[Redhead Jokes]

"Dear robotics friends and family,

Our robot performed much better in Los Angeles than it did in Phoenix. We made it to the finals, and we won another award...

My sons, Greg and Kevin, are featured, quoted and appear in a color photo in today’s Daily Breeze newspaper. The link in the message below includes the text of the article, but not the photos.

One of the reasons we won the Sportsmanship award was that solving our robot’s technical problems gave our team’s mentors time to help other teams that were having problems. Mark Miller helped a dozen teams with programming problems. On Friday morning, I went around to every team that was using the drill motors, which had given us so much trouble in Phoenix, and I told them how we had solved those problems. Many teams were having similar problems. I went back to the teams at the bottom of the rankings several times on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning to see if I could help them. I helped one rookie team whose robot had broken down during every match, just as ours had in Phoenix. After I helped them, they won their next match! That was cool. Ironically, that team also went on to beat us in our last qualification match on Saturday morning. It was our own fault though, because a bolt came loose and left our robot turning in circles. Another important lesson relearned—remember to check for loose bolts between matches. That must be the match when the picture in the Daily Breeze of Greg driving the robot with co—driver Angela Barron and human player Kevin was taken.

Thanks to Bill Fisher for stopping by on Saturday to cheer us on."

Bill Fisher is an engineer, technical consultant to several school districts, and the "author" of southbaycalendar.org who sent out that email featuring south bay teams.