What are your Team Traditions?

[archer003]

1. Our team puts hello kitty stickers somewhere on the robot every year.
2. Chipotle happens at least twice during build season.
3. We always try to build a t-shirt cannon. (this year we actually did... but it blew up.. twice. PM me for details. haha)
4. we have a system for naming bots like naming hurricanes. Every other year, the robot is a girl's name. year one: CRAP (Cougar robotics automated Project). year Two: Sasha. Year 3: Mac (In honor of a teacher who passed away over the summer). Year Four: Helga. This year, we haven't decided. We need to get a feel for the robot's personality.
5: There is an unspoken competition to see who can get all 61 buttons at our regional first.
6: KISS. (Keep it Simple, stupid!)
aaaand lastly,
7: We use a classic red wagon to transport the bot. (That senior graduated tho, so I am now making a custom spray painted ACTUAL cart for the robot with our team's logo graphiti style.

[Henry Williams]

We have many here on team 461 so I'll just list a few...
1 One time a former student saw a pallet of peep bunnies and said 'bunnies' in a very high pitched voice, now students try to inject it into many conversations
2 If anything on the robot is not securely fastened and moves it is 'jiggle billy'
3 After kick-off there is an unnofficial official team brainstorm session @taco bell
4 The drive team bleaches their hair
5 Celebratory Pizza Hut if we win something big
6 NRBA (National Ripstick Basketball Association(Thats right, we play basketball on ripsticks))
7 and the last thing I will mention though there are others I would really appreciate it if you quote this to say if you have seen it at competition but we have a 8 1/2x11 foot Happy Cat poster that we bring to competitions to put up near the pits.
8 I nearly forgot to mention our stylish team hats

[James1902]

-All students present at ship get to sign the inside of the crate
-The crate get's a new, themed paint job every year
-New themed pins get made every year
-There's always a tool left on the robot, usually serving a functional purpose
-We eat lunch as a team at the regionals, and almost always end up with other teams there.
-The drive team does push-ups for every penalty they get during a match
-If we make the elimination matches the whole team get's orange and green hair paint
-If the robot makes it to Einstein the drive team get's to shave the drive coaches head...this has only happened once so far, and i'm the drive coach this year
-Win or lose, we always Oink Oink Boom

and of course before every match, as many people as possible have to kiss Wilbur

[384drtysteve101]

Whenever something goes wrong on the robot, no matter who's fault it is, build team blames the programmers, and programmers blame the build team.

Kiss your favorite part of the robot before it ships( or bag this year)

before i came on the team i heard of saran wrapping freshman, because we would saran wrap a bot before we shipped it.

Also a lot of the seniors would work on the bot during lunch, and would stick the lunch trays in the ceiling, forcing the school to buy like 300 more, haha, then they found them all afterward

We also shipped bots not bag and tag them...

A few of us, like drive team tailgate for lunch in the parking deck, during the regional

[Graham Donaldson]

We always enjoy the bus rides to our "distant" competitions (NJ is our home regional that we go to every year, the others have been palmetto, buckeye, GTR, palmetto again, and virginia) - movies, HW, sleeping, and the occasional dance party .

We also do an end-of-the-year picnic, where we give out some awards for notable things that happened over the year - we try to give every senior one but also to some underclassmen.

Every Wednesday night is Davey's night - the head chef at a local restaurant (up the road from our high school) is a team parent and they've been providing dinner for us for a few years now. EVERYONE stays for dinner on Davey's nights .

I'll try to think of more to post...

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Needless to say, I have spent a small fortune on garden gnomes (I now buy them in bulk to get the volume discount).

i get the idea the gnome is living this year.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

i get the idea the gnome is living this year.

Nope, we are perfectionists. We had a run of bad luck on Archimedes, so we had to make some "adjustments".

[Kibaspirit]

I don't know if they are really "traditions" but some habits we have:

This year me and the other driver did a secret hand shake before every match with our driver coach, then we would finish it off with just each other.

Making a "DeWalt" joke whenever we can.

Referring to our Mechanical Engineering mentor as an "accountant."

We are a young team, so we just barely have a foundation. As I said before these are just some habits.

[Carol]

We always have a "sick art" contest on the way to Atlanta. We bring bags of crayons and pencils, and everyone makes a puppet from the sick bag in their seats. We tape them to the overhead bins and the flight attendants judge them and award prizes to the winners (usually extra snacks). The flight attendants love it.

We have tried doing the cha-cha slide on the airplane, but that went away very quickly - it seems that the pilots don't like all the movement in the plane.

P.S. You have to picture how MOE travels. Besides the 30 some students, we have mentors and family members all on the same plane. All wearing MOE shirts.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Carol

We tape them to the overhead bins and the flight attendants judge them and award prizes to the winners (usually extra snacks).

Do you have any photos of that? I would love to see the plane decor and all the MOE green filling the seats.

Jane

[Peter Matteson]

We always try to encourage "Throwback Thursday" wearing the older tee-shirts from your collection to the competition on Thursday.

A newer tradition has been to have the Thursday pit "To Do list" printed onto a tee shirt and worn around the pit by the newest pit crew member so we don't lose the list.

Team pot luck and slide show to end the season, including the mentors getting awards that make fun of us from the students.

Time lapsing build days when we think a significant portion of the robot will go together for posterity (Some of these are on our site or youtube).

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Jared341

Nope, we are perfectionists. We had a run of bad luck on Archimedes, so we had to make some "adjustments".

i REALLY hope you are kidding. you should be proud of your achievement this year!

[targus]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

i REALLY hope you are kidding. you should be proud of your achievement this year!

I can answer that. The Gnome is for the Robot (Miss Daisy) and Pit. So if there is any problem with the maintenance / electrical and of course, the biggest problem is the programing(er) The Gnome tends to get hurt. We also have a mentor that does not like gnomes and tends to attack it, at a drop of a hat. BTW, it is not me.

[smurfgirl]

This is a really fun thread! It's cool to find out about all of the other traditions teams have. I actually have never thought about some of the things my team does as traditions, but I guess as our team ages some traditions and great memories have arisen. It will be interesting to find out what else will be born in years to come.

[DarkFlame145]

From 145 this one could cause us to lose almost a hour on a Saturday.

Something doesn't work on the robot so the Controls (Programming/wiring) team and Shop team end up bickering over who messed up, get bored of bickering so we all blame it on the PR (NEMO) team. Come to find out it was controls the whole time.

Donuts on Saturday, no one worked till we got them. Then that brought the contest to see who could eat the most in one meeting. Last time I knew I was 13

The many random stuff that happens a lot:
Looking at drawing board trying to figure something out then randomly a mentor says "Have another donut"

Having a serious conversation with a lot of math and numbers, the same mentor from above would wonder off and go "Shiny thing" and play with something.