pic: The bleachers at Waterloo claim another victim

[Bongle]

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[Pat Fairbank]

Yeah, the Waterloo bleachers are notorious for this, since there's no backing to them and stuff can just slip through. In 2007, I dropped my laptop power supply and mouse down from near the highest row. Luckily, both survived the fall.

[DarkFlame145]

ouch, but look on the bright side, you most likely got all 100 bucks out of it in use.

[Wayne Doenges]

Isn't gravity a B****?

[Wildcat]

RIP laptop

[Dkt01]

If nothing else, what a great excuse to buy a new laptop.
If you can't stand giving it up, it would be a unique desk ornament or paper weight.

[The Cyborg]

The bleachers at the Detroit District are also notorious for not being gravity-friendly to people's belongings. They have the same setup at Waterloo: no backings on them. By the end of the competition, there are literally piles of stuff under the bleachers. To make matters worse, it is not easy get underneath these bleachers.
Thankfully, we have someone raid the bleachers at certain times and takes any important things to the lost and found at Pit administration.

Good luck in shopping for a new laptop! There are so many to choose from...

[MishraArtificer]

Originally Posted by Bongle

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Hm...that appears to be an exact clone of my own Dell Latitude D600! If you would like, I could sell mine to you for spare parts, my screen's intact. And it has a faster processor! (Yes, you can swap the processor in these, but it's such a funky chip: mPGA-479, it's not a true Pentium 4, it has one extra pin...**** it...)

Edit: Before I forget again, did you have problems with it occasionally not powering on? Mine sometimes gives this funny clicking noise, and the power light flashes for a couple seconds before going silent...

[Alex Dinsmoor]

At least it didn't get run over by a bus!

At least now I know what that big bang was!, I almost lost a microphone to those same bleachers, I sat down to take a break and my mic unclipped from my belt and was being pulled by gravity slowly towards that gap, I was able to slowly and carefully rescue it before it made the plunge.

I found it for some reason hard to see the benches vs the steps there as well as I was making my way up and down although I came close to falling at least I am reassured in knowing I certainly wouldn't fall through that gap

Maybe next year assuming I lose the 40 lbs.

[Bongle]

Originally Posted by MishraArtificer

Hm...that appears to be an exact clone of my own Dell Latitude D600! If you would like, I could sell mine to you for spare parts, my screen's intact. And it has a faster processor! (Yes, you can swap the processor in these, but it's such a funky chip: mPGA-479, it's not a true Pentium 4, it has one extra pin...**** it...)

Edit: Before I forget again, did you have problems with it occasionally not powering on? Mine sometimes gives this funny clicking noise, and the power light flashes for a couple seconds before going silent...

I never had issues with it at all, aside from build quality issues - the left hinge and trim above the keyboard was already missing before the fall, and the right hinge was barely attached.

I don't really need parts, I'll just get a new (or new-to-me) laptop. Maybe even one built after 2003.

[Nick Lawrence]

It's a good thing 1305 had their scouting server laptop securely fastened (with good old tape!) to their stand, or it would have suffered the same fate.

-Nick

[Travis Hoffman]

Are the Waterloo bleachers related to the IRI bleachers, by any chance? Those are evil little buggers, too.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by The Cyborg

The bleachers at the Detroit District are also notorious for not being gravity-friendly to people's belongings. They have the same setup at Waterloo: no backings on them. By the end of the competition, there are literally piles of stuff under the bleachers. To make matters worse, it is not easy get underneath these bleachers.
Thankfully, we have someone raid the bleachers at certain times and takes any important things to the lost and found at Pit administration.

I second this. My flash drives fell down from the top row of the bleachers...a wonderful thing to happen when they contain your business plan, which needed to be printed The amount of stuff that falls down there during the events is pretty laughable.

[Emily3204]

Thats pretty bad, but not as bad as when one of my teammates fell through the bleachers at the Javits Center in NYC. She was fine, but I haven't felt the same way about bleachers ever since