FIRST World Championships Day #4 - 4-29-13

Day four, the final and last day was again rough though we were finally able to function correctly despite the fact that we lost both of our matches putting us at a rank of 61 out of 100 and with a streak of 3-5 win-loss. We didn't do as badly as possible, but not as well as we had wanted. But no matter after we were done playing our matches we were able to watch the picking for our field Curie. Some weird things happened including a strategy called "scorched earth" which involved the top seed team in our division to be turned down by 4 teams (also in the top 8). There we so many ooooooooooooo's and ahhhhhhhhh's and snickering going on in the audience the entire time. After picking the team ended up splitting up to watch the other divisions due to the fact that there were more exciting matches to be watched. I headed over to Galileo is Casey and Collin when we got to watch Casey's old Minnesota team 2175 the Fighting Calculators and 2474 Team Excel which happened to be Ellie's, my good friend from Conserve, younger brother's team! The two teams that we were rooting for ended up in the semi finals playing against each other, but with 2175 winning out with the score of 156 to 117. It was so close every time and you never knew which team was going to win. Most definitely a nail biter and kept you on the edge of you seat the whole entire time.

After all of the fields finished holding their elims and found their top alliance everyone headed over to the Einstein field to watch some of the most high scoring matches that I have EVER seen live. Interestingly enough one of the matched involved a weird mistake where the alliance from Archimedes was supposed to go on to the finals but due to a miscount in the scoring Galileo went on to the finals and ended up winning the entire title! During the whole thing there was lots of dancing and cheering and air planes flying through the air from the nosebleed section of the dome. Someone actually managed to get a plane into the 5 point goal on the pyramid making the whole crowd go wild.

After the matches we battled the crowd in the rain over to the science center where there was an after party finale. Let's just say that I know how people on Black Friday feel. I have never wanted to get out a a place so badly. Also, the rain made it slightly more miserable on the school bus to and from because of the traffic and all the humidity building up in the bus. Apparently it has rained on the last day of comp for the past several years and is a bit of a tradition... weird right?

In the end I couldn't have asked for such an experience despite the multiple challenges that we encountered due to, perhaps, the curse of Curie that went on unbroken. Time to get excited for next season already!

FIRST World Championships Day #3 4-29-13

The 3rd day of competition, 26th of April brought on another day of rough matches with us playing our last winning match and losing 2 leaving our team at 3-6 win loss ratio. We struggled a lot working with our pneumatic systems and having a very stupid coding issue which resulted in the shooter wheel not wanting to turn at all during BOTH autonomous (un-operated by drivers) and teleop (driver controlled)! It was really saddening especially since we should have won at least one of the two last matches. You know those competitions where you just know that you will not win something no matter the amount of luck because of the caliber of your opponent that was your last match of Friday. We were up against The Pink Team one of the loudest teams in the stand completely dripping in team spirit (and eventually winning the team spirit award). We were able to put up an okay fight but the point was mute eventually and we couldn't do anything about it. Friday was rather disappointing because it was the day that we needed to shine so that other teams that were scouting us out would see what we could do in a match and were were obviously toastering. The term toastering was brought to us by Casey from his old teams and it means "to not do S**t, and fail epically in general." Rather disappointing but being able to walk around and see the name brand teams that everyone fears and both admires in the flesh was terrific. We were able to do some networking and see how other people managed the same tasks that we had tried to conquer. I had so much fun despite the fact that our actual team was not doing terrific. After all it's all about that cliche statement: "It's not about winning but about learning new things and having lots of fun."

By the end of the day we were all ready to get some food and go back to the hotel rooms. It turned out that Beth had arranged for reservations at a place called Mango (a Peruvian, and apparently VERY classy restaurant). Pause a moment and imagine 10 kids, 4 college students, and a munch of parents walking in in matching t-shirts and jeans with absolutely no clue how to operate themselves in a restaurant where entrees were not priced below $20.  In the time that we were there we managed to weird out a neighboring table, blow out BOTH the candles that were on the table, spill a class of tea, and confuse the waiter to no end because we were all unable to pronounce the names of the dishes on the menu. After the Mango debacle we headed back to the hotel. I was walking in the front of the pack and was one of the first to arrive back at the Hyatt where we were staying. It took a couple of minutes for me to realize that we were missing, Myles, Collin, Jasmine, and Matthew. Then the next thing that I know I see them come around the corner with Matthew dripping wet and shivering. We learned later that Matthew had decided to jump into the fountain that was in front of the neighboring bank! And on top of that he had also left his drivers button aka the magic key to go to certain places such as the competition field!

