My Weekend

Many of you know by now that this past weekend was the FIRST Robotics Competition at the Verizon Center in Manchester. Many of you also know that my team did very well at the tournement. How well? Granite State Regional Robotics Champions well! Yes, Mechanical Mayhem Team 1519 was a crucial componenant of the Regional Champions Alliance. After the qualifying rounds the team was in 8th place out of 52 teams at the regional. out of the 9 rounds we were in we won 5, tied 2, and lost 2. In the finals our alliance went undefeated. Needless to say we were all very happy about this. Throw in the fact that this qualifies us to go to the Championship in Atlanta this year and that makes us really happy. At this point I think it is pretty much decided that the team wants to go, and the only thing stopping us is raising the money to go.

In addition to winning the robotics competition, I also wasspoiled enough to be given a $3,000 production quality video camera and a $2,000 Digital SLR still camera to use over the course of the day. For some this means nothing, but for me it meant alot. Many people either don't realize or don't care that the higher end equipment really does make it easier to get good photos/videos.

Here are a couple of photos I took at the tournement (I don't have many of the photos yet since they were taken on other people's camera's. Once I get them I will probably publish a gallery on my blog):

Ben, making a quick adjustment to the shooter.

Ken tuning the drive shaft during the finals.