March was a busy month, but I was glad to be able to return to volunteering with the FIRST Roboics Competition at the District Event in Mecklenburg County (Mar 17-19). Luckily the yellow hat and the lead robot inspector vest still fit and I even located a Bravo Team sponsor sticker in the wild. On Sunday, I was tracked down by my student Jenny Dam (FIRST alum from Team 4935 – T-Rex, based out of Olympic High School) before another surprise…I was given the volunteer award for the Mecklenburg County District Event. It was the icing on the cake after getting to reunite with so many good people after being off of the FIRST circuit for a couple of years. Great robots, a good team of inspectors, and some nice competition on the field made for a busy but fun weekend.
Waves to Water…One Year Later
A nice writeup about the 4 teams in the Waves to Water DRINK Stage finale and link to a great video about the prize.
Photo from Werner Slocum, NREL
https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/one-year-later-finalists-reflect-waves-water-prize
Water Bros Article In UNC Charlotte Magazine
https://ucomm.charlotte.edu/our-work/channels/unc-charlotte-magazine
They folks in university communications did a great job with the article on Abby and Allison that appears in the Fall 2022 edition of the UNC Charlotte magazine.
End of the semester festivities
It was good to have some students and alums over food and games as the fall semester came to a close. On the games front, we learned a bit about wombats, gambled with a middle schooler, and Matt Calvin remained undefeated in Kill Dr. Lucky (the family board game of cold blooded murder) 19.5th anniversary edition.
UMERC/METS/OREC
It was good to be back to in-person conferences this September for UMERC/METS/OREC out in Portland. There were a lot of great presentations and it was nice to hear all of the exciting research updates. In particular, it was great to catch up with my former student Casey and hear about all the exciting things he’s doing at NREL.
Waves to Water DRINK Stage Finale Pictures
The Waves to Water Communications team has posted a Flickr galley of the DRINK stage finale. There are some great pictures in there, like this one of Landon and me talking device recovery with the NREL team.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrel/sets/72177720299196451/
Another student/alumni gathering…another lack of pictures
It was good to have some students and alums over for food and games at the end of the summer and catch up before the semester started. Unfortunately, I think everyone was again having too much fun and forgot to capture any pictures. As is tradition, there were a good number of games of Pairs before we shifted to more treacherous games. Alliances were made. Betrayals occurred. I had my perfect scheme thwarted by a 6th grader. Good times.
