Time Warp

Let's use this entry to make up for the entire month that I haven't blogged, shall we.

-I went to Cleveland, Ohio for four days and came back. We performed horribly, but got the robot functional. There was tons of fun, 3-hour delays, science museums, good people, good food, robots, snowstorms, arguments, interesting bus rides, and much, much more.

-I graduate in 2 months and 20 days. HURRY UP AND GET HERE MAY 30TH!

-I have been horribly ill for the past week. Must've picked up some sort of horrible virus on the way back from Ohio, through Atlanta. Monday I was so-so, Tuesday I felt flu-ish, Wednesday I went to school and came back feeling dead with an insanely scratchy throat. Thursday I went to a doctor to get drugs to make me better but instead made me vomit. Friday I threw up about five times and whatever flu-ish virus I had evolved to a menacing stomach virus. Rested most of the weekend, but I still don't feel 100%.

-I'm leaving for Orlando tomorrow. I still don't know how I'm getting there. Murphy's Law has made it's presence clear for everything involving this trip.

-MIT decisions are coming out on Pi day, 3/14 (Saturday at 2pm). OH MY FUCKING GOSH! I'm not really getting myself too worked up over it, but I can't say I'm not excited. We should be finding out sometime during the eliminations of the Florida Regional, which depending on the outcome of the event and our admission status will make us either very happy or very disappointed campers, or maybe some odd combination of both. Our entire drive team has applied to MIT and has been deferred, this should be interesting...

-Circuit City just gave me 20 hours worth of pay. I quit over a month ago. I read they're not taking it back. Sweet! Sidenote: There is no more Circuit City.

-My bookbag is really heavy, but its surprisingly streamlined this year. I only have one organized 1" binder. It's just that darn AP Gov't textbook and German 3 workbook that I have to lug around.

-I'm know I'm late at mentioning this, but Kunio Kato had the best Oscar acceptance speech ever, hands down.

-We played Mafia at school today during AP Gov't after taking a test since we were stuck in class for 4 hours due to the FCAT. It's awesome.

-I'm noticing a trend on Facebook where a lot of people (seemingly just Dillard people at the moment) are writing all of these wannabe profound notes analyzing their perspective on life or the way others think/act. It's like all of the sudden "OMG, random thoughts guys -- I'm probably like the only one to realize this, but I've just figured out that..." improperly infusing all sorts of lofty language, "big words", and interesting, to say the least, sentence structure. I can't say any of my close friends have done this, thank goodness.

-Speaking of Facebook, the trends that are going on currently are all getting extremely annoying. The tagging in the stupid cartoon characteristic pictures, the chain survey notes, and jillions of app requests are totally bringing down the environment. Regardless, I still like Facebook and will enjoy my little corner there, it's still better than MySpace.

-My laptop is kaput. It's the HD, quite unfortunately. I did do a backup a few weeks ago, but lost all of my pics from the robotics season and some other recent files. I might be able to recover the data but I don't have much time at the moment. I don't want to get a new laptop just yet since there will probably be better back-to-school sales or a deal affilated with which ever college I end up going to. I've been using my mother's and grandmother's computers for now when I can get on and my iPod doesn't cut it, hopefully I can get a replacement HD soon. This sucks.

-Season 13 of South Park starts Wednesday! Too bad I'll be on my way to Orlando; hopefully they'll replay it at midnight.

I have to go back to school in a month.

Booooooo!

Reminds me of that episode of Arthur where he makes a list of things that he wants to do for summer, the entire summer passes by, and with a week (or is it a weekend?) left, he realizes that he hasn't done anything on the list and rushes to do it before its time to go back. The only difference with me is that I did most of the things that I wanted to do (read: absolutely nothing :) ), and now I still don't want to go back. I still can prep for the SAT IIs, work on college essays, yadda yadda, but that's too much like school.

