What's the dumbest thing you've ever done, related to FIRST?

[John Bono]

Hmmm.... dumb things...
Does picking a 130lb. robot with your class ring on count? Well here's a few from my team:
1) Last year, it's crunch time at regionals--the end of the first day, and our robot still barely runs. I turn around and mysteriously vanish, amidst the blare of announcements for teams needing this or that. Suddenly, between all the requests of depsarate teams comes, "Team 990 needs a miracle. If anyone can provide a miracle, please see Team 990." My entire team turned beat red as laughter rolled out of the pit areas. Let's just say I got a slug in the shoulder every day of the school year after that from one of my friends.
2) One of our guys, Aaron, shaved his hair this year, much to the dismay of his parents. Part of his punishment, apparantly, is his current lack of a go-tee. I also remember getting the steam room at the AZ Best Western up to 150 degrees... I also remember jumping between the swimming pool (about 55 degrees) and the jakoozi (about 110 degrees). Of course, I had to spend about 15 minutes in the pool when the good looking girls showed up. No one wants to look like a wimp...
3) I lifted my friend Glenn up on my shoulders to look for someone. Keep in mind this is in the pit area among many people walking.
4) Our Physics Teacher, Mr. Johnson, as soon as our robot caught on fire at the end of a match. He was stomping on the afflicted hardware before the refs had a clue what was going on. It turned out that a cable came lose when we flippled on our back (the radio cable), shorted, and caught fire. No major damage, and the wire sat proudly displayed in our pit area for the rest of regionals. When one (of many) teams asked us if we needed anything, I piped up "an oven mitt." That was pretty hilarious.
5) I'm not sure if this was a good idea or not, but a couple of my roommates at the hotel, while perusing through the contents of my laptop, found a rather large folder (or at least they don't remember Mechwarrior 3 taking up a gig of hard drive space), and decided to investigate. I won't get into details as to what the rest of the night entailed for the four of us room mates, but the discussion of fluid flowrates and tissue tension was hit on quite a few times (as the material in question starts with an H and ends with a TAI), as were many other topics of anatomical realism. Ah, our physics teacher would be proud. Well, sort of. The dumb thing in all of this being me bringing my laptop. Imagine someone finding that at the regionals event.

[Nick Seidl]

OK, so I learned the hard way that if current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms, and if resistance approaches zero, amps approaches infinity. In other words, I crossed a wire against the two posts of a robot battery, and found myself banned from anything electronic on the robot for 2 and a half years (still on parole four years later).

[Greg Ross]

Originally posted by Nick Seidl
OK, so I learned the hard way that if current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms, and if resistance approaches zero, amps approaches infinity. In other words, I crossed a wire against the two posts of a robot battery, and found myself banned from anything electronic on the robot for 2 and a half years (still on parole four years later).

No wonder you're still on probation. If "current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms", then as resistance approached zero, current would also approach zero.

[DaveO'B365]

i stabbed myself with a scribe... and it went in really far (accidentally of course) any questions? hehe

[Nick Seidl]

Originally posted by gwross
No wonder you're still on probation. If "current in amps equals potential in volts times resistance in ohms", then as resistance approached zero, current would also approach zero.

Maybe I meant that current is volts over resistance, that would make more sense i suppose.

[SwordSerenity]

dumbest..well last year our team built our own goals to try the robot out, they were built just like the ones FIRST had. Well i decided to stick my head inbetween the pvc pipes and pull them apart and let them go ..so yeah they came back and slapped me on both sides of me head. there are tons of other stupid (yet intentional) things ive done...i guess im the team clown *shrugs*

[supersy]

Originally posted by Mike Persico
Well seeing as I'm not the only one on this thread... here I go...

It began as a simple dare from a fellow friend at nationals last year... he had one of those stupid but cool voice changer thingies... you know the ones they sell at disney? Well we also had access to a phone ... and the room numbers to all our teamates... oh... and calls to rooms from rooms were free...

Anyway... we went through the list and placed prank phone calls and messages from our room using the voice changer so nobody... so we thought... could tell it was us...

