Monday, December 31, 2018

12 Days after Christmas - Day 4

Today's giveaway is one of four cute little needle tins.  I will send a different one to each person who wins.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put NEEDLE TIN in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).

3) Put your NAME and MAILING ADDRESS in the body of the message

4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of January 1st to be considered!

Sunday, December 30, 2018

12 Days After Christmas - Day 3

Today's giveaway is a beautiful postcard of a set of 17th century embroidery gloves.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put GLOVES in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 31st to be considered!

Saturday, December 29, 2018

12-Days After Christmas - Day 2

Today's giveaway are Just Cross Stitch from April 2008.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put JCS APRIL 2018 in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 30th to be considered!

Friday, December 28, 2018

12-Days After Christmas - Day 1

Today's giveaway are two cards from the Edlin Casket in the V&A.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put EDLIN CASKET in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 29th to be considered!


Thursday, December 27, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 12

Today's giveaway is a pair of postcards of a historic garment.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put YELLOW DRESS in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 28th to be considered!


Wednesday, December 26, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 11

Today's giveaway is the Just Cross Stitch magazine from June 2018.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put JCS 2018 in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 27th to be considered!


Tuesday, December 25, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 10

Merry Christmas!  Today's giveaway is a notebook showing the masterpiece of Lady Evelyn from Scotland.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put NOTEBOOK in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 26th to be considered!


Monday, December 24, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 9

Today's giveaway is one of two Just Cross Stitch magazines from February 2018.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put JCS FEB 2018 in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 25th to be considered!


Sunday, December 23, 2018

12 Days of Christmas - Day 8

Today's giveaway is one of two postcards showing a Salem, MA sampler with a beautiful solid stitched outer border.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put SALEM SAMPLER in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 24nd to be considered!


Saturday, December 22, 2018

12 Days of Christmas - Day 7

Today's giveaway is a copy of the Just Cross Stitch magazine from December 2018.

The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put JCS DEC 2018 in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 23nd to be considered!


Friday, December 21, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 6

Continuing with the theme of tassels, here are multiple copies of a 17th century (Italian) tassel as a postcard.  There are four of them so there are four winners today.

I love these linen and gold thread tassels from the time period, they are always so over the top.  This ones seems to have mermaids (?) dangling down from the top.

The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put LINEN TASSEL in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 22nd to be considered!


Thursday, December 20, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 5

So today's item is a set of tassel heads (small about 1" long) and floss/silk ribbon to go with them.  If you love making tassels (remember the new Facette is perfect for making great tassels), then this is the giveaway for you!

1) Send me a email at

2) Put MAKING TASSELS in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).




Wednesday, December 19, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 4

Today's item is an issue of JCS with a sampler on it and several of the Christmas ornaments inside.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put JCS SAMPLER in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 21st to be considered!


Tuesday, December 18, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 3

Today's items are postcards of a 17th century panel embroidered in silk and gold.  Very similar to many patterns in the Trevelyon manuscripts. There are four of them so there are four winners today.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put PANEL in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 20th to be considered!


Monday, December 17, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 2

Our second day of Christmas give away is the Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornament Issue 2018.

To get your name in the drawing, send me:

1) Send me an email at

2) Put JCS CHRISTMAS 2018 in the subject line so I can sort the entries.


4) Get the email to be by midnight EST of December 19th.


Sunday, December 16, 2018

12-Days of Christmas - Day 1

I am a bit late on my traditional twelve days of Christmas give-aways.  That just means I will go four days late on it!  I have 24 exciting groups of items to give away and still want to send them all out!

So today's items are postcards of a lovely Baltimore album quilt.  There are four of them so there are four winners today.  The rules of engagement are:

1) Send me a email at

2) Put ALBUM in the subject line (so I can sort my entries).


4) Get the email to me by midnight EST of December 18th to be considered!


Saturday, December 15, 2018

Be on the Lookout - Stolen Samplers

There is a report of two American samplers stolen from a home in Vancouver in late November and we in the historic needlework biz are making sure that the news articles get play so everyone who might buy something or see something can be on the lookout.  This article contains good pictures of the two pieces - one from Ohio (Maria Wise's "Miss Puss" sampler) and one likely from Newburyport, MA (Phebe Sawyer, born 1778).

