So here’s my spiel: I am the HP for my team this year, and I’ve gotten some weird looks because of my pre-match ritual. It basically runs like this: While waiting in the queueing area, I pass around the lucky bearing with the rest of my team. This bearing stays with me during the match. As one of the people in charge of actually carrying the robot onto the field, I insist on the three count before lifting it be in German (eins, zwei, drei). When I get to my pad, I have to take off my hat, run my fingers through my hair, then put my hat on backwards, slightly off center to my left. I then look over at my drivers who give me four fingers on each hand (a sign to tell me that I want to be back in 8 seconds or less). I give them the same, and then tighten the velcro on the biker gloves I wear (they don’t really do anything besides psych me up). I then scuff my feet on the carpet next to the pad, and then on the pad itself. From there I check my shoelaces, and get ready. I assume a stance with my right foot towards the stack, knee slightly bent, left leg back, knee locked. I then sway that way untill the signal to go. Please tell me that I’m not that odd, and that other HP (or drivers) have some odd rituals too.
*Originally posted by Nick Seidl *
**So here’s my spiel: I am the HP for my team this year, and I’ve gotten some weird looks because of my pre-match ritual. It basically runs like this: While waiting in the queueing area, I pass around the lucky bearing with the rest of my team. **
I am a proud toucher of that bearing… 
As HP I stand and try to keep loose and stretched before a match and then I get the robot onto the field, grabbing the rear spoiler side always…then once that is placed I go over to the touchpad and get ready. I shake my head back and forth quickly and then I get in my ready stance (back to the good ol’ days of when I wrestled) with my hands extended I make a run for the top two bins… Not as wild as Nick’s, but it works for me
Edit:
Ah one last thing. If anyone has seen me play HP in Pittsburgh, you know I move pretty quick on the field. I think to myself in my head that there is a giant bear behind me…and I havent taken longer then 10 sec yet
You’re not odd… just obsessive-compulsive. 
I haven’t actually seen action yet, and thus don’t know what I’m going to be like when I am human player…
ehh… people on my team actually think I am psychotic… they have had a contiunous 6 hour discussing about not being able to prove that I am really human… I have been driving since May of 2001, and I become very stressed during competitions… the team has gotten me every known tyoe of stress reliever, yet… I continue to destroy them all! Last year at J&J… there was a walkway around queing… I think there are permanent marks in the floor from where I was pacing…
… if you ever run into me in competition… be sure to ask to see what I carry in my pocket!!! 
*Originally posted by weedie *
**ehh… people on my team actually think I am psychotic… they have had a contiunous 6 hour discussing about not being able to prove that I am really human… I have been driving since May of 2001, and I become very stressed during competitions… the team has gotten me every known tyoe of stress reliever, yet… I continue to destroy them all! Last year at J&J… there was a walkway around queing… I think there are permanent marks in the floor from where I was pacing…… if you ever run into me in competition… be sure to ask to see what I carry in my pocket!!!
**
Ehh…when was this 6 hour discussion? 
I should remember this (since I most likely started it…hehe)
Word to the wise: if you do run into her, turn around and run the other way 
She already knows where I live…running won’t save me.
(And you people think I’m joking!)
D.J…getting to see u run as the human player in Pitt made the competition 10 times better than it was…lol
and u will be dancing all day sat in grand rapids…ashleigh will make u…
…
sure.
uh… ritual?
stand on the pad, trumpet plays, go stack whatever was prearranged, get back to the pad within the 10 seconds, wait until the second signal, and go to the area behind the driver?
otherwise… yeah. you’re WEEEEEEEIRD 
*Originally posted by Mimi Brown *
**and u will be dancing all day sat in grand rapids…ashleigh will make u…
ha!
Im fearing for the worst
I think to myself in my head that there is a giant bear behind me…
What you don’t know is that there really is a giant bear behind you.
No rituals here besides getting figity and nervous. Although I once intentionally didn’t make the ten seconds, as our autonomous mode wasn’t working right, but was still programmed in.
Last yr as HP my driver and I would put on “lucky” chapstick. I know it sounds girly but it was our thing. After we put it on we then would kiss our two fingers and then press them against the robot. Then we would do our handshake and were ready to rock! Once we lost our “lucky” chapstick and did poorly. Thank God we found it bc without it we would have been screwed. After we found it we starting kicking butt again
*Originally posted by Robocardgrl5 *
**Last yr as HP my driver and I would put on “lucky” chapstick. I know it sounds girly but it was our thing. After we put it on we then would kiss our two fingers and then press them against the robot. Then we would do our handshake and were ready to rock! Once we lost our “lucky” chapstick and did poorly. Thank God we found it bc without it we would have been screwed. After we found it we starting kicking butt again
thats interesting… we sometimes change human players… but this year im not sure…probably not…
Our human players just give the drivers and the rest of the team in the stands the Megaforce Thumbs Up…
I just try to make sure I’m stretched out and ready. I kinda crouch down a little and reach out so I can quickly grab the stack. I’m also pretty fast, too. I made every round in under 7 seconds or so, some even faster. I only got flagged once, for stepping in the gray carpet as I ran back from giving two bins to 111.
