February 5th, 2010: Day #28- Workday

February 5th. Day 28. Saturday! Get excited people! Today everyone was really busy, but today was also one of the most exciting, fun Saturdays ever!

Public Relations had a productive day. Sheila worked on all things clothing related. She got everyone’s t-shirt size (via delegation to Deepa) so she could order the t-shirts. She also worked on re-contacting sponsors, seeing as a very limited list did follow up with our requests. She also worked on the Pit with Alec. It’s really turning out well; we’re just waiting on the materials. The other parts of PR worked on various Thank You letters for the numerous people who have stopped by and donated their time to help us. PR (and me) also worked on getting some interviews done for the Chairman’s Award. Some of them are pretty funny too.

David worked on the website. He got a team together (which consisted of people who weren’t already working) to comb through the site and tell David the dead links and grammatical errors for him to fix. While his team was doing this, he found this really awesome slideshow program for pictures. Problem is, he’s hit a slight problem: he can’t upload more than 10 pictures or else it crashes.

Jeff revisited his ball magnet today. He says that he hit a small “snag.” This, in turn, means he went back to the drawing board to redesign the mechanism. Aaron, working on the hanging-build team, called up Igus to ask if there was any special way to get the energy chain to coil back up. If there is, then we seem to have overlooked it. After Aaron figured out how to coil it, he reported back to the hanging-build team to complete the arm. The rest of the team consisted of Alex Guinn and Sean Boeck. I believe the one they worked on would make prototype #2.

Sean Weaver, Capitan of Electronics, worked in the CAD room today, drafting out the electronics board and figuring out a way to attach the battery to the robot. He also needs to find somewhere to attach the battery.

Programming did a lot of work today, because they compressed most of their work into one. All of the programs for the kicker got poured into a single button. It used to be that to use the kicker you’d have to go through a pretty tedious 4 or 5 step process, but now it’s all in a single button on our joystick.

Have I mentioned the EPIC snowball fight we had after lunch today? Well, seeing as it was a small blizzard outside, we did the only logical thing any of us could think of. We tested the snow to see how packable it was, and then split up into Rookies vs. Veterans. At first, there was a line separating into territories, but as the war progressed, it became a no-holds, get whoever from whatever range possible game. Plus, half way through, when Ashwyn came out, both teams just ganged up on him and pelted him until he had a rough resemblance to a snowman. This was, by far, the best team bonding activity we’ve done so far. Hope it snows again so we can have another war.

Pictures of the day: