[CRUSH-all] Robolympics and my absense from it

[Bill Bennett]

Hi team
I have heard from many, both on our team and others, that Robolympics came off great. I'm appreciative and proud of the team for that. I'm unhappy about having missed it, but it's hard to get ER trips worked into the existing schedule. 

I captured the video from KGUN9, which was not on at 4:30 but at 10 instead. I'll shrink it to a clip and post it. Thanks to Melissa for the head's up about that. 

Here's a summary of my gut wrenching - I mean that literally - experience this weekend, just so people who are curious know. I had mild abdominal pain all day Thursday. Just seemed like indigestion so I ignored it. Friday it was a little worse during the day. Some of you may have noticed by Friday evening during final pre-Robolympics prep I was not myself. By then the pain was coming in waves and being pretty severe at times. I went home and went through a diagnostic protocol interview by phone with a triage nurse, and the unequivocal outcome was to go the ER. There I went through manual exam, blood and urine analysis, and eventually a CT scan. The diagnosis was diverticulitis. It is not bad enough to indicate surgery at this point, though that could be at future possibility. For now I'm treating it with rest, antibiotics, and pain meds. My advice is to pay attention to recommendations about fiber in your diet, so you may avoid this interesting experience. 

I think I'll be able to come to the shop Tuesday, will keep you posted on that. I think our next important order of business is to get the student leadership organized, and to plan fall projects and activities. We have many enthusiastic members, and with the trophy project done, we need to right away figure out how we'll keep everyone usefully busy and interested. We should loosely divide into sub-teams and choose projects and goals in each area. For example, these could be: 
mechanical design
metal work and construction
electronics, sensors, programming
animation (this team is well formed already I think)
fund-raising, grants, administration
team image: photography, video, team graphics and uniform
communication: website content, newsletter, team brochure, public and media relations
... there are others, or different groupings, let's begin to work out a team view on this and get it going. 

Thanks again for all pulling together to make Robolympics a success. And especially to Michelle Lintner for pinch-hitting for me with very little time to prepare. Team CRUSH pulled it off.

Bill

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