Rolling Thunder Blog of Wonder - 2010 Competition Season

Atlanta - The Lost Entries - The Thursday Report

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:10:00 -0700

Day Two – This is IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Have you ever had a situation where you struggled and just felt like giving up? Well that was the feeling for a few members of the Thunder today. We had to get up at about 5:30-6am, get breakfast and run out the door to line up at the Georgia dome in order to get seats with “runners”, however really, they are just speed walkers Practice matches started right at 9am and 1511 secondary drivers got to do some practice rounds in order to be prepared for filling in on Friday when the Chairman's students will present.

Many got breakfast from the hotel shop, MORRSELS which featured breakfast sandwiches, croissants, cereal, coffees, juices and sodas. The dome venue offered anything from regular basic concession foods to fresh fruit smoothies, quesidillas to dots ice cream and candy apples/cotton candy.

It was strange to have practice matches and qualifications matches all in the same day as traditionally in the past, there was an entire day dedicated to practicing.

The arena – the arena, or Georgia Dome is the huge home of the Atlanta football player, and to think that rabid teenagers have taken it over! Held within the arena there are FOUR FRC Breakaway fields called: Curie, Newton, Archimedes and Galileo. Between our Curie field and the Galileo field is the Einstein FRC field where the Champions of each division will face off. It isn't just FRC all on that floor though! The FLL and FTC competitions are also going on all within that dome!

With all the FIRST Teams, participants and fans, together, our force fills about half the entire arena! We anticipate that there will be many more, as several have pledged to bring more people into science and technology which can relate to FIRST.

Not to surprise those of you at home, but if you didn't know – the competition site and the pit set ups are in two different buildings parted by a 10-15 minute walk depending o people traffic and your slowness. When routing from the arena, you go through the West Point open grassy outdoors and proceed into another building where conferences are held and the Chairman's hall of fame.

Many of our students attended open conference sessions topical to anything from press releases to pneumatics, or presentation skills.

The Chairman's hall of fame features past international Chairman's award winners such as the local X-Cats (FRC 191), and Miracle Workerz aka MOE (365).

The pit area is not like any you might have seen at a regional. It's about quadruple the size as it is accommodated to suit over 300 teams from all over the world. Robots were being carted here and there, left and right all over the place and all you can hear is the constant grinding sound of teams using power tools and shouting for tools. It's flooded with students, mentors and visitors that tour all over. Sometimes event FLL students and FTC students. What some rookie or young teams may not have known though, was that judges had been walking around in-cognito!

While many of the odds were against us today, we only won one of our matches because of several robot break downs. As if that would stop the Thunder though! The astounding pit-crew jumped right on the problem and worked to resolve it as soon as possible.

The one match we won was extremely successful which concluded with THREE robot hangs on our alliance. It was the first time ever reported that three robots on one alliance have hung successfully.

Cynette’s note: After the matches were done for the day, Crystal and Parentor Lee went to the conference center and gave a 45 minute presentation on writing press releases that will attract the media and make them want to cover a robotics team. Then Crystal caught up to the other students that were headed to the Robo-Prom, a “semi-formal” dance for team members! Hopefully I’ll get reports on those events and on the rest of the weekend!

Atlanta - The Lost Entries - The Wednesday Report

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:46:00 -0700

Day One – Fly, Fly away!
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

The dedicated Thunder hit the Rochester airport at about 5:45 am and got through checkpoint securities surprisingly quick! Everyone grabbed some coffee and breakfast and the plane boarding was right after. Our flight took off on time – 7:30am SHARP! It was a pleasant fly down with refreshments and snacks. We hit Atlanta at about 9:30am ad headed off to the train. As all of 1511 loaded up and the train doors closed. Funny story, we saw Kim and Eric (Mentors from Afar) getting ready to board the next train... unfortunately, they could not hear or see us. Following that we board MARTA which was a new experience for many kids.

Today was the tour day for many as we've visited the Atlanta Aquarium, CNN tower, and even Coke Factory. Upon arriving at the Omni Hotel, aka home, we all stored our luggage in a secured room because our rooms were not ready yet!

A little bit about about the Omni and CNN – they are joined together, and conveniently enough the CNN center has a giant food court with various vendors such as Moe's, Arby's, Chick-fil-A and much more in HUGE quantities! When you entered the foodcourt, what you would see are multiple cubicle windows! It was like a building inside a building! Not only that, but you will see a giant flight of an escalator for the tour, and a large world globe!

Lunch at the CNN foodcourt was just the beginning of the day! The sun shined a good 80 degrees or so for us all day...how pleasant! Many of us took advantage of the open pool this year since it was open.

A thank you is in order to all that helped to unpack and set-up the pits! (And pushed Thunderfoot through inspection!) And a huge HUGE thank you to team 1126 – Webster Thomas SparX who transported a good portion of the FRC teams robots, tools and various other things!

After a day of touring, the pool was a pleasant refresher for not just our team, but others that had also homed at the Omni. Not too far off is a wonderful hot tub that just melted our muscles and helped us ease up from a day of travel.

