To extend or not to extend the ship date!

[Lil' Lavery]

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

[chris31]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

Fix it windows, if i recall, are the time you can work on parts in between ship and regional. If so, that time isnt of much help to people how dont have a prototype bot or anything to test on.


There are alot of logistics involved with an extension. We wouldnt mind driving our bot to Richmond, as it is less than an hour away. But many teams arent local, and so there isnt an easy way to ship a bot from California to Virginia, in a short time.

[artdutra04]

Blizzards, Nor'easters, and ice storms for the most part just don't spring out of thin air (no pun intended); usually you have at least a few days notice that these storms are coming. If you know a storm is coming, then don't just sit there and hope it misses you, act and prepare accordingly! (Especially if you know you won't be able to meet at your school/primary build location.)

If you won't be able to meet at your school on a snow day, then the night before take any and everything you can and work at a mentor's house/garage/basement the next day. If none of the mentors on your team have any sort of tools at their house, take the robot home and practice driving or coding. I'm sure your team's programmers would love to have an entire day with the robot all to themselves.

Yesterday schools across New England were closed due to the snow and ice storm. But rather sit back and hope that the ship date will be extended to accommodate for the bad weather, we went ahead with out meetings regardless of the Nor'easter. We drove through the snow and ice, and met anyway all day long, taking advantage of the fact that school was closed.

Where there is a will to get the robot done, there is a way.

[IndySam]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Yesterday schools across New England were closed due to the snow and ice storm. But rather sit back and hope that the ship date will be extended to accommodate for the bad weather, we went ahead with out meetings regardless of the Nor'easter. We drove through the snow and ice, and met anyway all day long, taking advantage of the fact that school was closed.

Where there is a will to get the robot done, there is a way.

You are lucky, many schools won’t allow students to do what you did yesterday.

No amount of will will change that.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by IndySam

You are lucky, many schools won’t allow students to do what you did yesterday.

No amount of will will change that.

No, but a little creative thinking can at least make something out of nothing.

• If everyone is stuck at home, open up an AIM Chat room with all your team members and discuss strategy (or anything) for your upcoming regional(s).
• If your team owns some Vex robots, make a "programming platform". Put some sensors on it, and let the programmers bring it home. Several hours with a gyro or accelerometer on a Vex robot and they could have the basis for advanced sensor feedback well underway.
• If your school won't let you even work on the robot outside of school, you can always work in Inventor or 3DSMax.
• You can work on your Chairman's and Woodie Flower awards at home.
• You can work on your team's website at home.
• You could go to your sponsor's shop (if possible), and work there.
• You can work on pep club/team spirit buttons, banners, etc. from anywhere.
• If your team does any sort of video production during the competition season, you can work on capturing and beginning to edit video at home.
• If any of the students on your team have Vex robots, have them build 1/3 scale Mini FRC robot. Once the ship date is over, you can build a 1/3 scale rack and ringers and have a cheap practice robot.

While this may not be as good as actually working on the robot, at the very least you can accomplish something useful. I understand many team's frustrations with the weather, as New England has about every weather extremity imaginable except earthquakes and tsunamis. There's not much you can do about the weather, except try to make the most out of the situation.
And if it comes down to it, all-nighters are your friend.

If on Tuesday, FedEx is still closed or cannot access a large portion of the country, then FIRST may decide to extend the ship date by a day or two. But not any longer than that. FedEx still has all the logistics of sorting out 1300 crates and getting them to their destinations in time for Week 1 Regionals, and that is no small feat!

Originally Posted by mzclayton55

Even NASA will postpone a flight when the weather is bad. Airlines will even change their schedule because of the weather. That’s the real world!

With NASA and the Space Shuttle, billions of dollars worth of equipment and seven lives are on stake. With the airlines, there are a lot of assets (such as the planes themselves), employees, and passengers that they do not want to put at stake. But think of the ship date in another way:

Your boss/client expects a major presentation to be done by set date, but the weather is so bad that you cannot get to work to finish it up. If your client is in China, they don't know of or care about your bad weather, they want their presentation done to meet their deadline. So to meet your deadline, you Remote Desktop into your work computer to finish it up from home.

[d.courtney]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

What FIRST needs is a system that allows everyone 6 weeks, not 6 weeks of fine weather at FIRST HQ, but 6 weeks where you live... just because for you this is better then the one time FIRST did give a two day extension doesn't mean its better for all, for us this is our worst year yet for weather, but simply because FIRST doesn't get a 1/10 of the snow we get doesn't mean we can get safely to build.
I have had one American FIRST member tell me we should be able to do just as well as a team without snow days, as we Canadians should be used to the snow. Unfortunately thats how I feel FIRST thinks about the issue, unless the US is hit hard by snow who cares?
I am not putting my two sense into this issue because I believe we should get an extension this year, because its not a problem that can be solved this year. It is however something that they need to take note and need to change in coming years, how simple is having a clause on the shipping date saying that it can be extended with proof showing the school/roads were closed in your area signed by your administration?
I don't know anyone that would have a problem with some team that lost 5 days of build getting those tacked on the end to fulfill their own 6 week build. To me it seems like a graciously professional thing FIRST could do in a situation where that happens.

