Snow days

[MechEng83]

Day 4 of cancelled meetings. The team leaders are having skype discussions and working on CAD, essays, and scouting from home. It's a good thing these technologies exist.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise in that it forces the team to do CAD before building anything...

[Austin1018]

Originally Posted by MechEng83

Day 4 of cancelled meetings. The team leaders are having skype discussions and working on CAD, essays, and scouting from home. It's a good thing these technologies exist.

Maybe this is a blessing in disguise in that it forces the team to do CAD before building anything...

Being one of Indiana, we have had to do the same thing. We have a robot plan... now we just need to get to building. School is out for tomorrow... hopefully we get some work in on Friday?

At this point we just have to hope that they don't keep us from out work during the weekend. That's all that the school board, and the snow, can't touch.

[mklinker]

For folks in Indiana and surrounding states.....a few suggestions.

We have had great success this week with discussion using Google Docs. We have been able to discuss strategy, sub-system specs, and other topics.

We have also viewed Inventor images using join.me which allows a user to display their computer screen to others with an additional chat window available for discussion. This requires a free download for the host all others just use a code to access the meeting.

[*Rachelle*]

We haven't had any snow days this season, but we are still affected by all this, we have not yet received our kit of parts... Are there a lot of other teams that don't have their's yet?

[cadandcookies]

We've been fortunate enough to avoid an outright ban on school meetings on every day except Monday, given that windchill was -50 earlier this week in our area.

As always, "the show must go on." Snow days are just another challenge of build season. Personally, I've been happy that it's encouraged a lot of healthy discussion and meetings outside of scheduled times more common. There's no way to get people to work on the robot than telling them that they can't work on the robot.

[MechEng83]

I have students WISHING they had school, so we could meet. How awesome is FRC that it makes students wish there was school?

[bEdhEd]

Solution: Move to the sunny California Bay Area or Central Valley! Solano County and surrounding counties have been in quite an anomalous drought this year. I can only remember having two rain days since September 2013, and usually it rains almost every day here once October comes around, and then is on and off between March and June. The hills here in Vacaville are still brown from the summer. They're usually green this time of year.

It would be cool to have snow here, but I understand how difficult it is to try to have a consistent build season in snowy conditions, and I am not wishing for that. I feel at an unfair advantage being in an area with no snow (and no rain for the moment). It might be more fair to have build season in the spring but that may not happen in the near future. Props to all the teams who have to deal with snow and all other forms of frozen water from the sky!

[4404 PCH Colts]

Is there any chance that FIRST would postpone the deadline for teams that have experienced these snowdays? Our winter break has essentially been extended by 4 days with these snowdays, which while restful, has KILLED our build season.

[DominickC]

Originally Posted by 4404 PCH Colts

Is there any chance that FIRST would postpone the deadline for teams that have experienced these snowdays?

Not a chance. Such is FIRST (life, too?).

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by 4404 PCH Colts

Is there any chance that FIRST would postpone the deadline for teams that have experienced these snowdays? Our winter break has essentially been extended by 4 days with these snowdays, which while restful, has KILLED our build season.

Not likely. And as one of the affected teams, I wouldn't expect them to. This is one of those things that teams should plan around. This is why having a business plan with contingencies comes in handy.

[1018sophmore]

Having lost 4 days of build season will be a challenge. The team leads and mentors have been trying to stay in touch to get overall designs and concepts for our robot and what we want it to do. Still not being in our workspace for almost an entire week will certainly make for an interesting beginning to build season. Still have never been more excited for school to start!

[Austin1018]

Originally Posted by 1018sophmore

Having lost 4 days of build season will be a challenge. The team leads and mentors have been trying to stay in touch to get overall designs and concepts for our robot and what we want it to do. Still not being in our workspace for almost an entire week will certainly make for an interesting beginning to build season. Still have never been more excited for school to start!

It seems as though we are going to have another snow day....
*sigh*

This is going to be a rough weekend...

[Alan Anderson]

We will have lost an entire school week of build season by the time we are allowed to meet this weekend. I suspect we'll be putting in "crunch time" hours for a while, and perhaps adding shop time on our usual days off.

[Austin1018]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

We will have lost an entire school week of build season by the time we are allowed to meet this weekend. I suspect we'll be putting in "crunch time" hours for a while, and perhaps adding shop time on our usual days off.

Same here. We are meeting at Panera to try to get some actual meeting time in. Web meetings and Skype calls just don't do it when you have a FIRST game at hand.

[Kyle Love]

We have lost 5 days of school now due to snow. We had to go directly from the kickoff site in Indy to our homes (could not stick around to brainstorm or read rules) and could not meet again until today. It was very inconvenient, but we finally got to meet from 12-4 today and seem to have 5 days worth of brainstorming slammed into one day. We are cancelled tomorrow, but will be able to have an open shop for kids to come in and work on designs and CAD. We will find a way to get stuff done, one way or another, the snow days just make things more interesting .