Because this is all I have for the day...goodnight! I am enthusiastically and graciously accepting sleep!

Crystal.

Atlanta!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:35:15 -0700

The student team members have arrived in Atlanta with the school advisors and chaperones! I don't have much of an update yet, but it is good to know they have arrived safely! The rest of the team leaves Rochester just a little before 6 pm. Our group will be close to 50 strong!

The counter on the FIRST site says the competition starts in just over 19 hours, but our unpacking crew gets to uncrate Thunderfoot, and to do as much as they can in three hours tonight to get the robot inspected.

Be sure to check out the action using the web casts or on NASA TV starting tomorrow when the qualification rounds begin at 1 pm (Atlanta time). Here is the link! http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/robotics/

Atlanta Preparations!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:37:01 -0700

This past weekend was the final time to get everything all set for the trip to Championships in Atlanta! I hope we make it look easy from the outside, but it is amazing to see the amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes.

FIRST Conference Presentations. Crystal, Parentor Lee spend lots of time putting the final touches on their presentation on "How to Write a Press Release." And Mentor-from-afar Kim has two presentations to give - one on holding an off-season event and one on presentation skills.

All Rookie Meet and Greet and the 2010 Meet the Rookies Book. Parent Peter and Parentor Lee spent hours and hours working on the data collection for the rookie book, assisted at various time by other students and adults. The final preparation for the ARMAG included printing the invitations and buying some cool prizes. I'm hoping I'll find a giant soccer ball waiting at my doorstep when I get home today!

Spare parts for the Robot! The mechanical team was busy fabricating a second winch mechanism, and other spare parts for Thunderfoot.

Chairman's Presentation - The presenters were struggling to find a time to meet and practice, but I know they will work hard to make the best possible presentation in Atlanta - while the rest of us keep our fingers crossed!

Button Making - Supermom Sharon was busy making more team buttons for Atlanta. We have almost totally depleted our supply of button making parts, and we gave away way too many buttons in Boston, so our Atlanta supply won't be nearly enough!

Scouting! The scouters and strategy subteam was busy getting the scouting laptops back in tip-top shape. They were also spending time watching videos of some of the robots in action at regional competitions. We are ready for scouting the 80+ teams in the CURIE division. The Curie Division looks like it has lots of tough robot competition.

The excitement is building as The Thunder Just Keeps Getting Louder!

A time to cry...

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 10:13:00 -0700

One of the best qualities of Rolling Thunder is that we are family. And as a family we are learning that some of our greatest challenges have nothing to do with the robot or with the competition. It has to do with life.

In and through our week before Boston and and continuing through this week, our team has had an underlying story, one that makes me especially proud of the mentors and adult leaders. We operated the last week before the regional without our team leader, Larry. His dad became gravely ill and Larry was called home (Connecticut). His fiancée, Leann, who does our Chairman’s prep was our only contact with him, stayed here in NY. We made a call to keep it very low key for the students since the expend so much energy to prepare for competition and to get ahead on school work, that we knew we didn't need to add to that burden. The final preparation meetings and the mandatory travel meeting were held, the final packing and trip prep and all that stuff was done without Larry. Mentors and teachers just kept taking pieces of the work to be done and making it sure it was done. I’m sure most of the team members didn’t even notice a real difference as great care was taken to not make it a big deal.

Larry stayed with his family until the Wednesday before Boston. Leann picked Larry up on Wednesday evening as the caravan passed close by the exit to his hometown. The adults continued to encourage and do things to take the load from Larry, but made sure he had full reign as team leader (which has been an important part of ensuring the successful transition from Kim to Larry). The kids just loved him and accepted his leadership which has also been the whole hallmark of this season for us. (If you want to know how to adapt to change, watch a teenager – we as adults learned much from their ability to adapt.)

Saturday, after all of the celebrations, Larry returned to his family. His parent’s wedding anniversary was Sunday, and Larry’s dad died late that night. So this past week, instead of having a chance to celebrate with the team at our meeting, Larry was making those final preparations. He has shown great strength of character and I am very much impressed with him. We can’t wait to get him back to let him know once again how much he means to the team.

From TCExtra.com

Obituaries
Lawrence Paul Lewis

04/01

KENT — Lawrence Paul Lewis, 63, of Kent, died March 28, 2010, at New Milford Hospital, surrounded by his family. He was the husband of Virginia (Mills) Lewis.

Born Oct. 23, 1946, and raised in Wilton, he was the son of the late Lurina (Nickless) and Norman Lewis.

As a youngster, he developed a love for fishing. He always enjoyed being with family and friends, and making new friends. He was known for his gift of being able to hold a conversation with anyone he met.

