Remember To Do Some Good.

It was probably Saturday morning 4:00 A.M. the week of when I was taking one last look at my inbox out of shear bored-i-ness. I remember getting the e-mail from Jean about volunteering for another robotics camp, and that I had forwarded the information to some of my colleagues and friends. No responds from either group..

4:15 AM

There wasn't anything on my agenda for the upcoming week, not in the mornings anyways. I just had to meet with a potential employer on Monday. I told myself I would go only if I could get another friend to come, but after waiting for several days with no reply, I thought about just sending a courtesy response in case they were hopeful about having extra volunteers. I wasn't going to do it.

4:25 AM

One Piece on Hulu.com. Amazing anime. It was probably on the war with Whitebeard saga that I was on.

4:45 AM

I was getting sleepy and tired. Only my fellow night owls were active on facebook. Not less than 24 hours ago, I had returned from a bicycle trip from Lake Mead. My body was still recovering from the sun and 45+ mile ride. Still in front of the desktop, I looked down at my hands to read a that message written down on my keyboard.

I guess putting it there did it's purpose. Reading something is all the motivation you need sometimes.

4:51 A.M.

The e-mail was sent, and that was it. 

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The event was a girl scout robotics camp. Apparently it was my 2nd time doing it. Or not - a year or less ago they told me, I had done the same thing. It was called something different back then and was less formal. Throughout the week I was there, I got to meet and re-meet some interesting people. Among them Ms. Gari Lindsey, the current VP of the LVV section of SWE; Josh Mauro, who I discovered was also a mechanical engineering undergrad at UNLV; and Monica LeFebvre, a lady who helped coordinate programs with the girl scout group. They're shown in the following photo.

Everyone was so serious. Notice the serious face in the foreground. Such seriousness.

Josh kept getting hassled by the younger girls. They loved us, maybe a little too much. I was quickly reminded of old times with my baby sister after seeing them jump him and fight for his attention. This was the reason why I stayed away from the younger girls. There were around 35 girl scouts working on a series of tasks. By age range, they were divided into two groups. 

Most of my time was spent offering advice on the NXT Lego Mindstorm kits assigned to the older girls. The most challenging task they were assigned to including using a 3rd motor to control an arm that picked up objects located on a mat and placed them at another location. All of them wanted to used pre-routed programs. My IEEE friends would've panicked >.<

On Friday, came judgement day. Kim Womack came by to judge one of the events, and I was assigned to aid. My performance as a judge was less than that of an educator. I believe the main goal of it would be to perform a professional evaluation on a list of required task in order to showcase to the parents what the girls have learned. She was indeed a professional.

At the end of the day, there was a pizza party and Josh and I were handed this.

I was appreciated and have the certificate to prove it.

We  received "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies by the girl scouts. By the way, if you haven't tasted them, they are delicious! If memory serves right, the chocolate fudge has a sort of minty taste to it which makes these cookies unique. The accompanying mug was unexpected as well. Aside from the material stuff, earlier in the week an 11 year old girl scout had said "Thank You" to me and smiled. The first of many thanks received. All the rest actually had diluted the value of the phrase, but that first one had made my day. It was totally worth volunteering my time throughout the week. These young ladies will grow up and build weapons of war one day. And cure cancer. They'll also cure cancer. With robots*