Did anything weird happen to anyone at any of their competitions? It can be anything.
We were at the Chesapeake Regional and while our team was hanging out in the hotel something odd happened. I was by myself and I was going to go into my friend’s room when I accidentally knocked on the wrong door. I had assumed all the rooms on our floor were reserved for F.I.R.S.T. teams, but boy was I wrong. So, I knocked on the door and this woman comes out and starts yelling at me saying that she is so sick of us kids and that she has to get up at 6:30 in the morning and that her mom isn’t getting any sleep. It was obvious she was drunk and she grabbed my by the collar of my shirt and started yelling some more. I was FREAKING OUT!!! Then my friend Josh came over to see what the commotion was and she called him fat! Later on into the night, we walked by her room and there was probably 7 empty wine glasses on a tray in front of her door.
Remember, always make sure you have the right room number!!!
High School Kids need to remember that there are ordinary people paying good money to stay in a hotel, and they expect a clean, comfortable and quiet room for the night.
Every year, at every stay, I make it a point to remind our students of the common courtesy that is mandatory when staying in a hotel. No, as hard as it may be to fathom, the world does not revolve around FIRST teams.
If FIRST teaches you anything, it should teach you to respect others.
On Friday, during our third or fourth match, one of our drivers came back and said the robot felt like it wasn’t responding to him for about a quarter second. I thought he was just complaining about acceleration again (it’s regolith man; you need friction to accelerate) and didn’t think much of it. I wanted to do some run some tests of a new traction control algorithm, but our programming mentor believed the driver and wanted to reseat all of the WAGO connectors.
I had seen this before: I knew there were no wiring problems and, in the stress of competition, blurted out, “NO! I’m not going to let you waste thirty minutes troubleshooting a problem that does not exist. I need the robot to be on so I can test some code!” At this point, the mentor conceded and let me run the tests.
The very next match, during the last ten seconds, the robot completely died on the field. (Fortunately, it died next to our own PS, and didn’t affect the outcome of the match.) You should have seen how angry the team was at me (programming mentor: “if you had let me, I could have fixed that problem!”) until our drivers came back and said the reason the robot had died is that the Anderson battery connector had popped out after a collision with the wall.
As it turns out, there was no wiring problem. Apologies quickly ensued, and granted, the problem did not affect the outcome of the match, but seriously, could the timing have been any worse?
Don is right, people do pay good money to stay in a hotel and expect to not be disturbed by irritating high school kids running up and down the halls and shouting. I hope you apologized to her. Besides, it is irrelevant if she was the only person not related to a FIRST team. Even if she was with a team you should still respect her wishes. Do I think she handled it well? Heavens no! But she is a paying customer and deserves to have her quiet night’s rest.
And by the way, your post is quite rude to Don. It also makes you appear uneducated and disrespectful in general. He has a name I would suggest using it. Remember, you represent yourself, your team, your school, your sponsors, and even your country on these boards. Act accordingly.