Membership number change

Our membership number has changed fro 35545 to 36918. This is because we are now 'Team B.' Whatever that means. It has something to do with the greater number of teams sponsored by the club this year. I liked our old number better. I had finally memorized it, and it was easy to type, too.

In the future, the URL of this blog will probably change to http://36918.blogspot.com. So bookmark that, and if this page ever fails to load, check that one.

Meeting 12-30-06

Today felt productive. I think. Present members were:
Elliott
Joel
Brian
Kris
Anthony

We decided that we need a plan. It was sort of my idea, and Coach Mymom explained "how it works in the business world." We all decided that a plan would be helpful. So we made a list of things to do. I don't think it's complete, and of course, things will change, but at least it's a list. Now we have small tasks that one or two people can work on by themselves. I was going to scan that list and post it here, but I'm lazy. Basically, here's what we decided:

I'm going to look for LEDs for the keyboard and a western shirt for Joel.
Joel is going to find a costume for himself.
Brian and Anthony are going to work on Ted.
Ted is our secret name for the fantasticmobile vehicle.
Ted will have a pipe encasing the axle so as to protect the foam.
Ted's gears will be made out of stiff, but squishy foam.
Joel and Kris will be dressed like cowboys, with huge belt buckles.
Kab is going to be dressed in bunny pajamas, in memory of his pet bunny.
Kris really, really likes guns. We have to remind him that we can't use weapons.
The theme is going to be Bandera.
The castle is going to look like this:

That's all I can think of. Add comments if I missed something.

Second meeting

Today we had a meeting. Kab was the only person on time - in fact, I think he was early. I arrived at my house 5 minutes late, and Joel, arrived 20 minutes after that. But I had a good excuse - I was buying plywood at Hevenor's to build the keyboard prop, and I had to tie it to the roof of my dad''s Jeep. Now I know that I suck at tying plywood to a Jeep. It took forever, and then I had to hold on to it out the window the entire way home because it was loose.

Anyway...
Joel had done his homework with Andy, so we had a look at their script. Not bad. We added some stuff, most notably, MUSIC!! We're going to have music. If any of you know my father, imagine him. Any time somebody says something that is in a song, he sings the line of that song. (I have sort of inherited this odd habbit myself.) Anyway, that's what's going to happen in our story. We're going to have a lot of one-liners from popular songs play from speakers. A few songs we may use are:

"Milkshake" - Kelis
"I Want It That Way" - Backstreet Boys
"You Can't Always Get What You Want" - The Rolling Stones
"Basket Case" - Green Day
"Bad Day" - Daniel Powter

We had a lot of fun finding songs to use.

We improved on Joel and Andy's script a lot. Now the Supervillain (Kab) has emotional problems, and tells his prisoner all about them. He used to work at a milkshake factory. He always dreamed of being a sandwich chef, but his goldfish died when he was eight, so he dropped out of school to take care of him and with no education, was forced to become a supervillain. And the prisoner hates mayonnaise.

At the end of the skit, we're all (superheroes, supervillains, and prisoner) going to become friends and sing a song together. So we need to write a song. Kab said something about working on that, but we can't really until after the plot is settled.

Kab wants to be on the team, and he is coming to the next meeting (December 16).

Blue mushroom containers from Super S (or maybe other places too) might work well for the keyboard keys. I don't think strawberries are in season. I bought one container of mushrooms (yuck!), and I'm experimenting with it.

Kris could be our sign? Supposedly, a team did that last year and got a lot of style points.

I can't think of anything else now. Bye.

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE US ANY IDEAS ABOUT ANYTHING. WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE ANY IDEAS GENERATED OUTSIDE THE TEAM.

Meeting overview

I was sitting in my room, eagerly anticipating today's Odyssey meeting, asking Kab over the phone why he was 15 minutes late, when Joel, Anthony and Brian barged in sleepily. Brian was enthusiastic about Google SketchUp, and made me install it so he could show us a model he had made of the "flagella" propulsion system idea. It looks like this:



Confused?
So are we.

So after a while, the coach came in and made us get down to business. Joel told us about his idea for a plot. It was really good, and we've modified it since and now it's better. Gold star for Joel!

Everyone had trouble understanding the specifics of the problem, but now that's all mostly worked out. We brainstormed a lot of stuff, and the results are too complicated for the general public, so they are not being released currently.

The basic plot is this:
Two superheroes (Joel and Kris) are watching TV, and on breaking news they see that a supervillain (Kab) and his sidekick (Elliott) have kidnapped 2 people and locked him up with a password. The supervillain announced the password, but he threw away most of the keys on the giant keyboard. So the two superheroes must find all the keys and rescue the victims (Anthony and Andy). There's going to be some superawesome fight scene at the end.

The next meeting is on December 2, and then on December 16. We decided on some jobs to do before the next meeting.
Elliott: keyboard
Brian: sign
Anthony: collect strawberry cartons, design pigeon thing
Joel: rough draft of script
Kab and Andy: maybe help with script
Kris: figure out colors for superhero costume
Everybody: generate more ideas for propulsion of the device

Bye bye for now. And here is a little note that I think will accompany every blog post. It is very important.

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE US ANY IDEAS ABOUT ANYTHING. WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE ANY IDEAS GENERATED OUTSIDE THE TEAM.

decision-making

I made our member number (35545) the URL for this blog. Right now you are viewing this at http://35545.blogspot.com.

The URL needs to be something people can remember, so we can get lots of visitors. I think "35545.blogspot.com" has a certain.... 'ring' to it that is memorable. What do you guys think? We can always change the URL (a very cool feature).

Current Members

Elliott Balsley
Brian Bates
Kab Burgess
Andy Cook
Kris Maya
Anthony Mireles
Joel Rizner