[DFTF] The Classic Blunder...

[Joe Johnson]

This is part of a series of posts called Drinking From The Firehose on getting Dr Joe back up to speed on All Things FIRST.



Today's topic:
The Classic Blunder...

No, I didn't get involved in a land war in Asia. Nor did I go against a Sicilian when Death was on the line. No, my blunder was even more classic:

I designed a robot that SOME team could finish in less than 45 days, just not MY team.

As the picture above implies, I have been trying to make up for it by working myself to death for the last 3+ weeks, thinking I could set things aright by din of effort.

It has worked to some degree. Our chassis was looking awesome when I turned out the lights in The Box* this morning and headed to my day job. With more hard work between now and Tuesday Midnight, we will have a pretty amazing chassis, one that no rookie team has any business building: We'll cross the barrier with ease, we should be able to balance a Box of Rock on the Coopertition Bridge, we may even be able to help pull off a 3 robot balance after lunch on Saturday. It has other features as well that I won't go into (hint: we've named it, The Rook)... ...this sounds like a list of positives, but actually it works equally well as a list of negatives. You see... ... I am out of gas, we're almost out of time, and we've got nothing to handle balls... ...at all.

We've got weight for it. We've got space for it. We even have a reasonable concept or two we've sketched on various napkins over the last few weeks. What we don't have is TIME.

I can hear myself saying the words to my Rookies:

"It doesn't matter what Cheesy Poofs can build in 45 days, or Thunder Chickens, or Swamp Thing, or Miss Daisy, or WildStang, or CHAOS, or Beatty, or Buzz, or Pink, or ANYONE ELSE can build in 45 days...

...it only matters what WE can build... ...in 45 days... ...because that is the only option available to us."

I said it. I believed it. I meant it. I just didn't do it...

and there are only 106 hours left...

Joe J.

* Where else would you expect a team named Schrodinger's Cat to work?