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Spring Break!
(2007-04-02)

Wow, there hasn't been a news post in, like, a really long time. Lots of stuff has been going on, but I just haven't gotten around to writing about it. Here goes. A while ago, I emailed the creator of the Lifter and designer of the HVPS circuit I am trying to build, asking about the transistor problem. I haven't heard a response back. So, my HVPS test circuit is happily sitting under my bed in a big cardboard box. No work on the lifter yet, either, until I get the HVPS working. Early in March, my sister's gym held the annual Fairland Classic. The meet ran smoothly, and has become the biggest trampoline meet in the region, ever, including the regional itself. Like usual, I managed networking and award labels, and wrote a new program this year, which would spool out labels for awards very quickly on a single-feed label printer. Later in March was the First Robotics Competition. Our robot didn't do so good at the regional competition. We took it down to the FRC Chesapeake Regional, and spent our entire practice day swapping out the frame for one that was less than half the weight. We were still 11 pounds overweight, so unfortunately we had to remove half of our ramps, allowing only one robot to get up. Due to the lack of testing, the robot didn't function very well during the matches. It could hang tubes fairly efficiently, but we only hung 1 the entire day. I didn't seem to understand why, but the drivers must have thought it a better idea to play defense. Our one ramp worked great, almost every robot that tried was able to get on it. We won 2 of our matches, and placed 8th or 9th from last out of 50 some teams. Recently, I noticed the Ultimate Calculator on hackaday, and decided I had to put a PS/2 port on my calculator. After some part scrounging, 2 days of hard work, and lots of Dremeling, my TI-83+ now has a working PS/2 port. I'm still writing drivers for it, and am almost done with the keyboard routines. I hope to be done with all this before spring break ends. We move fairly soon, before school's out, and once we're settled into the new house I'll be able to spread out, my dad can set up shop again, and things here will start to move.