Results 180, CC complete, 1600, Playon
So Saturday morning I was timing my first every regional cross country meet. I put a lot of effort in ahead of time preparing for this task. I had a couple phone conversations with the author of the timing software I use to make sure I was doing everything correctly. Instead of spending hours entering paper entries I spent the time doing test sessions and importing spreadsheets from each school that had their roster.
One important detail I forgot to address was exactly how to get the location of the event which being held at one of the area high schools. I turned down the street that had a sign for the school but I ran into a locked gate. I could see the football stadium all lit up inside the fence (where I needed to go) but I had no idea of how to get there.
Along the fence line there was a narrow dirt path that ran parallel to the field. I thought maybe if I followed it I would eventually come to an opening where I could cut across. Well after about a half mile on this path it dead ended to another locked gate. The path was too narrow to turn around on since there was a canal on the other side of it so I had to drive backwards out of there.
Of course I was getting rather annoyed as I tried to use my GPS to guide me into the facility. Luckily I just stumbled into another entrance after circling around for a little while. I found the race organizer and finally was able to pull my truck into the football stadium.
The Collier County school system has VERY impressive athletic facilities. They just got done replacing all of the high school football fields with RealTurf, the fake grass that is actaully better than grass in many ways and light years ahead of good old astroturf.
I was impressed on how much bounce the field had. The “grass” itself looked pretty real as well. One of the things that helps RealTurf feel like it does are the millions of tiny little rubber balls that are buried in the grass. They both provide cushion and prevent cleats from getting stuck in the turf which causes many injuries. I also noticed that if you walk on this turf for a period of time you will surely have a bunch of these little rubber balls inside your sneakers. It felt pretty cool to be down on that beautiful field that was lit up from the stadium lights which were all burning brightly.
It was time for me to set up. Because in this event all of the data entry was handled ahead of time it made for a pretty leisurely environment leading up to the race. After getting the laptop and timing equipment set up I had a lot of stand around time until the first race started at 8:00 am.
The first race was the varsity girls. As the first finisher crossed the line I panicked a bit when I saw her time was two minutes longer than it should have been, I made a typo in the race start time. Luckily I was able to correct it easily. By the time the last girl crossed the line I already had the results of the first race complete. The coaches were thrilled with instant results. In the past they timed the race by hand which takes MUCH longer and produces much less information.
In total there were four races that went down one after the other and the timing went great. I had one girl that said her chip didn’t register (although it tested fine later) and one girl we had to DQ because she accidentally cut the course short. Other than that, things were perfect.
I have a feeling that my chip timing the race could possibly lead to more timing work for other cross country meets as word spreads of how efficient it was. I had a couple coaches on site ask me about the possibility of timing stuff for them. I told them I would be happy to talk to them about it, hell I could use Camaro money.
I actually did pretty much every part of timing the race myself, I didn’t have to hardly involve Alison at all. She showed up on site after a group run and handled getting all of the chips sorted and put away which was a nice help. Other than that it was a one man show.
I can’t tell you how many times I was thanked and told how much my efforts were appreciated at the race. It made me feel good about what I do.
Once we got home and after I had the results posted and equipment put away I immediately moved into my other work. Alison was pooped from getting up early and running so she retired for her customary nap. By the time she came outside I was finishing up the last of three things I wanted to get done, back filling the sprinkler repair area, spreading weed n feed over the rest of the yard and replacing another ripped section of screen in the pool cage.
Once I was done there I decided to hop on the mower and mow down the majority of the back yard which was overgrown badly. I had worked on the tractor the week before trying to fix an annoying oil leak that would cause the mower to smoke like mad when it first heats up from oil on the exhaust manifold. It seems like my repair was successful, I had no oily smoke during the session.
Alison went out for a girls night out Saturday night with Christie and Michelle. She said they hit a number of places before she rolled back home after midnight. I spent my night working on the computer and watching the Phillies get eliminated from the playoffs.
Sunday morning we just did a swimming workout at the water park. I told Ali I almost felt lazy by doing JUST swimming and not tying running, biking or both into it. My goal this time was to swim another 1600 meters/yards (not sure of exact length) however this time I wanted to do it continuously.
