Welcome to the Meme Dungeon 2.0

Winter Break
I didn't do much over break, but it was nice just being lazy after the stress of finals. Here is picture I got of my dog on christmas.



Monday January 9, 2017
Over the weekend, FIRST robotics released this year's game video. We took this class period to watch the video and learn about the robotics club. Robotics club members came up to the front and explained to the rookies what we do and what this years compitition will be like. Then, Mr. Miller talked to us about Google Sites, since some people were stuggling with html and their websites last semseter.



Tuesday January 10, 2017
Mr. Miller continued his lesson of Google Sites for those who were struggling with html last semester. Although I very much appretciated our tearchers providing us with options and caring about our grades, the lesson did not much pertain to me. I only paid half attention since I want to challange myself and keep using html. Instead, I added a new link to my home oage for my second semester website and a music player.

Wednesday January 11, 2017
First wednesday challenge of the new year...yay. So this time we were in pairs, and i got partnered with jacob. Mr. Miller explained that we have to cut out a foot long cardboard square. Jacob said that he won last year, and that the best way to be as exact as possible to not trace it out. So we got a carpenter's square and cut directly from there. Afterwards Jacob measured the corners with the pythagorian theorum. I think we have a good chance of winning. Square WC


Friday, January 13, 2017
The Robotics members had another presentation for the class. Sam and Cole explaind what the team has done since the game video was released. They also showed off some concept ideas they have for our bot. The rookies were invited to join the team.

Saturday, January 14, 2017
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!! Wow, i can't believe im finally *18* !!! After lunch at my favorite restaurant, Umami Burger, I got my first tattoo. Its a seritonin and dopamin molecule, which are the neurotransmitters for happiness.


Monday, January 16, 2017
We had an extended Robotics meeting today, since it's Martin Luther King day and we didnt have school. I welded somthing for the first time via Mr. Miller's instruction. I was going to help with the design team, but I got kind of caught up in practicing. A few others started prototyping out low goal/gear transport bot.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Mr. Miller finished up his lesson on Google Sites, explaining how people should set up their url. Afterwards, Kirk taught the rookies how to make a homepage for our websites. I already had a homepage, so it was just a refresher. Kirk also taught us how to improve our websites with more advanced code using a program called Bootstrap. I want to use it, but i honestly have know idea how.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017
For this wednesday challenge we had to transport some golf balls in bags without touching them with our hands. We were given a snack bag of office supplies to make a devise. Alex, Lucas, and I made a kind of scoop with paperclips. My group technically won, because the group that actually won was all veterans. Im not done with this WC form yet so the link wont work, but it isn't broken. (EDIT: I have now uploaded the WC.) Ebola WC


Thursday, January 19, 2017
Those who wanted to do a Google Site were sent to the shop, and those who want to continue HTML worked on making homepages with Neato. I got help from Kirk to add a navigation bar to my website. Afterschool, I got to do some more weld practice with Mr. Miller. It didn't start out too well since I have never worked with aluminium before, but I ended up doing one really good one that Mr. Miller praised me for.

Friday, January 20, 2017
Sigh... we watched the game video again... I mean...Yay we watched it again! We have finalized the design for our robot. Tony and Sam redid the CAD in Autodesk Inventor. This program was a lot better than SketchUp. They could adjust measurments like an Excel sheet, making it easier to alter the design. We have decided that the gear mechanism will be a passive system, meaning there is no moving parts. Also for the ball storage bin we will use a motor instead of pistins to move the ball wedge because pistins would take up too much space. At robotics, the new FAB kids learned how to use the mill. Nick and I milled the welds off our practice peices so they could be reused.



Monday, January 23, 2017
Dr. Neat went over the website grades. I got a nine out of ten, because one link didn't do anything. It wasn't broken though, so I asked Neato to look at it again. When he changes it my grade will be perfect. Afterschool, I didn't get to do any welding practice at Robotics because Mr. Miller wasn't there today. I hope he is okay. So, instead I started thinking about my skateboard design. I'm thinking of doing something simple because I don't like the way some of the more adverturous examples look.

