[sammas121]

We just got back from the Utah regional and the finals went about the same for us there as well. We were picked as a defensive robot on a strong alliance, (although we were seeded 5th we breezed through our quarter finals) and as such ran into a few difficulties. Right when our round was about to start our laptop had a blue screen of death, as we were walking out onto the field. We quickly rebooted the laptop (thats how we had fixed it earlier). When the laptop was rebooting they started announcing the teams and asked us if we were ready to compete so we yelled no! and made an "x" with our arms. The Technical Advisor then came and checked to see if we were almost ready and when he turned around one of the other refs on the sidelines told us we had to step behind the playing line so the match could start. Because the laptop couldnt finish rebooting we lost (because we were defense). We went and talked to the head ref and he said that we should have stayed in front of the line to distinctively demonstrate that we werent ready. (violating the other ref who told us we had to step behind the line) he also said that he had no recollection of us telling them that we werent ready, and when we pointed out that the Tech advisor had seen us and even come over he said that because we did step back he assumed we were ready for the match. During the next match of the semis another robot on our alliance got hit hard enough to crack the lexan ( inside of their frame so it should have been a technical which would have won it for us) when we went to the referee and showed him the lexan was cracked he looked at us and said "do you really want to do this" and then proceeded to say that because he had no recollection of the hit he couldnt call it a technical. When we then pointed out that it was cracked he said that he did not trust our honor system and that we may have just cracked the lexan earlier and were only showing it now. While I do appreciate the refs and their volunteer time, i wonder what we shouldve done in that situation. We have always been taught to follow the refs and so it was rather confusing when we were told we should have disobeyed the ref (by staying over the line, which couldve resulted in a technical). Also it was confusing to us when the lexan cracked because before when that problem happened they told us we had to leave the robot on the field and show the refs, so when we finally did this they did nothing. Your thoughts??