DASH Diary Entry: January 10th.

The season has started and with it comes the madness. Daily meetings, constant email messages, and a never ending amount of work has been added to the usual stresses of school. However, this year seems to be going surprisingly well; I say this with limited enthusiasm for the season is only 3 days in and there are about 39 days left. Not a single part has been assembled or created yet, but plans are in the works. I can proudly say that team 3103, a group of girls in plaid skirts, is building at tank-like robot this year. We are excited to get to ARC Specialties to work but I think we are anticipating the trip to San Antonio just as much.

At the meeting today hotel arrangements were discussed, but the chatter got much louder as discussion about design began. The base team is working hard to find thread for the tank drive and the arm team has been working on a forklift type arm and gripper utilizing both pneumatics and chains. Programming is anticipating what they need to do to make the robot that is still nonexistent to work.

Despite the fact that competition is so far away, Iron Plaid scored a small success today. For the first time in the history of our FIRST robotics team, we nominated a well deserving mentor for the Woodie Flowers Award. This award recognizes dedication and service to the program and all our mentors deserve it, but unfortunately we could only nominate one.

5 weeks and 4 days left to build!