Current
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2/12/12
As a reminder, build sessions this week with be Monday, Wednesday (not Tuesday because of Valentine's Day), Thursday and Saturday. These are the last sessions before open house on Monday the 20th. We need to FINISH the mechanical portion Monday so we have time for controls to work and also make adjustments to the robot as we drive, shoot, balance, etc. See you tomorrow. ~Mr. Eisman
2/9/12
Wow! Quite a busy night! Team Combustion was able to help two area teams tonight as they struggled to get their robots working as well as keep some forward progress on our own robot. We didn't make quite as much progress as we would have liked, but in the spirit of gracious professionalism, we helped two teams get closer to their goal. Nice job to everyone who helped out. We made some progress on our bumpers, got power to our wheels, and continued making progress on our challenge pieces. The animation team is also close to rendering their animation. This Saturday's build session is extremely important. We will build from 9 am until 5 pm. We will also try to send a few people to Gulfport to participate in their strategy session in the afternoon. Hopefully all mentors and students (especially captains) working the critical components of the robot can attend the majority of Saturday's session. On Saturday we will also discuss the potential for adding build sessions if we determine we are behind, discuss and prepare for the open house, and discuss the possibility of shifting Tuesday's build session to Wednesday due to Valentine's Day, and several other key issues. All important items that need your input, so please be prompt on Saturday. Keep working hard.....and smart..... ~Mr. Eisman
2/6/12
Dear team parents, We are still looking for parent volunteers to serve lunch on February 18. Please let me know if you can help. Many thanks to those who have stepped up already to feed the hungry students and mentors during the past several weeks. Your contribution has been much appreciated: Ms. Joyce, Ms. Hallal, Ms. Petras, Ms. Bramley, Ms. Saucier and Ms. Lew. Also, thanks to Ms. Bearden and Mr. Christopher who will be volunteering this weekend (February 11). ~Mrs. Furukawa
2/5/12
Congrats to all who supported Team Combustion yesterday. Not only did we successfully support the parade with a huge number of students and mentors, we also made significant progress on Thermite. A quick look at the calendar shows that stop build day is TWO WEEKS from Tuesday, so we need everyone to find the inner strength to push themselves. We really need the robot complete by the end of next week so we have a week to practice. Also, the open house is the day before stop build day, and we need to be ready for that. Mentors and students...please try to commit to being at the build sessions this week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. We are looking into the possibility of adding some build sessions in the next two weeks, but so far no final decision on that. The next two weeks are going to be challenging, but I know that Team Combustion will rise to the occasion. See you Monday! ~Mr. Eisman
2/5/12
Dear Igniters, Thanks to everyone who attended the parade today because I know the SWCC truly appreciates it. Are y'all sore?! Anyways, we had a wonderful attendance with Leah, Aretha, Devin, Preston, Alex, Daniel, Sabrina, Danny, Madeleine, Shelby, David, Kyle, Logan, Amalin, Joey, Chaz, Mitch, Sam, Rachel, Hannah, Scott, Nick Hallal. And of course, lots of thanks to our mentors and parents Ms. Wendy, Ms. Shahnaz, Mr. Kent, Ms. Gentile, Ms. Bearden and Mr. Allen (who was nice enough to drive the truck.) Speaking of the truck, if you didn't already know, it was borrowed from SWCC so thanks to them. While walking alongside the trailer, I heard just about every person who saw it comment on its beauty. Many people just stared at our robot in awe and some came up and asked questions. The greatest feeling was when people remembered us from a previous event. One lady said her son was on the team a couple of years ago and was amazed to see our growth. After seeing all of Slidell, I'm pretty sure we made a significant impression on our community. Also thanks to the people that stayed at the build space to make great progress on Thermite. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend and once again, thanks to all. ~Raya
2/3/12
Ladies and Gentlemen, A friendly reminder, we start at 9AM on Saturday at Qinetiq. We will transport those people who volunteered for the parade over to Salmen from Qinetiq. If you are not assisting with the parade, we need people working on the robot with Dr. Dale as well. I know 3 students who will be helping there, but we could use more. See you Saturday morning ~Mr. Kent
2/3/12
