So, in the rush to finish the robot this week, we had the great idea to fix our dongle. In the process, it broke. We can’t live without disable-ness and easy auto, so we came up with this:
Yes, the wires are stuck directly into the port with no pin, connector, or solder.
So, what was your worst desicion of the week?
What, you’ve never used a paper clip for this purpose?
Oh, and my worst decision of the week (last week, really) is brought to you by the letters and numbers 12L14…
Not sleeping enough and eating too much pizza.
–Billfred (written while nursing one heck of a sore throat)
It’s not a horror story, and wasn’t a bad decision, but four students took the control console to Nathan’s home to wire up the controls and solder the Port 3 DB 15 connector to the RIO’s console. Despite starting at 10pm and finishing at 3am, everything worked the first time it was plugged in. Freaking amazing.
Not using those “Mechanix” gloves sooner. I now have 3 fairly large cuts on one hand. One of them kind of leaked blood for an hour.
Luckily, I wore them and soon after I had another mishap. I was drilling and the bit sucked in the glove and twisted my arm around. I thought for sure my finger was wrecked but the gloves protected it without a scratch.
Thanks Mechanix! (cheesy smile & thumbs up)
Riveting my palm. Okay, it wasn’t exactly riveting it, but my hand got stuck in the pinch point of the pop riveter. I have also done this with wire strippers, polycarbonate, aluminum and other pointy things, almost all on my left hand. I swear, after the season’s over, my hand will just shrivel up and fall off.
Welding a metal bracket with a gas welder to wood
burn baby burn
ha ha ha
need more mountain dew
My Worst Decision of the Week?? Reading this thread!! 
The worst decision of the entire build season:
Painting the robot
We are overweight…
But it looks real good!
My worst descision both happened monday, first while testing autonomous i set the laptop on the robot while it ran off and stepped on the cord pulling off the computer while i ran behind to make sure it didnt fall
then a programming cable got left on the robot and melted on one of the motors and let out the magic smoke(luckily only the cable was damaged)
Although it didn’t happen this week, Our biggest mistake was when someone tried to hotwire a gear box to a battery to test it. There was alot of smoke…
We fried a victor because it was wired the wrong way.
eating that 5th fajita monday dinner . . made for a bad night/morning. but they were so good
You know, when it’s all over, no one says they wish spending more time at work. They wish they spent more time at home with the family (at school with the team) raising the child (building the robot).
Seniors, do you realize this is your last robot season?!
there’s always mentoring…i’ll be with either 190 or another Worcester team next year!
Stripping a wire while inside the robot… when it came off I nailed my hand on the frame and my face with the strippers!
Not being on a team… 
Nah… then we come back as alumni.
Worst decision: Pushing the robot down the hallway with the speed controllers on brake. “What’s that smell…” Next time we try to drive the robot…sparks start flying…and we’re all clueless as to why…until, of course, we spot the giant burn mark on the inside of one of the speed controllers. Whoops. :rolleyes:
Our worst decision had to be the night before our rollout. It was saturday night, and the programmers had just gotten the robot. I had to mount the drop down guard to protect the shooter from other robots, and i figured it could wait, since i didn’t want to disturb the programmers. the next day, at rollout, since the acceleration and deceleration code had been taken out, our robot got a little tipsy at the very end… and it flipped on its front side, onto the shooter :ahh: . Luckily, kevin had mounted the lexan gaurd for the wheel of the shooter, which was made from lexan and to be replaced by the new aluminum wheel. When the robot fell, the guard protected the wheel, which wouldn’t have mattered anyway, but the impact shattered our lazy susan :eek: (the giant ring of ball bearings we’re using as a turret) It was the sunday before ship, so we some of our adults on a road trip to mcmaster (about an hour away from us) early the next morning. We mounted the guurd, and bought a few spare lazy susans. Worst descision had to be not putting that guard on… or taking the accel/decel code out. Luckily, we learned from our mistakes and fixed the stability problem before a competition. Never forget MORT face-plant '06.