He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1966 and served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He was a life member of the VFW.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Lawrence Paul Lewis Jr. and his fiancée, Leann Bartomioli of Rochester, N.Y.; a sister and brother-in-law, Charlene and Roger Genest of Kimberling, Mo.; a brother-in-law, Gary Lorentson of Brookfield, Conn.; four nieces, Tammy Ricchezza and her husband, Mike, of Waterbury, Jammie Genest of Naugatuck, Alyssa Lorentson of Brooklyn, Conn., and Polly Fife and her husband, Kevin, of Northfield, N.H.; a nephew, Clifton Mills III and his wife, Beth, of Fort Drum, N.Y.; a brother-in-law, Clifton Mills of Northfield; and several great-nieces and great-nephews.

He was predeceased by a sister, Melissa Lorentson.

Services will be held at Lillis Funeral Home in New Milford on Monday, April 5. Calling hours will be from 5 to 7 p.m. The service will begin at 7 p.m. Burial will be in Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield.

In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to a charity of your choice.

The family welcomes on-line condolences, which may be posted at obituariestoday.com.
© Copyright 2010 by TCExtra.com

A time to Laugh...

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:35:29 -0700

Just a quick note to post some photos taken to celebrate April Fool's day!

The leadership team took some time last night to fill Mr. Brewer's office with old FIRST game pieces.

And then some of the members of the team were there when he saw it this morning!

Boston Update - Saturday. The Big Show

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:30:43 -0700

For the longest time it looked like I would be unable to give to you Crystal's perspective on the final day of the Boston Regional. But she has pulled it together for me! I will interject here and there on this one!

Day Four – BREAKAWAY!!

While the event is a blur in my head now, and no longer fresh in my mind, I’ll still try my best to fill those empty spots in.

It was about 7-7:05am when everyone met down in the lobby with all their belongings that they had brought with them. We all wheeled up on our bus and drove for the last time, through the busy Boston traffic.

The day started just like the morning before; getting our bags checked, waiting 15 minutes in the lobby, cheering for the staff and other teams. The storm had already hit the arena. This time, there were no hair up-dos, no spiking, and certainly NO straightners!

Opening ceremonies were very brief on Saturday, and the final qualification matches were underway quickly. Kristina and Mentor Sharon took the time to prepare the team awards - our camo decorated inflatable soccer balls.
Our award recipients:
Goal Tender - Best Defense - Team 97
Striker - Best Kicker - Team 2084
Upper 90 - Best Lifter - Team 1403
MVP - Favorite Alliance Partner - Team 467
MIP - Most Improved - 2888
Dribbler - Best Under the Tunnel - 2590
Halfback - Best Bump Climber - Team 3148
Rookie - Favorite Rookie - Team 3280
A large contingent of students, accompanied by Mentor Bear as the photographer, headed to the pits to distribute the awards.

We started the day in first place, but wavered throughout the morning based on other teams results. After our final two matches, we were seeded 2nd and Theo was selected to make the alliance selections.

Everyone was nervous throughout the day for the upcoming awards ceremony, but when the Thunder and lightening struck on the field with several successful wins, everyone’s minds were drawn to cheering and shouting to support the team! We even had alumni Rika Lee and Mark Mascadri join us!

It was phenomenal for our drive team to make it all the way to Finals! Alliance Captain, Theo Matt directed the alliance selections. 1511 allied with Brazilian team 383, and a Maine team, 2648! (We lost our first Final's match by one point - unfortunately Thunderfoot had not climbed to his full height and we missed out on bonus points.) Our last competing match was a score of 12 to 11 favoring the opposing alliance. It was an intense last match as the scores climbed and climbed. Congratulations to the winners: Team 88, Team 1922, and Team 1768!

That wasn’t the end of our day though. For sure, we knew we had the Regional Finalist medal coming.

The crowd went quiet as our emcee re-appeared in a tux. He welcomed us to the regional awards ceremony, and called Dean Kamen to the podium. Dean, spoke to us about our future, his vision. He told us about the new Dean’s List award, informed us of his family story.

Then the awards ceremony proceeded…. With many poems. It was silent… and there wasn’t a squeak in the room until team after team was called.

The team was called for the Top 3 Safe teams (Mike H's record as safety captain is still perfect - Top 3 at every regional!), Cooperition Award (tied with the 1st seeded alliance, HYPER Team 69), and Regional Finalist Award.

And then came the first moment that the team was waiting for – not Chairman’s just yet, but the Dean’s List. The arena was quiet… and 1511 members had their fingers crossed. From there, everything was a jolt as they called student leader Crystal Vongnaphone as one of the Dean’s List Semi-finalists!!! The team jumped in excitement and tackled Crystal in the stands until she dashed down to receive her certificate from Dean and Woodie themselves! (My version - The team erupted! I couldn’t really see Crystal at first but by the time they got her to the aisle, she stopped, put her face into her hands and started crying. Then as the team started cheering, CRYSTAL! CRYSTAL! CRYSTAL!, she bolted down the stairs (with our photographer trying to dash after her from about 5 rows up). When she got to the entrance the other winner, a young man from one of the teams from our finalist alliance, Blake Bourque, Team 2648, was waiting for her. They congratulated each other and she let him go first, which was good because when she got to Dean they seemed to have this very long conversation.)