I have traversed this distance in the water twice before but the first time it was four 400 meter segments and then two 800 meter segments. This would be the full Olympic swimming distance at once.
Before I started I had Ali shoot video of me doing my warm up lap with the Flip HD I grabbed off of Woot. I have described how my swimming style is very weird and leaves much to be desired. As you can see, there are elements of freestyle, side stroke and even a breaststroke style kick in there. I know it looks very odd but for whatever reason it allows me to swim extended distance in a reasonable amount of time. Why fix it if it works for me?
I was able to hit my goal, pulling down 32 fifty yard laps in about 34:30 according to my watch. It wasn’t easy. I tried to imagine hopping right on a bike for 25 miles and then running another 6 after such a swim. It didn’t seem like it would be very much fun.
Boy this past weekend was a big change from the last where all of the Philly sports news was good.
The Phils had a lot of momentum returning home after a huge win in San Fransisco to extend the series. The rabid fans were thrilled when the team jumped out to an immediate 2-0 lead. Unfortunately that was all the team scored, filling the rest of the game with frustration culminated by Ryan Howard striking out looking to end the game. The Giants simply played better during the series. Their pitching for the most part shut the Phils down, plain and simple. Oh well there is always next year.
The Eagles game was very aggravating as well. For half of the game the Birds were handling the Titans pretty easily. They were driving for a TD that would have given the Eagles a huge lead when LeSean McCoy fumbled the ball away after a sloppy exchange. Then the wheels came off.
The Titans have this receiver I never heard of with the last name of Britt. All of a sudden he become God-like. He burned the Eagles again and again AND AGAIN for huge gains down the field. It was utterly insane. Sean McDermott had absolutely no answers for this kid. Instead of moving Asante Samuels onto Britt he left Ellis Hobbs on him who got burned worse than toast in a flamethrower. Hobbs looked like he was playing on one leg, he apparently sucks.
Well McDermott had no plan to slow down Britt who had 225 yards and 3 TD”s receiving. As a result the Eagles went down in flames after controlling the game for more than a half. It was very disappointing.
I have continued my investigation into ways I can cut down on paying too much money for stuff that I shouldn’t be, my latest target being the ridiculous amount of money Comcast charges us for cable tv.
One of the options is to use a HDTV antenna to grab over the air high def broadcasts of the major networks. I have read that surprisingly, the best HD picture you will get is via this route. The vast majority of what is sitting on our Tivo is major network programming AND the Tivo’s have support for an antenna based connection, another plus. I also have my Netflix service which is an unlimited source of tv content.
If there is a downside it would be the absence of some cable only programming I like such as Caprica, The Ultimate Fighter, Iron Chef and a few more. Well I may have found an answer for that as well.
A Google search turned up a website called http://playon.tv It is an application that you install on your Windows based pc that allows it to act as a proxy for other DLNA/uPnP devices to grab web based video content. It supports a number of devices including all the popular console gaming systems, iphone/ipad and many more.
I tested the system out on my Wii as well as my Iphone and Ali’s IPad. It’s pretty damn slick. The interface is barebones but simple to use. The selection of available content is pretty staggering including Hulu, Spike.tv, ESPN and many, many more. The content took less than a minute to finish buffering before it fired up.
There are a few drawbacks. To use the service obviously your Windows pc has to be up and running to serve up the content. The client itself seems to be a large resource hog as my CPU meter was running at over 50% even when it wasn’t actively streaming. Once streaming started it almost pegged the CPU.
The quality of the video stream varies from provider to provider. On the small Iphone and Ipad screen the video content looked just fine across the board. However when you blow that up to 73 inches there is a pretty big visual quality hit.
Playon is not a free service. You can try it for two weeks for free. After that you can pay $40 and then $20 a year or bite the bullet and pay $80 to be good to go permanently. A one time $80 cost versus $700-$800 in cable tv charges a year is a good trade in anyone’s book. It’s all a matter if you are ok with some of the other trade off’s.