If you see either of them - please let the Vancouver Police know.  The case number is #2318-18266 and Detective Zachary Ripp is in charge (360) 487-7391 or

Friday, December 14, 2018

A New Year - A New Team

Painting the formerly blue (and larger - it didn't fit in my
new SUV) cart and adding some sweet upgrades
The weekend we said goodbye to our kids and sent them off to college, we had a robot retreat with the young team.  I took off for a private meeting in the barn (gosh it was hot in there in August) while the rest of the parents chatted around the pool.  I usually have one or two of these types of meetings with the kids every year where they can say anything and it is quite private.  We had some business to do.

We had a new kid to decide on bringing on the team - I wish I could reveal the content of the conversation but I can't - but I was so proud of their discussion.  They were thoughtful on the skills and quirks of the individual and decided that in the end, he was a good person inside and that was the most important part.  And he has been a great addition and has really shown great programming ability.

Newly painted cart and driver station almost
finished - looking really spiffy!
These meetings are where I allow all the anger and feelings of unfairness to come out and sometimes agree with them and we talk about what positive steps we can take in the future.  It gets it all out and we can move forward emotionally.  The second order of business was rectifying the team's feelings about FLL and doing just FTC now as well as what we would be called.   In the end, we are The Brainstormers FTC 8644 and have changed our color to red to distinguish the two groups and harken back to their Robot Revolution color scheme.

That meant a bunch of changes - like rebuilding and repainting the cart!  There are a few artistic ones on the team and that is great.  They decided to add the logo, freehand, to the sides and it looks amazing.  That is one way you make sure as a coach to use the skills of the kids and give them room to shine.

We gave them permission to be themselves.  They didn't need to be the returning world champions - they needed to be the latest reincarnation of that team.  I told them that the older kids only expected them to work hard and 'be honest, helpful, humble and nice" - in other words, be a "Brainstormer".

I asked the kids to table their eagerness to win for some of the season and take it slow this year and focus on skill building.  Reminding them that all this is really new to them and there is so much to learn.  If they leaned too much on one kid, they wouldn't get so far in the long run by taking that easy path when they are trying to win it all.  Better to sacrifice a year and have a huge building team, programming team, etc to share the load.  They will have five years at this and already had a short season in their pocket too.  And we coaches learned so much with the older team about team dynamics and skills needed - stuff we muddled through but could have done so much better guiding the kids, so we are being careful with this group.  Had the older ones had better coaches - they really could have done something.  I think they succeeded in spite of us.

One of the things we have been doing is exploring our thinking/doing processes as individuals - something I call Quiet Thinkers and Loud Triers.  By understanding this, we can partner the right people together for the right tasks and they each can realize the strengths and weaknesses they have when attacking a task.  For example, when thinking of ideas, the Loud Triers will tend to build before thinking as that is their process.  This looks to the Quiet Thinkers as if that kid has already come to a solution and they will keep their ideas to themselves.  It doesn't quite separate exactly by gender, but definitely our American culture rewards girls who exhibit quiet thinker behavior and boys who show loud trier behaviors.

The Quiet Thinkers working on the electrical system
- a tough job but one of the most important of the entire robot.
As you read before, it was mastering this system
that allowed our robot to always run and thus win
But when you get to some task like deciding the wiring system for the robot and getting the entire rat's nest controlled, insulated, etc, a quiet thinker team might be the perfect people to take it on.  We did that last week, asked the two oldest quiet thinkers (also girls) to become the masters of the electrical system for the next several years.  They spent four agonizing hours ripping it all apart and making it work correctly, marking the wires, figuring out the amperages, etc.  The most amazing thing was that when the battery and phone (brain) was plugged in, the robot worked and worked correctly which was the first time I had ever seen that happen (verified by the older kids).  We have a goal as coaches to get every kid into a technical role as much as they often will move away from something because they are either frustrated or don't feel confident in it.  We are encouraging lots of exploring and leadership and learning.  So we are really far behind for where the older team would be - but they are tackling this two grade levels lower than the others did.

But they have recently really gelled amazingly and their work sessions are sooo productive and they have been keeping up that rate.  The best is that we have now identified the three captains and they have been running the show - sometimes John and I stay upstairs for an hour to allow them to run it all and they have been doing a great job - freeing us up to teach skills.

The competition marker - looked like a time capsule
so we are going to stuff it with messages from the older team
to the younger one - they have been working together
since these kids can remember.
We have a twitter feed and there are a few videos on it that are funny.  My husband has been taking time lapse videos of their work sessions.  We have actually found them useful for the kids to review when writing their notebook entries to make sure they catch all the work that happened that day.  But I am sure in the future they will be invaluable to us as a history or nostalgic as we look back to the early days of their adventure.