I could see the sincerity within each and every judge and refs eye. I knew they were watching me, and I knew they had kept a close watch. The entire day, I was just so nervous thinking about it at every minute. When they actually announced my name, I could not believe it! I was in tears! My eyes just flooded as I went down and shook each and ever person's hand. Dean, gave me a hug and that moment was captured by both mentor John Hall and teacher advisor, Mr. Weisbrod! Thank you!!

Little did Crystal know, she’d be joined by her team as soon as she got to the top of the stairs…
By the time we got her back upstairs, as we were in the nosebleed seats, she had time for a quick photo with her Mom and just a few hugs before they started the Chairman’s announcements. A poem...

“We all know FIRST's a marvelous thing,
That gives us each back more than we bring.
The many fine works of this fine team
Show all who see what FIRST can mean.

They teach, they strive, they ignite the sparks
That spread FIRST’s message in widening arcs
Across the globe, and around the corner.
This team attracts great awe and honor.

A robot could be nuts and bolts,
But inspired by sponsors, kids and coaches,
This team's power can reach so high
That their energy can light the sky.

Now, if this poem has made you wonder,
Just wait, and you will HEAR THE THUNDER."

Midway through, you could begin to hear the sobs of our team members and the enduring squeaks that just wanted to become screams of joy! There were many shedded tears of joy as the team jumped up and hugged each other. We could even hear the echo of our Thunder in the stands next to us as the Duct Tape Bandits cheered for us. After they announced our team, we went up to the main hallway to get to the next down stairway and in the hall way we were just a jumble of piles of hugs. It was a cool almost private moment before we all entered the arena again.

Mr. Weisbrod thought Crystal might have been in some serious shock having cried so much over the team’s success and her own, knowing that all her hard work has been rewarded in the highest honor possible!

The team will now go to Atlanta with high hopes of Chairman’s at Championships, a kickin' robot ready for more competition, and for Crystal, the chance of becoming a Dean’s list Finalist!

No one wanted to go home, or leave the arena. No one wanted to stop enjoying the wondrous time we will remember – no one wanted to leave Boston.

Dean, Woodie – Thank you!

The bus ride was long, and everyone slept. We didn’t get home to about 2am. We stopped and had McDonalds, salads, sandwiches and pizzas.

Before leaving the school we draped the Chairman’s banner over Mr. Brewer’s desk, and placed our trophies beside that blue piece of pride that we hold our heads high for.

A thanks is in order to all our friends, family and alumni who were able to capture these amazing moments in time, and were able to support us throughout the entire trip!

We hope to have a great competition in Atlanta,

And signing off until then…

Is your Head Communications Director…AND

Dean’s List Semi-Finalist now,

Crystal

Boston Update - Friday Evening

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:18:00 -0700

Thanks to Crystal, you are truly getting a day in the life of Rolling Thunder at competition! Here is her perspective on Friday evening. This is as close as it gets to downtime for the team and as you will see, it is anything but restful and relaxing!

Day Three ... Part II

So the team had a wonderful time exploring the museum and having dinner.

What did we have? The food ranged from chicken tenders with french fries to salads and sandwich wraps!

Everyone split up in groups and checked out many of the exhibits, including one in honor of our own founder, Dean Kamen! There were also exhibits focused on lights, electricity, personality, and well.... physics.

A lot of the big kids took over the kiddie play room. Yeah, that was a lot of fun! We even met with a few of the Duct Tape Bandits and toured with them!

After the museum we returned back to the bus to have our team meeting before we got to the hotel. As Mr. Weisbrod gave his talk, we passed through the "Big Digg"-- a giant road tunnel that was just completed as of this year. Upon arriving at the Marriot, everyone made a run to the only two guest elevators in the entire hotel.

The hotel has 15 floors.

Do you know how long it takes just to get up and down? And imagine the looks on business people's faces when they saw a mohawk, red camo, and a bunch of kids. Some might have said it was priceless, and others were just curious.

While most kids went to bed, strategy crew: Matthieu, Kyle, Jason, Crystal, Becca, Theo and the amazing mentors Kim, Larry, Jeff, Leann and even Tom and Cynette came!

From approximately 9:40pm to about 12:45am, the team ranked and ranked robots and observed them for their top teams selection list. It was a long night, but everyone got some amount of sleep.

That's it for day three in Boston, part II!

So signing off is your Head Communications Director,
Crystal

Boston Update - Friday's Events

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:53:00 -0700

Once again, Thanks to Crystal, I can publish a team update! This is really great, since I have very limited computer acess and it would be Monday or Tuesday until you heard anything from me!

Day Three - In the heat of Competition (Friday - Qualification Rounds Begin)

It was a day of excitement for the enthused Rolling Thunder! We departed from the Marriot hotel, our temporary home at about 7am! We all got on our awesome bus and it took us about 15 minutes in the crazy Boston traffic to get to the Agganis arena.