FIRST World Championships Day #2 4-29-13

Day 2, being Thursday the 25th dawned bright and early with a view of "the arch" at our hotel! We walked over to the dome and the craziness began. During the month between Peachtree Regional and champs we we tried to get better accuracy on our shooter by adding an encoder which would make our shooting accuracy sky rocket, and so that we were able to shoot full court frisbees into the 3 point goal and not into the 2 point goal. After a day of testing the device broke and we replaced it with a photo sensor that used light to test the rpms of the spinning shooter wheel. All day on Thursday we battled problems after problem with the code that was not keeping the rpms of the shooter wheel. We only had one practice match and the rest were qualifications (aka the matches that mattered). We had our ups and downs. Our most major upset was that of beating 2056 one of the biggest name brand teams with a score of 122-134 in our favor. At the end of the entire competition 2056 had lost 1 of their 8 matches. We were the ones who had upset their winning streak! Definitely a moment of proudness for our team especially since we weren't doing as well as we wanted.  It was terrific to be able to be with all of the other teams from all over the world. The atmosphere was constantly charged with excitement and sudden bouts of team spirit. My one pet peeve at this competition and the last for that matter were the people who would scream "ROBOT" in your ear every time they passed you on the way to a field. Just say move! Don't scream it in my ear!

After the long day of matches the team headed to a pizza place who had the logo pi as it's sign. A perfect place to put a bunch of starving robotics kids! The pizza was a bit weird. When we ordered we were under the impression we were getting standard pizza and not a deep dish pizza. Consequently we ended up with a couple of pizzas that completely lacked cheese. You could tell we were NOT food connosoireurs!  That night was filled with TV watching, chilling in other people's rooms, and lots of sleeping, and even more eating. If I do say so myself it was a long day and being able to kick back and relax, no matter how dirty the room was. Trust me, the carpet looked like it was growing food instead of the food being dropped on the floor. Needless to say we were all a closer team after these late night hang out sessions!

FIRST World Championships: Day #1 4-29-13

Over 10 days and not a single post. Shame on me! But in my defense perhaps life's been bowling me over and I'm just now recovering, but I would be lying if I said recovering is what I am doing. Slept for almost 12 hours and not a single ounce of feeling revived. If you read this then you already know that I am a major robotics nerd. So so so  very much.

On the 24th of April started 4 of the busiest days that I have had in a LONG time. 4:30 am marked the time that I rolled out of bed to get to the bus an hour later. The whole team groggily packed up the bus with our fellow alliance partner team 4026 aka Global Dynamics from Decatur high school. 9 hours later after lots of joking around with Adam and Billy (the drivers from the other team), lots of sleep, lots of food from Cracker Barrel, 2.5 hours of playing Hearts with Collin, Jasmine, and Jay, and even more sleep we arrived safe and sound in St. Louis. We had from about 5:00 pm till 8:30 pm to send 5 members of the team over to the Edward Jones Dome to unpack the robot, reassemble it, and make sure that all of the paper work for everything was correct. We were able to successfully able to open the crate and get the robot out, but learned very quickly that we were not going to be able to remove it from the bag that it had been put into at Peachtree Regional a month before because  Sue (one of our mentors)had forgotten a piece of our paper work. There were 2 forms that said that the robot had been bagged the night of the end of the 6 weeks and had been locked the day that it was shipped off, but there was no form that stated that we had ever opened the robot at Peachtree! Until we got everything figured out we couldn't start work on anything and couldn't get inspected. By some miracle a woman from Peachtree happened to walk by and ask us how well we were doing and when she heard our troubles she called a guy name Dr. Bob who apparently has a lot of clout in FIRST. By the honor code we were saved. This was the first of many of our MANY troubles..

There had originally been a team social arranged by one of the other GA teams at the Old Spaghetti Factory, but because of the delay, Jasmine, Collin, Ben, Casey, and I completely missed it. The food ended up being brought to us. One thing that I must say for all of our disorganization and complications I would never ever ever trade our college mentors in for other people. There is a special bond that we all have together and there's never a weird separation between us that makes us fell out of place with them. Casey of all people seems to be the most student like despite all the people who apparently asked Sue whether or not she was a high school student. But back to what I was saying that night was full of lots of pasta, watching Turner and Ben play Super Smash Bros., and Casey and Ben trying to get Alex to push the beds together so that they would have more room and be able to have a said "cuddle-fest"! Needless to say Jasmine and I were rolling around on the bed laughing at Ben and Casey's efforts.

Let me pause a moment an say that here's how it works. There are four fields and the competition is in a bracket system. The top 8 ranked teams from each field pick 2 other teams to be on an alliance. the top 8 compete in elims in best out of 3. The winning alliances from the 4 fields go on to Einstein field.

