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Iiiiiiin the jungle, the miiiighty jungle, the Zazu sleeps toniiiiight.

Posted by Anna on March 14, 2010

Yawwwwn. Good morning.

Naturally everyone is tired after the events of yesterday. Despite the fact that we didn't make the elimination rounds, we still managed to make good progress with Zazu, and now we're much more prepared for the Minnesota regional in two weeks! There's still a few technical issues we need to work out, but other than that with strategy and everything we are now quite ready for the next competition.

One thing that really does concern me is that number of problems that arose during the elimination matches. A few teams ended up dropping out because their robots suddenly stopped working (which I don't recall ever happening in previous years), and in the final match, which is supposed to be epic, three of the six robots didn't even move at all for reasons unknown. Naturally this is troubling, and I doubt that it's the team's fault for the robots not working. So I desperately hope FIRST can fix whatever it is that's happening before next week's regional.

Interestingly, we were actually relatively close to competing in the elimination matches. This is the first time (that I've heard of anyway) that there was an actual need for alternate robots, and apparently two of the alternate robots got substituted into the field after teams dropped out. 1816 was next in line should another robot stop working, so we kind of had a chance at competing in a round in the elimination matches. That may have been more trouble than it would have been worth though, since we had already crated up the bot. The level of pandemonium in the pits was quite amusing actually, since we were busy packing, then were told that we were an alternate and needed to have the robot ready to compete, so we started to unpack, then decided that we probably wouldn't be called in and started repacking, then found out that we were very next in line to be called in as an alternate and had to then re-unpack, then a robot had problems on the field and we had to re-unpack more. But they ended up not needing Zazu in the end. At least it was good exercise.

Speaking of crating the robot, the robot crate is a surprisingly comfortable place to sleep. It's all cushiony and has that delicate aroma of wood mixed with styrofoam with a hint of batteries. And we can fit like five people there (six if they're little). Maybe since airplane tickets are so expensive these days...

No one ever asked for a flux capacitor at the pit admins. That was disappointing. Maybe in Minnesota.

We watched The Lion King on the bus ride home. I still don't get why we named our robot after a squawking bird. Zufasa would've been a much cooler name. Eh. Too late now.

Now, on to the next regional! After catching up on schoolwork that is.

Anna