From there, we headed for row 107 to claim seats for Duct Tape Bandits and ourselves so that we could coordinate cheering! We even ended up sitting with other local NY teams, Devil Tech from Victor and Division by Zero in upstate NY, Potsdam.

At that point, the pits flooded with people in capes, duct tape, and even inner tubes! What you see at competition, is always something not like any other! I find that the most interesting thing about the regional is how differently it compares to other regionals and the ranging difficulty.

Half of the primary drive team upon arrival were taken right into practice mode for the Chairman's presentation at our time slot of 10:15am. So part of the secondary drive team helped to fill in! The first match was a loss, but we know we wouldn't back down!

The Chairman's team returned within half an hour of their presenting time and brought great news and gossip! The judges loved our presentation and are really impressed with ourt eam. Great job, Chairman's team!

From that point on, there were many matches of success! Thunderfoot's awesome mechanical and electrical work has kept our scores constant and amusing! Many spectators throughout the day came into our pit to view our newly implemented hanger, including Dr. Woodie Flowers! Funny enough, our pitcrew had about a five minute long conversation with him as he inspected the red protruding mechanism that was designed in between regionals.

1511's seeding went up and down as matches carried on throughout the day. Dropping down to as low as 11, the Thunder brought on the storm when they won their final qualification match of the day with a score of eight to four! This put 1511 into the position of seeding number one! By the end of the night, 1511's ranking remained and Thunderfoot went to sleep with it's new bumper blanket created by awesome team Mentor, Cynette! (Our team was quite bummed with the new bumper rule assigned this year, but that didn't mean we couldn't still have camo bumpers!)

The team did not receive any awards today, but as Woodie would hope everyone will do and has, is we have all made our grandmothers proud!

We are currently loaded up in our bus and heading off to eat dinner! Do you know how difficult it is to fare in Boston traffic and roads? You either have miniature cars sneaking up right in front of you and cutting you off, or you have people walking across the street!

Tonight, some students will be going to the museum, some will be scouting, and others will hopefully be resting for tomorrow! Everyone is to pack when we get back home in preparation to leaving Boston tomorrow evening after the awards ceremony.

Our team has high hopes for top seed, Champions, Chairman's and even Dean's list!

Ditching you for the sights of Boston, is your head Communications Director,
Crystal

P.S.: I'll let you know what we eat later and how late night strategy goes!
Till then, don't forget to smile

Boston Update!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:11:20 -0700

Thanks to Crystal, we have an update "Day Two – Let’s get it on!" This covers the first day of the regional - Thursday, Practice day.

It’s day two of being in Boston with the drive, pit and back up team. Most of our students (even the ones back home) woke up at regular school time hours to get ready for our arrival at the Boston Agganis arena!

We set off from the hotel at 7:30am after waiting for everyone to get their meals and head off. Everyone piled in cars, and we drove over to the parking garage which was $10/person! Kind of unfortunate, really, but oh well!

The arena was already really crowded with pit setup, stands flare, and even laptops! Everyone had their own special items, like the Duct Tape Bandits – one of our favorite teams.

Did you know that you cannot bring food or drink into the venue? You can’t even walk in without having your bags checked! But it’s got to be best for everyone!

What we had for lunch? At the arena concessions you could find anything from pizza, to pretzels, to even crab cake sliders! Talk about variety! Many of us decided to eat out though at the Qdoba’s down the street, or Chicken restaurant that appears to be favored by quite a few of our team members!

The practice day consisted of our students pit scouting, exploring or being in the pits mounting on all the new robot designs that were completed as of 4pm! We have a new hanger that effectively works and flips our robot up successfully! However, we are currently working to “up” our status on there because we don’t quite clear the tower base (or whatever name best fits here).

When it came time for everyone to stop practice rounds our members took their time packing everything up for the pit. A majority of the pit crew went right back into their working zone, while some returned home to the hotel to rest, or attended the team social that served free pizza and ice cream! Held in a gymnasium, half of it was used for movie viewing of The Terminator, and the other side had food and games! The hosts were collecting jigsaw puzzles that would be donated for an Alzhimers cause.

In a nutshell, there were many series of unfortunate events today, but everyone is here now, and our Thunder is still rolling

We look forward to a great day tomorrow and lots of cheering!

Signing off again for take two is your head Communications Director,

Crystal

All packed up for the Boston Regional!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:23:56 -0700

The Boston Regional Starts tomorrow and runs through Saturday March 27. The trailer is packed and the advance crew heads out later today after school with the rest of the team following tomorrow after school.

The team has been busy for the past several weeks, and there could have been a lot to report out, but I've really enjoyed my several week hiatus! Refreshed and ready to blog again, let me talk about a few of the activities!