Mazel tov to the media team, Shelby, Leah, and Madeline, on a great first video. Excellent work!! Everyone go watch. If you don't know where to go, go to the website, and under the menu bar is a link to our youtube page ~Mrs. Holladay
2/3/12
Students, Many have registered, some have registered but their parents have not completed the registration. That needs to be done thru whatever email you gave for your parents. Mentors, Many have registered, some have not. Whoever has not completed theirs, will want to complete this, it was to be done every year. ~Mrs. Holladay
1/30/12
Hey everyone, This Saturday, Feb 4, is the parade for the Slidell Women's Civic Club. I have 22 people signed up so far. We still need about 5 more people to walk with our truck and carry our banner. Please sign up! And like Mrs. Wendy said at the last Saturday build session, if you are an officer and not on this list, shame on you >:( Also, we need 11 parents/mentors to walk with us in the parade. So far we have 3 mentors signed up. Please talk to your parents so we can fill up those last 8 spots! Email me ASAP (and that does not mean Friday night) so that we will be ready for Saturday. ~Hannah
1/29/12
We had a good build session yesterday. I know everyone was tired by the end of the day. I definitely was! The chassis has wheels and motors mounted. Transmissions and chains are Monday/Tuesday. The control board is painted and ready for drilling on Monday. We fired the shooter again with the arms milled by Mr. John, including making a 3 pt basket. Strategy played the simulation game to help us make some decisions regarding controllers. We will be using joysticks to drive Thermite (tank drive). For those of you who weren't there on Thursday, animation presented their storyboard and are proceeding well. Good overall progress, we even had Dr. Dale smiling as he left!! One point, we still need more mentors and parents to assist us with the parade on Saturday. I believe we have 3 or 4 signed up right now. T-shirts/Caps - You should have signed up with Hannah for how many/size you want. If you have not and want one, please see Hannah. 2012 T-shirt Design - Jen has completed a design for the t-shirt. We will have it for everyone to see on Monday. PFC Kevin Trimble - The Bayou Regional has posted a link on their website regarding donations for him. His story is at http://www.bayouregional.info/donate.asp. Aretha brought this up on Saturday regarding a donation. Please talk with Aretha regarding this. Hours - Devin will have the summation of build hours on Monday. This will give everyone a chance to see where they stand with respect to accomplishing the required hours. Website - If people have free time, please peruse the team website. If you find any broken links or problems, please pass the information to Rachel so we can get them fixed. Kinect Manual - FIRST has asked for Rachel's kinect manual to be placed on FIRST Forums. This is a big deal - everyone else is now looking at YOUR team for how to make this work. Remember to thank the parents who bring lunch on Saturdays! Cooking for 20-40 is not easy or fun. Thank you! to Ms. Shahnaz and Raya for opening their home and hosting breakfast, Ms. Gentile for helping cooking, and Ms. Mei for serving and most importantly clean-up. Make sure you have read Raya's e-mail concerning OP Grad and credit for hours. If anyone has any comments, questions, or concerns, please let me know! See you tomorrow ~Mr. Kent
1/25/12
Hey team, Don't forget to come to my house for breakfast Saturday morning. Our house will open at 7:30 am until 9 am. Remember, however, that this breakfast is to encourage everyone to bring items for PROJECT GRATITUDE. You can bring beanie babies, webkinz toys, toothbrushes, toothpaste, cards or just money so I can go purchase items. As I stated before, we cannot do much Outreach during the build season it if y'all brought items too :) Apart from that, our breakfast can hopefully power us through an efficient build session! ~Raya
1/25/12
Good progress last night. Chassis frame for this year's robot is being constructed, controls continues it work on the camera among other tasks, animation is making progress on their video. An important milestone was reached last night as the preliminary design review (PDR) was completed. After a lengthy discussion on Saturday and a bit more yesterday, the group consensus was to go with a single wheel shooter, the switchback transport system and a single sweeper. Now the task at hand is to CAD that design and build the robot in the next four weeks. We are slightly behind our schedule, so it is incumbent on everyone to continue to make progress each and every build session. As a side note, I will be out of town until the 4th of February. I look forward to seeing significant progress on the robot upon my return! ~Mr. Eisman
1/23/12
