Friday, November 30, 2007

Game on!

We've spent every night this week preparing, we're ready.

Everyone really pulled it together. Our project is done and we went to the aquatic center yesterday to share what we've learned. We made a few small changes on the table last night and practiced. This morning we're packing up and tonight we'll all be in Carlsbad. LEGOLAND here we come.

Great work team, and best of luck tomorrow!

Monday, November 26, 2007

CRUNCH TIME!

We're in the last week team, and we've still got a lot to do. Our last meeting saw just a little progress but overall the long weekend was fairly productive. Our pool model is pretty much done, we have all the challenges we plan to attempt worked out, we have almost everything built that needs to be built. We just need to practice, practice, practice. We also need to finish the project.

We're having meetings every night this week, Monday- Thursday (travel day Friday)

I hope to get home earlier than 7:30 every night but work has a way of seeing to it that I can't. Plan to go from 7:30-9:00ish. Get your homework done before you come over team members, FLL should not interfere with your school work.

See you tonight.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Less than 2 weeks!

We had another great meeting yesterday. We did several timed runs at the table and have shaved precious seconds off our time. We also crossed several things off the list only have a few things left.

Connor's mom Theresa was very helpful yesterday logging time and figuring out points. She also caught a mistake we have in our Wave Turbine mission. WE'VE BEEN DELIVERING TO THE WRONG PLACE!!! While we had our list knocked down to one critical and two minor tasks, we're going to have to re-think our strategy at the next meeting. We need to plan a new mission to get the wave turbine to the North West corner of the field. Dianna and I looked at the truck attachment this morning and it seems with the addition of a retaining arm on the A motor we could deliver the turbine on it and retrieve the truck after. Delivering the car with a simple fast push could be added as well.

Time is a fundamental problem, right now we barely have enough to finish the missions we have, let alone adding more. We need to shave time off of resetting, we need to consider combining more missions, we need to possibly alter the lower attachment area. I hope we can all spend a lot of time this week working on the challenge, I know I will. I've elected to skip the crew screening of The Mist on Wednesday, I think the meeting is more important.

See you all Wednesday, let's plan to go a little later than usual.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

We has another fantastic meeting tonight. Connor and Rawley programmed the corn and uranium mission with little trouble. Austin and Morgan put some time in on the project and Dane and Austin worked on a truck retrieval solution. We just have a few more missions and we'll be set. It's looking like we may have to skip one or two missions because of time. This certainly seems more challenging than last year's table. Not so much from a complexity standpoint, but from a number of missions and combined missions standpoint. We just seem to have way more to do.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Today's meeting went pretty well. Rawley programmed an awesome solution for the mine cart mission, we made several modifications and worked out the oil platform and also made some progress on the project. Connor also learned some basic programming.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Meeting tonight!

Did you do your homework?

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Fantastic meeting team!

We are finally making some real progress. We have good attachments for the wave turbine, the oil rig, the corn, the uranium, the satellite, the coal car and the power plant. We have good programs for the satellite and the power plant. Now that we have almost all the attachments, we can get to work on the programs. Great job tonight!

Remember your homework for the project, please do your part.

Also remember that we are adding Friday 7:00 - 8:30 to our regular meetings.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

LESS THAN ONE MONTH!
We have got to get ourselves into gear team, we are running out of time. We'll probably have to got to 3 or 4 meetings a week very soon if we're going to make it.

We also need to get busy on our project, we need to put together our proposals for the Aquatic Center and present them. We need to make our project board and LEGO model of the building (if we can).

Regardless of how we do at the tournament we've already accomplished what we set out to do. We've learned about alternative power sources, we've learned teamwork, we've learned about robotics and technology. We've gotten excited about science and technology. I'm proud of you all and I hope we're all still having fun.

LEGOLAND here we come!