Chairman's presentation preparation: The presentation team was selected. Shauna, Becca and Kyle have been busy at work developing and practicing this year's Chairman's presentation with coaching from a variety of mentors. Shauna and Becca were presenters last year, but Kyle is the new member of the team. Last night during the team meeting, the team got to hear the presentation for the first time, and Shauna and Becca got to see how Kyle would do with a large audience. Smile Kyle, smile! The presentation was wll done and does a great job of highlighting some of the important activities of our team. Doug Hitchcock's red camo tuxedo jacket has been borrowed and new ties have been made by Andrea B. (alumnus Collin's mom), so the presentation team is sure to look sharp!

Chairman's video: Last night we also got to see the finished Chairman's video. Crystal has been working very hard to gather interviews and select photographs to put together this year's video. It was great, especially the awesome Theo monologue that accompanied it! Well done Crystal! It should be posted soon and I'll include a link here at some point if you would like to see it.

The Button Maker has been smokin'! Almost everyone has been getting into the act of making the oodles of buttons needed tor trading at Boston and hopefully a head start on buttons for Atlanta. In addition, 5 special edition Regional Recognition buttons have been made for the Boston Regional to be used as recognition awards by all the teams in Boston. We can now see the bottom of the bottomless - or so we thought - box of button parts and will definitely have to restock the supply soon.

Rochester Rumble: Last Saturday, we hosted the Rumble for the FLL teams in the area. I missed attending, but it sounds like it was a sucess! I heard that there were 5 teams in attendance and that Thunderplucker was working again and was tossing orbit balls and rolling around.

Rolling...speaking of rolling, both our cart and our tool box had some work done on them to keep them rolling smoothly. It was especially noticible on the well loaded tool box as it was moved out of the shop last night and loaded on the trailer.

Thunder...our robot, Thunderfoot, is getting some upgrades when we see it next at Boston. The robot subteams have been hard at work redesigning the lifter mechanism and planning some other tweaks to enhance performance. Part of the process included building a light frame mock-up which was dubbed Thundertoe. This week, in what has been called Build Season Week 10, the new lifter has reached a point where it will be able to add some WOW to our robot! Alas, the lovely piece of netting that made our robot so photogenic at the FingerLakes Regional will soon be obsolete, but after seeing the lifter in action, even I can say that the trade off of pretty vs "DID YOU SEE THAT?!" will be worth it.

And now that I've mentioned "did you see that?!" the Boston Regional is scheduled to be webcast on Friday and Saturday at http://www.thebluealliance.net/boston10/. You may also be able to find a webcast on the NASA site at http://robotics.arc.nasa.gov/events/2010_frcwebcasts.php. Keep an eye out for the “red camo” and see Team 1511 in action! (Thanks, Val for the links!)

Time to hit the road!

Photos of the day...well, photos of the interlude...

Introducing Thundertoe!

Getting ready to grip the tower!

Finger Lakes Regional - Eliminations Day - The details!

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:49:48 -0800

Sorry about the lack of details yesterday - but after such an exciting day, your blogger just hit the wall and needed sleep more than anything!

Today, we have bright sunshine outside and I hope all of Team 1511 has had a chance to get an essential vitamin D recharge!

But to backtrack to yesterday...

The morning started early with the students arriving by bus as close to opening gate time as possible to have a chance to get things moving in the pit, settled for scouting, and have a chance to color hair and paint faces in Rolling Thunder colors and red camo. On the bus they passed around the front page story (Okay, B-section front page) featuring our lovely robot and our drive-team in action! For now, here is a link to the article - 44 schools put robots to the test in regional competition. I'm sure it is because we had the most photogenic robot at the competition!

After opening ceremonies, qualification match play continued from yesterday. We had three matches today:

Match 59 - we won 5 to 2
Match 63 - we lost 0 to 11
Match 70 - we lost 0 to 11

I know it looks like we had a very bad day at this point, but actually the converse was true. Just to totally confuse things this year, FIRST Breakaway game rules included a seeding score calculation that made it advantageous to sometimes all work together to have one alliance score big and that's what we did in Matches 63 and 70. In Match 63, we actually scored several times for the "wrong" alliance before taking a position to feed balls to the "wrong" side. In Match 70 we defended our own goal so that no shots could be scored for us. The game announcer and color commentator had a great time telling the crowd why it looked like our team had totally lost its marbles! Our strategy paid off and we finished the morning ranked in 5th place, giving us a role as an Alliance Captain for the elimination rounds.

During the morning, team members finished the preparation of the team awards - awards that we give to other teams. It is a fun part of the FIRST tradition. We prepared 7 awards trying to give them a bit of Rolling Thunder "flare" along with a soccer / Breakaway theme. Thanks to Andy's Mom, Heather, we had fun inflatable soccer balls that the team had decorated with red camo on Thursday and Friday.
Our award recipients:
Goal Tender - Best Defense - Team 191
Striker - Best Kicker - Team 217
Upper 90 - Best Lifter - Team 1507
MVP - Favorite Alliance Partner - Team 1450
MIP - Most Improved - 1551
Halfback - Best Bump Climber - Team 610
Rookie - Favorite Rookie - Team 3162

Another fun part of the day was seeing all of the Rolling Thunder alumni who returned to cheer us on! I hope I don't miss anyone, in addition to Josh who was refereeing, there was Brenton, Dan, Collin, Cuyler, Jackie, Joe - in the Gorilla costume complete with a chin guard!, Jess, Steve - mentoring Team 229, and Supermom Shelley!

