Our team is so hot we set off the fire alarm

[Jon Stratis]

At least the sprinklers didn't go off! Our biggest fear with our current build space is that we'll hit a sprinkler head with one of our robots and flood the entire room...


Now for our interesting story form this year.

We had our annual open house on Saturday. As we show up to the build space in St. Paul, we notice a lot of construction stuff going on and a couple of news vans half a block down the street. Naturally, our first thought was "I wonder if there's any way to get the news vans to tell people about our open house?"

Then we find out why they were all there... the water main had burst! So, we had an open house with no water. None to drink, none to run the plumbing in the restroom... truly a nightmare. Some quick phone calls, and a discussion with one of the building maintenance people gets some bottled water in the build space and some jugs in the restroom. But the worst part of it... a large donor to the school was going to bring us some coffee for the open house. She ended up driving to over a dozen coffee shops in a 5 mile radius until she finally found one that had water and could fulfill her order - not what you want a big donor to have to do for you!

Like any team, we managed to get through it and had some great turnout for the open house. But man, what a nightmare!