"when the programmers let us near it"
Well, speaking for the programmers in question, I just have to say WOOHOO for the team's efforts this year. The chassis and mechanism is complete and we completed the programming today. Six days until ship and we have a complete robot with programming! This puts us at least six days ahead of any past years I have done this.
In past years we have completed/tested/tweaked hardware and/or software at the regional and still managed to do well. Everyone at the Colorado regional had better look out this year because we can concentrate on competing right from the start.
I'm not sure we will know how to act next Tuesday when we can put it in the box with all the parts attached. In some past years we have still been attaching parts while we were putting it in the box.
(Come on, fess up out there, I know we weren't the only ones).