Aretha and her team are doing an amazing job with chairman's. We want to make sure we are keeping up with our alumni. Does anyone know of past team member's mentoring other teams or participating in FIRST in any way? We have two, but I feel sure more are out there. Please let us know. thanks ~Mrs. Holladay
1/22/12
The mentors are in the process of selecting two students from this year's team as our nominees for the Dean's List award. The award TYPICALLY goes to a junior, but does not necessarily have to be a junior on the team. If you are interested in being nominated, please write up a short (one to two paragraph) summary of why you think you should be nominated. Content should center on both build season and the off-season activities. Send your summary NOT to the entire team but to me personally (eisman82@hotmail.com) by Friday, January 27th. Thanks ~Mr. Eisman
1/18/12
Good build session last night. Thursday's build is from 5:30-9, with several students out for Beta convention. The following build will be on Saturday starting at 9 am. Lunch will be provided. This will be a CRITICAL session as we hope to hold the preliminary design review and begin construction of this year's robot. See you soon..... ~Mr. Eisman
1/17/12
I am sitting in third hour and Dr. Peterson just came in to talk to me. I must admit he came from no where (ninja!) and scared us all a little bit. He asked how Jumpstart went. I told him how many people where there and how much it meant to us, as well as the FIRST community, to be able hold such a large and important event. Hopefully our success will allow us to continue holding Jumpstart at the high school.
1/16/12
Thanks to the team for letting me sell lunch at our successful Jump Start build. We made about 70 bucks so if the team wants their 10 percent I would appreciate it if our treasurer would contact me. p.s. I'm bringing the leftovers to building tonight. :) ~Raya
1/15/12
Thanks to everyone who made Jump Start yesterday a great success! The teams from all over the Gulf Coast definitely benefitted from the experience. To all the students and mentors who spent many hours before and during the event....thanks! We also made some good progress for our own build as we start to focus on how we will compete in this year's game. Next build session is Monday at 5:30....see you there!! ~Mr. Eisman
1/14/12
Chairman's (writing) is down to essay character cuts and theme maintenance, as well as two more short answers. So, in case any(underclassmen)one is interested in exploring the balance between accomplishment- rattling and poetic waxing, the next and nearly almost last Chairman's session will be scheduled at my house for Sunday (that's tomorrow!) at the somewhat inconvenient time of 7pm. On the bright side, this awkward timing forces you to eat an early dinner, supposedly leading to a faster metabolism. Thanks to Alex, Raya, Rachel/Sam, and this could be you! for various contributions last session. ~Aretha
1/13/12
After three build sessions :
Jumpstart A: Zach and Sam will need help setting up and taking down the field elements. They need
to be set up before we start and we will take down the goals at about 1pm to return them to Qinetiq.
B: Team member need to bring team hand tools to NHS for their own use. C: Bring safety glasses for all
to use. D: Jumpstart begins for some of us at 7 for the rest 7:30. Build session is 9-till football.
Admin: 1.Two ladies (Carol and another) came to talk to the team about the Krewe of Slidellian
Parade Saturday Feb. 4. We will need to provide approximately 22 students and about 4 mentors, report
to Salmen at 11:15, finish about 4. The robot should be riding on a truck, not mine. 2. Trailer artwork
is being produced today 3.Students are needed to sent email invitations to all for Open House and Bayou
4.Kickoff newsletter needs to get out 5.Chairman- Essay and 5 of 7 questions are in first draft. The
committee will meet Sunday and Monday during the day. Shelby is making great progress on the video.
6.Work continues on team desktop computers updating to Windows 7. 7.Build session Monday 5:30-9pm
8.Our Kinect video has hit 3529 views
Teams: 1. Animation challenge released 2.Controls - all hardware in KOPs checked out, sonar sensor
checked out nicely, and Labview install in one of the team desktops in progress. 3.Challenge - balls were
shot from blue steel, several designs in progress via Autodesk for gun, either belt or pneumatically
driven. 4.Chassis - team discussion about design decision to drive over the bump or use the ramp. Even
with 8" wheels no existing robots chassis can be tested with the bump. A three wheel rig was fabricated.
Pros and cons were brought forward. Team needs to make decision early next week. Regardless of decision,
the robot will get on the ramp for the end game and have a mechanism to lower the ramp.
