Tag ipico is great

We were given Friday off since the 4th fell on Saturday this year.  I took advantage of the day off by coming to work.  It wasn’t too bad I only spent a couple hours there doing some work on our firewall and moving some mailboxes over to Exchange 07. 

After leaving the office I stopped by the truck accessory store.  I need to get my tonneau cover replaced.  My bed cover has been in poor shape for a long time.  Over the years the three cross supports and rear support have all broken.  As a result there has been nothing to keep water collecting in the cover like a pond for the past couple years.  Well it finally took it’s toll last week when the weight of the water ripped the one side rail clean off.  Instead of replacing it with the same style I decided to spend an extra $75 for a folding cover similar to what is pictured to the left.  It has integrated supports that will not snap over time.  It should get installed later this week. After the truck store I stopped and grabbed groceries as well since it was on my way home.

We decided to further utilize the extra day off by knocking out the normal weeding/mowing/ weed whacking duties on Friday afternoon.  It was cool to have that out of the way for the weekend.

Our 4th of July started ridiculously early, I set the alarm for 3:45 am, yes that is not a misprint.  We needed to try to get to the race site as close to 5am as possible for the 7am race, there was much to do.  This was our first time using the brand new Ipico timing system.  We were rolling the system out at the biggest race we time all year, a rather daunting test.  Once we arrived on site we realized we should have some bug spray, they were nasty.  It was also incredibly warm and humid.  Even though it was still pitch black out I was sweated through my shirt in short order.

We began the mad scramble to get all of the equipment set up.  Runners started showing up already at 5:30 am.  The chaos ensued.  We had a number of volunteers there but the problem was nobody had the time to instruct them on exactly what they needed to be doing.  This is a common theme with most of our races, disorganization.  We recruit bodies to show up but we don’t have individuals on site whose sole responsibility is making sure that everyone knows what they are doing.  Ali and I try to throw instruction out there as we can but we are both far too busy attending to day of race registrations and setting up the timing equipment to be of much help.

Soon the place was MOBBED with runners.  There was nobody available to help Ali with typing in the day of entries so I had to jump in and help as I could.  It always amazes me how many people wait till the day of the race to sign up.  We had around 230 people do so out of the nearly 900 race entries. 

Entering day of entries is a VERY frustrating process.  In order to ensure that runners are timed accurately we need a few pieces of information, their name, birthday,  gender, zip code and their bib number.  It’s crazy how hard it appears to be to get this information.  Ali and I were constantly getting entries that were incomplete or written in illegible chicken scratch.  We instructed the people at the desk to double check that the information was legible.  Some either forgot or were too overwhelmed by the mass of humanity to do so.  We really need to work hard on getting the registration process to go smoother.

So about 10 minutes before the start of the race I still had not finished doing the prep work on the timing hardware.  I told Ali we had to move the laptops over to the finish line so I could do that while she finished putting in the entries.  Never having done the pre-race setup on this system in live conditions added to the stress.  I also was missing a printer cable, I accidentally left it with the old timing hardware.  Luckily one of the board members was able to run over to his office and borrow one for me to use.  I actually was late getting to the start line, they had to wait for me to get there.

So the race starts and I head back to the finish line to help Ali finish putting entries.  I synch the time on the computer to the time on my watch. then the timing hardware is synched with the computer.  I punch in the race start time as 00.07.05.30, or 7:05 am or so I thought.  The first runner came screaming down the last stretch and crossed right around the 15 minute mark.  His name  and time pops up immediately, cool.  The timing system appeared to be working fantastic, each runner that crossed was read immediately.  When big clusters of 6 or 7 runners crossed simultaneously it handled it just fine.  With the old DAG system it would have been a nightmare trying to hear if I got the same amount of beeps as runners.

Well after about 100 runners finished I thought I would produce the first set of results.  When I pulled up the results screen I noticed something was wrong.   The times all showed as 7 hours and change, wtf??  I mentally scrambled to figure out what was going on for a few moments until I figured it out.  The start time I entered needed to be shifted over to the left, I inadvertently had told the system the race started at 12:07 am…..

Great now how do I fix it?  I knew how to erase the results and I knew I could manually import the times from a file however the first file I looked at did not have all of the finish times.  After a few more moments of panic I found another file that had all of the times.  I changed the race start time, imported the file and the numbers were then correct, whew.

After that drama the rest of timing the race was a dream.  The Ipico system continued to read times perfectly and the new software made result generation much easier than what I was accustomed to.  The hardware is also incredibly easy to set up and tear down.  I had the race awards done before they were even ready to announce them.  We had the race site cleaned up by 8:40 am, a fantastic accomplishment after putting on a race of that size.  On the ride home Ali and I both took turns verbally patting each other on the back for making the new system work in such testing conditions.  All of the other races should be easy in comparison.

