Tuesday, January 12. 2010
Today Kim gave me the idea for the team to have a blog, so starting today, we do! I’ve asked the students to stop and give me a few tidbits during the meetings, so this could be a very hodge-podge for a while. It’s tucked here in the forum until the web team can find a better place!
What we ate for dinner! This will be an important thing to cover each night!
Tonight’s meal was provided by Mike Mo’s Mom (Terri). Thank you! We had Shake and Bake chicken, Rice-a-roni, mac-salad, tossed salad and rolls. The vegetarian selection was eggplant parmesan! Cupcakes for dessert in three flavors!
(Over the weekend we had Hotdogs and fixings on Saturday prepared by Andy’s Mom (Heather) and Deli style sandwiches set up by Paul’s family!)
During the meeting time we met Jacob from Wayne Central HS. He will be shadowing our team because he wants to start a team at his HS next year as his Senior Project. Welcome, Jacob!
Melinda M. (a new super team mom who has taken on our Patron Drive) reported that we are very close to $8000 in commitments for the patron drive! Go team!! This will help a lot with travel expenses and also shows a lot of effort in getting the team name out into the community!
Students were told to complete a Chairman’s survey and mentors were encouraged to complete it as well. Mine is only halfway done at this point, because I am writing this!
Leann announced that as a team we would be taking donations and making a memorial gift to Habitat for Humanity in memory of the young student who died as a result of the school bus accident on the way to his kick-off in Connecticut. We as a team send our thoughts and prayers to the family and to the whole team. We wish we could do more, so it helps to be able to make a donation.
Tonight was the first time many of the sub-teams are meeting. It is very crazy especially since there are so many places we can be meeting. It sounds like this… “Where did all the electrical guys go?” “Where did all the mechanical guys go?” “Does anyone know where the field crew is?” I hope we come up with a better system for keeping track of everyone after a few days!
Mike H. brought “pretty stuff” to the programming sub-team. It’s the new classmate computer. They got to keep it for about 5 minutes before the Control’s sub-team snabbed it. Meanwhile the Programming team was working on installing the development software into the programming laptops and hooking up the camera to ThunderPlucker (2009 bot) so they can prototype some vision software using the bulls-eye target.
Meanwhile Karen of the Field/Crate sub-team was trying to get the official specification on the vision target out of the field documents. The official sheet seems to be missing (GE-10059) but she found a similar version in the Team Field element drawings.
Ideas are flowing for the 2010 logo for the t-shirts and buttons, many incorporating soccer balls and vision targets! I’m glad that we have a very artistic student (Quentin) who is just waiting for some good ideas! Until that happens, the button makers – welcome Alexis- working with Sharon, Melinda and Peggy, are making the “generic” team buttons.
Buzzing over to the shop, the smart board in Mr. Brewer’s room is in use with a preliminary 2010 drive-train design being used to assist the mechanical teams in their cogitating. On the wall are the drawings from this weekends brainstorming sessions and are labeled “Das Bőt” and “Der Donnerfuss (Thunderfoot).”
Speaking of the drive-train, that sub-team is working on the bill of materials and ordering parts – Sub-Team Mentor, Josh, is moaning. According to the build schedule, they are a week behind schedule. Wait, it’s only day 4, how can you be a week behind!?!
And to round out the upper shop tour, I’ve come upon a set of transmissions that have been built to a 12 to 1 ratio. The drive-train crew explains that these will be used as the interim transmissions until our 16 to 1 transmissions arrive.
Things are quieting down as the 8:00 hour approaches. It’s early in the season and some of the students are heading home. I’m sure by this time in Week Three, 8:00 will pass without notice for most of the team. Our schedule says that we can be here until 10 pm on school nights and I know the day will come when we will be scurrying out at 9:59 pm with the voice of Eric in our memories yelling “run for the chopper!!!!”
