leadership

It has quieted down in Saints Robotics since the build season, but there is still work to be done. In the post-competition weeks, we decorated the display case across from Mr. Cooney's room, assigned new leadership, and planned for next year.
The Wednesday after the regional, we had a huge post-mortem discussion. We filled up almost a dozen slides with notes for past failures, future wins, spirit and pit ideas, and more. Hopefully, we'll get most of the non-build tasks finished before graduation and at the beginning of this year to give more focus to actually building the robot during the 2009 season.

We have not uploaded any of the photos yet, but we have, in fact, come back from the Microsoft Seattle Regional mostly alive. It was wild and crazy, and like the announcer said, something of a "Cinderella story." Almost everything that could go wrong did, and we ended up walking off the field with medals. Pity? Fluke? Maybe I should recall the story...

We were working on "upgrade parts" before we got to the regional. We built new steering wheels, calibrated them, and built them in a way that allows us to mount them quickly. We also got a replacement gearbox with a wheel, just to switch out one of the wheels.

Just a few short days, and Spring will be upon us, along with the Microsoft Seattle Regional! Everyone's looking forward to it, and we've managed to probably more than double our attendance rate from last year, which might make us seem less like a joke and more like serious business.

I spent a while organizing all our stuff (other people helped sort bolts, metal, spacers, and terminals) only to put most of it in boxes that we're bringing to the competition. Oh well, at least everything is organized, right? Speaking of organization, Saints Robotics is going to re-organize for next year. The current structure we have is pretty good, but it's very difficult to get everyone organized all at once.