LAST DAY OF BUILD!

So here it is guys! a neat [well not so much..] little run down of what we did during the LAST DAY of build for the 2008-2009 season!

heres a little narrative of how the first part of my day went

the morning came. -cue dramatic music here- Monday morning. the LAST morning of build. I remember waking up and thinking, "my first last-day-of-build day." [I was in hawaii last year swimming with some sea turtles and trying to run away from the free hula lessons that our hotel was offering to all 14 year olds...] I grabbed a piece of toast, a glass of milk, a banana, and my laptop [yes, my laptop IS a main part of my breakfast] and signed onto my email. The first thing i saw was our dear head of engineering, Ashwin Mathur [the one who makes puns all the time], online and his status said, "MVRT MEETS AT 10 AM TODAY!"
A shocked silence followed. A very short shocked silence however. 10 seconds later, I was up and about flapping like a frantic chicken trying to finish the mounds of homework I had promised I would do before the end of the day, in the mere one hour that I had before I had to go. I had heard about the notorious MVRT last night, where people worked worked worked, and generous parents brought wonderful food for the kids who worked worked worked. Oh and worked. Did I mention that? Well I didn't quite manage to finish my work quite as fast as I had hoped, so I arrived at around 1oclock ish. Already there was a flurry of activity as once again, the drive crew prepared to make its daily, and last, trip to NASA to practice. There was a moshpit of people around the robot and a moshpit of people around laptops looking at code. In fact, there were so many people around the robot that I actually tapped one of my programming friends and asked, "where's the robot?" She just pointed at what looked like a swarm of teenage kids around food, and after I nudged a few people aside, there it was! Wow. who knew about 12 kids could completly hide a robot from sight? or am I just blind? Anyways, I joined in all the hustle [it wasn't too hard, I assure you...It was sort of like being thrown head first over the top of niagra falls. you don't have a lot of choice there. and just to clarify, I have not actually gone over the Niagra falls, but in my AP physics textbook, there was a guy who did and apparently, he the force of impact was quite large and "rude", so I imagine it was painful as well] and soon enough it was 2:30 and yet no signs of going to NASA. Our officers noticed this too I suppose because they hollered out to everybody that they were going in about 30 minutes, robot or not. Now this got people serious and in 31 minutes and about 23 seconds, the robot was ready to go. [yes they waited. why would they go to NASA without the robot for heavens sake...?] So they marched [or actually drove] off and we all had our assigned tasks. Electrical was to find/work on the compressor code, PR/Media was working on their video for Chairman's and mech was cleaning up, working on the crate, and bumpers. Well I'm happy to say we got in about 1 hour of work. [me being the highly competitive person I am, just had to beat everybody and got in about 2 more minutes... ;) ] and then it was back to playing games/eating our hearts out/watching movies. Actually the PR/Media division was on tract till about 5! CONGRATULATIONS! Rohan, Aravindh, and Prashanth plowed through that video like...erm...a cow ploughs a field [well of course. not one of those lazy cows that eats all day...just clarifying]. Anyways, at 5 me and devaki decided to go to grooveshark [the new website that many of the robotics members use to listen to music on] random disney songs. Namely the madagascar hit: "I like to move it move it" and some Aladdin favorites too like: "A Whole New World" Instantly, a group of guys who were doing wierd things while shooting, decided to karoke to Jasmine's voice in Aladdin. [For those of you who think Disney is too cool for High School, allow me to refresh your memory. Remember that princess who was always dressed shades of blue/purple and went with aladdin on that carpet ride? the one who sang in ridiculously high pitched voices as they zoomed to totally random countries like china, nearly getting killed hundreds of times along the way? yep. its her.] They were quite good, so we secretly rechristened the main singer [we have no idea what his real name is] jasmine even though he was a guy and secretly promised ourselves we would NEVER become that wierd in senior year. Or maybe we already were that wierd. But oh well, thats why we dream, right?
So here's kind of what our time table was like a few hours before midnight on monday.
6:00 - most of electrical playing games on laptops
PR/Media TRYING to work, but being distracted by Madagascar music on full blast
Random members across rooms - listening to music/chatting
7:00 - electrical still playing games...
PR/Media gives up on trying to work on video and decides to watch "Jasmine" sing in those freaky high pitched tones I've told you about
Random members - either watching "Jasmine" sing, or still chatting/listening to music
7:30 - Drive crew returns from NASA and looks around room in total shock and disbelief
7:31 - work resumes and people are sprinting all over the place like olympic sprinters racing for gold

So we all got back to work. After that...what was it, almost 3 hour break? Well...yeah. Oops! We started programming once more and finally got that compressor code working and got everything done. Phew that was tiring! Well not really. It was like 8:15. But Ryan's mom and Somebody else's mom brought us dinner! [I AM SO SORRY FOR NOT KNOWING WHO WAS THE OTHER MOM. AS SOON AS I FIND OUT, I WILL SPRINT TO THE NEAREST COMPUTER AND CHANGE THIS] It was this amazing spread of salad with tangerines, avacados, and [i think] italian dressing, spaghetti with a creamy tomato and cheese sauce, and some delicious garlic bread! To wash it all down we had various types of soda, although I prefered a bottle of water. [I know, I make it all sound so mouth watering, right? haha I'm a chef so I guess that's why :D] After chowing down, they whipped out some wonderfull cookies and all that was left to do was the final editing of code, some wiring, and a good polish of the wheels. Devaki, Keerthana, Jeet, and Patricia spent a good while working on those, aided by Mr. Kikla who demonstrated the power of Windex and the marvels it can work on low friction wheels. Who knew? Windex really does solve many problems. Anyways, then we watched all said our goodbye's and watched it be boxed tearfully. Fine. I was quite tearfull. Most others were as stoic as the laptops around them.

As my parents drove me home, convinced that I had spent more time in the robotics room than at home this long weekend, I decided that even though I was dead tired and I needed at least 50 hours of sleep before I would recover from this harrowing experience, I can't wait to do it again next year!!

I'll post up all the stuff about SVR and Davis soon you guys, so stay tuned! geez. who says that these days?! 'stay tuned'?! that was so when we still used radios. How about, subscribe to this page and come back when its updated! hmm...not quite as catchy, but it'll have to do

yours truly
-Anindya

P.S. Hey mvrt members, mentors, or anybody else from other teams! post your own stories about the last few days of build, by leaving us a comment!