"Spare Parts" Rules Are Broken

[KenWittlief]

Dave - im really sorry if we are pushing your buttons here

you have to understand one thing - there are a lot of us out here who LOVE this stuff- not parsing the rules - im talking about FIRST, getting our bot to be the best it can - thinking through every little detail and trying our best to give it our all.

Some of the best times I have had on FIRST was leaving work on friday afternoon from Xerox, going to the Xcats site, and working on the bot straight through till sunday morning - mentors and students (the weekend before shipdate)

there is something about being in survival mode - something about a challenge - something about being competive that bonds people together

or another time, at epcot, after the championship was over on saturday, sitting by the pool with another engineer late at night, talking about how we could talk Xerox into starting a second team - and we decided, if Xerox wont do it why cant the two of us start a new team by ourselves? (Xerox did start a second team the following year, and that other engineer DID start a third new team - Jeff Debes and team 1450)

or this year at pittsburgh - our bot was drifting to the right in auton mode - even though we have a closed loop gyro compass - when I did the last room check on the students thurday at midnight, I hit the sack, and suddenly it came to me - why our bot was drifting the right - do you think I was able to sleep after that? no! out comes the notebook PC and Im looking at my code in the wee hours

and its not just FIRST- its engineering - Ive had plenty of jobs where we pulled all nighters - or worked straight through a weekend to get ready for a trade show or a product lauch date

we are not trying to find ways to keep working on the bot to get an advantage over other teams, or to make life miserable for FIRST

we do it cause we LOVE it! you cant put a clock or a timer on something like this - you cant tell people "now go out for dinner and dont think about this till tomorrow at 8am"

(we love you too Dave - Dave? Stop banging your head on the keyboard Dave :^)