Day one is done and it had it’s ups and downs over the 11 hours we spent at the Mississauga Hershey Center. The status of the Henri-Bourassa robot: the arm is having difficulties due to a combination of design and programming issues. Autonomous mode isn’t going to happen. The minibot may or may not make it into the final robot, but we’ve passed inspection and are ready to begin tomorrow’s qualifying round in whatever shape we start in. We can do additional work through the qualifying round.
Walking around and looking at the other robots was a little frustrating as it was apparent that so many of them had many more man hours of build time available, greater funding for parts, larger resources and facilities…and in many cases a fair bit more experience. But that’s isn’t the case for all of them as some are having difficulties even functioning while others haven’t managed to pass inspection yet.
The atmosphere is pretty good as each team is willing to help out the others regardless of the status of their own robot.
After they kicked us out of the robot pits at 8 PM, we all went for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.
Now, 15 hours after I left the hotel this morning, I’m back and am now ready for a good night of sleep! Tomorrow is another day.
Vigilant Futures has its select basketball aficionados on staff that meet every Friday on the bball court at the local university. The last Friday of each month, this select number of bball lovers face off against the Youth Fusion team from James Lyng High School and realistically, the younger players do get the best of us each time.
This Friday will be different. This Friday the Vigilantes will be spectators at LaSalle Community Comprehensive High School (LCCHS) when their bball team gets some court time with the kids from James Lyng High School. The reason: Vigilant is sponsoring 10 students from LCCHS to go to Ecuador in April…on the condition they play James Lyng for it.
The idea behind the friendly game was to get the entire school involved to raise funds for the 10 students. If the LCCHS basketball team wants to help their fellow classmates raise the money, then they’d be happy to help them out. And the kids from the James Lyng Youth Fusion program know all about helping the Montreal community. A perfect match. It’s part of the Vigilante way to pay it forward.
So now all of North America knows what us Montrealers have known for a while: Chuck Hughes is an awesome chef and Garde Manger is his hipster playground where his culinary ideas are born. He is Montreal’s worst-kept secret, but we’re happy to share him and his gastronomic prowess with the rest of the world so long as it is in TV form via Food Network Canada.
Yesterday night, Food Network Canada finally aired Chuck’s appearance on Iron Chef America. His selected opponent: none other than Bobby Flay. With Chuck’s ‘go big or go home’ attitude, you just knew he would choose the celebrity chef.
Anyone who’s watched Iron Chef America and dined in any one of Bobby’s many restaurants knows he is extremely tough to beat. No other Canadian chef beat Bobby before in the Iron Chef stadium. Not Susar Lee, not Lynn Crawford, not Michael Smith.
But Montreal’s own Chuck Hughes did it. His take on the secret ingredient – Canadian lobster – beat out Bobby’s dishes. His simple working-man dishes, as one judge called them, impressed the judges and ultimately led to Bobby Flay’s demise in battle Canadian lobster.
Montreal is totally proud! Check out what Chuck had to say before the battle began:
Last weekend, Vigilant Futures was lucky enough to be one of the Gold-level sponsors for Concordia’s first time hosting the CS Games. What a weekend! We were surrounded by incredibly talented students from across Canada and the northeastern U.S.
Congrats to the team from the University of Rochester for their 1st place overall finish. It was great to be there.
The 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day for me means celebrating my relationships with important women in my life. It goes beyond acknowledging family and old friends, it also means celebrating the women who have more recently graced my life with their simple presence (like my colleagues) because I am a better person for knowing them. I like to think they are better for having known me too.
It means celebrating the women who have taught me what being a woman means and hoping I can live up to their expectations. I think it’s as simple as that.
Happy International Women’s Day.
Mimosa: the official flower of International Women's Day
Concordia University is celebrating National Engineering Week (March 1-5) and to commemorate the event, engineering students are building a giant structure entirely from K’NEX pieces, as they’ve done for the last several years. This year’s structure is the space shuttle and will be the biggest project in terms of size and the number of K’NEX pieces used to build the shuttle. The number: just over 166 000 K’NEX pieces!
The week celebrates engineering in all its forms and shows future university students how fun engineering can be inside and outside the classroom. Concordia opened its doors this week to many, including potential students, to showcase their students’ talent and allowed them to get a glimpse of what the doors advanced education offers – something Vigilant Futures holds dear.
The Women in Engineering association at Concordia took charge of the project this year and decided to place special emphasis on the role of women in engineering to encourage more women pursue an engineering career. Their inspiration for this year’s project is Montreal native Julie Payette, engineer, astronaut, and honorary degree recipient from Concordia University.
The project is nearing completion as several weary-eyed students worked overnight to ensure the structure is completed by their Friday deadline. A few of us Vigilantes were lucky enough to be there as a couple of students mounted a cherry-picker with the shuttle nose in hand and ready to be crowned at the top of the structure. Onlookers filled the atrium where the space shuttle is being constructed and held their breath as the students ever-so-carefully lifted themselves and the nose about 24 feet into the air.
