Crunch Time... What Do You Do...

[EricH]

For us, it's been crunch time for about 3 weeks. I can only think of one day when nobody's even gone in, and one where everyone left early (Super Bowl Sunday). Build sessions run from roughly 7:00 PM to 11 or 11:30, occaisionally later, on weekdays, and 9-5 on Saturdays, with work resuming around 8.

[Ericgehrken]

195 is going to work late tonight to be ready for team 176's scrimmage tomorrow.

[Madison]

We meet three days per week with students and two days without. It gives the mentor-folk a chance to plan things out, organize tasks for our students to accomplish, and take care of some of he boring work that students can't participate in such as milling.

Since last weekend, we've left the lab on most days no earlier than midnight. Once I go out tonight, I'm not planning on being home again until Sunday. It's better not to raise my expectations too high by thinking of things as exotic as food or sleep or a social life.

I'm sure most of the kids will be there right along side me, but because we meet so far away from many of their homes -- 20+ miles for some folks and completely unable to get home without team transportation -- a lot of parents force their kids home early.

[geekofband007]

Well since we had a couple snow days over the season mainly this week we have had to extend regular hours. basicly this weekend we arnt planning on sleeping like on saturday we are probally going to from 10 o clock in the mornin to like 12 or 1 at night and same with sunday and mabye monday so basicly we are going and aint stopping

[Tim Delles]

we have shifted into over drive (considering we are building 2 of them). We should get both completed and tweaked by monday night for our design review. This last week we held meetings every night (6 - 12am) and saturday 10 - when we all passed out in the morning

[thewhit]

Our team meets everyday no matter what anyways, but since it is indeed crunch time we have late late weekends and on weekdays we go till 10pm. At the very moment we are working in our welding shop and it is 10:13...planning on going till 2 a.m.! We bought plenty of coffee and pop all around.

[Dan Petrovic]

We extend hours. Starting tomorrow morning, we have 36 hours of raw robotics goodness until we pack up our robot Monday night. Today we stayed until about 11:00 when we'd normally leave at 9:00.

Tomorrow we start at 9:00AM and go until 9:00PM (most likely later), and then Sunday, 9:00 - 9:00. Monday there's no school so... 9:00 - 9:00.

[Josh Murphy]

If we were in a crunch which we are not thank heavens, we would just extend our hours and go in on sunday. We meet everyday fom about 6:30 am until about 8 at night because we get to work on it in our classes during the day. I have 4 classes a day where I work on the robot which is nice and someone else, one of the other main builders covers the hours I am gone. Then we work from 2:10 pm to about 8 pm unstop.

[orelinde]

we are currently staying until the robot is finished. we have cleaned up and are getting ready to call it a night. we will be attending UTC tomorrow but then will come back for more work until the robot ships. we stay every spare second we can and we do not leave until we absolutely have no choice.

[Cody Carey]

... take care of some of he boring work that students can't participate in such as milling.

Give a student machined parts; and he can assemble, but teach a student to machine; and he can create.


We're kicking into overdrive right about now... but all that is left to do is a bit of programming... and some fabricating... and some drive practice...

Nothing a few days of work shouldn't fix

[mathking]

We'll probably be at school all day tomorrow. Too many little things need to get done. At least it drives. If the autonomous code works as well on this bot as it did on our 2005 robot we should be able to get right to the rack in the correct position. Whether the arm works well enough to score then...we'll see. (Hopefully tomorrow.)

In the past we have had some very long nights the last weekend. I am hoping that we can keep that somewhat under control this year. But we'll get as much done as we can. (We haven't redesigned the ramp in at least 6 hours, so we'll probably have to do that two or three times tomorrow. ) Good luck everyone. And try to get some sleep. Fresh minds work better.

[Kendal Reed]

Normally, we (Team 007) meet weekdays from 4-8 PM and Saturdays from 10-4. This week we are totally crunching, so yesterday was 4-10 PM, today is 10 AM-10 PM and the next two days will probably be as long as we can stay or until the robot is done.