roborogue #1

prototyping

this is it. the big day. our prototyping meeting. let's see how much we can get done. this meeting is somewhat last minute, so i'm not expecting a lot of people to show up. in fact, besides abdul, ethan, and i, i doubt anyone else will show up. to be honest, with fewer people, it will so much easier. less people means less argument, less digression, and let's be honest, less mistakes. i'm soooo excited!!

we're so behind that we need to get a lot accomplished this meeting. we have already 100% decided that we are not going to go for the scale. we're only going to focus on the switch. oh yeah, and the vault. this means that on the smaller platform see-saw thingy, we're gonna drop the cubes, and slam them into this tiny square opening to be stored in a box called the vault for points, as well as power-ups.

before i can go too far into detail with the description, the doorbell rings. it's the two brothers, or as i like to call them, two of the three stooges. with their silly mannerisms and the strong urge i feel to hit them over the head, they'd fit in perfectly. ethan is a junior, like me, though he is older. i'm only 15, while he is 17. anyway, he's got a car and his license, so he is going to drive me and abdul to home depot and a few craft stores to pick up some more sophisticated materials to prototype with. i personally think that some squares of cardboard would be enough, but they want to buy stuff like popsicle sticks. freaking popsicle sticks. how sophisticated do these guys wanna go here?

i realize that i'm standing there gaping, thoughts running through my head instead of greeting my guests and yelling a farewell to my mom. i run outside with them, still in my embarrassingly weird looking dance clothes, and prepare to embark on an adventure with adbul and ethan. ethan is all set to pull away from the curb, when my mother summons me. i lean out the door to talk to her, while she expresses the worry that ethan is driving, and i'm about to leave with two strange boys. though i think that her concerns are ridiculous, i don't go and instead i help cooking.

about half an hour later, the boys were back, and the smell of food was filling the air. so we did the only thing there was to do. we worshipped the holiness that was food.

jk jk

i wish we had done that. however, we sat at the dining room table, like sensible people, and started talking about prototyping. as we were all rookies to design (me included; my previous team hadn't really included the 'freshman' in the design process), it took us a while to come up with ideas. ethan had already come prepared with a pretty complicated design, made up of conveyor belts and lots of wheels. he talked about that with us a little bit, before i came up with my stellar idea of an elevator system. it was pretty thought out for a spur-of-the-moment idea.

eventually, our lead, siobhan, showed up, so we worked with her for our ideas too. nearing the second half of our meeting, we decided to split up into groups to build our prototypes. both abdul, ethan, and siobhan somehow ended up fighting over who was going to pair with me to build the prototype. i wanted to work on my own idea of the elevator, and since ethan had come up with the other idea, it was only natural that he should work on it. now the trick was getting siobhan and abdul to split up between us two to work on the prototypes.

however, being the eternal compromiser that i am, i ended up working with ethan on his prototype, which ended up using corrugated plastic signboard, pins, lots of hot glue and tape, as well as bunches of cardboard, while abdul and siobhan's model of my design (let me remind you) was made almost entirely out of cardboard with neat green strands of yarn. so overall, quite a productive meeting, though i would've rather worked on my own idea....

side note: ethan is quite confusing. he makes jokes but then goes back to lurking in corners. i think the closest i've been to him since this season began and he joined the team was when we were stabbing pins into cardboard. he's a strange person, and i know i'm strange too, but he somehow really takes the cake. he's a mixture of shy yet bold, funny yet serious.

well now that we have the prototypes made, we have to decide on one, and come up with the specific design so that we can build it to put on the robot. since we don't have dues for the members, we're kind of limited in terms of funds, so we don't really want to spend unnecessary money on extra aluminum that would end up getting wasted. no, i don't mean that it would get really really drunk.

i can't wait until the next meeting, where mr. talbot will give us the yay or nay on our prototypes, and we can get to the actual building. that's what i came here. that and the food.

food always scores a win in convincing me of something's goodness. guys, that's a tip for you. food, good food, and lots of it; that's a pretty sure way to a girl's heart. at least, a girl like me. but then again, i'm pretty unique *hair flip*

*cringes when i hit a vase with my hair and knock it to the floor*

um, no one saw that...

*clears throat*

this season on a rookie team thus far has been really interesting. the team dynamic, the shop, the functionality almost, everything basically, is really different from my team last year. i love some aspects, but some other aspects are rather frustrating. oh well, my hopes are high.

i'm expecting to beat the boss both at states and at worlds. why not aim high? at least i'll fall among the stars and suffocate to death in the oxygen lacking space