One of the things happening at the moment is the collection of well wishes from the older team.  The competition this year has a team built 'marker' required that will be put by the robot in a box during the autonomous.  Ours is made (CAD designed and build on a 3D printer one of the girls built herself!) and it looks like a time capsule.  So before we glue the top on this weekend for our first competition, I am going to stuff it with the messages from the champs to the new team and they can break it open when our season is done and enjoy and laugh at the comments.

We have been getting back into the swing of our outreach as well, continuing to work in the inner city of Boston teaching robotics as well as mentoring three FLL teams locally.  The kids are doing a fantastic job and are wearing their new logo with pride and have been exemplifying the values embedded in it.

It is tough to teach other young kids these skills.  Often kids don't learn hand skills and so it makes these things more difficult (look for a blog on this in the future!), but they have been remarkably patient and encouraging.  We give the local program a big jolt forward every time we get there with the local kids being very interested in our kids and thus being far more willing to try something than when the center staff cajole them.  We take the center's staff lead and do whatever they think is needed to encourage and bring the kids along.  One session was all around nuts and screws and putting metal parts together to give them practice with fine motor skills.  I keep telling the center we are 'with them' for ten years so are happy to take the long approach with them like we do with our kids.  It is the only way to make a real difference.  Recently we helped them get a younger age group robotics system LEGO just introduced as well as tablets so the kids can have more success and then build back up to the harder robot system as too many were getting frustrated.  Latest pictures and reports are that the system is a huge hit and just the right point developmentally.  We even had the center kids help us research the system while we were there to make them a part of the decision.

It has been an up and down season so far, my husband and I have to steel each other at times to remind ourselves of what the older team was like their first year and stand back and give the kids the opportunity to fail at things when you know how to keep out of the problem or could tell them the answer.  At times I tell the other parents how hard it is to watch the slow moving train wreck some days - but then they will suddenly learn the lesson and do the next round so much better as they internalized things. I am blessed with a group of parents who are totally behind the concept of failing to success - if more parents were like this, kids would be in much better shape these days.

I'll give you an update sometime later when there is something to tell.  We will be competing until at least end of February if we don't get an advancement slot, so we still have a few months to go!

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Their Final Video

In character, they decided to post one final video of their team over the summer.  It wasn't a we won kinda thing - it was a blooper reel.  They had a saying that 'we failed our way to the championship' and that is very true, pretty much every failure that could have happened did - the way they used that was to learn from each one and do something to prevent it from happening again.  That is why their bot never was affected by ESD the last year.  Everything - all systems came from failures.

The video is hilarious.  They set it to the song that everyone else uses to promote how great they are in a final nod to silliness.  And yes - if you are watching carefully, they were last their first year and first their last.  Quite a rise.

It was an epic year and a big story as I said.  The closing of one chapter and opening of a new one for both groups.  I miss the older ones terribily.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

My Favorite Picture

This is how FIRST announced on their official channel the winners.

There have been three hugs caught between these two fine young men - one of agony and two of joy - and they all had tears.  And their relationship started back in middle school with a simple - "you know Rob, you're dyslexic like me"... "No I'm not".... "Yes you are".

We all bet they start their first company together.  I hope some day to frame it and put it on their company's wall.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

The Event Finals

FIRST's goal is to be the sporting event of the mind.  The vision is to make doing this so cool that kids will equate it with the kind of reverence as March Madness for College Basketball.  That is the reason for the loud rock music, the impressive guest speakers, the huge venues and the cheering crowds.  When do nerds get that kind of respect?

This event was moved to Detroit and the biggest crowds ever came the five days - over 40,000 people watching and there were deafening cheers and rock concert music.  Then the finals were moved to the NFL stadium.  Only a few members of the team and coach were shipped over in limos and our equipment loaded onto semis in a huge coordinated move during a five hour break.  It was no break for us.

Never thought this would happen.  
While the event awards were happening in the main venue, our partner got that field of theirs back to the venue as the practice fields had been removed while we were doing the eliminations.  Our teams were chosen because they were like us - and took our lead.  Never, ever ever think you are ready.  Work to the last second.  There is always a screw that can be tightened, a motor that can be checked, a test that can be done.  The kids are totally in control and we just sit back and enjoy watching this extreme display of the will to win.  Now think of this - the parents have run back and loaded up a 200 piece field from the top floor of a hotel and gotten it to a major convention center and reset it up in about 30 minutes.  OMG.  And the kids used it for about an hour to reprogram their autonomous programs to work in concert together better as well as surprise changes that a team might not know (defense, etc).

