After arriving at 7:30 for the very start of practice rounds, we’re definitely off to a good start. While we would have liked to sleep a bit longer than 6am, it was nice to get into the practice line before the last hour, when the line extended to the stairs to the parking garage. Wow. Everything’s been going smoothly, even though today we just practiced seeding round (since we only have to worry about seeding for today). We then went to watch Tim do his presentation on state machines, which was great and interesting. Yay Tim! Then we had a break for lunch, and at 12:45 lunch ended and there was another 45 minute practice session before the start of seeding rounds at 1:30. Of course, the lines went out the door again, so seeding rounds didn’t actually start until about 2 pm.
After the practices, while we were hosting an intense Mario Kart DS tournament, Hannah ran up to us and asked us to listen to her, but we were enthralled by the game. Then she said “Guys, I mean really listen to me!” So we paused for her, and she told us that the Create’s XBC was really lacking battery power and she couldn’t find the charger. After that brief moment of terror, we got it plugged in, and even though it only had about ten minutes of charge it did fine.
Seeding Round 1: 125 points. The Create did an excellent job on the Tribble piles, but the Legobot didn’t manage to complete any of its tasks once it got across the bridge. It did, however, manage to hit down the other half of the bridge. We hit their solarium area’s pipe and got stuck, so we didn’t manage to get any additional tribble piles, but we still got the 15 points for having the bot over there. The Create made it across the bridge and into their shelter, so we got that 30 points. It’s a great score, but we’re hoping to do even better in the next round.
Practice tables opened today at 8am. Mr. Gras made some joke about going for a run this morning, like they do in the military, but somehow the idea didn’t catch on. However, he still wanted us to start practicing as soon as possible. But knowing how we teenagers would behave this morning after a less than optimal amount of sleep, the Newcastles and he decided that we would be ready at 8, meet in the hallway, and head to breakfast.
So here we are, at Oklahoma University, with half the team waiting in line to practice. It’s nice – having two sets of bots, we can practice twice as much and find mistakes in half the time. The first two runs were bad; the first Legobot did a good job, but both the Creates did badly and so did the second Legobot. But in between practices, everyone runs back to the table to work on what they can, then they get in line to test again. Tomorrow starts seeding rounds, and hopefully by then we’ll be ready.