Re: If you could change one thing....
 

I wish we would have utilized our kids time at the site better. Because X-WhAAAt is such a simple robot and the team worked so efficiently we were able to build a competition robot and a practice robot but it also left the kids with alot of idle time that they used to either hang out or horse around and there were things to be done (like cleaning, creating a new Hall of Fame display and making a new video for the Hall of Fame display). I bet it won't be a problem next year.

Re: If you could change one thing....
 

This is in addition to Dave's story. Halfway into the day we found out the XP pro could only have 10 simultaneous connections, XP Home 5, and 2000 professional 10. After finding this out we decide to use all the personal computers there to be servers to render. I then remembered that I had 2000 Advanced on a CD at home (aren't ITT Tech licenses great?). Come midnight my hard drive decides to crash while installing it. So I reformat, use my comp. as a server the next day, and pray it doesn't explode from having 70 simultaneous connections into it :yikes: .



I wouldn't change a thing at all.

Re: If you could change one thing....
 

We had one of those mentors too. Nothing ever seemed good enough for him and every time we had a meeting he would come in with some new idea he had thrown together the night before. We have a whole box of the "plan C's" he built because he didn't think what the students were doing was going to work. He even brought in some 8" balloon tires he bought at Tractor Supply with 60 tooth sprockets thinking we should use them on the robot...they weighed about 3 pounds apiece! And every time we had a meeting he would nay say just about everything. "are you sure that will work?" with an evil grin.
The whole point of FIRST is to allow the students to find out what works or not and if it doesn't we should fix it ourselves, right?
I have to admit, this mentor was a genius, he had worked for NASA, actually wrote some of the programming for Voyager...a real-life rocket scientist, but he could have been a little less involved. Or just shut up!
A few weeks into the project, though, he had to leave the team for a long business trip and secretly we all rejoiced (which I do feel a bit guilty about, but just a tiny bit). But that isn't supposed to happen...our team shouldn't dislike a mentor so much that they are happy when he leaves. I guess thats just what happens when you get so many smart people together in one place. Anyhow...without him we built a working robot all without using his "plan C's"...and secretly we are all happy we proved him wrong. It may not be right, but there are some people teams can just do without. I completely understand what you mean.

Re: If you could change one thing....