When we got to the stadium - we immediately noted that the static problem was epic.  We couldn't cross the competition area without seeing arcs.  It was a result of the dry air and the covering on the astroturf - no way to ground anything.  So immediately all the teams were playing with the sparks - but on our side, we knew the entire shoot out was going to hinge on this.  Our friends Gluten Free were the captains of the other side and one of their partners was our partner at Worlds last year.  They were super formidable and my son, as the captain, decided our mindset was the underdog and we had to fix the static problem.  The lead up to the finals was a few hours and the finals took soooo long with 45 minute breaks between matches as rock stars sang, luminaries talked (GM's CEO was there as well as head of the Air Force), Obama beamed in a message and T-shirt cannons were used to pump up the crowd.  Our kids didn't let a minute waste.

There is a robot there inside all those bodies working
feverishly - making sure no metal can accept a shock
If they weren't off in a corner discussing every concept to game strategy and legal defense moves at different points in the match (you will never see the moves we see in the video where our team steals blocks out of the mouth of the competition and backs into their path to cost them seconds - all of that was planned) then David and Rob were inspecting their partners robots with them and covering any exposed metal and protecting the wiring even more.  We had chosen them both because they had demonstrated not only great performance but humility and a willingness to collaborate.  I can't say that our friends on the other side were as focused as a three team group.

Woodie Flowers MIT Emeritus and former
PBS host - cofounder of FIRST
The stadium filled up and I was amazed at the poise and focus of my team.  I mean their faces were on no less than 7 jumbo trons - two half the height of the stadium.  I loved those pictures - never did I ever think my two boys would play on a NFL field and be on the jumbo tron for tens of thousand screaming fans.  When it was over - they let out the confetti.  Magical.

When you watch the video - know that in the last match it became obvious to our friends Gluten Free that they couldn't catch up and so with about seven seconds left, they mounted the final position and put down their controllers, ceding the match.  If you look close in the bottom of the frame - the captain stuck his thumb out saying to our side - you got this, congratulations.  What a humble and gracious move.  We were so sorry they had to loose for us to win, those boys are a class act.  We are rooting for them this year.

Two world champions, the runner up all around award winner
and two other MA teams - many of these kids went to
schools together and have moved on to college together
And to ice the cake - our Lincoln, MA friends - the ones who were huggers... they won the runner up all around award for the World.  What a thing.  The three teams got the three highest awards at the same time.  (And the Boston Globe refused to publish a story - just shows how there is such a bias against smart kids and for high school sports still).

The captains of our two partners - well they discovered in the summer that they were both attending Georgia Tech and they decided to room together!!  And our captains?  Well - they are in London right now together at the same international semester abroad for Northeastern.  They will come back to Boston in a week to join the other two Brainstormers at Northeastern.  Two others are rooming together at University of Massachusetts Lowell and the rest are at Tufts with kid who made the documentary.  In London are several other World's teams FTC kids.  I have told the kids for years - be humble, be nice, be helpful and be honest.  You will know these people in your careers for a very long time as the engineering world is small.  One told me recently he now understands why I always said that.

The focus of the kids for every last minute was incredible.  My son's last
pep talk just before they took the last match.

It came home to a few of them while we were in Detroit.  One wanted to visit UofM as he was a junior and another was trying to get off the wait list.  So I arranged a tour of the vast project team facility.  It is super impressive and houses the formula one team, hyperloop team, solar car team and many others.  We were being given the tour and had our team shirts on.  As we rounded one corner a student there stopped and said "oh my God - you are The Brainstormers!, we are rooting for you this week!".  We were stunned.  He said lots of them had been in FIRST over the years and had watched us at competition and were keeping up with our videos over the season and had planned on coming to the finals - hoping we would get to them.  As we left, I reminded the guys - reputation matters.

This competition is so much more than learning to program and build a robot.  As one parent said to me a few years ago - "it's everything school should be".

Below are two videos - the final match (one of the announcers used to live in Lexington a decade ago) and the summary video by FIRST released to the media gives you a feeling of the competition that takes over an entire city for a week.  If you have kids or grandkids, think about taking them to see it sometime or a local event.  Maybe they will be inspired to try it.  And yea, my kids are in it.