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Blizzards, Nor'easters, and ice storms for the most part just don't spring out of thin air (no pun intended); usually you have at least a few days notice that these storms are coming. If you know a storm is coming, then don't just sit there and hope it misses you, act and prepare accordingly! (Especially if you know you won't be able to meet at your school/primary build location.)

If you won't be able to meet at your school on a snow day, then the night before take any and everything you can and work at a mentor's house/garage/basement the next day. If none of the mentors on your team have any sort of tools at their house, take the robot home and practice driving or coding. I'm sure your team's programmers would love to have an entire day with the robot all to themselves.

Yesterday schools across New England were closed due to the snow and ice storm. But rather sit back and hope that the ship date will be extended to accommodate for the bad weather, we went ahead with out meetings regardless of the Nor'easter. We drove through the snow and ice, and met anyway all day long, taking advantage of the fact that school was closed.

Where there is a will to get the robot done, there is a way.

Our school administration wont let us work anywhere but at the school, and although I would love a day with the robot and bringing it home with us, again school rules won't let it be worked on anywhere but at school before competitions. It isn't so simple to just say you can still work on it, there are liability issues with the school, and simply the safety of getting into town. I would never put our team at risk of being stopped, or my life in danger on the roads, to get an extra day of work on it during bad weather.

[ALIBI]

As said before, I would agree that the only time FIRST should extend is when the shipping company can not pick up the crate on the 20th (this year anyway) and then that should only be for the affected areas. We here in West Michigan are not permitted to meet when the school cancels activites. We even had several days where we had school, but after school activites were canceled, go figure. Anyway, we have lost seven or eight days so far during the last three and 1/2 weeks of the build. Everyone works a little harder and we should be able to ship OK. The electrical/mechanical teams hope to wrap up Saturday AM giving the programers and drivers the weekend and monday to tweek and practice. We have been know to ship a box of parts to our first regional and have actually still done quite well. The biggest slow down we had this week was trying to get overnight parts out of Indiana, hopefully FEDex will be good to us today or tommorrow.

[redbarron]

I think a extension of the ship date is a fair decision. The school district I am in does not let us come into the the school on snow days and when they cancel the after school activities, and those of you that said to take things home and work on them are assuming all thats left is assembly, programming, and adjustments. We personally have some machining that needs done before we can proceed in the build, and I dont think anyone on our team has a mill sitting in their basement. In order to assemble you need the parts, in order to program you need a running assembled robot, and in order to make adjustments you have to have something running to know it needs adjusted. Those of you that work out of a sponsors shop that is fortunate for you but we work out of our school and its impossible to get in when school is cancelled, which means we have had 5 weeks to build our robot. Whatever FIRST decides to do, as far as the ship deadline, will be in their opinion fair to all teams, so we are at the mercy of their decision. I just hope they review their decision again before the 20th.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by redbarron

...in order to program you need a running assembled robot,...

With this, at least, I disagree strongly. For several years in a row, we've had usable software ready well before the robot was assembled. A lot of the "fancy" programming can be written and debugged using a simulator or testbed. For tweaking PID constants and presets you do need an actual robot, but much programming is possible without one. For some problems, all you need is time.

[1768]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

With this, at least, I disagree strongly. For several years in a row, we've had usable software ready well before the robot was assembled. A lot of the "fancy" programming can be written and debugged using a simulator or testbed. For tweaking PID constants and presets you do need an actual robot, but much programming is possible without one. For some problems, all you need is time.

Bold mine.
This is true, if you have the access to and expertise required to use said simulator and/or testbed. This makes it difficult to impossible for younger teams to try anything complicated programming-wise.
This is not so much an issue with games like Aim High. Our team went for the low goal, lined up the robot with dead reckoning, and were fairly successful. This year, in Rack n' Roll, if we're lucky we'll get our code to work in the time we have. There's no "easy route" other than sitting out autonomous entirely.

[mathking]

Just this evening I was wondering aloud when we went from "doing pretty well" to "too far behind." One of the mentors reminded me that if it were Monday (the 4 days we missed) we'd think we were good to go. Then we laughed and noted that many of the best memories I have from FIRST were scrambling to get something done. So we'll make the best of it and have fun.

Just for the record, people in Ohio may not know hurricanes, but we know flooding. Too well.

[Michael Hill]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

FIRST did extend the deadline in 2003 after a major blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what hit in 2003. Many places are already back in school, or will be tomorrow.
Personally, I think FIRST should allow some more fix-it-window time, but not extend the deadline.

Maybe you're talking about in your area. In West Lafayette/Lafayette, Indiana, however, it's a different story. It was reported that this was the worst blizzard since the late 1970s. Purdue even canceled classes and all operations for 1.5 days, which is EXTREMELY rare.