Here, you can read through the personal recollections and observations of team members from the past two seasons concerning all sorts of topics that FIRST teams may see themselves confronting in the coming years.
From Carl Agnew, advisor to the Tech subteam of Westside Boiler Invasion:
That year there was an advisor on the team named Kevin Bourke. He was a good guy who knew his robots. He also was a big practical joker and got in trouble more than an advisor should. After the competitions were over that year, the team spent the last day in the MGM Studios park. FIRST had given out FIRST branded disposable cameras to everyone on the first day and most of us still had them then. By that time, most of the team had finished up all of their pictures. Now, when you get these things developed, you are really supposed to turn in the entire camera. Unfortunately, some of us were not satisfied by just carrying our used-up cameras around with us. So, many of us started breaking them open and removing the film. At this point you had a camera mechanism that one could do whatever they wanted with. For the most part, the most interesting thing anyone could think to do was activate the flash at will. That is until Kevin thought of the ultimate plan. He took his broken apart camera and lightly press-fit it back together. Here is the money maker. He then walked up to a boy whose mother was nearby but not paying attention. Kevin asked him if he would take a picture of the group for us. So he proceeded to give him the camera and “accidentally” dropped it during the handoff. It of course fell to the ground and broke open. Kevin then proceeded to pretend to be very upset about the broken camera. Of course the kid was horrified that he had dropped and broken our camera, especially in front of all these college students and highschoolers. We had a jolly good time repeating this stunt on many patrons throughout the park. After a while it became difficult to pretend to be shocked that our camera had been totally wiped out by other park goers’ clumsiness. Speaking of shocked, that reminds me: those cameras had capacitors, too.
For those of you not familiar with the attractions at Epcot Center, there is a building called Coca-Cola’s Ice Station. The entrance to this place is a wintry tunnel where it is constantly snowing and when you get to the end there is a little Coke gift shop. The best part is that there are a bunch of soda fountains where you can taste Coke products from around the world. You just pick up a little cup and enjoy Coke from many different countries. The liquid dispensing is timed so that just enough soda comes out to fill your miniature cup. Also, you can do this as much as you want for free. Most of the team went through the tunnel as a group and spent a few minutes drinking Coke we had never tasted before. Most of the soda on tap tasted pretty good, but unfortunately, a few of the flavors were not so fantastic. The most notable example is the Coke from Italy. It was beyond tasting bad. It was downright undrinkable. It had a very strong bitter taste that was difficult to tolerate. This was a sentiment that was shared by the entire group and everyone around us (including the employees). Soon it was wondered by all: who could drink the most “shots” of this stuff? The portions were probably a little bigger than shot glasses but were still manageable in a couple big gulps. So we all started doing shots of Italian Coke and kept track of our score. Most of us decided that eight to ten of these things were all we were willing to do. There was one freshman by the name of Josh H. who was not willing to give up that easily. We all cheered Josh on while he downed cup after cup of the awful Coke from Italy. In the end, Josh gulped through twenty-one cups of the stuff. Twenty-one cups of this monstrosity of a beverage to me is just incomprehensible. Needless to say, Josh got sick and had an upset stomach the rest of the afternoon for the closing ceremonies and afterparty. Kudos to you, Josh!
From Richard Chen, IT advisor:
Earlier this build season, I was at the high school working with the tech team on programming. In the shop, during a lull in the activity, a student had brought in snow and was shoving it down people’s shirts. A couple of snowballs were then tossed at the offender. Then, without warning, somebody screamed “Snowball fight!” At that point, about half of us ran outside and started pelting each other with snowballs. A number of people managed to hit me, and one chose to put snow down my shirt. It was a rather good snowball fight, and we used all sorts of things for cover, including students’ cars that were parked out back. After about five minutes or so, we ended our impromptu snowball fight and then got back to the work of building the robot, having gotten a nice break from the work.