Pictures often say it all.  Now Pick Up Your Controllers Teams

Monday, December 10, 2018

A World's Documentary

2 Bits and a Byte in our basement working during spring break
before we all left for Detroit
In the most amazing twist of fate, the two teams whose fates had been intertwined for so many years - us and our local high school -were getting ready to go to Worlds, we were doing a lot of work together.  Our local high school team, 2 Bit and a Byte were using our field for changes as it was spring break and the school was closed.  The captain then told us he was going to do his school project for a film class as a documentary of their Worlds trip.

So imagine this - our fates have been linked for years.  They carry our stuff to the Worlds on their bus every year.  And we will win the World Championship and our friends are making a documentary for school!

David working in the Marriot ballroom
on our mini station - we have to move
that 200 pound cart of tools and robot around
everywhere we go.
Well - you will have to watch it as well, we show up in it quite a bit.  It is a great record of not just what happened but what the experience feels like for these teams.  You can see the work in the hotels, the boring travel, the affection between teams, and how big this is.  The world championship is played in the Lions stadium and the Astros park.  And there are 30,000-40,000 spectators, jumbo trons and news crews.  That is pressure for these kids.

All these top teams in the ballroom late into the night every
night of competition
The booth - we have always been low key, focusing on the
work instead of decorations
There are more back stories to this video - moments not captured.  How every night after competition the teams go back to the hotels, eat fast and start working.  Often you bring your field if you can get the hotel to rent you a conference room.   If you get one, you often invite teams that might be advantageous to you to come and work in your room.  The three MA teams have been helping each other like that for years.  This time, we were downtown across from the venue so they were far away and a Pennsylvania team called BrainStem had a ballroom at the Marriot and was having all the top teams come to use it with them.  They ran a mini-competition every night between the two divisions which no one was allowed to film.  A lot happened in that room at night and it was exhausting.

Our animal costumes
Our booth was decorated with a cute display of team photos from all the years and one of every one of August's T-shirts through the years.  Kinda nostalgic.  The kids had always been the least 'decorated' kids out there, preferring to stay focused instead of doing costumes and crazy hats which are encouraged in FIRST.  But this was it and so they decided to buy animal onezees and dress up for Worlds.  They competed several days in them and I loved that they were trying to add some enjoyment and soak up the last feelings of their FIRST adventure.

The Lexington MA team and Lincoln MA team we had competed with so fiercely and friendly for four years were in our division - and while they would be continuing on, we were retiring.  Amazingly we had one match together.  Us against them as a combined team.  Before a match, the
The goodbye hugs that interrupted the
competition flow.  What a moment.
announcer introduces the teams quickly and then they go 'Red alliance ready (thumbs up), Blue alliance ready (thumbs up) and then count down and go.  But this match was different and we were so stunned that we had to borrow the only pictures anyone got of what happened.  As soon as the announcement of teams started - their side put down their equipment and walked around the field and individually hugged each of our kids goodbye in a show of three way respect.  It stunned the audience of 5000 and the announcer.  I don't know what to say other than it was an amazing moment.

We went undefeated - it was mindblowing.  That meant we would be the #1 captain and could pick two teams to be our partners having the 1st and 5th choice.  As soon as it starts to become clear you will be a captain, teams come around and start promoting their team and trying to show their robots capabilities.  There is so much to this 'dating'.  As the final choices are early the last morning, you have all night to talk to teams and maybe work together to see how your robots perform.  So it is super stressful for both sides.  You are trying to look at film to see if their claims are true, figure out what capabilities you need in a partner set and do you work well together - i.e. will they follow directions.  You need to have several back-ups because the other captains might choose your choice before you get to the 5th pick.  So this goes on all night.  Our guys had evaluated many teams and had given suggestions to several to improve their performance - mostly centered around the electrostatic discharge to their robots which would temporarily or permanently disable the bot during a match.  That happens and your team will likely loose the match.  We had distinguished ourselves by mastering the electrical system and this problem so the kids went around to their potential partners and told them what to fix that night.  Next morning at 7am, they would meet all of them on the practice fields and put them through testing.  This testing consists of us driving around a lot and building up charge and going over to touch their robot and see if it stops running after being zapped.  Some teams follow directions - the Lexington team facetimed David at midnight running around the hotel in celebration of the fix he had suggested working.  When you see the video of the kid in the elevator exhausted thinking they might not play that day - that was the next morning as we hadn't committed at midnight.  We were still keeping our cards close to the chest.

