Ho-Hum

Well, I don't really have much to say today.  Things have been chugging along.  The robot is "bagged and tagged" until next week when we are allowed to work on it for 8 hours before the competition next weekend.  The driver tryouts were interesting.  Some kinds were "naturals" at driving it.   Within the space of 5 minutes you could literally see them increasing on the learning curve.  Others were not naturals - one kid almost tipped it over within the first 15 seconds of driving it.  After all the kids had tried out (one practice run through the obstacle course, then one timed run), us mentors/judges went into a room and did a calibration.  It was almost like an interview calibration at work.  First we looked at the data on their timed runs, and from there we picked the top five.  Then we went through a discussion of ability to handle stress, communication skills, dedication to the team and practice, maturity, etc.  We eventually narrowed it down to three.

I played racquetball this evening and got beat all three games.  I gave another 3-hour training session to other engineers in my group today (the last 3 hours are next week).  Work is getting to be very busy, partially because I haven't been working as many hours (over the required forty hours) because I've been leaving at a decent time to go to robotics.  That's all I've got today really.  Nothing exciting, just some ordinary days in life.