Anyone doing anything cool this week?
My win is that we’ve gotten to know one of our neighbors a bit more, kinda glad to have a neighbor near us that isn’t awful.
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At our 2nd regional and looking good going in to day two.
(Here scouting is giving a pre-match briefing to drive team)
[UPDATE]
We are captain of alliance 3 !
[UPDATE 2]
We are regional winner!
And won Chairman’s!
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Slowly getting over a sickness that has been plaguing me over the course of the last week and a half. Trying to be helpful with Houston travel advice on CD and remembering way more than I would like to admit of the shenanigans coordinating travel. Also seems like 3128 got bit by the trading bug and doing my best to be a helpful old person where I have advice there as well.
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Finished senior design a day before it’s due.
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Received tentative news that I’ll be getting a period in my teaching schedule for robotics.
As well as the school is trying to clear an old and obsolete shop room to create a modern machine shop (2-5 year plan).
The negative that goes with this is that our district/school is facing declining enrollment. So “free periods” and empty rooms that need filling aren’t necessarily coming from a love of robotics point of view.
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Today I’m going to meet with a new build space sponsor, we’ve been in my tiny personal garage for over a year, a neighbor of mine is donating a full 2 car garage with attached side office for our team. Between the two garages, we’ll finally have room for all our tools in one place again, they’ve been spread out across garages in 4 towns for the last 2 years. This is a huge load off my mind. We’ve also got more money in the bank at season end than we’ve had in a long long time. The students are psyched for summer projects and I’ve heard so many ambitions for next build season. It’s been a good week.
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Is the reduction in enrollment a localized issue or is it more general across the country?
(I guess what I’m asking is are we finally seeing a major impact from declining birth rates)
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Bit of both. Huntington Beach is suffering from what other “bedroom” communities did 10-15 years ago: aging homeowners, and young families priced out.
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Timed some sales and sneaked around int’l shipping calculators to save somewhere in the range of $300 on 2k in car parts from the UK.
Downside: everything smells like fresh rubber in here now
Upside: I have a purpose made spring compressor and don’t have to roll the dice with those sketch harbor freight style ones.
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Sounds like someone is working on rebuilding a top end.
Don’t remind me; haven’t even torn down and measured the engines yet.
It’s a very well though out coil spring compressor, as the dampers are…well they’re more like spring holders at this point.
Also found a way to shove cheap, adjustable shocks from a corvette on the rear, so that’ll be nice. 4 people in the car literally double the load on the rear spring and it looks like a lowrider with a full tank.
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Got hit in the face with a TTB climber, had to get stitches/glue on my nose, but didn’t hit me in the eye!! Praise God
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I had a really wonderful Saturday. Generally I really started walking again this week. I walked all over the place, and have averaged about 15.000 steps a day this week. I had been planning to go see a friend’s installation in an art gallery in the week between regionals in Turkiye, however, I ended up wayyyy too busy, and finally, on the last day of the installation, I got to get over and see it yesterday.
Generally I have been getting out more, seeing friends, exercising, and I feel a lot less lonely and depressed than I have been for the last 4 months. Also, yesterday, while walking to the gallery a friend showed me a new IBB Sosyal Tesis (The city runs public restaurants to provide low cost, high ish quality dining experiences in really cool locations for a wider segment of the city) with a killer view of the Bosphorus, and a mystical look at the islands, and the mountains across the sea - we could even slightly see Uludag, which is not usually visible due to air pollution.
I also sat at galataport for the first time in the daytime (I usually walk through it at night on my way home from Fatih) Even during the day, it still feels like I’m walking through the year 2100 when I walk through there, it’s soooo nice.
I also made Iftar dinner for a group of friends, and I actually, for once in my life, hit the target time for eating, despite running late all day long. It’s pretty important to nail the timing for Iftar though, because people have been fasting (well some were, some weren’t in my case), and the ones who are fasting, really want food the moment they’re allowed to eat it 
The city can be a little mad-max-y in the minutes leading up to Iftar. I am really really bad at hitting my intended time for meals, I often tell friends, we’ll eat at 6, and we end up eating at 8:30 because that’s when the food is ready. That did not happen. The food was there, the table was set, at 19:46 as the Call from the mosques indicating time to eat began.
I also walked to Fatih this week, and we started putting our office back together. Despite all this me time, I still got a lot of work done this week.
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I finally got a 3D Printer. Naturally the majority of the last 24hrs has been using the printer to print out “upgrades” for the printer itself, plus a Benchy!
I also got permission from my landlord to put up an antenna for ham radio. So I’ll be setting up my shack sometime soon!
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Volunteered at an event for the first time! FTAA at WPI 
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The students got to got out the the Texas District CMP this weekend and had an absolutely amazing time!
I have a few new conceptualized art pieces I’m excited about working on soon. I just got my first arduino in the mail, and I’m ready to start programming with it!
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We were able to add vision tracking as well as a 4 ball auto, we got 1 more week to make it a 5 ball auto. (ps. adding vision in under a week is a lot harder than we though but it works like a dream)
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Basically the best weekend possible for me, not only did we win the FiM Jackson Event as Alliance Captains, but we also took home the Autonomous award for the first time in team history, and I won the District-level Dean’s list! I can’t wait for next week!
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Had a really good time volunteering at the FiT District Champs. As usual, it was well organized. A bunch of the inspectors were asked to switch hats on the second day and was asked to judge Team Attributes on one of the fields. I got to see the what the students personally got out of the program on two teams I already knew and respected and ended having even more respect for them. It made me really wish I had access to such a program when I was their age and confirmed that supporting it was the right thing to be doing.
This afternoon, the coach/parent of a brother/sister FLL team I have mentored for the last two years was invited to compete at the FLL World Festival next week at GRB. Thus, two teams will be representing the Texas East Region (mostly Houston) instead of the usual one. Sadly, it is likely that spots opened up due to teams encountering travel restrictions.
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Being your alliance partner was definitely a weekly win for me!
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