An open thread for people to comment and discuss how their teams are spending their last day of build.
Our Fabrication team is spending the last 7 hours of the 23rd to make adjustments as everyone else does their various duties and learn how to dance.
Small mechanical fixes and then driver training/programming time until 11:30pm PST. Then bagging.
Begging, yelling, kicking, and screaming for members of my team to send me updates while I’m at college not doing homework.
This afternoon/evening, staying at home getting tornado warnings on the cell phone.
We put a few things on and took a few things off this morning and bagged around noon so everyone could get home before the weather did. Bumper mounts, coping, and removable ballast went on or at least had mount holes drilled; key parts of the boulder pickup and launcher came off for inclusion in the withholding allowance. We also tweaked some labels, added a Cheval Excluder Device to a gap between our belly pans, and tossed in a few spare treads for our primary wheels. We did a few bench tests, but no drive tests today so we could get home safely.
QFT
Reassembling our electronics (:ahh:), building a new arm, and drive practice. Probably right up until midnight.
Replacing all the bolts that fell out at our Week 0 and driver practice, provided we can find a large enough carpeted area nearby.
Attempting to fix our linear actuators that move our arm up and down, the maybe, just maybe we will have enough time to work on driving.
Stressing out on why the firstinspires website never works!
Stressing out why our airbill for our week 1 event is to the wrong location, after correcting them twice. :mad: Our robot pickup is tomorrow morning.
Stressing over the abusive nature of the defenses and how we are going to keep our robot together for 50-75 matches this season.
Put in the RSL, tidied up the wiring, took off our withholding allowance items, bagged, and had snacks. Oh, and a group was working to finish the practice bot.
We made some beefy bumper mounts. Tweaked a couple of things. Drove the robot around and took some pictures. We were ready to bag weeks ago which is crazy being last year we never had a working robot.
Had a final from 1PM to 5PM, another final from 6PM to 10PM, and a take home final to work on now…
Our team left the mentors to build, bag and tag the robot.They also decided to go to a play with the drama department instead of finishing the job. No commitment, pitiful work ethic, and just plain old fashioned male bovine excrement. We’re bagging at 1159. The team will ask did we get the robot done? My response, “you weren’t here, we don’t build your robot. That is your job”. I’m ready to pack robotics as an extracurricular into a box and throw it away. My non instructional time could have been spent with my family and friends. i’m totally unmotivated to go to competition. I will go. I have an obligation to FIRST and to our patrons. I’ll go by myself if necessary, set up our robot and watch the competition.
I’m done. Good night!:mad:
Figuring out what parts will be taken off practice bot and put on competition bot for bagging
I feel terrible for you! FRC is all about being a team no matter if you win or lose! They should have been with you celebrating victory or defeat becasue it may have been a great season.
If I were you, I wouldn’t just abandon FRC all together, because there are teams out there that will appreciate this program for what it is and what it does. Even better, appreciate you and the other mentors for what you’ve all done.
Best of luck to you! :o
PARTY
We had time to program 17 different autonomous routines tonight… then have a drink with my fellow mentors :rolleyes:
It is a painful thing when you find yourself playing Atlas and speaking as one of the founding members of Team 11 (on my own behalf) I know first hand how hard it is on a newer team leadership when you perceive lost opportunity.
All I can say is this: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.
FIRST can be a powerful positive experience but as an adult lead you sometimes have to let the young adults fail and do your best to conserve your resources for those students who will accept the challenge. You may lose sponsors. You may even hurt future opportunities and you don’t want that but everyone has limits.
I wish you could motivate everyone but things can be hit or miss and they have to let you help them, not make you clean up after them.