Chief Delphi Note: all should update their Chief Delphi profile to include the team logo as part
of their signature. To do this 1.Go to the team website and right click on the logo on the upper right
hand corner and select 'save image as' and put it on your system where you can find it. 2.Logon to Chief
Delphi and go to user cp on the orange menu bar 3.Go to Edit Avatar on left hand side menu bar 4.You want
a custom Avatar, select Option 2 - Upload from your computer And now our team logo will show up with your
post. Lets continue to get our name and logo out there ~Mrs. Holladay
1/11/12
Just spoke to Curtis, he is bringing the power tools and his trailer, so all the cutting, etc will be outside. We will need to get power setup and run, etc. We will need to get the game pieces to Norhtshore He is arriving at 7 so some of us need to be there to let him in and get setup. He has concerns about finishing by kickoff, we need to be aggressive getting teams going. ~Mrs. Holladay
1/9/12
Hello everyone, As the build season becomes more stressful by the day, we must remember about all of our Outreach...and Mardi Gras is right around the corner, which means PARADES! The SWCC loves us so much, they requested us to march in their parade again to carry their banners. Therefore, we need to act fast and figure out if we even want to do it. The parade is February 11th or 12th. Anyways, if we are interested, Ms. Carol Wolfram needs to come in and talk to us for a quick rundown so we need to figure out a good date for that. Also, keep collecting your hotel shampoo, conditioners, and soaps. Keep Building! ~Raya
1/9/12
due to ms. tiff's amazing negotiating skills she has gotten dr. p to let us have jumpstart at nhs. we have to be done by about 2-2:30. we are starting at 8. we will need several from our team helping teams, especially in the beginning, if we are going to finish by dr. p and football deadline (that one maybe the more important one). we will be bringing teams who want to see our build space to qinetiq during the day. while this will allow us to continue our work, we really need team support at the school. thank you ms. tiffany!! ~Mrs. Holladay
1/8/12
All, I was approached by a fellow president(Megan Boyanton) of a NHS service club (she runs Interact, I run Beta) and we are planning to have a lot of the Northshore Clubs help out with a project. The organization is called Operation Gratitude ( http://www.operationgratitude.com/individuals-and-organizations/ ) and it send care packages to soldiers overseas. NHS will be focusing on three areas: writing thank you cards to soldiers, sending toothbrushes and toothpaste for the service men and women and send beanie babies and similar dolls for soldiers to give out to the children in the area that they are serving. We want to gather everything ship it out mid-February. I volunteered the Robotics Team to help out because even though I am president of the largest service organization at the school I must honestly admit that the Robotics Team is the most effective service organization at out high school. She wanted to come explain a little bit more and talk to us so I invited her to our Tuesday build session. She will drop by around six pm (during our intro meeting) to give a bit more details. This is not that hard of an activity to do but it would really mean a lot. Everyone agree/cool with that/rad on?
1/8/12
Hello Team 1912 Parents: (STUDENTS - please forward this email to your parents. Thank you.)NHS Team Combustion needs your help. Please step up to volunteer to provide a lunch at one of their Saturday build sessions (list below) for 40 people (students and mentors). Please email or call me as soon as you can (contact info below) to let me know which Saturday you are available to provide and serve lunch. The students and mentors are starting another very intense build season. On Saturdays, they work all day at Qinetiq. They use the quick lunch break to conduct business meetings and go over safety. Interactions between different working groups happen during the lunch break as well. Typically, each Saturday lunch is provided by two (or more) volunteer families. If you want to talk to another family and volunteer together, that's great. Thank you. If you didn't talk to others, please step up anyway. I can match you with another family to go in with. It is strictly a working lunch (and not a buffet party) so no need to go lavish or provide too much. You are asked to also provide necessary paper products and water (not sodas) for 40 people. Being a lunch volunteer is a great way to: (1) get involved in the team which is benefiting your child in so many different ways; and (2) have a chance to peek into their working space and see your child's and his/her friends' achievements for yourself. Thank you for stepping up for the Team! Please call or email me (info below) with any question you may have. 2012 Build Dates: January 14, January 21, January 28, February 4, February 11, February 18. ~Mrs. Furukawa
