You know you've been in the shop too long this weekend if:

FIRST General Forum
#111

When non-robotics students leave school, come back to watch a basketball game, leave again, then drive by in the wee hours and to stop in to say “you mean you guys never left since 3:00?”

When you fall asleep while sitting on the floor next to the bot waiting for the electrical team to re-wire a Victor, and you don’t realize you’re asleep until the team mom wakes you up by calling your cell phone (Saturday afternoon).

When you leave at 11:00 pm and you feel guilty for stopping work “so early.”

When the students express a deep desire to sleep overnight in the school.

When playing a game of double-entendre with the robot’s “working name” reaches it’s 153rd consecutive verse and every one of them gets a laugh.

When the janitors’ looks have changed from interested, past annoyed, to sympathetic.

When every single person on the team thinks that “Whizzenator” is a great name for the ball feed mechanism.

#112

thats why my mom decided to become team mom this year, to make sure that my case of memory loss, aluminum lung and insane amounts of time spent out of the house were truly due to robotics and not other things.

when your school safty officer stops you in the hall (while your skipping class to work on the robot) thinking that youre hungover, then remembers that your on the robotics team and are in fact just sleep deprived and begins to tell you his ideas of how we can improve the bot and how hes willing to help

#113

You get pissed off at unimportant things…like the floor.

The bottom of the Shop-Vac has become the #1 place to look for lost nuts, bolts, washers, Sharpies, etc… 90% of the time, it’s in there.

You realize that the Koi pond outside is frozen over…and there are still fish in it.

Absolutely no cutting, drilling, milling, or grinding can begin for the day until the kid with the Metallica CD arrives.

You have every Chuck Norris fact committed to memory.

Singing “Afternoon Delight” makes everything A-Okay.

You put in a Metallica CD and then drill something, just to see what it feels like.

Build sessions often begin with the phrase “Alright…Begin the unnecessary harcore rock music!”

#114

when it takes you two days after shipping to figure out how many hours you were in the shop between Friday and Tuesday. (>80 in my case :ahh: )…

#115

Just to be contrary, I wasn’t at the shop at all during the last weekend before shipping. I did talk to the student lead programmer on the phone Sunday afternoon as I drove back from Baltimore to Indiana, but except for those few minutes I had put robotics out of my mind almost completely.

Even so, I didn’t miss out on the fun of spending entirely too much time on a project and getting entirely too much sleep. I left home in the dark hours of Friday morning, drove more than six hundred miles to meet with a group of people at a science fiction convention, got maybe twelve hours of sleep over three days, ending by driving another six hundred miles to get back home before midnight Sunday night. During the weekend I gave suggestions to someone translating Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, helped sell copies of The Klingon Hamlet and back issues of HolQeD, played my first game of Klin Zha in over three years, finished a draft translation of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (to be included in a collection of Hugo-award-winning works published within the next year), watched people playing odd variants on poker, enjoyed a game of ’oH SoH (“You’re it!”), came dangerously close to buying a DVD of the Star Wars Holiday Special, and made way too many polylinguistic puns.

Enthusiastic sleep deprivation does not need to involve building robots.

(Of course, I then spent about twenty hours on Monday and Tuesday programming the robot before shipping it.)

#116

Well,

When your all strung out looking for a ballpean hammer<-happend to me last year
When you start hearing songs comeout of the grinder<-also happend to me last year
When your over 2000 miles from your team for a year, and you miss the smell of hot metal in the mornin’, noon, and night.

#117

And the bummers make a nice pillow.

#118

-If you are Ashley and you somehow know all the tools names…
-If you cant distinguish your right from left
-If your shop looks like a tornado hit but you are able to find everything you are looking for in the matter of seconds
-When you go home all you make is robot connections… “Hey, thats like [team]”
-When you break down crying because of lack of sleep.

#119

-When you start reenacting movies such as spaceballs, monty python, and anchorman

-When sitting is a privilege, not a right

-When finding a stool is harder then finding something to eat

-When you can operate the band saw while sleeping

-when noone shaves, and noone cares about it

-when you whistle a song while walking into the shop, and then when you walk out at least 3 other people are whistling the same song, and don’t know why.

#120

…when you walk outside and ask “Where’d the sun go?”
…when you walk to the car and there is ice on the windshield because it’s 3:30am.
…when the phrase “I’m going to visit the yeti” becomes the most hilarious thing ever. (we called the bathroom we were using the yeti because of the horrendous noise the fan made)
…when you start inventing robotics country songs
…when you decide to write a robotics song “Solder like it’s hot”
…when you start giggling over every dumb thing
…when you decide that it would be hilarious to make a tshirt that said “program reset”, so when the programmer asks you to hit program reset, you can actually hit someone
…when the thing you are most grateful for is food and caffeine brought in by parents
…when the robot has inexplicably moved, and you don’t know why until a team member informs you that you were asleep

#121

-When you run out the COMPLETE videotape whilst doing a timelapse video starting Monday night
-When someone talks about “that parmesan smell” and he’s talking about lexan shavings, not cheese
-When “The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny” is on it’s 15th repeat and all the team members are still singing along (and no one’s sick of it yet)…

#122

…you’ve spent more time with “Karen” (our robot’s name) than with your girlfriend and she gets jealous of her…

#123

…that fiberglass looks like it’d taste good

I admit that I’ve been wanting to taste it…

#124

when you no longer have feeling in your fingers because you keep touching the metal that just came off the band saw. i have done this many times this season

#125

At least i’m not the only whose girlfriend is made at them

#126

… you look like Matt:

#127

You know you have been in the work shop WAY too long when

– you go to the store to buy milk and realize the expiration date is the ship date.

– When your parents call you at the shop to ask if you are ever planning to see them again and you ask … who is this?

– When you suddenly realize the fedex guy is standing here and your still working with the dremel. shaving wieght.

– When you suddenly realize your mom (me) is at robotics simply to see you (son) because she actually missed you.

–When someone elses kids call you mom…regularly

–When vegetables become just not important as at least getting some kind of food substance into the kids…regardless of healthiness.

–When you post on Chief Delphi as a parent and you realize you spent too much time at the workshop. and it is 5 days after ship date and you just realized it.

#128

when you know the exact tool someone wants just by them saying “get me” and making a twisting motion w/ their hand

#129

When the work table looks like a nice place to nap

#130

When you can actually post in this thread.

When you have a question drivingt you nuts but are to preoccupied to answer it.

When 2am is first break.

When you realize your face doesnt like machine lube on it and turns red and puffs up. and you dont care.

When your mentors just start putting random numbers down on your time sheet.

When sleep is a word you lose contact with.

When you wear the same pants for nearly a week cause you don’t feel like looking for clean ones knowing they will get just as dirty.