Beautiful beach day for the memory book

Poolside Party Pictures

Zombies from the deep

Chinese food restaurant delivers!

Filling, if not gourmet

Waiting for the food allowed a long time for swimming.

The attitude is gratitude

It is easy to get discouraged when things don't go as you think they should. If any of  you watched the streamed matches, you would have seen evidence that robots don't always do what you want. We saw our robots get stuck on sacks, spontaneously lose power to the arm in the middle of a match, and even spin in circles without any input from the controllers. Thankfully there is more to this experience than winning. You win some, you lose some. The important thing is how you play the game, right?  Try telling that to a very competitive middle schooler. Sure, it is a heck of a lot more fun to win. Our challenge is to teach them how to lose graciously. Do you get stuck in the blame game or do you focus on identifying and solving the problems you can fix? Do you give up trying to fix what you think is wrong or do you bounce back and do your best in each moment? Obviously, we want our kids to learn resilience and perseverance, so we give them opportunities like the World Championships to practice these qualities.

And what a world event this is! This is truly the Olympics of robotics. We witnessed more than 700 teams from 24 countries parade across the stage of the Super Dome yesterday morning and not one American team won either middle school division. We have quite a lot of work to do to play a role on this large of a world stage. So top of the agenda at last night's team meeting was to check the team members' attitudes and make sure they considered all the had to be grateful for. Are they grateful for this opportunity to see the best VEX robots in the world? Are they grateful that they have beds, food, and a hotel pool? Are they grateful for each others' camaraderie and for our supervision? All of that was expressed. An attitude of gratitude? You bet! 

Second on the agenda was safety. After two days of allowing a freedom of movement within the confines of the convention center, we are back in buddy system mode where we move and make decisions as a pack. And Doug and I are alpha wolves, without question. Tomorrow the team will travel to Newport Beach, taking public transit, so that we can all dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean. 

Troubleshooting

Nothing ever goes as you expect it to go. Looking at the results of a match or even seeing the match streamed live on robotevents.com doesn't show what goes on when the robot comes back to the pit. So much rebuilding. So much reprogramming. So much redesigning. So much negotiating. So what if they aren't so good at cleaning up after themselves? You can't have everything!

Why we're here

We arrived at the Convention Center this morning (Thursday) ready to go. Our booth was decorated, our robots were ready, our scouting notebooks were all set up, and the match schedule was published.

The scouts headed right out as soon as they could, and after some minor adjustments to the programming, both robots headed to the practice fields and the skills challenges. We prefer an empty booth because it means that everyone is doing what they came here to do.

Scouts learn how to be good listeners and critical thinkers. Drivers and coaches sell their wares to other scouts.

Food Photos

Drinking coconut milk from a real coconut

Rootbeer Floats!

Money Management 101

Food. It's an interesting study to see the variety of ways that middle schoolers meet their need for that most basic stuff of life. Team members are given their food allowance for two days at a time--that is $60.00 for six meals. We discovered early on that the hotel's all-you-can eat buffet for $9.50 (hot eggs, meat, waffles) or $5.50 (cold cereal, fruit, muffins, hard-boiled eggs) is actually a good deal. After stuffing themselves yesterday, some were disinclined to buy anything at Target that might serve as their less expensive breakfast or lunch alternatives to the Convention Center Food Court food. Others, the sensible ones, aka the girls, pooled their funds and bought fruit, soup, and hot pockets at Target to cover the midday meals for the rest of the week. And then there were the few who thought snacks and Gatorade might be fun.

Walking back from the hotel after the midday break today with Griffin, I asked him what he ate for lunch and his response was, "Some pizza bagels and yogurt." He then commented that he wished he had bought more fresh fruit and vegetables at Target, but had made up for that lack by doing 100 push-ups, 30 push-ups, and a 1-minute plank. We all know that nutrition works like that.:)

Dinners have been our together time. Tuesday evening featured excellent Vietnamese food where we discovered fresh coconut milk right from the coconut. Wednesday was pizza and other Italian food delivered to the hotel. So far, no one has gone hungry from lack of money and they seem to be happy with their choices. Parents, you have done a fine job of creating adventurous and responsible eaters and it is a pleasure breaking bread with them. Right now, I have the scouts scouting our dinner options for tonight. They've got skills!

Follow the proceedings online

Sunny Anaheim, CA is host to the VEX World Championships. The excitement is building.

As promised, here is the link to follow the results of our matches online. Click here, then follow 902C in the Opportunity Division and 902D in the Spirit Division.

Arrival and Settling In

Sorry everyone for the delay in getting this blog up and running. The days have been full and the blog I wrote this morning describing the play by play of our journey to Anaheim disappeared in a flash when I tried to upload a photo. This is attempt number two, which will be posted sans photo. 

Right now the majority of the team members are playing in the hotel pool after a long day, which began at 8:00 with a shopping trip to Target for food and booth decorations, then proceeded until 6:00 setting up the booth at the Anaheim Convention Center. The robots were unpacked from their busted boxes yesterday and prepared for their journey from the hotel to the Convention Center. Both robots seem to be working, though tweaks to the programming and hydraulic systems were in order today and will probably continue throughout the competition. We beat the long lines for the inspection tables by being ready early and though the practice fields were filling up early, both teams took the opportunity to take the robots for a spin. Tomorrow morning we will be arriving at the Convention Center early so that both robots can get in at least one Skills Challenge Round before the Practice Rounds begin at 11:00.

Scouting has also begun in earnest. The scouting teams set up their notebooks yesterday after the divisions were posted online. I will include a link in my next post along with a picture or two. There are 160 Middle School teams altogether and our teams are split between the two divisions. Team 902C is in the Opportunity Division and 902D is in the Spirit Division. You can follow the results of their matches by going to robotevents.com. There are 10 matches in the preliminary round for each team, so the scouts need to gather data on 30 teams right away, ten alliance partners and twenty opposing teams. The scouts' mission is twofold: gather information on the 80 other teams in the division and sell our robots to those 80 teams in case any of those other teams is in a position of choosing a 902 team for an alliance partner in the Championship Rounds.

Everyone seems in good spirits. Hopefully this swim will help them all relax enough to get some shut eye before the real games begin tomorrow.