Just like I have this amazement with airports and planes, I also share the same enthusiasm with trains. Problem is I travel by plane more frequently than I travel by train. Actually, I've only been on the train a few times. Well, I can change that! I decided that sometime in the near future, probably next week, I'm going to take a little journey. I really don't have anywhere to go on a real train (nor do I feel like paying for an "expensive" ticket), so I'm going to go somewhere in the tri-county area on tri-rail. I have always found tri-rail to be pretty cool, being that it stretches from Palm Beach to Miami, the only issue is that it only goes in two directions, North and South, typically east of I-95, so in order to really get somewhere, you'd have to utilize some other method of transportation. The whole "use public transportation to get to work" scenario only works for those that live in the downtown areas. Broward needs to hurry up with that light rail system. I'll be gone by the time its implemented though. It's not like The Sims where I can pause "life" and stick some new features in. Nonetheless, this hinders my destination options a bit, which is why this is just an exploration trip, wandering around just because I can. Perhaps I'll go from the southernmost point of the route to the northernmost point. Perhaps I'll find and interesting place. Perhaps...

I'm really having a hard time believing that it's back-to-school time already. The ads in the Sunday papers were all about new pencils and High School Musical lunchboxes and dull polos and dorm stuff and clean white sneakers and things that are bothering me at the moment because ITS NOT TIME YET. Okay, the caps were unnecessary, but the whole school thing kinda snuck up on me. I had been content doing my FLVS work, but as for real school....nooooooooooooooooo. 30 days is a long time, but I have a feeling it will fly by. This summer is a little weird since I didn't experience the back-to-school rush last year being at CMU, I just went right back to school as soon as I got back and picked up a few new things I needed at the mall that weekend. Maybe if I ignore it I'll just forget and everything will work out somehow on the 18th. Yeah, that sounds good.

2008 FIRST Robotics Championships

Two days later, I've finally rested up and resumed normal life (even though I missed school because I overslept today). Here goes...

Wednesday:
We left Fort Lauderdale around 10:30am. I've flown to Atlanta from Fort Lauderdale like a bajillion times, this was no different. We arrived in Atlanta at exactly 11:59am. We were greeted at baggage claim with:


We also had to wait a while for our shuttle to show up, enough time for some cool pictures


This year when we arrived at The Westin, our rooms weren't ready, so we had to store our bags before we parted ways to explore the city. A few of us went to the Georgia Aquarium, others went to The World of Coke and Five Points.


There is one word to describe the aquarium...amazing. I've wanted to go since it opened last year. The fish were really cool and all, but what I was more impressed with was the methods in which they were displayed. A lot of the tanks were surrounded by glass ~5 inches thick, which slightly distorted the image.

these things were the coolest

who doesn't love jellyfish?

and penguins!

There was also a neat part where you could crawl under and stand in a tube-like structure among the penguins. We were entertained. For me, seeing live penguins was totally worth $27 alone. Don't ask how much I'd pay to see or touch a giraffe.

future Gator?At the aquarium, I also got to pet sharks and stingrays, sit on cool modern furniture, and confirm my thoughts about not eating seafood :). Wednesday was a beautiful day in downtown Atlanta. We cut across Centennial Park to get back to our hotel, and it seemed like a scene out of a movie -- kids playing in the playground and in the fountain, people playing football, frisbee, reading books, tanning. That night we went out to Durangos, a steak house, for dinner. It was...eh. Just an overpriced Applebee's/Chili's/Friday's. This year we were on the 62nd floor (only 10 away from the top!) with an amazing view. It was great waking up and going to sleep seeing all (most) of Atlanta beneath you.

Thursday

we have taken over!

Taking up the entire Georgia Dome and 3 parts of the Georgia World Congress Center, the 2008 FIRST Robotics World Championship is underway! We met the New Zealand principal that we would be hosting for the weekend shortly after entering the pits. Since there will be an FRC Regional there in 2009, a few teams were asked to host a visiting group of New Zealanders. They wore hats with kiwis on top, thus a possible nickname for their regional and theme for many teams, the Kiwi Regional. It was great talking to him, explaining a bit of FIRST and the way we do things while hearing about other cultures and school systems at the same time. Our practice matches went pretty well, but didn't work out too well since everyone was interested in testing out their own features instead of playing with the alliance...we didn't get the ball much.

That night we went to Benihana for dinner. It was so highly anticipated, but unfortunately sub-par. Still fun, I guess. Curfews suck. I barely got to use the Internet since it cost $16/day for the room, though free in the lobby, and we were forced into our rooms at 11pm.

