[fireball3004]

It's at least true for my team, and seems like it would be true of others, that if your mentor or team members are frustrated by dwindling numbers or repeated failure to make it to Atlanta, that animation is dumped, and they ditch training the freshmen in order to make a better robot.

[whine]
It's difficult in Hawaii in particular, because there are so few engineers here. Anyone who wants to be an engineer has to leave the islands to get a decent degree, and only a handful return, most work for the armed services... As a result we seem to have a distinct lack of engineers, animators, CAD users, or their children.
[/whine]

all that means though is that we all have to work harder to recruit and train new younglings.