Moving on to Alliance Selection - Becca was our representative on the floor and the picking was tough! It sounded like our pick list were matches to most of the other teams lists. We selected rookie team 3157, the Iron Lancers as our first partner and team 578, Blue Lightning as our 2nd partner. After all 8 alliances were settled, we were ranked as the fourth seeded alliance and got a slight time to break for lunch.

During lunch, the team presented Mentor Kim Eckhardt with a photo book to celebrate and thank her for her 5 years as the founder and leader of our team. Yes, she cried. And then she carried the book around with her everywhere she went for the rest of the day and asked everyone to sign her "yearbook."

Now let the elimination rounds begin!

Quarterfinals against the 5th seeded alliance went according to our strategy. We won QF match 1 with a score of 8 to 4 and we won QF match 2 with a score of 6 to 2.

On to the semi-finals! We were now playing the Number One seed and we knew the going would be tough. SF match 1 was a total bust. Our robot lost its programming. While the referees gave us enough time to reload the program, they didn't give us enough time to reconnect with the field and we sat completely disabled fro the entire match. the other two robots tried their best by in the end, Team 3157 received a red card and the score ended up as a 0 to 8 loss. Not to be deterred we regrouped for SF match 2. Balls were flying into the goal and with the help of the Iron Lancers hanging robot we won with a score of 8 to 7. Back into the game, we headed into SF match 3 but were shut down by the other team and lost with a score of 0 to 7. But we were proud of our efforts and could say with pride that we beat - at least for a match - the alliance that went on to win in the finals!

After we were eliminated, we started the final packing of the pit and cleaning up of the stands, while cheering on the teams in the finals. Awards followed soon.

When you are sitting through the awards ceremony, you listen to each description with the hopes of catching one that sounds like your team, but this time award after award was presented to really great and deserving teams but none of them were us. We cheered for the recipients, especially thrilled when the rookies received recognition, when 1126 won Gracious Professionalism since they were our nominee as well and were over the top with excitement when team 1551 "The Grapes of Wrath" received three awards in total!

But in the back of our minds we were reminded that in our history we've received awards at each regional and wondered if this would be the regional where we would finally not get an award. That would still be ok, since we know that there are teams that wonder at every regional if this would be the one where they would win any award, and we have definitely won our share. There was a break-through with the Safety award, the team was recognized with an honorable mention and would receive safety pins. Safety Captain, Mike H. was thrilled, and Team 1511 would not go home totally empty handed.

Now it was down to the final team awards, Engineering Inspiration and Chairman's. The Engineering Inspiration Award presentation began:

"Inspiring others to respect science and technology requires passion, knowledge and commitment. FIRST celebrates these qualities by presenting its Engineering Inspiration Award. This award celebrates a team's outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school, as well as their community. (Standard boilerplate award introduction - now the team specific hints begin)

This team's goals focus on building their team members and improving life in their community (we do that, but we know that a lot of team do that). They host summer camps, volunteer at FIRST events (we do both of those, so do other teams), visit nursing home residents (hmm...that's a little specific, at this point I turn and look at Kim. I imagine that Mike Mac sat up a little straighter at this point; coordinating the visits to Atria has been his community service project for two years now), and through partnerships they've built with their school, their mentors and their students (ooo, partnerships - that's a big buzz word in our team literature) they've helped many FRC teams and started 38 FLL teams (That's our count! The team starts buzzing) including one in the Bahamas (Can it be true? Are we really getting this award?)

This year they introduces a VEX robot building activity in the fall to encourage technical learning among their students (Theo - behind me says 'I told a judge that!') The team encourages participation by anyone in the school (I heard Crystal tell a judge that!) and boasts a large female representation on the team. 93% of their graduating students go to college for engineering. (The whole team is twitching by now!)

They invade the community with their Thunderbolt (That just sealed the deal!) approach to spread their love for engineering.

The Engineering Inspiration Award goes to Team 1511, Rolling Thunder!"

The Thunder erupts! We have won the Engineering Inspiration Award! Shocked, amazed, thrilled we make our way to the field to accept silver medals and the trophies for the award! High fives to the judges! Then on cloud nine we return to our seats to hear the announcement of the Dean's list nominees and the Chairman's Award winners! Congrats to Team 340, GRR for another Chairman's award! That makes three in a row for them, and 5 out of the last 6 years at Finger Lakes! And this ends the 2010 Finger Lakes Regional!

And on to Boston!

Photo: Part of a team photo after FLR: Crystal and Kyle displaying the trophies (we get two with an award), Shauna is showing off the medal, Mike H. has the safety pins, and Mentor Kim is holding her photo "yearbook!" For the full photo and many other from FLR, check out Smugmug, our team's photo receptacle!

