"Quotes" that were said during build season

[wildaburk3160]

One of our classic ones, and irritating being a programmer myself is
"Always waiting on the programmers"
Another one is
"It's irrelevant."
"Sleep is for the weak."
"We should really put some beds in here."

[wildaburk3160]

Originally Posted by E Dawg
Programming subteam: "Blame electronics."

Funny how that works.

Funny thing about our team is that the programming and electrical teams are one and the same. So usually its: Mechanical guy:"Blame it on the programmers." or "Of course you're just waiting on code to deploy."

[Invictus3593]

Originally Posted by Qbot2640

There was no banana candy in our KOP...or was that a FIRST Choice item that sold out before I got logged on?

HAHA it was an item we got seperately. This is the stuff

[Pratik Kunapuli]

*Loud bang in the back of shop*
Mentor: What was that?
Student: I was testing code for the drive system
Mentor: What did you learn?
Student: If I press the trigger the robot flies backwards at full speed

[Oblarg]

This one requires a bit of context:

At the beginning of one of our meetings, we noticed that some of the shelves on the wall of our "programming cave" (they span the whole room and are directly above the computers) were in less-than-prime condition. In fact, they were pretty much collapsing, so we removed everything from them and put a large "OUT OF ORDER" sign up, which one would hope would discourage people from putting things on the shelf...

Fast-forward to the end of the meeting. We're cleaning up, and the programmers need to put away some of the large stools in the room, which usually go on the shelves. Of course, they completely ignore the sign, and a minute or two later we here a massive crash and run into the room to behold a scene of wanton destruction. Well, not really, but one computer was very nearly crushed by a falling stool and the whole shelf assembly had pretty much ripped itself out of its wall mounting.

At which point someone pipes up:

"It's okay, they're programmers; they're not good with hardware!"

[E Dawg]

Me: "Enabling teleop now!"

The robot moves forward at full throttle and takes the leg off of a table.

Ben: "You should probably fix that."

[MichelB]

"Twist it, tape it, pray. YOLO!" when I asked how to connect to wires without soldering.

[Christopher149]

Apparently the stripper is named Margie now.


At least, I think that's the name the students used recently.

[EMHS2773]

*Testing the launcher*
-Mentor: Go up to full speed.
-Me: Full Speed?
-Mentor: Yes, let's see how far it can go.
-Me: ....okay...




Then I had to explain to my dad the sizable dent in the garage door at the end of his shop 100 yards down field.

[Briansmithtown]

"Guys, we have to build a robot!"

[RohitD]

Two of our newer designers were in charge of designing our battery charging station. When they assembled it—

"Oh, wow, it works!"

[brandon.cottrell]

"That's a speed controller. It controls speed. That's a power distribution board. It distributes power. That's a digital sidecar. It uh...sidecars in a digital manner." -Me trying to figure out electronics my rookie year.

[theCADguy]

Originally Posted by yash101

Solution: Programmers should check electrical, Electrical should check mechanical and mechanical should check Programmers.

That's real problem solving

That's what management is for!

[kmcclary]

Welcome to the 2014 Build Season! Oh boy... It sure didn't take long this year for the comments to start flying... (Luckily, I work with several teams. To protect the guilty, I'm not saying at which one this happened. :-)

Scene: Kickoff Saturday 2014, back at the ranch that very afternoon.
The entire team was doing their traditional "group aloud reading of the new FIRST Game Manual", to review the game rules together...

We get to Rule G34, and all progress stops for about 10 minutes...

FIRST wrote:
"Rule G34 - COACHES may not touch BALLS.
Inadvertent or inconsequential contact will not be penalized.
Violation: FOUL"

The room suddenly goes silent. Internally I thought: "Oh crap... What were the manual writers thinking, phrasing it that way to high school students? Are we ever going to sneak past this one?"

... Not a chance, with this group...

Sure enough. It started with a few stifled snickers... Tension builds.
Suddenly, the entire team explodes with riotous laughter.

... "Yea, that's VERY foul all right..."
... "Of course you're not supposed to do that. Everybody knows that!"
Etc.

Finally, after everyone got a shot at the rule, I thought we were home free.
No such luck. They then all turned and stared directly toward their on-field coach... Oh oh... Round 2...

After a pregnant pause, the comments started flying again...
... "Hey Coach... We told you not to scratch yourself so much!"
... "He's so famous, FIRST even wrote in a rule against it this year!"
Etc...

Once THAT died down, Round 3 happened... A student then turned and asked the mentors:
... "Hey {mentors}... When handling your balls, what constitutes 'inconsequential contact' ?"
This started an entire sub-discussion among the students on "ball handling and underwear straightening etiquette" in and around school, the field, and elsewhere.

Chaos reigned for several more minutes.

One of the new female students near me looked around, totally bewildered at the pandemonium in the room. She then realized the gender of most of the commenters. With an "eye roll" expression on her face, she turned to another young female student on the team, sighed, and summed it up nicely:

... "Of course... There are waaay too many guys on this team..."

And that is when *I* lost it...

The only sensible thing the mentors could do was to keep quiet and wait it out. Eventually it died down. Decorum was restored, and we could continue with the manual reading session.

But from then on, things went more slowly. Every mention of "balls" was accompanied with at least a few stifled snickers, and sotto voce comments. Example: When talking about "retrieving your ball from the pedestal when lit", you can imagine the "loudly whispered" comments ("Ooooo...That sounds painful", "What a relief", "Hey, if you tried to light mine up, I'd retrieve them too..."..., etc.)

Needless to say, we finally ran out of time and gave up.
We had to ask everyone to read the rest of the rules at home.


Didn't any other team notice this one? What happened when your team encountered Rule G34?

- Keith

[Celia]

"It's like cardboard, but plastic!" (corrugated plastic)

Everyone in the room had a healthy laugh at this one. It's become quite the joke.