I mentioned earlier that the lock up forms were one of many of the problems that my team encountered... possibly because we were suffering from the Curie curse. Apparently there is a curse at Championships where NO ONE from Curie field has EVER won the world champion title. Great way to start the 4 days dontcha think?

An Origin Story by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye 4-18-13

• Sarah Kay:
  It started with a sweater.
• Phil Kaye:
  I was looking incredibly fly. First day of college orientation as a freshman... plus, I'm the type of guy who's always trying to make a good impression.
• Sarah:
  He looked like a tool. And it's the first week of school, so I've got people to meet and things to try. I don't have time to waste on this guy loitering backstage at a talent show.
• Phil:
  It started with a freshman talent show, a chance to showcase what I know about spoken word and poetry and try and get some people to notice me.
• Sarah:
  It started with a technical difficulty -
• Phil:
  some sort of delay -
• Sarah:
  somebody's iPod track wouldn't play.
• Phil:
  So I'm stuck waiting backstage when I notice this girl -
• Sarah:
  and he walks over, stupid sweater and all. There was nowhere to run, backstage was too small.
• Phil:
  And I'm so nervous about going onstage, I decide to strike up a conversation.
• Sarah:
  Oh, sorry, I completely got ahead of myself. I totally skipped introductions. My name is Sarah Kay.
• Phil:
  My name is Phil Kaye. I'm from California -
• Sarah:
  born and raised in NYC.
• Phil:
  Let's see, fun fact about me -
• Both:
  My mom is Japanese and my dad is Jewish.
• Sarah:
  Not a common combination, but I think it's kinda cute. People call me Japajew -
• Phil:
  Jewpanese -
• Sarah:
  Ashkenazi kamikaze.
• Phil:
  And come December -
• Both:
  Hanukkah and Christmas!
• Sarah:
  Plus, you should taste my mother's brisket. Jan has matzah ball soup with noodles...brings my father Jeffrey to his knees.
• Phil:
  It took mom and dad to raise this lanky, cock-eyed, half-breed.
• Sarah:
  Well, I think that's it. My mom, my dad, and me - oh, plus my little brother. He's eighteen.
• Phil:
  My little sister is a deadpan firecracker. She's only eighteen, but she keeps me on track. Her name is Sarah.
• Sarah:
  My little brother's name is Phillip.
• Both:
  Anyway.
• Sarah:
  Where was I?
• Phil:
  It started with a backstage interaction.
• Sarah:
  No, it started with a backward first impression.
• Phil:
  Okay, well, I'll tell you where it didn't start. It didn't start at fifth grade summer camp.
• Sarah:
  That's true, it did not start at junior lifeguards. Even though we were both there.
• Phil:
  Matching red bathing suits, white t-shirts, visors, and our counsellor -
• Both:
  Mr. Johnson.
• Sarah:
  Who probably figured that the shy girl in his morning class -
• Phil:
  and the skinny kid in his afternoon class -
• Both:
  were... cousins?!
• Sarah:
  Probably thought we carpooled over together -
• Phil:
  in between family photoshoots and fourth of July barbecues.
• Sarah:
  But instead, we merely co-existed -
• Phil:
  almost met but always missed it -
• Sarah:
  spinning around like two sides of a coin.
• Phil:
  Look!
• Both:
  We've done the research!
• Sarah:
  And we swear, we're not related.
• Phil:
  And we've never dated.
• Both:
  And we're never... EVER... going to.
• Phil:
  Because what are the chances of finding someone with your last name -
• Sarah:
  Japanese and Jewish with siblings called the same?
• Phil:
  What are the odds of finding someone -
• Sarah:
  who can finish your sentences -
• Phil:
  who will let you cut in line -
• Sarah:
  who knows not to just lend a hand, or an ear when you need them to give you their spine -
• Phil:
  who is woman enough to be best man at your wedding -
• Sarah:
  who will keep every secret, save every letter, tell you how you really look -
• Phil:
  who will remember every single one of your birthdays -
• Sarah:
  without checking Facebook?
• Phil:
  What are the odds of finding someone who knows your poetry by heart -
• Sarah:
  who won't freak out if you're hanging out and accidentally fart?
• Phil:
  Yeah. If you have a date and you need to look fresh, I will let you borrow my hair products.
• Sarah:
  And if you don't have a date and you need to look fresh, I will let you borrow... my cousin.
• Phil:
  I will always see you for the alley-oop.
• Sarah:
  I will always save you a seat.
• Phil:
  I will always pick you to be my partner even though you are terrible at handball.
• Sarah:
  When the fire takes all you have, my home will be your home.
• Phil:
  When you are old and can no longer remember my face, I will meet you for the first time again and again.
• Sarah:
  When they make fun of your accent, I will take you swimming because we all sound the same underwater.
• Phil:
  When Ellis Island tries to erase your past, I will call you by your real name.
• Sarah:
  When they call your number for the draft, I will enlist to fight beside you.
• Phil:
  And I will march with you from Selma to Montgomery and back as many times as it takes.
• Sarah:
  We will stand together against the hoses and the dogs -
• Both:
  because it didn't start with us.
• Phil:
  It started with Lennon and McCartney.
• Sarah:
  It started with Thelma and Louise.
• Phil:
  It started with Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin.
• Sarah:
  Bert and Ernie!
• Phil:
  Abbott and Costello!
• Sarah:
  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
• Phil:
  Mario and Luigi!
• Sarah:
  Watson and Sherlock!
• Phil:
  Pikachu and Charizard! And they could tell you what a miracle this is.
• Sarah:
  They could tell you how rare this is.
• Phil:
  But they could tell you how rare friendship always is.
• Sarah:
  The chances are slim.
• Phil:
  The cards are always stacked against you, the odds are always low.
• Both:
  But I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.
• Phil:
  I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save some for later.
• Sarah:
  I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rains fall hard.
• Both:
  Friend -
• Phil:
  I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself.
• Sarah:
  I want to be air in your lungs that reminds you to breathe easy.
• Phil:
  When the walls come down -
• Sarah:
  when the thunder rumbles -
• Both:
  when nobody else is home, hold my hand -
• Phil:
  and I promise -
• Both:
  I won't let go.