When we got home after unloading the car and doing a chip inventory Ali retired pretty quickly back to the bedroom for a well deserved nap.  I stayed up and worked on getting the results online as well as getting all of the equipment cleaned up and put away.  We were somehow missing 6 chips after the race. 

The rest of the day was enjoyable, we actually got some more chores done inside the house but we also spent a considerable amount of time enjoying the pool, making burgers on the grill for the 4th and watching a movie.  When we were sitting by the pool in our new zero gravity knock off lounge chairs I commented to Ali how it seemed like we did SO much for one day.  I guess when you start your day at 4am that happens. 

The movie we watched was Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian, I had this for quite awhile but never got around to watching it.  Much like the first movie I enjoyed it and once again it sort of felt like a poor man’s Lord of the Rings meets Harry Potter.  I’d give it a B+.  Not worth seeing in a theater but a nice rental.

Sunday was rather busy again but we had a healthy amount of relaxing time as well.  We decided to knock out our July cleaning project right away, the utility room.  We have been rather lax in doing the monthly cleaning project.  In the past 6 months we may have done it half of the time.  The utility room is small, maybe 6 x 12 but we spent a good couple hours cleaning it.  We have a bunch of shelves in there that are loaded with stuff.  We took everything off the shelves, sorted it, cleaned it, threw out unneeded stuff and put it back.  The utility room is also where the litter box resides.  As a result everything had a generous coating of dust on it.  We spent a lot of time wiping everything down including the baseboards and even batteries.  Well Ali cleaned the batteries and the holder they are in.  The room may not look significantly better to the casual observer but Ali and I can tell the difference.  It smells less dusty as well.

We again spent a decent amount of time both around and in the pool.  Sadie of course was involved in the fun.  She once again fell in the pool inadvertently while playing the splashy splash game.  This time instead of swimming towards the steps like we hoped she would she tried to get out in the deep end.  Instead of forcing her to go to the steps I just gave her rear end a push so she could get out.  Boy does she LOVE getting splashed, it’s crazy.

Last night I watched another movie I had for awhile, Slumdog Millionaire.  I knew little about the movie except I heard it was good (although somewhat depressing) and that it was up for multiple academy awards.     I had NO idea that movie was about Who Wants to be A Millionaire (Indian version)  I thought it was about an Indian slum lord.   

It was a very different type of movie for me.  The movie plot seemed incredibly detailed and complex.  The way the past and present was tied together was pretty brilliant.  The movie featured some very disturbing images of life in India.  It certainly would not do much to bump their tourism numbers.  India is definitely off the “must visit” list although it was never on in the first place.  Talk about decrepit living conditions….

Anyway the movie was good, just good in a different type of way for me.  This was all about the story and character development.  They did a great job in both regards, I’d give it an A.

I forgot to mention that the mess that was all over the hood and door of my truck miraculously cleaned itself while we were out west. Before we left I had washed and waxed the hood but I still could see some staining, I had not addressed the driver side door at all.  Well when we got back I could see no more evidence of staining.  Evidently the combination of intense south Florida sun and torrential rain had dissolved the stuff.    Before we left I dropped 30 bucks on various rubbing compounds and waxing tools to get the mess off.  I guess I didn’t need it.  I still plan to use what I bought to give the truck a thorough once over.

I finally started reading a book I bought a few weeks back call The Dumbest Generation.  The book is about the irony in today’s digital age where there is more knowledge available than ever, yet young Americans are dumber than ever.  They aren’t dumb in a clinical sense, I’m sure they have the same brain capacity of prior generations of Americans.  They just don’t use their brain.  The book isn’t just making broad, baseless claims, it uses information gathered from many sources to back up this analysis.  Young Americans are very tied up with being social consumers and little else.  Young America has very little to no knowledge of history, politics, government or little else that does not affect them in a very direct and singular manner. 

Yes I don’t need anyone to point out that although my age would exclude me mathematically from this classification I still am a regular participant in many of the same vices the book claims to be  the source of this intellectual anesthetic.  Facebook, blogging, texting, Twitter, MMORPG video games, 200 channels of TV are all symptoms of the new dumb reality.  I know that I participate in all of these.  I am under no illusion that these things do have a dramatic effect on an individual’s performance in society.  You are connected but isolated at the same time.  You prefer to text your thoughts rather than say them.  Your idea of a good time is a raid on Ogrimar instead of getting together with friends.  I get it. 

The fact that I am interested in reading a book about this very phenomena is a clue that I am not beyond hope. That and I can still tell you who the vice-president is and can point out  Egypt on a world map.