Finger Lakes Regional - Eliminations Day

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 21:44:16 -0800

What a day! From newspaper coverage to seeding points to semifinals to awards, so much to tell.

But instead I went out to dinner with my family. And I am as exhausted as I'm sure every member of the team is.

So tomorrow, I promise to fill you in on the details.

And for now... a photo of our lovely Thunderfoot.

Finger Lakes Regional - Qualification Rounds Begin

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:50:22 -0800

8:00 am and the team is ready to go! Time to set up space in the stands, time to get the rogot prepped for the first qualification match of the day. We were slated for match #2 and had to be prepped and on the field before the opening ceremonies.

We sat through the usual amount of introductions and short speeches. The Canadian National Anthem was sung by a choral group from Nazareth Academy and the Star Spangled Banner was sung by a quartet from Team 340. Both groups did a very nice job! Let the games begin!

We spent the day wrestling with a variety of issues. The mechanical elements seemed to work in the pit but when we would get to the field and something would go wrong. But with our drive team rapidly improving in drive ability and strategy, we still seemed to be doing ok.

Here is our match summaries for today:

Match 2 - we won - 2 to 1
Match 8 - we lost - 2 to 9
Match 22 - we won - 7 to 2
Match 27 - we won - 5 to 3

Oh look!!!! After Match 27, we are in first place in seeding points! All of the cameras on the team rushed to take photos of the monitor. It looked like this!

The strategy team intensity just picked up a notch!

Match 31 - we lost 1 to 2
Match 44 - we lost 0 to 3
Match 50 - we won 9 to 0

At the end of the day we were ranked 5th. Not too bad!

I was impressed with the whole team especially considering all if the first timers! There was a great scouting crew in action at all times and the students all got to spend some time in the pits either pit scouting, or just meeting teams and swapping buttons. However, we do need to work on cheers as a whole! Tomorrow will be another opportunity to get loud and make the Thunder Roll!

And tomorrow I promise you a good photo of the robot!

Finger Lakes Regional - Set-up / Practice Day

nospam@example.com (Cynette Cavaliere) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:49:06 -0800

Thunderfoot, come out of your box and play!

The uncrating crew headed to RIT very early this morning to start the process of unloading the robot and building the pit. Our crate splits in half and makes the walls and shelves of the pit, so setting Thunderfoot free also starts the very intense process of establishing a pit space.

Leaving school for the day, our drive team, secondary drive team, pit crew and lead scouters were accompanied by a group of chaperone parents, mentors and Mrs. Latona as the teacher advisor for the day.
The pit crew had it's hands full with a long to-do list that included replacing many parts with lighter versions including the beater bar, the front ball stops, rear under motor cross member, front under motor crash bars, and so on...

Meanwhile the scouting crew under the guidance of Mentor Kim (a little role reversal for Kim and Larry!) dealt with their own set up and was plagued with laptop issues throughout the day.

The robot made its debut on the field at its second scheduled practice session and was driven by the secondary crew. This was just to test the drive train as the rest of the mechanical components were not completely rewired. After another work session the robot took the field for another practice session, but had what seemed like some connectivity issues. Finally running for the second half of the session and we got to cheer it on as the drive team tried to balance on the top of the bump.

Many of the other robot teams were also testing, trying and tweaking. Mentor Jeff was kept busy with helping other teams with programming issues, and Labview Larry got to try his hands at resolving a few issues as well. We all missed having Mentor Eric E. as the third programming partner, he would have been busy as well! The pit "shop" was busy loaning out parts and other support from white paint to wheel mounts to borrowed tools.

By this time, most of the rest of the team had arrived with Mr. Brewer. Serious pit scouting started and the students had various opportunities to help get things in good shape for tomorrow.

Practice sessions over, the robot now weighted in at 121.2. Time for serious weight loss. First on the chopping block, the camera. Hopefully we will find more places for weight loss and be able to put it back on before the end of the season. Long fasteners were trimmed, holes were made in the lexan mounting plate for the electrical panel, the battery tray was trimmed, pivot plates trimmed, and finally the mounting plate for the camera was removed. Reweighed, Thunderfoot came in at a svelte 119.6 pounds.

The inspection process went full bore. Sizing, check. Bumpers, check. Drew a lightning bolt on the electrical main for ease of spotting, filed down a few sharp edges - check, check.
Passed inspection around 7 pm.

While the rest of the team ate Moe's - thanks to Kyle's organization and to Kyle and Mentor Leann for the pick-up service - the programming team was dialing in the stops on the kicker foot and the switch setting verification for the winch. They seemed pleased with that. Similar to an issue that Thunderplucker experienced, Thunderfoot has some shifting signal with the Jaguar speed controller, but they were confident that it could be resolved.

The evening ended with the moving all of the stuff from the stands into the pit.

I didn't get a chance to take any photos, not even of the awesome camo netting - I'll do my best to get some tomorrow!