I love how it doesn’t show me other weekly wins threads until I add the gif.
So, kickoff happened, there was that. Hopefully everyone has some great wins related to that? Or not. Whatever, this thread is about sharing what’s made you happy this week so let’s hear em.
My win - I’ve had a lot of fun tinkering with ML stuff, forgot how much I enjoyed it. And 323 is making some solid progress, hoping the storms this weekend don’t put us too far behind.
kickoff was great
design discussions have been great
I am now behind on doing dishes.
My win: Learning to recognize @Andrew_Schreiber’s new profile picture… slowly but I’m getting there
You know what’s funny? I thought I’d updated it years ago. It’s all part of a plan that nobody will recognize me at events.
new chrome extension unlocked… ReturnOldAndrewPfp!
ReturnYouTubeDislike but for CD
I had an awesome time at my team’s kickoff party! Got to hug an old friend 
school got canceled today because of weather and then it barely rained
We decided that Crescendo is a good year to jump into the truss game!
I just wish we could have played the recent seasons in reverse, because that would have enabled community practice facilities like ours to do a gradual buy-up of these truss elements over a 5 year period.
I am a part of Regeneron’s Top 300 Scholars!
The first week has been going quick. We have a design that we are doing testing on now. We have 3/4 of the (first draft of the) impact essay done.
I’ve learned that managing a team is so much harder than just doing stuff. It is a ton of fun though.
Ran the livestream for an Hour of Code broadcast for the elementary schools.
Won Gold for my Virtual Enterprise Firm’s website that took us a month to build. I also got to present our company and the judges seemed to like it.
Robot is roboting. cad is cadding. we are in my mind, at least a week, maybe even two weeks ahead of last year. got some good ideas for things, geometry looks good, overall great start to the season.
Just get everything done in the first 2 weeks ez 
but seeing as this was what last year looked like i’ll take it
Every kickoff, we tape out a field on the floor of the atrium. This year we added cardboard field elements thanks to a suggestion here on CD. Also, last year when the kids “played robot” on the field they took great liberties with robot size, so we got the mistaken impression that there was “plenty of room” between the scoring grid and the charging station (there was not). So this year, my daughter and I whipped up these robot frames for everyone to wear. No more “size fudging”! And the kids even thought they were great fun!
(Blue Alliance shown here)
Big win as a parent! As of tomorrow, for the first time all three of my children are either living on their own, or with someone they chose to live with out of affection rather than necessity. @PereBear got a raise at the turn of the year and secured an apartment near work and in a pretty good neighborhood. (When @perebear was two years old, we lived less than a mile away from his new place,) Though I have to admit that I’ll miss his help around the house,
Solid win: a successful new recipe! Last month at our church fundraiser dinner, I found out that one of our members wasn’t eating the gumbo because she’d recently been diagnosed with gluten intolerance. (I didn’t ask the details). This month’s dinner was already scheduled to be red beans and rice [cooked by her mother], and I was making the cornbread. I decided to make my first all-corn (gluten free) cornbread on the spot and told her so across a crowded room. I assembled a recipe and did a test cook for my family on New Year’s Day. They were OK, but a bit dry, had a bit too much meal, and (because of the dry) were a bit overcooked on the outside by the time they were cooked on the inside. I made three minor tweaks and did another test cook early this week. I made four batches today for our monthly dinner, and they smelled awesome and tasted just as good and had a much better texture as well. OBTW, my recipes aren’t secret. I’m not going to bore CD with them, but I’ll share by DM if you want it.
I got in to WPI and they’re offering 28k/year too!
What a week. We lost a Saturday (tomorrow) due to the snow, but we had a working KitBot lower half as of Thursday night. It could drive around and everything.
At work we have been prepping robots for shipment, doing live testing on our track and seeing good improvements in a lot of areas. I took the day today to work from home and clean up all the code I wrote this week. It worked great, it looked like a hot mess in my IDE though.
We also got a random call from a possible new mentor. Absolutely excited after speaking to him on the phone, but can’t believe the experience he’s had and I hope he decides to stick around with us. 72 years old, semi retired engineer. Went back to film School after he retired because he wanted to learn a new skill. Has worked with a couple of universities before on Engineering Capstones.
He’s the type of person who has cncs at home, has made connections with manufacturers, etc. Asking if we have a need for motors, servos, etc that he’s collected over the years (I’m gonna send him the game manual and it’ll tell him about motor legality, too much to explain over the phone). He sounds just like me, but in the future after a nice long career. I hope to learn much from him this year and hope the students will listen to a new person with lots of information to share.
Finally definitely a win. Last year we had juniors all in the same programming classes during the day all sure they were right and this lead to alot of arguments and debates. Two of them decided not to return at the end of April. One of the students however came back this fall. Whether it was they thought about it more or just really missed the experience idk. Their attitude has changed and they stayed last night to finish up the KitBot because they couldn’t just walk away when they were so close at the end of the meeting. That’s a complete 180 from less than a year ago.
yeah you wouldn’t believe the difference between last season, where we didn’t have a design until 2 weeks prior to our first comp (not an exaggeration) to this year
my win: school feels a bit more manageable and even with robots and homework eating up all my time, still found some time to hang out with a friend, nice to have a break from the chaos and just chill and watch some shows
Had my FTC Dean’s List interview this week- felt really good about it! Can’t wait to find out on February 3rd if I’m going to Houston 
Got the trailer lights working, again. They are more managed now, but I had to rewire it and all the relays because the people I had working on it somehow connected the power to the ground on every single thing.
After working on them for what feels like way too long, we’ve finally gotten our new pit carts into a useable state (though they haven’t reached their final form yet…).
Everyone on the team is very proud, and every single student/mentor has had some hand in working on these in some capacity, be it measuring, cutting, grinding, welding, drilling, gluing, sanding, etc. etc. etc.
And my favorite fun fact is the table tops are from the wood of the old gymnasium bleachers, that we turned into a butcherblock countertop.