Friday
Let the games begin! Officially, at least. Guess who showed up to support FIRST...

Former President George Bush

During his speech, he made the statement that might just as well be the new motto for FIRST. Team 1649 (who just happened to be our alliance partner in the eliminations) even made buttons with the phrase, and Dean Kamen was wearing one the next day.

"FIRST is like the WWF, but for smart people." - George Bush

Qualifying matches started, though they didn't go too well for us. Our robot performed the best it has ever been, averaging over 40 points per match alone, but not so great alliances murdered our ranking. We lost EVERY single match on Friday, more matches than we'd lost in qualifying ALL season long. The mood wasn't that great on the team, though we knew we were performing well, so we still had a chance.

While I was supposed to be eating lunch, I stopped by Scholarship Row to talk to a few colleges and see about some of the new FIRST scholarships being offered. I checked out WPI and RPI, didn't get a chance to get to the MIT table because it was too crowded, but spent a while talking to the nice representative from Olin. I am in love with this school. And guess what, they have admissions blogs too! I think it's #2 on my list now...right below MIT, but more on that later.

I met up with my cousin, Dorienne, that afternoon for a while before heading off to dinner with the team. AZIO! We've gone to this restaurant every year, and it is a pretty darn good Italian restaurant.

Saturday
The Saturday of any robotics competition is always the busiest, except at the championships, it x5 more busier, with 4 divisions running eliminations at the same time, all leading up to the finals on Einstein. We played 2 matches on Saturday, finally winning our last match and reversing our previous regional record of winning all but one match.

We were a bit worried about getting picked for eliminations, so right after our last match, we went back to the pits to "sell" ourselves to other teams. In doing so, we realized that alliance selection had already started, so Jhon and I made a mad dash from the pits back to the dome. Jhon could run faster than I could, so he was there to accept if we were picked, which we were! I suddenly received all types of phone calls from people in the stands "WHERE ARE YOU GUYS!?" lol. He arrived just in time. We were the second pick of the #7 alliance with 1649 and 527. The eliminations didn't go too well, we were up against a tough alliance of 33-45-2337. We didn't think we had much of a chance without great strategy and cooperation from all of our alliance partners, but unfortunately that didn't happen. One of our partners was a bit of a ball hog with a really slow ball-pickup method. It slowed us down a lot, I don't think we even hurdled in the first match. The second match was a bit of a mess too. We played to the best of our abilities given the circumstances, but even still our alliance wasn't tight and we made a few bad decisions as to how we scored. We were done for the season. We packed up the crate and headed out to watch the finals. By no surprise, the HOT alliance won.

After the Curie division finals ended, Gustavo and I left to sit in the students' section where two representatives from each team were to sit in case we won an award. These just happened to be the absolute BEST seats in the house, right in between the main stage and Einstein, so we could see the final matches clearly and see the speakers, Dean, Woody, and all the big wigs up close. The finals were intense. The semifinal matches seem so good that they should've been the finals. The 1114-217-148 alliance was the alliance that everyone had been dreaming of since regionals started, and they came together from Galileo and hurdled (quite literally) their way to the top. Congrats to them! It was quite a show.

The fun didn't end there. After spending a good 15 minutes getting out of the Dome, up the packed escalators, through the crowds, and to Centennial Park, I finally got into the social with a few other team members. The rest of our team was faaar behind, being that they were sitting over by Curie. The food sucked as usual, the entertainment was a little interesting, and the bounce houses, carnival games, prizes, glowsticks and lighty things, and FIRST drag race were all fun, but nothing compared to the karaoke tent. Once we found that, we were there until the end. The request list was pretty long, so we didn't sign up to sing, but we still sang along with everyone else, jumping around in the dry fountain. The last song was "Thanks for the Memories" followed by the fireworks. Pretty nice ending. As usual, the fireworks were great, and the reflections off the sides of the various large downtown buildings were even cooler.

Back at the hotel we continued with the party, turning one of the rooms into a rave, complete with glowsticks and techno! It was more of a one/two-person rave, but we all had fun. I had no intention of falling asleep at 12 because I wanted to pack and take more pictures, but fatigue apparently has more power than intent.

