Well, I didn't win the Lipton contest (bummer)

But...I competed this past weekend at LEGOLAND in the Junior Master Model Builders competition and I won!

I'm posting a link to my new Brickshelf page, you can see my entry there. It's the couple enjoying a picnic.

My Brickshelf page

Woo Hoo!

I'm a finalist in the Lipton Free Your Y contest on YouTube

Please visit and vote for me! You'll have to cycle through the entries until you see mine.

This is the link to the contest...

Lipton Free Your Y

Hey Team!

We're officially registered for season 2008!

This year we are team 94 (gets smaller every year). I need to hear from everybody if you are participating. I also need to know if you have any friends who are interested in joining the team.

The team had a great time at RoboChallenge. We saw some great robot designs and were inspired to compete next year. We'll be back with a few of our own robots next time.

ROBOCHALLENGE!

Here's the plan for this Saturday if you didn't get the message on your answering machines...

We're meeting at my house at 8AM and leaving very shortly after. One parent per child can attend as well. I put all team members on the list as well as siblings so everyone is welcome. My van seats 7 and so far it's just me and Austin in it (Connor has a birthday party to attend)

If we get there by 9 we will get in for free (normally it's $10 for admission to the Strawberry Festival). We enter at gate 7.

wear your Bricks For Brains shirts, we want to look like a team.

Hey team,

I finally finished my LEGO Falcon. Thought I'd upload a pic.



On another topic we need to finalize plans for the strawberry festival this weekend. I'll figure out what we're doing and give everyone a call.

Hey team,

This video is amazing. I just had to share it with all of you.

As usual we had a great time at LEGOLAND. The new Land of Adventure is awesome, we all got to ride Lost Kingdom Adventure twice and loved it. Both boys had a blast (pardon the pun) in the Pharaoh's Revenge as well. Connor also really enjoyed the Cargo Ace plane ride. We also had a great time competing at the Junior Master Model Builder event. This month's theme was "Creator Beach House". Me, Dianna and Austin all entered (Connor was too busy at Build 'N Race). I built a sand pail with a shovel in it, Dianna made a cool little scene with a beach chair and Austin propped a surfboard in his miniature beach house back yard, complete with a BBQ. We still have no idea who won the contest, but it was certainly a good time building.

Hey team members! I kn0w it's been rather quiet here but let's change that. Last night I was contacted by Mrs. Baldwin at VMS and she invited me to be a part of the new Mindstorms robotic club there. I know that some of the Bricks For Brains members are already involved and I'm excited to be included.

She also informed me of a coming event at the Strawberry Festival in Santa Maria, the Robochallenge. It looks like it could be a lot of fun. I don't know if we want to compete (may not have enough time to plan or build) but it would be fun to go and meet some more robot and LEGO enthusiasts. The sumo challenge and the tug-o-war look like a lot of fun though. you can check it out here

Me and the family are off the LEGOLAND again tonight! We're going to check out the new Land of Adventure and compete at the Junior Master Model Builder contest.

greetings from LEGOLAND!

We had a fantastic day. The kids did an amazing job with their project and showing their robot design. The judges were impressed. We had a perfect practice run but luck was not on our side at the competition tables. A combination of challenge model malfunction and robot wonkiness kept us from getting our potential score. But I'm still very proud of my team. Everyone had a good time and took the performance issues in stride. No trophy this year, but we'll be back.

And to cap off a perfect day, Dianna surprised me with my anniversary present, the Millenium Falcon!

Great job team! And thanks to all the parents and mentors for helping make this day happen.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Meeting tonight!

Did you do your homework?

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.

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!

We had a fantastic meeting on Sunday. Despite running late and a member shy (glad you're feeling better Rawley) we made some great progress on the table. We successfully figured out an order for the challenges, organized our attachments (what we have of them) and did some dry runs with the clock running. I think everyone has a much better gauge on what we need to accomplish in just over a month.

We'll do some more timed runs at the table tonight, and hopefully get some more attachments built.

Team members and parents, please check the member page for your totals for LEGOLAND.

Meeting pushed to 5:00 today, we'll have Pizza.

I'm stuck at work, hopefully finishing this movie today.