Hey all,

Greetings from Florida! Yeah, it's costing me somethin' but I just wanted to tell you how were were doing and that we all made it safely.

Day 1: Wednesday

Ugh, 4:15 am is too early to wake up! Heh, actually everybody except Ronny and myself made it on time. Talk about punctuality... Drove to Oakland airport, and boarded the plane that left 6:12 am. After a stuffed and crampy 2 hour flight, we landed in Denver. Most of us were tired and sleepy and Steve felt kinda sick, but we were doin' okay. Transfer flight arrived in Orlando around 2:15ish. It's SO hot and humid here! It's hard to get around without air conditioning. There was a chartered bus waiting for us. It was MUCH more comfortable compared to the cramped airplanes with unappetizing food. The surrounding scenery is different here too. It's not like SFO where it's all crowded, busy, and urbanized, there are no big office buildings or crowded people around the airport. In fact, there are trees all over, and it's all very serene. The bus took us through Disneyworld until it reached our hotel, the Carribean Beach Resort. We're in rooms of three or four except for Andrea who got a room with one of the Monta Vista teachers. Disneyworld is so huge! Even if we spent a week here, I don't think we'd be able to see everything. Unfortunately, we weren't able to pick up the robot once we got here, so we didn't get to work on it. So we spent today getting oriented. We have a hectic schedule for those of you that think we're just having fun. Breakfast is at 6:00 am, shuttle leaves for the arena at 7:00 and we're there 'til 9 pm. We did spend the evening today in the pool though. Yeah, so we'll be working tomorrow trying to get the robot to do everything correctly. I'll keep you guys posted.

Eric

Day 2: Thursday

Greetings again from Florida! It's too HOT here! Heh, we spent all day today working on the robot. Woke up late 7:30 (me at least..) and ate breakfast at the food court. (Bacon, sausage, eggs, mashed potatoes, fruit, and sprite) Took the last 9:00 shuttle to the arena area, right in front of the large Epcot sphere. We picked up our crate today and unpacked. Each of us gets a booth and there are about 200 teams. We have some crazy competition, but they were built by the engineers so they can't say they have a 100% student built bot! Yeah! We got 3 practice rounds about 2 hours apart, so we worked like mad to get something else on the robot working each time. So now we have a working robot, except the lift doesn't go all the way up yet. We'll work on that tomorrow. Heh, it was 'bout 80 to 90 degrees and the AC at the arena kept shutting off...ugh.. So I hear it's raining over there? I was in shorts and a t-shirt and still sweated like a pig.. =( Then at 7:30 we left for dinner and explored around Pleasure Island...fun, interesting, but too expensive! ($2.50 for bottled water) We also took a boat trip around one of the lakes and walked around Disney Mainstreet for couple mins. We finally got in around 11:30 and settled in. And now it's 1:15 and I think everybody's in bed except our room. (Francis and Billy are getting upset and yelling at me to go to bed..)

Tomorrow's schedule:

• 7:00 breakfast
• 8:00 go to arena
• 3 or 4 seeding matches against other robots
• 7:30 leave for dinner
• 12:00 go to bed

Busy huh? G'nite you guys!

Eric

Day 3: Friday

Woke up late today...we skipped breakfast and went directly to the arena to work on the robot. We had seeding rounds today that determines the order we go on for the elimination rounds. So we spent the entire day at the pits until they closed at 6:30 pm. The weather was hot and humid as usual. We also sweat like crazy, as usual. We made a couple modifications to the robot today. About 5:00, we decided to re-do the entire lift design, so we took it all apart and sent it into the machine shop to get it lightened. We didn't get to finish stringing the lift back up but everything else worked fine. We had a pretty good day. We got 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, and 1st on the seeding rounds. YEP, we got 1st on one one of them. Can you believe it? Heh, we were happy after that.. =) We did have some problems, like the pneumatic pump kept blowing a fuse on the receiver board, but a replacement pump fixed that problem. We also added another motor to independently control the last segment of the lift and changed the lift pulley system so it goes up all the way now. After the pits closed at 6:30 we all went to the EPCOT center. We went in that huge central sphere thing, Spaceship Earth, and then wandered around the entire place. There was also a spectacular fireworks/laser light show overlooking the lake. Unfortunately by the time we got back to the entrance, all the restaurants were closed and we went back to the hotel without dinner. Luckily, the local food courts at our hotel opened 'til 11:30 so we ate a late dinner today. After dinner, I was so tired, I took a shower and went to bed, so I donno if anybody stayed up late.

