Alright so seeing as it is really slow at Home Depot right now, and in a continuing effort to look busy i was browsing through the computer system to see if 200 Bedford Street had any recent orders and the only thing i saw scared me alittle, i printed out a copy but for the obvious reasons, i cannot keep my job and post it on the Internet, but an order was made for 2000 Mailboxes… I don’t know what this means, but it is an very interesting element indeed
I don’t know about you but i am sure starting to be afraid of what Dave and the GDC came up with this year
Now really! Putting pasta and noodles in a mailbox sounds like a joke to play with your leftover spaghetti dinner. Well, who knows if thats for the game or if they just wanted to change all their mailboxes and have spares for a couple of years, ( ) but it sounds interesting.
I guess I’ve just seen too many of these stories that all have the same style that I am just extremely skeptical (if not 100% positive it is made up) Also, if someone were to order that many mailboxes, I don’t think they’d get them from Home Depot
Could they possibly be those mailboxes that the US Postal Service uses to transport their mail in bulk. Those boxes greatly resemble the ones which were used in the 2003 game. Could FIRST have gone back to boxes this year? Mabye we put the pasta in the boxes? Or mabye these are the classic mailboxes with the little hatch door thingy? But why? My brain is starting to hurt with possibilities. More details please? Pretty please?
But if you think about it, if it were FIRST why would they need 2000? It is too late to put one in every KOP (I think) and if they were for the regionals/champs, I don’t think they would need that many. Because there are only a max of 7 regionals on any given weekend, and (remind me if I’m wrong) they ship the fields from one location to the next for each weekend, so they only need 7 sets.
That would be 285 mailboxes per regional! To possibly need that many, they would have to either (1) greatly increase the number of robots on the field at once or (2) significantly increase the length of the match.
And just imagine 285 mailboxes scattered around a field the size of the 2005 one… there would be no place for the robots!
Not to burst any bubbles, but this is probably for some major housing complex being built/neighborhood renovation. Or maybe it is a for construction company that needs a stockpile for many projects across the country. But you don’t know who bought it, right?
IF these 2000 mailboxes were actually purchased by FIRST, then I think it is safe to assume they would want to buy the least expensive ones possible that accomplish the goal. If you search the Home Depot site, about the least expensive one they have is a plastic one for less than $40 that opens in the front and back made by Step2. I can see this as a solution to the human player/robot interaction safety issue. The human player must put something in the front and the robot retrieves it from the back. Sort of redefines the whole loading zone problem doesn’t it.
On the one hand, $40 x 2000 = $80,000 is a pretty big chunk of change but on the other hand why would anyone order 2000 mailboxes anyway much less from the Home Depot near FIRST headquarters? Hmm, very suspicious.
There are 1133 teams currently listed for this year. I wouldn’t think $40 more per KOP would be out of the question. Since we don’t know the game yet maybe there is a wall of mailboxes or something. Who knows. By any measure 2000 is a lot of mailboxes. My guess is these have nothing at all to do with FIRST and somebody messed up an order somewhere. Once at work I needed to order 500 plastic sample bottles and someone in the purchasing department messed up and started to order 50,000 before the mistake was caught. It would have been a real problem if an 18 wheeler showed up full of empty plastic bottles.
There are cheaper mailboxes than that. You can get a standard rural mailbox for about $10 from Lowe’s (source: personal experience, as my family now has a new one on the street).
Just a thought, but they could still need 285 for each regional… Think about how many extra tetras each field needed just to keep enough for an extra supply…so we can’t rule out this possibility yet?
Maybe the mail boxes are part of the Montana’s height clue, the mail box is raised off the ground a certain height, and inside is the object that the robot has to detect using the vision cam either at the beginning of the match or the return home at the end of the match for bonus points.
This is certianly interesting. I would have to wonder though, are these mailboxes the type that would be sitting out front of your yard, or are they the kind that are similar to a P.O. box with a lock and a small door?
) but it sounds interesting.
