Einstein?

[Bill Gold]

First of all, I find it very cowardly and offensive for someone to troll these forums anonymously. Your being on the floor taking pictures and self-admitted obscenities pretty much gives you away as either a member of 997 itself or of another friendly team from their area. If you’re going to say something like this you should at least make a fair representation of yourself like the rest of us.

It bothers me that I feel that I should have to even toss in my $0.02 here, but I think this is a bit ridiculous. It appears to me that the alliance captain and another member of the alliance weighed the opportunity cost between 997 and whoever the backup robot was in this situation only after coming to the realization that 997’s ramps could never count for the 12” lift period, even after extensive fixes. This is definitely a grey area for robot replacement (which means there are good reasons both for and against robot replacement), but there’s no harm in pursuing it. The only reason I can see that 997 would be upset about this would be because they would rather play and lose than to do what’s arguably in the best interest of the alliance and agree with the switch. The competition is a competition, and an alliance is like a hockey team. You want to win, and you want to do whatever you can and whatever’s in the alliance’s best interest to help it win. Not to mention the fact that if the alliance won with you subbing out there’s that 4th place on the alliance in the official records, so it’s not like you’re kicked to the curb with no recognition. Anyways, my point is that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the alliance captain stating a case for a possible replacement.

With great respect Eugene it was pretty clear to pretty much everyone at the 2006 SVR that your team was one of the two main scoring threats on your alliance. It wouldn’t have made sense to take the backup robot at that point because it would have significantly decreased your alliance’s ability to win the regional not having your robot in play. It was very courageous and something that was very inspiring seeing a team doing all that it could to try to give its alliance the best shot at winning; that’s not to be forgotten, but to have such a harsh stance on robot replacements is also a bit... harsh for lack of a better word. Especially having seen a few robots who can drive in varying degrees be switched out.

Whatever happened happened. It’s over now.

By the way, I had absolutely no contact with 254 at all this season other than saying hi briefly to a couple people on the team at SVR. So don't think I'm taking their side because I'm a part of the team. I'm just speaking my mind.

-Bill Gold
(I take responsibility for my opinions)