Eric

Day 4: Saturday

Today was finals! I woke up early and washed all our Themis t-shirts with Andrea. Everyone else got up early and went over to the pits. We ended up seeded 94th out of 166 teams or somethin' like that, so we didn't do too bad yesterday. Unfortunately, it turned out we were the 2nd match of the day but we didn't finish up last night, so we had to compete without a completely functional robot. Of course, I was still doing the laundry during this time, so I didn't know until later... by then everybody was angry at me for some reason... =( Since the matches were double elimination, we had to win the next match to go on. We finally got everything working, but we had some bad luck and we didn't get all the baskets we needed. So we were eliminated from the competition. We were kinda disappointed, but it was okay. We've gotten this far! Since we were eliminated by 12:30, we had 3 hours to waste until the finals. I went back to the hotel and rested while some went to the Magic Kingdom. Finals were interesting, but they went by fast. The award ceremony started at 6:30. Unfortunately again, we didn't win anything, but we learned a lot, and now we know that we need some engineers to work with us next year. We'll be some formidable competition next year! After the award ceremony, we all went to the wrap up party at the EPCOT center. It was pretty fun, we had tacos, salad, chicken, and lemonade. The rest of the party was like a dance. They had loud dance music and lights and a bunch of roboticists dancing =) Heh, Fran, Gil, and James went out looking for girls, while we danced and relaxed. We got back to the hotel and I fell asleep. Last I checked, it was 12:30 something. After, I went to go call home, and ended up mingling with Andrea and one of the guys from Monta Vista HS. They have a pretty interesting team too. They're also a rookie team, but did pretty good. And now I'm writing this at 3:30 am in the morning, since we lost 1 hour to daylight savings time adjustment. I better get to bed, g'nite all!

Eric

Day 5: Sunday

Whahoo, finally we get to relax and have some fun! I went to bed late yesterday so I didn't wake up until 11 something. Some of the others woke up earlier and ate breakfast. We kinda broke up into groups, Josh, Canon, Brandon, Thinh, Jones, Ryan, and I went to Typhoon Lagoon water park to get wet. Just about everybody else went to MGM studios and Magic Kingdom. I donno what they did, but I can tell you that Typhoon Lagoon is pretty fun! They have a huge wave machine in the middle of the park that makes gigantic waves. There was also a "river" around the perimeter of the entire park with inner tubes that you could ride. We spent a couple hours going around racing each other there. Of course we also went on the usual water slides 'n stuff. We stayed there until 6:00 when it closed. From there we took the bus and monorail to Magic Kingdom. We went on Space Mountain, but it was a little different from the one in Disneyland because there's no ball in the middle and it seemed shorter. After that, I left everybody to go meet some people from Monta Vista HS (Cupertino). One of their team members asked us to go eat with them, so Andrea, Jones, Thinh and I went to meet them at the entrance. We met them at 8:00 and we ate at a restaurant called Starlight Cafe (I think) (hamburger and sprite w/fries). Afterwards, we followed them around on various rides. We went on Big Thunder Mtn. Railroad, Small World, some alien encounter thing, the Haunted House, and Space Mountain (again). By then it was around 1:00 am and I was getting cold and tired; I kept falling asleep waiting in the lines. So I left them again and headed back to the hotel. The weather changed drastically in the past 2 days. When we got to Florida, it was too hot to stay outside at night, but now it was chilly and windy, and I was freezing because I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to get back to the hotel, and when I asked one of the monorail operators, he said to go to Epcot and transfer to bus there. When I got to Epcot, it was completely deserted and now I was stuck. Luckly, there was a security guard there, and he arranged a ride for me back to the hotel room.

Eric

Day 6: Monday

We decided not to go to bed that night because we had to get up early anyways to get to the airport. I spent about 2-3 hours walking in circles around the park with Francis. We got at least 5 or 6 miles in.. =) Others watched TV, relaxed, and wandered around the resort's lake. By 5:00ish, we started packing and boarded the bus around 5:45. The bus took us to the airport and we boarded the plane to Los Angeles. The flight was 'bout 5 hours, but it went by really fast, because I was asleep for the majority of it. The weather in LA was pretty good, sunny and warm. We had 2 hours to spare, so we played cards, and got pizza and Burger King for lunch. The flight back to Oakland also went by pretty fast, and the next thing I knew, we were in Oakland. Now the weather was gray and dark. What happened?! We arranged rides back to Mills and I went home to type this letter. And now it's raining outside and I'm cold again. Ah, home sweet home. Overall, the trip to Florida was pretty fun. The first couple days were really hot and we had a lot of work to do, but things eased up in the end and I think the majority of us had a great time. Although we didn't do so great in the competition, I think we learned a lot from it. We didn't have much engineering help, which all of the other teams did. But then, it ended up that the engineers built the robot instead of the students, so we have to find the right balance for next year. Now that we've experienced what it's like to be in a national engineering competition, we'll be more prepared for next year.

Eric