Rituals? Hrm… the only ritual I have is I “jump/leap” toward the stack… and when Im making a stack of four I do it two and two so I dont drop them… but other than that no rituals… lol
Half the time at the Central Florida regional, I was trying not to make it back in 10 seconds. If I had, our half-baked Autonomus mode would have been ugly
Besides that, the only thing I did that was outta the ordinary was making sure my pants were pulled up…next time im not forgeting a belt
One other note: For anyone watching the regionals via webcast or Nasa TV, have you noticed a supreme lack of creativitey(sp?) in box placement? With our aformentioned auto mode, we used our boxes to the extreme, and it seemed to not be in a way anyone else did…maybe i just missed it. Someone speak up!
btw, team 108 soap has all or almost all of the UCF regional on their site, and its awesome! http://www.soap108.com/2003/movies/fl/
Check out match 72 for some amazing work by 180 and 179 that, sadly, still didn’t win it for us, but was a blast to carry out
Umm… how many different ways are there to place bins anyway? I mean… not much you can do really…
Mainly, theres the dull, 4 stack by both players, often not even placed well,(IE, about 5 inches from the side, even though the side offers support when the stacks are hit)
Later on there was more 3/5 combos, some 8s, and a few with 2/2/4 or somthing close
Basically, we used our stacks to throw off our opponents auto modes, and it worked greatly. I reallly didn’t see alot of that with many other teams
*Originally posted by GateRunner *
**Mainly, theres the dull, 4 stack by both players, often not even placed well,(IE, about 5 inches from the side, even though the side offers support when the stacks are hit)
Later on there was more 3/5 combos, some 8s, and a few with 2/2/4 or somthing closeBasically, we used our stacks to throw off our opponents auto modes, and it worked greatly. I reallly didn’t see alot of that with many other teams **
My ritual with making a four stack was to make unintentionally overexagerrated movements while lining it up for precision, then to sprint back to the pad to barely clock in every single time.
I would jog in place and swing my arms to get ready and loosen up. Scott (Gaterunner) and I (the human players of 180) took a lot of pride in our well-placed stacks…most of which worked beautifully. The only time our blocking stacks couldn’t pull through was against Heat Wave.
On 461 we have several strange traditions pre competition.
First of all we used to have ‘the lucky hammer’ which was a small aluminium hammer that one of our mentors made in one of his manufacturing classes at purdue. Basicly we had a system of passing the hammer between certain people and placing it on the robot in certain ways and rubbing it a certain number of times…its entirely to complicated to post on here. But it worked for us…and we one Ford Sweet repeat 2 years ago doing out rituals…then we lost it somehow on the way home from michigan…and we haven’t seen any sign of it since.
<EDIT> Also thanks to Sweet Repeate 2 years ago i have been known to randomly shout “7 in the goal, none on the floor” over and over really loud in the pits and before matches. That was my first time down on the field during competition and since i was the big tall guy on the team who understood the game i got nominated for human player, and i think alot of the other teams assumed i was a good human player since i was big so i ended up loading the balls into the goal for every match including the finals that day…and in the finals our aliances coach was screaming at me “7 in the goal! NONE ON THE FLOOR!!! NONE ON THE FLOOR!!!”</edit>
Last year the human player and i came up with a ‘driver handshake’ which soon the rest of the team was doing so to prevent ourselves from being cooler then everyone we added a whole serise of movements and choreography to it so that other people cant do it as easily. So now there is the Operator/HP Shake and the Team handshake… everyone who is near the field or staging area before a match has to do the driver shake to everyone else…and then we all put our hands in and do a ‘1,2,3 shout something’ That something has been everything from ‘go nuts’ to ‘WBI’ to ‘461’ to ‘WHOSAFUSSAWHASSAWHOATAWAT?’ which i made everyone shout in cleveland this year cuz it loosened us all up.
Before matches i almost never talk to people who aren’t on the field team, i really like to psyche myself up and get in a zone of pure robotics action…i’ve been known to yell at team mates before matches cuz they try to get me to talk…or i am screaming for emergency supplies for last minute fixes.
Right before its our turn to go on, our base driver john usualy asks me “should i do it now?” and when i give him the word he charges the pneumatics system with our tank charger, then cool our motors with some compressed air and the robot is taken onto the field. As operator and the designer/builder of our controls its my job to set everything up and i go through and check to make sure every plug is connected atleast 4 times before every match, then i put the modem up, plug in the radio…check the plugs again, make sure the voltage is good on the battery, check that we have power, and then make sure that my LED goggles are ready to go for the match.