These away competitions go either 3 or 5 days and so the last night when the stress of the last day is upon all their shoulders, I give a speech at a big dinner to remind them of why we do this and what they mean to each other.  It centers them.  Last year, the seniors gave tear-inducing speeches in return.  So the pressure was on and we actually recorded the kids doing it in Detroit.  No dry eyes - my husband was brought to tears by one boy who described finding us and what that meant to him and said "it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone that I wasn't a winner in Middle School, and you turned me into one".

Some teams tried to suggest a old trick that had been pulled on us two years - say you are broken so no one will pick you and then let the team you want pick you.  Very dirty.  Our guy refused when a team suggested it - the kid said 'you mean you would rather loose (thinking that they were the best choice) than do this?'.  Our kid said "Yes, and we have lost before and are fine with it".  We obviously didn't pick them.
Andy running this field and evaluating
teams as potential partners.  Must have been
hard for those guys to take this little kid
giving them the once over and doing
what he asked them to show.

When I arrived that morning at 7:30 am to the convention center - each one of my top drive team had a practice field with teams running around trying out their changes.  This picture of my 7th grader made me laugh.  You can tell he is holding the cards and is seriously evaluating that team of 17yr olds.

So we choose the BrainStem team from PA as our #1 choice and were thrilled when the Lexington team was available to us at #5 pick.  They were loosing hope that they would be picked and absolutely freaked out in the stands.  Our fates were now combined yet again.  And remember - it was a choice to hate each other or let bygones be bygones.  It was the right choice.

A story for the ages.

More tomorrow about the backstory of the event finals.  What made the difference.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Getting Ready for Worlds

So we had made it through and now they were working to perfect that aggressive autonomous program where the robot would be able to find the cubes and put it in the box.  Now remember that most of the team had done all of this while keeping all A's in AP classes in school and doing totally overwhelming numbers of college application essays.  It was tough.  So now the kids were in the time frame of acceptances and running around the country trying to make their final decision on colleges.

So the weekend before Worlds I was in Ann Arbor with my son at the campus visit weekend for University of Michigan.  In the morning, we were waiting for the session to start and he got a FaceTime request from his younger brother who was home with the robot running programming testing to discuss some changes.

What happened next was a microcosm of what this team is about.  Rob - the other team captain was in Florida and texts and joins on FaceTime on David's phone.  So there are two open FaceTime streams in my hotel room.  Andy has his phone on the field floor and is allowing the two boys to watch - David direct and Rob who is looking at the screen through David's phone.  He would run the robot - tell them what he was seeing.  David had the code up on his screen and would make a change and use this cloud based version control system used by all professional programmers called GitHub. Once he committed his changes to the cloud, Andy would download them in Massachusetts and load them on the robot and run it again so they could all see the results.  This went on for over an hour.

On the computer is Massachusetts, the phone kid is in Florida and we are in Michigan.  They are programming and debugging the robot from three states.

They don't take no for an answer.  All the seniors are in different states on the last weekend to do work?  That doesn't matter.  We will work on the robot remotely and collaborate across three states.  It just blew my mind so I had to take a picture.  This is one of the reasons they win.  They 'do whatever it takes', which is a line in a song by Imagine Dragons that all robot teams like to use for their robot reveal.  But these guys really take it to another level.

I recall how many of you who I have met through the years have asked if the kids 'really want to do this', implying that I am forcing them to work on robots.  You can't make anyone do this kind of thing - it comes from the inside.  You can guide them and enable them, but you can't make them.  They have to want it.  And they wanted it.

Saturday, December 8, 2018

The Reveal

So teams do this thing on YouTube called 'the reveal'.  Often before Worlds, they want to advertise to other good teams what their robot can do so they might be picked as a partner in the elimination rounds.

We have done it too - but this year was special.  All season the kids had a feature that no one could figure out.  They could pick up blocks that were at a diagonal and no one else could.  It was killer.  So we had been very protective of that secret and it was a big reason I wasn't blogging because the kids around the world had been doing things like sending people in the region (even as far as NH) to meets or scrimmages we were at with long lenses!!  I couldn't risk posting a picture in our workroom and someone seeing it.  They would talk about it in some social media streams including analyzing video shots from FTC sites and pictures and posting them thinking they knew the secret.  It was super crazy.  So we didn't release our reveal until a day before Worlds started.  There were lines in our booth to understand the trick and do the head slap as it was actually so simple.  The best innovations are.

