Slow Winter...or not.

Winter time is the slow time of the year.   There is not much that goes on.  I did manage help out KDHX with a few concerts at the Sheldon.  The specific shows were Jay Farrar show and the Todd Snider show.  Volunteering is cool.  Some times you get to be behind the scenes and see stuff not many people get to see.  I didn't see a large part of the Sheldon Concert Hall but I've seen more than most.  KDHX membership drive is coming up again.  Seems like it was only a few months since the last one in October.  If you would like to send in a few bucks, it wold be appreciated. 

Also helped out the O'Fallon Kiwanis a few times in the last few months.  There was the Salvation Army Bell Ringing in December.  Recently we has spaghetti dinner.  It was good as always.  Don't know how we did by the numbers though. 

I am also a fully trained secretary by the Toastmasters.  Kinda sucks that I've been out of service since mid-December.  Life of a student but I am only 4 classes away from a Masters in Information Technology Management.  I am on a mission to document all of these experiences.  I've got 87 hours between August and December for 2011 and I want to beat that this year.

And I have moved this blog over to blogger.  Figure I'd try it out for a while.

Interesting Weekend @ F.I.R.S.T. Robitics Competition

April 29, 2011:  USFirst.org Robotics Championships 2011 @ Edwards Jones Dome in St. Louis, MO.
Got to escort teams of kid and coaches (between first and third grade) between their presentation table to their review session at their designated times.  Assisted in judging by running tallies between the main area and the judging area.   Helped create award certificates for the final presentation.  Kept things running smoothly to accomplish everything from sign in to awards within a 4 hour window.  Also assisted with the presentation of the medals for all of the children that participated in the event.  Their were 29 teams from 11 states that were involved in the events for JFLL.

It was interesting.  Their are 4 levels of competition.  JFLL, FLL, FTC, FRC.JFLL (Junior FIRST Lego League) involves kids in grades K - 3 and has kids do research on some chosen topic area.  The teams then select some topic within that topic area, do research, and build a lego model.  This year's topic was "Body Forward" All topics for JFLL and FLL were related to the body.

FLL (FIRST Lego League) is geared to grades 4-8.  This team get to build robots out of lego robotics kits.  All geared towards completing some basic missions relating to the topic.  Some missions might include having a robot place a band aid on a patient or retrieving a syringe or mending a fake bone.

FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) is geared towards kids in grades 9-12.  These kids get to build robots that run though an obstacle course and complete some assigned tasks.

FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) is also geared to kids in grades 9-12.  Here kids completed one of 2 possible types of robot competitions.  One competition involves getting large inner tubes on hooks 12 feet in the air.  Their is also a side mission of having to get a little robot up a pole the quickest.  The other big competition is an areal act of building a flying robot that is controllable enough to land on various platforms.  Ground robots will also try to gather and shoot balls into a box.