Ten minutes after placing a call on one of our captains phones... she came to the room... she was pretty POed but she forgave us... five minutes after that her boyfriend gave us a visit... he still hates us for it...

that was also the night we got caught on the waterslide after midnight with a few others... We only thought that the water had been shut off... it never occured to us that the slide was actualy closed

I was in this 2. Her boyfriend was really pissed he wanted to bweat us. Also at the slide I layed on it and got smashed down and it hurt. First is very fun though.

[Mike Persico]

watch the language symsky!!!

[T967]

metal shavings in a fisher price motor. Lots of humming no movement.

[Sam Lipscomb]

Well seeing as I'm not the only one on this thread... here I go...

It began as a simple dare from a fellow friend at nationals last year... he had one of those stupid but cool voice changer thingies... you know the ones they sell at disney? Well we also had access to a phone ... and the room numbers to all our teamates... oh... and calls to rooms from rooms were free...

Anyway... we went through the list and placed prank phone calls and messages from our room using the voice changer so nobody... so we thought... could tell it was us...

Ten minutes after placing a call on one of our captains phones... she came to the room... she was pretty POed but she forgave us... five minutes after that her boyfriend gave us a visit... he still hates us for it...

that was also the night we got caught on the waterslide after midnight with a few others... We only thought that the water had been shut off... it never occured to us that the slide was actualy closed

oh dear god, Persico...you're going to have to tell me more aobut THIS one...

[jzampier]

I was being lazy and needed to test a motor... so i just grabbed the leads and touched the battery.... well, there was a large spark and everyone got quiet... ... Not a big deal, but it scared a few people...

[kristen]

So um.. I'm not sure how dumb this is, but it's definitly my most embarassing FIRST moment.

My team was in the first practice round in Annapolis this year, and I eagerly volunteered to be the human player. I was confussed beyond belief, and everything was going so quickly.. anyways, the announcer was talking about how things were going to work, and he said "I'm going to go 1, 2, 3, 4, go (while pointing to each human player station)" anyways, he repeated himself and I thought that the round was beginning, so I quickly picked up the stack of bins to put them out onto the field. Only, the match WASN'T beginning, and I realized that after about 5 seconds, when I stopped and the bins fell over. The announcer then went on to explain how things were going to work AGAIN, while I felt like the biggest fool ever.


... good thing that it was only the first practice match, so not too many people saw. My teamates are definitly NOT letting me forget it, though.

And of course there are tons of dumb things that I did during the 6 week building period.

[Harrison]

lol Kristen, our human player did that in a match on Saturday, and lotsa ppl saw....Actually I think one of the other human players did it as well - so it wasnt such a big deal.

[randomperson]

Lol.. I kinda did that..

Its the first match of the day, and so the announcer says "1.. 2.. 3.. " (I go) "go! .. *trumpet noise*" ... yeah, I felt kinda stupid cuz Im sure more people than normal were watching cuz it was the first match on saturday.. oh well

Hmm.. actually I think I caused 3 minor penalties for my team come to think of it.. (other occasions though).

As far as dumbest thing I've done.. our third practice match, I set the switches for our auto mode.. test it on our cart.. satisfied about it.. and then I set them wrong somehow. Needless to say our bot went straight.. then turned directly into the railing. Not a good thing at all..

[Melissa H.]

Well...it was at the Great Lakes Regionals...one of the parents from my team wanted me to hang up our team banner...so, having nothing else to do, I grabbed a bunch of zip ties/cable ties, carried the banner up and started securing the banner with the ties...well, me, being amused by random things, decided, "Hey, this would make an interesting ring..." Um...big mistake I ended up pulling too hard, and eventually, I realized, "Uh...how come my finger feels funny?" By now, it was a nice shade of blueish red...me...started to panic. Since I was still sitting above the pits, I had to run down the stairs, crashed into some TNT people (Sorry about this! ) and literally sprinted over things to get to my pit. When I got there, I couldn't find any wire cutters or scissors...so, I grabbed a screwdriver and pryed it off...luckily, no one noticed this little incident from my team