The kids also did a really cool thing.  As our team was all graduating at once, they ended their reveal with a montage of their years in FIRST.  I cry everytime I see it.  It starts at 3 min 49 sec.  And at the end - they passed the baton to their younger siblings in a gracious move.  They gave them their name and trusted them with their legacy.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Off to the Super Regional

So after the MA state championship the kids made a radical change to their programming and installed some sensors to make it happen.  It was controversial on the team.  If we could pull it off, it would make us super competitive with Gluten Free and we had been jostling with them all season.
Deciding to entirely tear down the robot 48 hours before the
super regional to try to fix the electrical system

But sometimes those changes can be devastating, adding something to the system that throws the electrical system off.  And it was a spectacular problem.  Our control board - a $150 item kept frying randomly.  They would track down what looked to be the problem and rewire that and would get it back up for a day or two and back to the super challenging programming and it would fry again and they would find something else.  I would federal express a new board overnight and as it started adding up in costs and they couldn't get it to stop we were getting really, really worried.

They really get into the work
The programming guys were trying to build this system where the robot would know exactly where it was on the field and automatically pick up block and find its way back and deposit them during autonomous.  The game required 1 block pre-loaded to be deposited to get points in autonomous.  A small fraction of teams would drive blind into the pile and pick up one or two more and be able to get some of those in the box autonomously.  Gluten free was able to do two trips - getting between 3-6 in the box.  We were working to match that and increase the success ratio to a more guaranteed two trips and 4-5 in the box.  And all this would happen in 30 seconds.

Working with the designer of the control system at REV
Robotics to figure out this sensor-control system problem
But our electrical system kept frying.  I started teaching the boys how to do extreme failure analysis - map out all the changes and electrical failures and try to see a pattern.  We called the company who makes the electrical board and I led the kids through talking to them - make it their problem I said.  Show them you know your stuff and ask them to let you break the warrantee and open the case.  We sent them electrical measurements from the raw board.  It was a quandary.  The company kept Fed-Ex shipping us new boards - we spent $1000 on them.  There were a certain number of ports and as each one fried we had to use another until the board was useless.  So they had a test matrix on the white board for the programming - choosing how to test with the number of ports we had.  We were running out of time and how many boards were at the company.

And then the kids knew they had to do the terrible option - tear every bit of wires out of the robot and replace and rewire the entire bot.  That was a 8 hour job for two people.  And it was 48 hours before we were to leave for the Super Regional.  While they were doing that the three programmers (including the 7th grader) were all on spring break and they mapped out a complex master program that would test the system as soon as the robot started in the match and decide how healthy it was (i.e. getting the right readings from the sensors) and then send it down an execution path using the set of healthy sensors to do as many of the autonomous tasks it could.  This is called controlled system degradation and it is a very sophisticated concept.  I.e. don't let the spaceship blow up - limp it back to base before the astronauts die.  It forced them to write and test five autonomous concepts (each one would be a good team's entire program) and stuff it into one and allow the system to decide which one to run based on the electrical system health.  They were still writing it in the hotel the night before!

My youngest and Gluten Free after they set the World Record
Now once the wiring was all fixed, my older son sighed relief and went to school while my youngest
was going to run the software test.  And of course - it fried.  I could have cried - they weren't going to make it and they would lose the super regional and likely not make it to worlds.  It was a crushing blow I thought.  They texted him at school to deliver the bad news.  We were leaving at 3pm.  He told his brother to change a set of sensors to a different type and start recalibrating all the programs.  We let the company who made the boards know that they needed to meet us in the booth on the first day with a new board and they promised to go over the system.

In the end - it was their sensor they made.  We all figured it out because my youngest put his iPhone on the ground and filmed the robot as it moved off this structure called a stone in slow-mo.  This new sensor had moved position and was hitting the stone sometimes.  Static was building up on the field and was transferred to the robot by the sensor which didn't have a cover.  When the control electronics received enough shocked, its resistors burnt.  Yes - the company has totally rebuild and released the sensor for this season based on our kids research.
David and Rob.  The last time they
hugged like this, Rob was consoling
David as he wept over the
controversial loss at Worlds.  This was
for joy.  Friendships like this don't come
along often in life.

I was in the booth when the kids explained to the judges the problems they had had and how they had designed this  autonomous program to determine the health of the electrical system and run a different program strategy using different sensors to get points.  They were gobsmacked - just amazed.  As many of them were engineering VPs for major aerospace companies their minds were blown.  At one point the Raytheon guy shook my guys hands and told them they didn't need to go to college.  They were already fully baked and were needed at the job sites.