So now it's all over, back to normal life (as if I had one). Pictures from the entire weekend are here, here, and here.

HEY I JUST NOTICED....108th POST! w00t w00t!
awesome coincidence.

Florida Regional 2008

This should be a quickie:

I'm up in Orlando right now for our second competition, our home regional, the Florida Regional. Everything is going great so far. As of right now, we are ranked #1 (5-1), and we also won the Rockwell Automation Leadership in Controls Award this afternoon. It's such an awesome feeling hearing the words you spoke to a judge in the pit transferred to the announcer briefing the features that made your team worthy of the award. I don't know how to describe how I'm feeling at the moment. We're doing really well, and all day, people have been asking "Noelle, are you exicted?!" and I just respond with a simple "Sure." It's just really weird, since as a team, we've never been in this dominant position before, where teams are coming up asking us to pick them, or how we're just able to bring the robot back to the pit, do a few software updates, and then relax. Perhaps I'll be more excited on Saturday afternoon if I have a gold medal around my neck...or even silver. I'm pretty excited now, I just have different ways of showing it, I suppose. (If you couldn't tell, I even danced to like 4 [Cha Cha Slide, Chicken Dance, Cotton Eyed Joe, Macarena] of those dance songs during a field reset/break; SOAP archived the footage, it should be up tomorrow or later this weekend).

If we win our last match tomorrow, we'll most likely be picking. I had a bunch of scouting stuff planned out to walk around the pits and such, but with all the commotion and fast-paced scheduling, it was pretty much impossible until the end of the day. I got a pretty good idea of some robots from waiting in queuing and playing with/against them, but it would've been nice to have had some raw match data. There are enough good teams to form a strong alliance regardless of where we're seeded.

So...it's 1:08am now (NICE!) and I should be sleeping or packing or showering or scouting or not blogging...

PS: I'm really excited for tomorrow

New Jersey Regional

My last blog entry lied. I'm definitely not in New Jersey right now, and unfortunately at school instead. Normally I would write an incredibly long entry filled with pictures and video and anything else that appears in my mind. This time around, I just feel like giving a little summary. Eh, maybe not...

EDIT: pics here(you don't need a Facebook account to view)

The trip there was pretty smooth, 40 minute delay, ate crappy food at Ft. Lauderdale Airport, lost a SOAP laptop somewhere in Philly, and then played lots of SingStar and Guitar Hero my room. On Thursday, we learned that this hotel supplied possibly the worst continental breakfast that could ever be served. Also, DJ, Jhon, Gustavo, and I thought it would be an awesome idea to be the first ones to get to the arena. Ha, how clever of us...they ended up opening the doors at 9am, and we had to stand outside in the <20 style="font-style: italic;">I had no control over the arm and it was stuck in this ~90degree position. A miscommunication led to the arm getting snapped because the robot was driven full speed backwards under the overpass with the arm up. At that point, we though we were done for the day. It was even more disappointing since we had won all of our matches, and breaking the arm didn't seem worth 2 points when we were already >20 points ahead. Though in true 108 fashion, the robot got fixed. Our plan was just to remove the arm for our next match and take the position of the lap-bot, but with the help of the NASA Machine Shop (thank goodness they were there) and little parts from the other generous teams, we got the whole thing fixed and in working condition in less than an hour, making our next match. Though everything functioned properly, it was the only match of the regional that we lost. The rest of the day ran smoothly, winning our last match and ranking 3rd, 5-1 by the end of the day.

Anyone in FIRST knows that Friday's rankings don't really mean much if you're in the Top 8, because within the matter of 1 match on Saturday morning, everything can change. We didn't want to be too cocky, so we planned for the case of dropping out of the Top 8 -- doing scouting overnight and making sure to promote our robot to other teams. This wasn't necessary, because we ended up winning our last two matches, thus placing us #4, 7-1, by lunch time Saturday. (Lunchtime? who got to eat lunch...not me =/) As alliance captains, we had to quickly combine all of our scouting data and create a top 8 list of hurdlers, lap-bots, and secondary picks. At the supposedly competitive New Jersey Regional, this was a bit hard to do. On Friday night, we watched all the videos from the matches (exhausting!), and coming up with a list of consistent hurdlers was not easy. I was the representative from our team to pick (a bit nervous), and we selected 223, a pretty good hurdler, and 102, the most awesome lap-bot there. We got owned in the quarterfinals, since we were behind 24 points in hybrid mode each time, so the competition ended there for us. I'm definitely looking forward to FL now, since we have a bit of an advantage!

