AAAI ’04 – Victory

As you probably already heard, perhaps in Fritz’ LJ entry, or on the Swarthmore home page, we won the Urban Search & Rescue competition.

We didn’t just win; we kicked some serious smart people ass ;o). We set a record score for the competition (almost 36 points over 6 rounds). We doubled the second-place team’s score in just the final round, and tripled it if you count both the preliminary and final rounds. Take that, MITRE! And just to rub salt in the wound, we’re going to buy the same really nice robot carrying cases :oP. Stupid FedEx, destroying our wooden shipping crates…

At any rate, it was a truly awesome trip, punctuated by excellent food and excellent beer. I had dinner with my mom on Monday; we shared a salmon pizza, and I had an espresso-based ice cream dessert, to help me stay awake. On Tuesday, we went to this awesome Peruvian place. The owner was also our server, and he was just really friendly. They had this really good malty dark beer, Cusqueña. If you have it in your area, you should try it.

On Thursday, we drove down to Big Basin State Park in a very cramped Dodge Stratus. We hiked for a few hours, moving up through the redwood groves along a ridge line to a nice overlook. We saw a rattlesnake, among other forms of life. Afterwards, we were exhausted, so we napped for a little bit, and then walked over to the Tyrolean Beer Garden in Ben Lomond, CA, where we were staying. Some pretty good beer there as well.

I can’t believe it’s already been a week since we got back…


Comments

4 responses to “AAAI ’04 – Victory”

  1. Woo hoo! And congrats!

    *tosses confetti*

  2. Excellent, excellent!

    Although I somewhat dislike the l33t-speak, this is, nonetheless, a ‘w00t!’ moment. Even more so if you take ‘w00t!’ to be an acronym for “We Owned the Other Team(s),” given that you most certainly did. Maybe you even ‘pwned’ them. I don’t recall which one implies a stronger degree of ownage. But insert the one that does.

  3. CONGRATULATIONS! :D

    Guess good things come from talking to robots. :P

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