And the robot worked.  There are two divisions, 72 teams there and we were on the same side as Gluten Free.  This time we were able to become partners in a funny proposal again.  And yes - it was a dream team.  We started setting World Record after World Record.  In a mind-blowing semi-final match, we set the world record and lost in a controversial calling of some 300 points in penalties.  This ticked the kids off and other teams made it an internet meme who were watching world wide.  So they went out on the next match and set another world record.

They won the entire super regional and it felt sooooo good after coming in second several times and those two weeks of nail biting over the electrical system.  On to the Worlds for one more run for the Gold and it was going to be tough.

We won three engineering awards and in a funny twist, this took so many spots for advancement that the next spot for advancement kept going down the list farther... until it got to the local high school team who had been sad in the stands.  Their bad luck had kept following them and while we knew the robot was great, it had a problem that week.  But they were going to Worlds.  And that was prophetic.
We did it.  Those few weeks were so tough for these kids.

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Vermont Championship and a proposal

Before the MA state championship, we went to the Vermont state championship to try to get one of their two spots to advance to the super regional, knowing that MA would leave someone behind because it is such a competitive state.  That is how we had advanced the year before and the MA teams realized that it was a real advantage if they could be on the wait list for VT.  They don't have enough teams to run a championship and so depend on out of state teams to have a championship at all.  But it is a long drive - 4 hours away from Boston.

So this year it was full of the best teams in MA and NH.  That means for such a small state it was a preview of the eliminations for the World Championship and that was kinda overwhelming for the staff.  In the end, we went up against a team we really respected - a pair of brothers in NH.  They had already won their state and so had qualified but edged us out for the #1 captain spot by only 5 points out of 1000.  That meant that we couldn't be their partner for the eliminations as the way advancement went, the winning team partner wouldn't advance.  So they begged us as they knew together we would set the world record that day.  But their father/coach realized we couldn't say yes and we respectful let them know before the public selection show.

When the broadcast 'selection show' happened, the captain actually took the mike and asked us to be their partner, even bending on one knee as a proposal - something they knew we had to say no to and we had told them - it was quite embarrassing as the crowd booed when our captain said no (And someone put it up on youtube with the title 'betrayal').  The kid had even written a poem to ask us.  But Miss Vermont was there and came over and hugged the kid in a show of fun sympathy.  In the end the matches were incredibly close and we barely lost.  That was the only championship we lost all year.  And the story of Gluten Free and The Brainstormers wasn't over yet...

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

New Team Mate

During the entire early season we had discussed with the older team that after Lego was done, we wanted them to mentor the younger team and transfer their knowledge so when they went into the metal division they would have the knowledge.  We had envisioned that maybe many of them would join the team to shadow them to learn what the others did.  But when they decided to do that crazy month thing - it was the perfect way to mentor them intensely.  And so they did.

The two brothers again - now wearing the same shirt
But then they took it one step farther.  I asked them to put the issue of the kids joining them to rest before they went out to dinner one night.  When they came back - they had made a decision.  They told me they would invite my youngest son to join them officially and make him a Brainstormer.

This was right after they had finished that crazy month and they had been really impressed with him - he had always impressed them and had to go to all their competitions as we couldn't leave him home alone.  In fact for years he had been their best 'scout', informing them of which teams had which skills and letting them know which teams would be their best partners or the best strategy to run with them on the field.  Now it would be official.
Collecting the MA State Championship
Trophy - he was the driver

And not in name only - no shadowing.  The head programmer said that he had to be a full team mate - that meant he would be let into the code, would have to pull his weight, drive and everything.  I had tears in my eyes.  This was their last year in robotics and they just told me that they were going to let this 7th grader on their team and affect their chances of winning or loosing on their last run for the gold.  I told them what character I thought they had.

Andy was more than thrilled.  He poured his heart into it.  My husband started teaching him Java and
he took over tons of the testing of the code and running testing protocols on the robot.  The brothers drove every morning before school and with so much practice the two boys became a formidable driving team.

We went to the state championship I talked about before (when we pulled the local high school along to the championship and thus moved them on to the super regional).  The guys let Andy collect the State Championship trophy - becoming the only kid to ever win the robot game in MA in both levels in one year.

Getting ready for the Finals Matches of the MA State Championship.  The Seniors and the 7th grader.

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Robot Revolution and The Brainstormers Compete


Getting ready to go to competition, their robot was looking
Moving to the competition field in their new quarter zips








The only time they will ever be in competition together