My Trip to Portland approaches

Yes, I am again going to Portland for a robotics competition, again at Rose Quarter.

I just need two more teachers to sign my permission form, then I am leaving on Wednesday, after school.

I’m driving down with other robotics club students, and we’ll make the drive fun.

There will be more when I get down there.

EDIT: All my teachers have signed my permission form, so I’m good to go!

FRC Build Season is closing soon

The date for FIRST Robotics Competition teams to ship off their robots is drawing nearer. I’m in the Tahoma Robotics Club, and I am getting to see our robot come together. We hope that our robot will do very well at the Portland and Seattle Regionals, taking us to the National Competitions at Atlanta.

The Build Season started on January 9th, with the season kickoff. On that day, FIRST announces the game robots are to play in competition that season. After the announcement of the game, our club went back to our school to think of strategies to play the game this year. We get 6 weeks to design and build the robot from scratch.

Our team has a fairly long way to go, and only 8 days to get there. I’m feeling that we’re going to finish just barely ahead of time, and we’ll do very well at competitions.

My first mac

I read a story about Carl Nygren’s first iMac. It inspired me to right a story about how I encountered Macs.

At Cedar River Montessori School, there where some Macs from the Classic era. They had SimCity, and that was what they were used for. That was a very long time ago, about early 2000s. They ended being stored in a barn, where I would never see them again….

Fast-forward to December 25, 2007. That was the day I got my Mac Mini. I love it. It runs programs waaaaay faster than my Crapsta laptop.

It has died once and recently came back to life. Now you’ve been SERV’D! by it. (or him. Yes, it is a him, technically speaking. see here. It’s related because the mac is on irc.mozilla.org in #oksw, #mac, #bots, #classicrock, #shoutcast, and #astronomy as okswbot.)

But now this mac is your master.