From the fun side, this trip was pretty awesome, I'd say. We didn't even have to plan out some fancy itinerary; fun in (or outside of) the hotel with the team was enough fun alone. As soon as we arrived on Wednesday, despite it being 11pm when we got there, we played SingStar and Guitar Hero for a few hours. Fun stuff. Thursday night was karaoke night, with Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Edition and SingStar being the highlights of the evening. I have video, but they are too dark to see anything. If you want to see 'em, I'll send/show if you'd like. Friday was the best night of them all. On the way back from dinner at the little Italian restaurant where DJ bought us all cheesecake (Thanks!), snow flurries started to fall. Even though there wasn't enough snow on the ground to form anything that resembled a snow ball, there were piles of snow on the edges of the parking lot from the blizzard a few days before. Let the battle begin! More and more people came out, and eventually we had the whole team outside for a 1.5 hour snowball fight, including an awesome ending with Students vs. Mentors. Guess who won? It ended when a woman complained that since we were playing the parking lot, we might hit her car. Boo her! Another hilarious thing was that we noticed after about an hour that there were 3 hotel windows with the curtains open...the Canadians were just sitting up in their nicely heated rooms laughing at us! "Those silly Floridians!" After the snowball fight, the night wasn't over. We gathered everyone in my room to read the Woodie Flowers Award submission to Diane (almost producing tears), and then headed off to do some scouting. We watched every single match video from Friday, trying to come up with a list of top teams...not easy to do. After that we visited another room to view some freshman-on-freshman pranking. Surprisingly, the freshmen were really cool to be around. Eventually I went to sleep... I don't know how, or when I managed to pack, but Saturday went by incredibly fast. I didn't get a chance to eat until we got to the airport, and realized that I was severely dehydrated sometime during the elimination rounds, making a mad dash to find something before my abilities were hindered. By the time we left on Saturday, most of us had adjusted to the cold, not wearing jackets at all. The entire weekend went by insanely fast, arriving back in Fort Lauderdale around 1am on Sunday.

T-minus 13 days

Yes, less than 2 weeks left. Still a ton of stuff to do. Everything is slowly starting to come together. My mother has taken off quite a few days in the next two weeks to help me prepare, so I get to spend time with my mommy. Yay! 4 loads of laundry done in the last two days, 2 more to go. I've washed almost ALL of my clothes. Amazing.

Target is absolutely an amazing place. Although I didn't expect to find a laptop lock in there (which I didn't), they have everything. And anything. I can never leave target with only one thing. There is always a need. "Shampoo on the clearance rack? With a bonus travel conditioner free too!? Oh I just have to get that! Wait...they have conditioner on sale too? 2.50!? Hell yeah!" WOAH WTF!!...I'm at my grandparents' and the newspaper just arrived. Scared the hell out of me. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was the newspaper and not someone trying to break in. Enough to get my heart rate up a bit. But I finally got that metal ruler that I wanted. Now I can make decent perspective drawings!

My mother bought me new luggage on Tuesday. Killer sale. Nice $200 5-piece luggage set for only $50. I really like bags. Bags of all types. I was the kid with 1000 bookbags. I'd get a bag in the summer, promising to use it the whole school year, only to find another cool one around January. I've had my current book bag for a whole year and a half now, which is a long time for me, but I actually like this one. It's gotten the most mileage, by far, from the store to my house to Ft. Lauderdale(school) to Orlando to South Carolina to Atlanta to Jamaica to Grand Cayman to Las Vegas and to Pittsburgh next! Besides the good ol' trusty Jansport, my new luggage is great. Most people could care less about luggage, but I could care more, if that sounds right? It's a dark gray color and has great wheels, zippers, handles, and everything! It even has that new luggage smell! I don't know why simple things are so exciting to me. I'll just bask in my luggage loving alone, since no one else cares. I still need a nice beach/pool/outside/wherever tote bag. Target had some nice ones, but I'll see what other stores have to offer before the indecisive Noelle can make a final purchasing decision.