Age is js just another number 4-18-13

"Forests may be gorgeous but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns to grow in a cemetery." 

Dunno who wrote this, but I saw it quoted on Maeve's pleasenoplastic blog and I thought it was a great quote and thus here you are reading it for perhaps the second time. I think that this is a wonderful quote probably because my mom's birthday is coming up. Some people celebrate their birthday and other people dread them and even others have forgotten the day that they were born because they say that age no longer matters. Of course this quote has something to do with age and nothing to do with birthdays but it made me think of the weekend I'm about to spend in the mountains just relaxing away from one of the things that I love, robotics, but with the people that I love the most my family.

Simple Travesty: When life gives you lemons.. 4-14-13

Good folks who are reading this... it turns out I am not the only one writing about lemons!

Life: Simple Travesty: When life gives you lemons..:       People always say," when life gives you lemons, make lemonade", but what does that mean?  What else would you do with them? ...

Lemons make your teeth feel funny 4-14-13

Sometimes life gives you lemons and you make lemonade and sometimes when life gives you lemons you just have to take them even though they make your teeth feel funny. Turns out I did that this spring break. Granted I'm homeschooled and stuff but when you have half of your family on a traditional schedule you must pay attention to what mainstream wants... But back to what I was saying before I go off on a tangent about following mainstream society. It turns out that stomach and head ache can really start cramping your style for just relaxing with your family at the beach when you are stuck lying on a couch curled into a little ball spewing incoherent words. Though the entire week was not a bust at all.

At the beginnong of the week I got to go up to St. Petersburg, FL to visit Eckerd College and have an interviw. Funnily enough when we walked into the admissions building, my sister saw that there was another person who was visiting from Georgia - Decatur in fact. It turned out that I actually knew the person visiting.. Dylan Byers, from my local homeschool group that I have been in ever since I can remember! I found out later that he had rescheduled, but it's funny how small of a world it can be. The place is gorgeous right on the beach and equipped with some fantastic buildings and opportunities. In addition, I really liked the interview... the first question being, "So whatcha been reading?" Should I go on about how I think this is a fantastic question and how we had a great conversation about Ishmael, Harry Potter, and so many other great things?? Such a great conversation. No to mention talking about the pain April, the admissions counselor, had to suffer from her sunburn that was in the form of a book on her thighs and her immense respect for the qualities of a Syltherin. Due to talking forever together, I managed to completely screw up the entire rest of the day that they had planned for me making everything thing happen all at once! Chaos reigns once more and my day was made despite the pounding in my head.

Metaphors of Life 4-4-13

Weird right? You don't get it do you? Have you ever read the book "A Fault in Our Stars?" It's an amazing book by John Green. It's simply about a girl who is living with cancer and the people that she encounters. This guy, Augustus, does this thing with a cigarette where he puts an unlit one in his mouth. His reasoning is that "You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do the killing." It's all a metaphor. I don't always get metaphors in life. Sometimes they seem way to deep for my inferior brain to understand. Maybe I just don't get things like that. Anyways... you should read it. There are some very amazing insights too. Speaking of which:

"This is not a pipe" - Rene Magritte