buckets worth of ice into my bed and put the sheets and cover on. I had to sleep on the floor that night.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Me and a couple of other people did something like that this year. We had just ripped our unworking drive train out the first time and there want anything we could do that night sence we didn't have the parts for a ned drive train. So three of us got office chairs and and 4 foot long poles and proceded to smack one of the 13 inch balls around while running in to each other. stupid but fun. Akuu knows what I'm talking about.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I wonder if there is anyway to reply to this anonomously?? lol

Not for something I did, but for "stories" I hear of days gone by before I joined FIRST!

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Last year, we were drilling holes in something (don't rememer what) with the drill press when the drillbit stopped drilling. We were pretty pissed since we were almost done.

Our solution? Push harder.

However the stupid little bit just wouldn't drill. We realized we were doing something wrong when the bit started glowing orange.

Our reaction? Push harder.

It wasn'tt until small flames began shooting out of the other side that we decided to get a new bit. We did, of coarse, stop to cool the bit down every now and then with a cup of water. What did we use for a cup? One of the old light covers.

See? there are reasons to keep those around!

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

lol Water??? I'm sure that just wrecked your bit.. Try some Go-Go juice on the bit next time.. Water is never good on the metal parts!!! :p

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I'm afraid to ask what this 'go-go juice' is. :)

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Ok, so let's see...

Steve, Brian, Dana, Greg and I definitely had some fun in the hotel at last year's Canadian Regional. Steve was going to the army and we decided to have some fun... I talked one of the girls into giving me their room key (took me an hour). We ended up overflowing their toilet with ice. I went into someone else's room accompanied but talked him into letting me stay to look for something I may have lost (process took 30 min) - this resulted in the door being wedged open... Steve, me, etc. rearranged the whole room and reveresed the mattress/spring box - "Why is this so hard?". Shu's ice bed was another fun event. I don't feel like listing more at the moment.

This was dumb because of all the trouble we could've gotten into. This was awesome because it entertained a large group of people. :)

Including the girls with the ice-toilet... they used it to cool drinks ;)

Oh, what to do this year?

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

lol It's just a lubricant you use when milling or drilling metal parts so phenomenon as described by Crop Circles don't happen!!

I don't know if Go-Go Juice is the technical name, but that's the name I hear it called more often than not in the shop during robo-season.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I stabbed myself in the finger with a Letterman while trying to saw balsa wood. That was pretty cool :p

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Well once, I went to a team carwash to raise money...for the wrong team. I was a freshman too so I didn't know I was at the wrong place until I started cleaning cars and they said something about "PantherTech" and I was like "Well...we are the Technokats right?" and they all laughed and I then almost peed my pants >_<

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Wow!!! That is the funniest post I have ever read here.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

Where some people will say the dumbest thing I've ever done is push Dave to murderous mutterings, I disagree. The dumbest thing I've done is almost leaving one of our students behind at Annapolis, and it was completely my fault. And he's one of our best students, too! I wasn't supposed to be the chaperone, but the parent who was had a death in his family and had to leave on Friday. I was the only adult with the security clearance to be the official chaperone on the bus ride home, so what else could I do? Well, after the closing ceremony, I gathered all of the kids in one area while one of the adults went to find the bus. She was supposed to call another parent with the information but never did (turns out she called that parent's home phone). One student, Kyle, asked if he could run back to our pit area to look for his coat, so I said yes, and told him to meet us out front. We herd everyone else outside, and try to keep them from spreading out and mixing into the crowd... a parent called the bus driver for location and we all head over there... On the bus, we take role... When Kyle's name comes up, I say, "He went with his father." (which he could have, but I don't know why he didn't). The bus is slowly inching foward when Kyle comes running up to the bus... whew! Lucky break for a horrible chaperone!

Heidi

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Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

*OUCH* I didn't almost, I did leave her behind.

Last year at Phoenix a best student told me she was running back in the motel and would be right back. I forgot, we all climbed into the cars and went to competition without her. She was pissed and upset. I didn't blame her at all. I felt terrible. She walked to the competition - 4 miles. No one had realized she was gone. Thank goodness she was a senior, self-confident girl rather than a freshman. Her dad was with us. I apologized and it took her awhile to be ok with me. I failed miserably that time. I'd be upset if people left me behind.

Re: What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?
 

I'm almost afriad to post this. All I will say is that if you were in our hotel in Philly about two years back. You probably heard about a kid that tied himself up. That was me.