|
Soooo.....
So, it's 10 pm here at Houston, TX and I'm exhausted. If you are reading this, then you either don't care that I'm at Champs or you can read CD on the road. I'm at the Marriot Med Center, and I can tell you that we have 19, yes, 19 teams here!
Here's the system lowdown that has been set up. This year there is a band you wear all three days. This band gets you transporation to and from Reliant. It's color coded which has a set of hotels set up for a color. Don't get it? The Med center hotels are blue. Others will be diff colors. Also on the band are four meal tickets. I'll tell you more latter when I have more time and I'm not dying of sleep deprevation... |
I'm at the Holdiay Inn Select. Our bands are neon green.
It would be nice to be sleeping now, but I'm just not tired. |
im reading, and i do care that ur at nats, only reason i can post now is b/c i am sitting in a class wishing my team had qualified.
|
I care too.. But I'm sitting in class wishing that our team could have afforded it... Oh well.
|
SPARKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It would have been nice to have been able to afford to go to nats.... oh well. YAY for sparky! |
the set up sounds pretty reliable
any problems so far? judging from my time.. it looks like the pits have been closed for about 20 mins now? |
I will be so amazed if 384 wins the nationals. And I will also be frustrated.
The robot is very consistent and the construction is well done, but it has an average drive train and an average autonomous mode (~ 4.5 seconds with 2-3 stacks knocked down). It does not stack and the arm on top doesn't do anything (per my observations in Chesapeake). I don't understand why robots like 1114 and MOE don't win more. GO STACKERS! And go other robots who, to use this quote purposefully, 'think outside of the box'. :) |
Quote:
Cory |
lol.. one of the mentors on my team posted that it closed at 7 pm houston time..which is 8 toronto time.. and it says the same on the first site..
hmm.. i hope my timezones arent messing anything up.. lol |
71's in the radisson astrodome (ugh- i wish we were at hyatt or holiday inn or doubletree or somewhere else...) we have bright pink wristbands, and our driver aj had alll his meal thingys fall off.... so now he has to hope they don't check. blaaaahhh, i miss florida, these walks from the pits to the arena are sooooooooooo long!
|
Quote:
Bright pink wristbands!! *gasp* ;) No one mind what Yan said. Sparky will r0ck ;) |
for all the people that at home do to no qualifying or not affording how is houston? How does it compare to Epcot ? what are the difference? how is the field layout ?
|
Well I'm not in Houstin but I can tell ya not having Nats in the proper time zone EST/EDT is casuing me a few headaches. Is houstin 1 or 2 hours difference from EDT?
|
I believe Houston is one hour BEHIND EDT time
doo doo doo..posting in class |
I was watching the web cast and man I am torn. I'm really happy that our Sister team Metal in Motion (343) is in First place for its devision Curie. But I feel bad for my other favorite teams that aren't faring so well. However I do have a few favs that are doing great. 342: 10th in Archemides, 16: 2nd in Curie, 108: 10th in Galileo. If I didn't mention your team it's probably because you're not in the top 15. But I still love you! (Especially 180 and for some reason 71 ;))
|
i just want to be a nationals instead of this rained out place ( very rainy in Va. Beach, its never this bad, even for April ), plus i want to see some of my new friends from 122, but no dough, no go.
P.S.-What's up Christina, hope you guys can salvage something on day 2 |
overall
ok... first off: radisson- our room had roaches, about an 1/8 in. of mold inside the vents, very bad for people w/ allergies, smelled like mildew, spiders in the bed, had stucco falling everywhere, stains were all over...NASTY!!! chief delphi called the corporate headquarters because it was so bad, we had 2 rooms- mine was one of those 2- moved because the smell and nastiness was just way more than the other rooms. ugh. there are teams here, and we're all pretty unhappy. the new room isn't too bad... but it's still in the same building and all, so we don't trust it.
the pits are about a ten minute hike up four ramps on a nasty incline to the actual arena, longer to get to the divisional playing fields, which make you feel all special because it's all big and bright and in the reliant arena... that's the old enron field to most of you... but the stands make it harder to cheer on your team. the pits themselves are the astrodome, but there's dust and dirt from the moving of the pitching mound.... but that's tolerable. the field layout isn't bad.... two division fields back to back on each side, and einstein in the middle- which is going to be used exclusively for finals this year. still- i'd rather be on a rookie team or a team (or even a person) that hadn't ever been to florida nats, because then i might appreciate this all more... because epcot was soooo much better, the walk from the pit to the arena every match makes me wonder why we ever complained about the walk to einstein last year.... it seriously was less than half the walk of this year from the pits to the arena every match. great america isn't open all day like disney was either, so it's kinda like.... aww... we can't goof off on down time... :( also... yeah.... we're not seeding too well, but we're hoping we'll be picked... and GOOO 108 :yikes:!! (i've been adopted onto their team since i'm in their pits alomost equal to the time spent in mine...)and of course to everyonne, tomorrow's finals!!! w00t!!! |
Mixed feelings
Well, Team 108 stayed at the Hyatt, which wasn't nearly as bad as team 71 had it at the Radisson. The Hyatt's rooms were really pretty nice. The only thing I miss that I had at the other hotels this year was internet at the hotel. There was one computer at the concierge desk running windows 98 with a REALLY slow net connection for all of the hotel to use. THAT didn't work out well, especially when you need to VPN home to get that crucial interface file. Other than that it wasn't too bad, it was within walking distance of the hard rock and tehy had a starbucks (as overpriced as it was) downstairs. Im not sure how many teams were there, but at any given point there were about 5 teams staring at each other in the lobby waiting for the elevators to get there.
Houston itself had its ups and downs. I personally liked the epcot atmosphere a lot. It was awesome that when nothing was going on, you could run into epcot for an hour or so, and if someone needed you, be back out in 10 minutes back working in the pit. The astrodome was a bit bland, lots of grey floors, backdrops just put out into the middle of the field, juss really bland. Good point was there was plenty of seating, as opposed to the old fields at florida, where you really had to fight to get INTO the curie, newton, etc. fields. Closing ceremonies just kinda of ended, no big show with fireworks and fire and green lasers meticulosuly designed to be go off at an exact point in the night for that awesome effect disney always managed to do. Disney did a lot of things right when they hosted the event. The Real big plus was the pits I thought. Whereas the walk was horrific. Like goose said, 10 minute 4 ramp hike, usually performed running with a robot on a handtruck. That resulted in some robot spillage a few times. I saw one of the candian teams take a bad robot fall off their cart. Running up a ramp with a robot is NOT a good idea. The pits themselves were really nice though. I found the pits to be resonably noisy, as in I could actually carry on a conversation with somone without having to yell like a pshyco and the teams weren't exactly jam-packed together like usual. I found the pits to be an extremly work-friendly environment for the most part. Maybe it was just us, but it also seemed like there was a lot less "ROBOT COMING THROUGH, GET OUT THE WAY!!" this year. ...and we went all the way to houston and didn't even see the space center! AHH! Team party afterwards I can't comment on how good it was. For me, it was one of the best times I've ever had, but I have no idea what most of the park looks like ;) |
YEA! Our bands where PINK !!!
We had 5 at the Howard Johnson - 5, 84, 181, 503, 957. We had our own little party Thurs. Night! What fun!!! |
Long live Epcot.
And if what I hear is correct, we might just go back to WDW.... |
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:28. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © Chief Delphi