Tuesday, January 24, 2017
So, a bunch of people had pitiful websites so Neato gently scolded us and divided the class. Those who had a 7.5 and below on their website had to work on it today. Those who got a good grade started this week's wednesday challenge a little early. We are supposed to build a car out of cardbaord and straws.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Okay so the car wasn't actually this week's wednesday challenge. Apparently, Neato was just giving us time to work on it so that our cars would be ready for next week. The actual challenge this week was to come up with a handout for this year's competition. My group came up with a little hand fidget. Competition Handout WC

Thursday, January 26, 2017
There wasn't much on the agenda today. I worked on my car and got a little advice from Alvin. My original plan was to make it shaped like a bullet train, but then I decided it would be more time efficient to just make a box and focus on a straight axel.

Friday, January 27, 2017
The veterans showed off the newly finished cad. Our design now includes bumpers, final measurments, the fuel pushing wedge and a secondary wedge to stop jaming. The electronics board has been assembled, as well as an extra. The programers are designing a game that will be played in the pit, though we don't yet know much about it.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017
So, last week we all tried to come up with ideas for competition handouts. Today we were supposed to take the winner of last week's wednesday challenge and improve upon it. My group ended up trying to recreate the original using a straw, which would be cheaper than wood. It turns out the aerial screw is really hard to make. When the groups were done making their improved prototypes, we went in the front of the class and presented them. Personaly I think the group that used a two propellar design did the best. Handout Redesign WC

Friday, February 3, 2017
A miracle happened today...CAD is FINISHED!!!! Every part of the robot has been finalized, as shown below. Though, FAB is a little behind schedual because peices weren't cut to the correct size of. These pieces will most likely get used for welding practice later. We are planning to make two chassies this year so that we can test a robot even after bag and tag. Speaking of which, 589 basically has one week to get a competition ready robot because the last week is reserved for testing. Also, today during school five 589 team members went to Rosemont to recriut next year's freshman.



Monday, February 6, 2017
Over the weekend Mr. Miller graded our websites. I don't think I did too well, since i was going to finish up my wednesday challenge form at Robotics on Saturday. Unfortunatly though, I wasn't able to go. Anyways... today in class he spoke on what he noticed about some of the websites. One critisim he had was that people (myself included) weren't filling out the "solution" portions of the WC forms correctly. After that, we finished up our cars, because will be racing tommorrow. Also, afterschool, Ms. Martos announced the t-shirt design for this year. It was the one I voted for which is pretty cool. I want Kirk's desgn to be the thursday shirt.



Tuesay, February 7, 2017
The date for the cars has been finalized for thursday of this week. Today we were working on finishing them up. All gluing should be done by tomorrow, because it needs time to dry. Since im done with my car, I used this time to finish last week's wednesday challenge and design next week's challenge. Yesterday at robotics we detrmined that the flying handout was against the rules and would get us in trouble. So, we will instead be making the idea I presented.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017
I am running the wednesday challenge today, because I approached Neato a few days ago about have the class make fidgets toys for the counseling office. He decided to make it into a wednesday challege. The students had to come up with a fidget toy design that followed the rules for the handout wc. I ran the challenge as the others were in groups.
Fidget Toy WC

Thursday, February 9, 2017
Today we our first round of car races. My car wasn't ready so Neato told me to just do it tommorow.

Friday, February 10, 2017
My car didn't move to start, so my first score was only 6 in. When i got it to move, it went all the way to the bottom of the ramp. The little skiis really worked! Next time im going to do more testing. Car WC



Wednesday, February 15, 2017
This wednesday challenge was very similar to the marble race challenge. We had to toss tubes to eachother in a circle. Its was kind of hard and it took good cooperation. Tube Toss WC



Monday, February 17, 2017
So we just worked on our websites so that they get up to date for the grading this weekend. Also the averaged car scores came out. My score was 79.2, so i won't be able to do the next car yet. To progress, people need to get a wcore of at least 100. Mr.Miller posted the list here.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Today is finally the end of build season!! During class the robotics kids did a demenstration on our finished robot. Afterschool we did Bag and Tag, where we got in a circle, loaded the robot in a huge trashbag, and zip tied it with the date.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Another Wednesday, another Wednesday challenge. Today we were to design the letter A for a diffent team to fabricate. This was basically the same as the 'E' challenge. It wasn't to hard to do the SketchUp with my partner Nick. Neato said we were supposed to also make the other team's design today, but we didn't have any time.