The Saturday after next, this time, I should be on a plane to Atlanta, which should connect me to another flight to Pittsburgh. 13 days! It's oh-soooo close. Anticipation is a bitch.

Another Boring Tuesday

Only an hour and 47 minutes into Tuesday and it is already turning out to be quite a boring day. All of the excitement and energy from the last few days has packed themselves into a car and drove home this morning, arriving there about an hour ago. It's the loner's corner for me for the next month or so...

My level of internal excitement has been at it's highest for the last week or so. The end of the school year always brings a great amount of stress, yet there are still mixed feelings. Goodbye to all of my senior friends; Evan, Matt, and Shara, you will be missed. I'm a junior now ('09 w00t w00t! I totally lack spirit lol), which brings on the excitement (or not) of 5 AP courses and exams, and of course the lovely ACT and SAT! Robotics has died temporarily. I doubt anything will happen over the summer since a lot of people will be traveling and such. I guess I'm officially the team leader now, but that won't matter until August. We'll start doing CPR and turn on the defibrillator then. None of the other positions have been released yet. That leaves me all summer, uninterrupted, to brew up more sinister plans for next year!

Forgetting school and such, CMU is really the increment factor in internal excitement levels. I get to learn over the summer. Yay! I rarely get to learn at school. Perhaps more than actually getting accepted and being there, I am flattered with the process of going there. I LOVE airplanes and airports. A new airport at that! I've never been to Pennsylvania before. State #8 (hey that rhymes!) for me. Airports are so fascinating. I have this thing with people on a mission, going places...you know, like seeing a row of school buses pull in a school, people driving around before a hurricane. The underground train in ATL is cool...and fast. Too bad I probably won't get to ride it. If I get a chance during my layover I'll ride it to one concourse over lol. The part to top it all off is walking through the jet way. Flying is fun, but there is so much more to the experience than just sitting in a plushy chair in a pressurized metal tube a few thousand feet in the sky for a few hours. The smell, sounds, and the sights of walking into the terminal is more than exciting. It's impossible for me to remember my first time on a plane, but I can remember always taking notice to these things. Every trip has always been amazing, more so the weird trips, like when we were on standby passes in Miami and we ended up going all the way to West Palm Beach, or when Santa Claus was on the plane back in 93. In Las Vegas this year with robotics when we were playing Home Alone coming back, with all of the confusion thinking that we would miss the plane, I was most alert. I noticed everything as we ran by. The slot machines next to the coffee shop, the odd placement of the stairs, the security lines and the people checking and going through them, the doors on the train, the walls, the ceiling...everything. Haha, yeah I looked like a tourist. Aside from my little air travel aside, I also have been making lists. Tons of lists, with sublists. Like 12. Packing lists, shipping lists, washing lists, purchasing lists, organizational lists (a bit redundant, eh?), a list of lists, and the oh-so infamous to-do list. They have yet to be digitized. Some time this week I'll sit down for about an hour, put them in Excel, color code everything, print them out, stick 'em on the wall, and begin actually accomplishing the tasks on the lists.

Yesterday my 9-year-old little cousin called me boring. She was saying it out of spite at first because I felt like reading Gizmodo on my computer instead of playing Disney Channel games. Then she started rambling on about how "Noellie sits at the couch all day with her headphones on and her computer only doing boring stuff like reading stuff and typing fast and being boring!" I played along sarcastically, though it kinda got to me. Am I really boring? Is increasing the depths of your knowledge considered to be boring by the standards of a 9 year old? When I was 9 I wished for more to learn, if only I knew then how much more I could find on the internet than those lame kiddie science sites. Whatever. Maybe I am boring by society's standards of an average teenager. Haha do I get any penalties for infraction?

25 days 'til I leave for SAMS! 76 days 'til school starts.