On Thursday, October 10th, we had our first team meeting.  The turnout was excellent at 30+ people, many of whom were new faces - which are always welcome - and it's looking like recruitment really came through this year.  We can all thank Frances Tung for that excellent work, making our amazing recruitment posters and dealing with short turn-around times.

While we covered the obligatory introduction to what FIRST is (cue "My FIRST Power drill" video ) and introduced everyone to our operations and subgroups, we also enjoyed a VERY special guest; that being some Boeing engineers and their new "toy".

 This "toy", named in military fashion, is the SUGV, or Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle.  Designed with reconnaissance in mind, this robot doesn't carry any weapons or use special tools to neutralize an IED (improvised explosive device, to those of us that live under a rock) like the air force robot demoed at the '08 Microsoft Seattle Regional.  Nonetheless, the thing is nothing less than amazing.  It sports the ability to climb stairs, go underwater, and move faster than any human can sprint.  Some other tidbits about the robot: it runs Fedora Core Linux which is reinstalled every time it gets turned on and it's controlled by a mod of an xbox 360 controller.

 Our next meeting will be on Thursday, October 16th.  This meeting is mandatory but we will have lots of fun stuff to do (as usual)