[Kyle]

I joined these forums in January of 2003 two days prior to the kickoff for the 2003 season and I was browsing them since September of 2002.

I have noticed more threads with a negative undertone to them then in previous years. It seems that as more and more people join these forums and more and more of the members become more experienced in FIRST and its great ways that we are becoming able to have better and more incite full opinions on many things. This year there have been more problems in one season that in the past that I have experienced, yes I did skim through the archives before posting this, with the transmission problems, the random rules posted then taken away. People are voicing their opinions and this year more then ever FIRST is hearing those opinions and we ARE making a difference. The transmission problem was addressed by FIRST. The tools in the pits was addressed and taken care of. Now the big issues are with the reffing and inconsistent rulings at the regional and Championship levels by next season I truly believe that we will solve these problems in some way or at least make them more tolerable for most people.
There is a reoccurring theme in this thread of their are 1300+ teams involved in FIRST this season with 37 regionals, nothing is going to make everyone happy. We must make the best of what we can get and when we can no longer tolerate something then change it. FIRST is what YOU make of it, it can be the best time of your life and inspire you to great things or it can be the worst part of your year but the best part is that no matter what you still learned something.
This time in 2 months most all the arguing and disagreements will be over with, there will still always be posts with READ THE RULES BEFORE POSTING! This team and that team are professional/engineer only built. He/She is un GP because of this or that... Sadly those things will never change in this world even our nice almost perfect world of FIRST. Lets all take a deep breath and remember this is just a game there is a whole big world out there and we have to survive that before worrying about being able to bring in tools to the pit or who hit who in what match.

All of this will soon pass and it will then comeback again and again just as the seasons change.

Sorry for some of the randomness of this post, but hey I am witting this at like 0450am so what do you expect. Also sorry for the spelling and grammar errors that I am sure to have committed in this post English is not my first language, my first is bad English, so I apologize.

So I now throw my $1.00 into the bucket and take back my 0.98 cents.

EDIT: I wrote this at 0450am but I was busy at work and could not post it untill 0725.