What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?

[shyra1353]

Originally Posted by Marygrace

LOL, that1guy is gonna reply to this one, at one of the Lego League competitions we were cleaning up afterwards, we had spent all day reffering, and there were these double doors. LOL, except, the double doors had a pole in the middle of them. I figured like double doors there wouldn;t be anything in my way....yeah, i ran right into it. Yeah......that1guy laughed, LOL, (Ryan you suck!)

dont feel bad .. i saw someone at nationals in houston do this .. i found it hilarious!!!

[maxgebhardt]

well I'm a senior, so I'm full of stories, some me, some kids who left... anyway, fresman year at the colombia U, NYC regional (2001) one of our team members decided he couldn't sleep at 2 AM so he left the hotel and walked uptow from 110th street staight into harlem, when he came back at 4 AM our mentor was sooooo pissed at him...
another time sophmore year some kids decided to make a crossbow out of 1" square aluminum tube, and the elastic tubing, they used the 1/2" long drill bit as a bolt. the first firing sent the bolt across the room and into a blackboard, the hole is still there.
that same year at nationals we got to space mountan 5 minutes before closing, so we got on, and the line was short, but we werent done, so we came right out the exit and went back on. its not so dumb until you realize there were at least 8 of us doing this, and we rode it 6 times...
this year at final bin bash in NJ I had junk in my pockets that sung around, so I decided to duct tape my pants tight at the knee to keep them from swinging, and tighten my belt. the problem was I left my rear no slack, so when I crouched for the team picture, my pants split right open from zipper to back...
last year I was installing line following sensors under the bot, when I decided to make sure the bracket was extra tight... I severed the wires...
freshman year, one of our team members was told to figure out how to hook up the speed controllers (victor 883's) so he diced to test one. he looked at it and saw no positive or negative marker, so rather than RTFM he hooked all 4 in series and reversed the polarity, blowing them all out. not fun at $112 a pop... (will stop for broke speed controllers)
last year at huston, we forgot saftey goggles, so I mentioned I saw a target on the way there, so I voluteered to go, and took a list, mostly drinks and junk, that I needed to get... it wasnt a little walk, it was 3 miles (round trip) I later found out, and the googles and 20 pounds of liquid refreshment were a pain to carry. the nice part was when I showed up and sold some of my purchase at a markup to other firsters...

[Mike Heinowski]

So That was you, akuu!!! Oh man I'm so telling everyone.

Oh, great I didnt know that you still looked here.

[Melissa Nute]

Trying to find someone to do the Truffle Shuffle at the 2002 Nationals.

It failed. The girls I was with and I only found gross icky FIRST boys that would only do that if we did something. We wouldn't saw no Truffle Shuffle.

[George A.]

I'd have to say the stupidest thing that i've ever done F.I.R.S.T. would be one of two things. The first would be up at the Canadien Regional a few years ago. We were staying at a hotel that was also the staying place for a local high school ice hockey team. They called us "nerds" so we decided to get even. Long story short we amost got into a rumble with a full sized team of hockey players.

The second would have to be when I sat in a tub full of ice cubes for 5 minutes as a last minute hoorah for the nat's a few years back...still can't feel the cold below my waist...but the shock value of wearing shorts when it's 30 degres outside is priceless.

[m0rph3us]

To see someone put a piece of metal (one of those Autodesk wrist bends from Nationals) into the terminal of a battery just because it fit…

PS: The Fireworks were nice

[SlickChicFallen]

hmmm... Krispy Kreme run at 10:30 at night... and a little visit to visit a team in a local hotel...

AND. Allowing the team to know that I was going to tolo w/ our electronics mentor, lol... They RIPPED on him... and consequently me too

[MasterSnow]

*sigh* I went over to a building where all of our electronics equipment was stored. I unlocked the building, turned on the lights, set the key on a table, and walked deeper into the building. I turned around and...surprise, the door locked behind me! I managed not only to lock the key inside the building...but to trap myself inside the building as well. What a night...

[Jeff Waegelin]

We broke into our school Auto Shop's storage room. We left a nice apology on the board, though:

Our note on the board

Now, we did have a reason for it (our tools were all locked in there), but still... breaking into a room would count as pretty dumb no matter why you do it.

[Matt Krass]

Quitting my team last friday

[JoeXIII'007]

The dumbest thing I've done SO FAR (since I'm a freshman) happened at a festival in my home town. During the festival our team brings out all our robots to demonstrate, play around with, etc., along with a team from a nearby high school. This all takes place under one small tent.
So, the final demonstration of the day came, and I was allowed to drive the National Champion robot of 2002. Great! So I drove that and the other team drove their most recent bot to accomplish a simple task. That task I have long forgotten, but that isn't the point. Near the end I decided to wrestle with the other robot, first pushing it into a solid table,(it didn't fall) and then into a temporary pipe fence. It didn't fall either, but could've gone into the crowd. I got a pretty good word from a person on the other team.
I first didn't recognize what I had done until I had got that word, and looked at the damage, ON OUR BOT. Their bot was O.K. Ours, I don't think, is repaired to this day. Worse yet, that's the National Champion bot. OUCH!

Another thing to mention, there was a poster hanging saying, "THIS IS NOT BATTLEBOTS!"

[Shu Song]

Hmmm where to start?

oh yes.

At Canadian Regional last year, I got into a hotel room with two pretty rowdy guys on our team. We stayed up til like 12 playing halo. When it was time to sleep, I put on my jammies, crawl into what was supposed to be a relaxing bed, but turned out to a bed full of ice!!! It was so cold that I girly screamed. (for those of you who don't know what I sound like when I do that, be thankful.) Apparently, those two guys had dumped about two buckets worth of ice into my bed and put the sheets and cover on. I had to sleep on the floor that night.

[Joe J.]

Originally Posted by SharkBite

this is just a fine example of the typical idiotic stuff that tends to occur during late nights at FIRST..... in 2000 our building area was a military warehouse...... there was a fenced in area in the middle where they had probably once stored stuff nobody is supposed to talk about........ and on the far end there was an ample stock of random decrepid office chairs
what was the result you are wondering?
extreme bumper office chairs in the battle cage

Me and a couple of other people did something like that this year. We had just ripped our unworking drive train out the first time and there want anything we could do that night sence we didn't have the parts for a ned drive train. So three of us got office chairs and and 4 foot long poles and proceded to smack one of the 13 inch balls around while running in to each other. stupid but fun. Akuu knows what I'm talking about.

[Elgin Clock]

I wonder if there is anyway to reply to this anonomously?? lol

Not for something I did, but for "stories" I hear of days gone by before I joined FIRST!

[Crop-Circles]

Last year, we were drilling holes in something (don't rememer what) with the drill press when the drillbit stopped drilling. We were pretty pissed since we were almost done.

Our solution? Push harder.

However the stupid little bit just wouldn't drill. We realized we were doing something wrong when the bit started glowing orange.

Our reaction? Push harder.

It wasn'tt until small flames began shooting out of the other side that we decided to get a new bit. We did, of coarse, stop to cool the bit down every now and then with a cup of water. What did we use for a cup? One of the old light covers.

See? there are reasons to keep those around!