Thursday, February 23, 2017
So since there wasn't time yesterday, we finished up yesterday's wednesday challenge. Nick and i got Cole's design. It wasn't very difficult and he had added measurements which made it a lot easier. But, I really REALLY hate cardboard. Its hard to cut and it makes things innacurate. So it was a bit of a struggle to make an exact 'A', but i have faith. The judges will tell us the results tomorrow. A Wednesday Challenge




Wednesday, March , 2017
Boat Tail WC

Monday, March 6, 2017
To start off the class Mr. Miller briefed us on how the grading went. I've been too busy in class, so i haven't updated in a while. And to top it off I wasn't here on Friday so i couldn't do any last minute updates. My grade wasn't great... Kinda wanna cry. I really want to be doing better in the class. I really respect Mr. MIller and Dr. Neat, so i feel like ive let them down. Sorry. Well, other than that some people started the second car, in which we try to recreate a car from a SketchUp Neato made. My car didn't get to the 100, so i will be racing it again today.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Mr.Miller talked to the google sites kids about why some issues were happening with pictures not showing. He showed up how to make pictures available to everyone, so that they no longer show up as 'restricted access'. I use HTML so i just worked on my website. Afterwards we had time to work on cars.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017
The Wednesday challenge this week is to mail a chip to the school a chip without it breaking. Basically it is scored by chip damage divided by mass x volume. Neato told us a story of how he didn't notify the school of the packages being sent, so there was a bomb scare! We were given until Friday to make a design and score estimate that will be given to another group to build.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Happy Pi Day!!

Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Today is the last day to work on our chip packages. Edgar and I were practically done yesterday so we didn't have to do much today besides tape up the box. I worked on my website and the wednesday challenge form. Im a little worried about my website grade since i will be going to the Ventura regional tommorow and Mr. Miller is grading the websites this weekend.

Thursday, March 16, 2017
Instead of going to school today, a lot of robotics students went to the Ventura for our first regional. The bus left at 6am for Ventura College and we arrived around 9. Since a small team had gone to set up yesterday night the pit was up already. The driver capes weren't finished and a lot of the spinners wouldn't stay together so Nick and I had to do a lot of hot gluing.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017
We have another regional this week so instead of doing this week's wednesday challenge I was helping with preparations. Fabrication was working on a climber add-on to attach on thursday. Ian and I made more buttons for the pit. Excused WC

Monday, April 3, 2017
Now that the regional is over, the robotics kids did a presentation and spoke about our experience at the Orange County Robotics Competition. We showed the class some of our matches and the Fridolins' last match. Since we got the Engineiring Inspiration Award we were invited to Championships and everyone wore the medals to school today.


Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Since it is now the 4th quarter we will be starting on skateboards. The class hasn't done much for scatebaord prep in the last few weeks, so Neato is having us make a SketchUp of and already existing board. I still have to do the fabrication of Neato's pre-modeled car to qualify for making the final product. There is also some confusion over how the next few weeks will play out as 589 has never gone to championships, so some robotics kids will still be working on AthanaToaster-oven while others will be working on our final.

Friday, April 7, 2017
As the team is trying to raise money for Championships, Mentor Amiee started a GoFundMe page that was shown to the class. After Mr. Miller finished, Neato explained the results for this week's challenge. The score that won was 2.81. Even though it wasn't very accurate it won because it only utilized the decimals, inlike all the other groups that had 6-9. Kirk also went over the reasults of the Potato Chip WC that he posted on his website. For the rest of the period we worked on our websites because Neato is grading this weeked.

Monday, April 10, 2017
CAASP testing is going on today so we have block schedualing and thus had 2 hours in class. On Saturday we packed the robot up along with all it's extra batteries, a few bumpers, and some pool noodles for protection. Today AthanaTaoster-Oven got picked up by FedEx so it can be shipped to Huston. FedEx is a sponsor of FIRST so we got to ship the robot for free, which is lucky for us since shipping would have bankrupted us. After the truck left Neato explained the website grades from the weekend. I got excused from the wednesday challenges, even though i did them, since i was working on the robot. After showing some websites that have improved reacently, Neato called up all the kids who never got passed the first car. They were assigned a special wednesday challenge to get them caught up while everyone else worked on the skateboard SketchUp. Kevin did a lesson on how we can make a baord easily



Wednesday, April 12, 2017
At lunch I helped Cole clear the orange carpet so Christian could test his autonomus functionality. During class the class split into its respective groups to either work on CADing the scatebaord or build the cardboard tower. Even thoough Kevin went over how to make the design yesterday i still had some trouble trying to get my CAD to look right.

