Thank you for everything Olivia

[richardharman]

I hope someone with some real influence in First reads this and rewards a simply great person who kept our team in First.

  After spending at least 40 hours tryng to figure out Labview from the various documents and videos on ni website and finding only help that did everything except teach me how to get labview to run three lousy motors and three  solenoid pistons (about what 99.999999% of what first teams need to learn), I started to come to the realization that usfirst just might not be the program for me or my school.  Here my school had plopped down nine grand on a program that required that I stay up all night for six weeks straight, ignore my job, family, friends, and health, receive no fincancial compensation or academic recognition for my efforts and then to make it all the more delightful give me just enough information about labview to make me look lke the stupidist moron to ever fumble about on a laptop.  ( I'm not). In short, my professioal reputation was in dire jeopary  Imagine that in your job, you convince your boss to give you a 10,000 dollar budget for something that you cannot get to work in the most rudimentary stage.  That was where I was.  I had attended a training (?) session for labview that was held by one of the Beta teams last year only to hear a young man mumble about vi's for an hour and 15 minutes.  It was a waste of time.  I read the ni community forum pages every single day.  What an extremely wretched way to provide support for a high level and very expensive system.  Imagine that you buy a car. The car is very sophisticated and requires some real training to operate properly.  Instead of providing that training, the auto company refers you to a forum website where other people who have bought the car (and can't figure out how to even start it) try to answer your questions.  Now let's make the situation even more like USFirst- if you can't get the car running within a week you will not be able to get to work and you will lose you job!!!  Finally, my patience at an end, I called USFirst to demand my school's money back.  It was the end of the line- no more Deam Kamen- No more gracious professionalism- no more Woody Flowers- no more getting locked in the school's parking lot at 2 in the morning with the one student who stayed late to get the robot working.

As a last resort, I tepidly dialed the ni community phone support and after a few quick questions and a short hold period, I was put through to Olivia Chiu (sorry if I spell your name wrong). Then, as if divine intervention had conspired to restore my faith in the world, Olivia answered nearly all my questions about labview in about 5 minutes.  I like to think that since I had done a lot of homework (including having printed out much of the training documents), I was able to help OLivia help me.  But I think the simple fact of the matter is that Olivia (as well as Brett(Brent?) and the others at ni were simply very patient and very understanding of both Labview and the needs of usfirst participants. All in all, I might have spent a total of ninety mnutes on the phone with Olivia and the other engineers at ni over the next two weeks and at least half of that was due to the time I had overlooked a hardware issue  (I think the sidecar power had become disconnected).  Olivia did not call me an idiot one single time even though it would have been a justifiable accusation.  With their very brief help, I was able to get a very functional program together and teach members of my team. I couldn't help but wonder why First and ni did not provide training materials that were immediately pertinent to the most common needs of developing working code for the robot ( as opposed to trying to get us to figure out that *&^^%$#$ camera that never works or the frigging gyro chip).  It would have been so easy. THe closest thng I found was the simple moters trainig video (which was from 2009 and not updated- with omissions that made it not work with the 2010 version of labview)

ONe Saturday morning in particular I was trying to finalize the assignment of the solenoid outputs to specific buttons on the joystick. I knew that I was close, but I couldn't get it.  I spent over three hours on the website trying to figure it out  -- only to find everything one could imaginably do with an accelerometer chip (thanks!!).  The information I needed  (as well as 99.99999 % of USFirst teams ) was simply not there.

Feeling I had given a good faith effort- I dialed ni- thankfully Olivia took the call. IN less than 45 seconds  (I timed it).  I had the answer!. Imagine how long it would have taken to get that answer from the forum?

So there it is.  OLivia Chiu kept our school in the USFirst program- not Deam Kamen-not Woody Flowers- not the Beta teams- not gracious ^&**((()% professionalism - not the engineering firms and the corporations that USFirst wants us to weezle endorsements from.  Just one competent, sincere and professional person.

Imagine if all of USFirst worked this well?

Sincerely

Richard Harman

team 539

[OliviaC]

Hi Richard,

Thank you so much for the glowing comments and feedback (and yes, you did spell my name correctly). I'm so glad that we were able to answer all your questions and help you get your team's robot running (and kicking). It's been a wonderful experience helping out with the competition and seeing the students' and mentors' ethusism and energy at the regionals. It's too bad I wasn't able to be at your regional but I hope you all did well and that you all had fun!

~Olivia