Monday, April 17, 2017
We started off by watching a video about a NASA project that one of Neato's colleagues was working on. And after Neato talked about what everyone should be working on, Kevin did yet again another SketchUp review. So he wouldn't have to teach us again, Tyler videotaped Kevin's lesson and Alex posted it on youtube.



Thursday, April 20, 2017


Monday, April 25, 2017
Everyone is finally back from Huston so Sam, Cole, and Kevin did a little presentation on their experience. Apperently when they arrived at the hotel it was really late, so they were running on 4 hours of sleep which is worrying to say the least. After setting up our pit the robot got inspected extrodanarily quickly, especially considering how many teams were present. During our first practice match we climbed successfully for the first time. As teams were only allowed in the pits for 4 hours, when it came time to clean up, the pits were a madhouse. There was a welcome party on the first day for all the teams. Along with food trucks and hackysacks, there was a "silent dance party" in which everyone wore headphones that played the same music. The team got to meet Woody Flowers and Angela got her name badge signed by him. That was probably hilarious to watch! Anyways we were on the Newton subdivision, a ratherunfairly buffed subdivision filled with past year's champs. The subdivision matches played mostly like regular regionals except alliances had 4 partners instead of 3. The 4th alliance partner was kind of only there on standby in case one of the others couldn't play. In one of our matches we were against team 180- a previos year's champ- and we didn't have a third allaince partner so things weren't looking too good for us. During the match we accidentally rammed 180 and dissabled them until the rope climb. One match our robot fell off the rope and actually bent peices on the feild but nothing on the robot broke! Later one of our allaince members had a broken gear mech so they borrowed our extra one and zip tied it onto their robot. Cole said this is called cheesecaking... In the end we came in rank 61 but it doesnt really reflect how well our robot performed. After our part of competition was over, our team had a pizza party with the swiss and got some nice shirts from them. The finals were held in Minute Maid Park along side the FTC (lovingly dubbed the FIRST Toaster Challenge) finals. But no one knew what was happening with FTC because it was boring and no one was paying attention. Unfortunatly, neither us or the fridolins didnt get picked for allaince selection. And although it was a little melancholy, there was a huge firework show when the stadium's ceiling opened up.They stayed an extra day since the tickets for monday were cheaper than those for sunday. During their free day they went to the Johnson Space center. Apparently 180, this year's champ, has their shop in a wing of the space center. is a big winner team and we got to see their shop in the space station. When Agela got homeshe gave me one of the fuel balls from the competition.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017
We had a skatebaord related wednesday challenge today in which we had to make a plan for cutting planks of birch wood from a 5'x5' sheet. I didn't end up participating in the challenge since I left early due to some emotional matters.

Thursday, April 27, 2017
Erin disscussed the results for the boat challenge that the non-skateboards group was doing last week. After that Neato told us that he is grading websites this weekend so we got time to update. The rest of the time I worked on my skate board. I forgot to post these earlier, but here is the SketchUp I did of Neato's board:



Tuesday, May 2, 2017
We didn't have much to do today. I worked on my website and finished up some wednesday challange forms. I still haven't finished my skatebaord SketchUp because I cant really decide what I want and people keep asking for my help with theirs, though that is no excuse for taking so long.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017
For today's wednesday challenge we were in pairs of twos and were tasked with making a paper airplane. We are to only use a singlesheet of paper with no additions and try to get it to fly the farthest. After designing we had to make instructions so we could trade with another group. Lucas and I designed a pretty classic airplane, but we thought about just crumpling up a peice of paper. We built Kirk's dart design. I wish we had just made the ball design in the end as it was the winning design. Paper Airplane WC



Monday, May 9, 2017
I made the final touches on my skateboard design and consulted Cole and Ian about how it looks. Once I was happy with it I got Alvin to help me print but he wasnt very helpful. Once i figured out how to print it wasn't too hard it just took a long time.

Friday, May 26, 2017
Water Filter Final

Friday, May 31, 2017
Today is my last day in Dr. Neat and Mr. Miller's engineering class.