Which brings me to this weekend and my trip to my home town of North Bay, Ontario. My good friend Ken had an important set of ski races to run and ensure that the race is fair and done without error.
Well, Murphy was an Optimist and this weekend was no exception. Just like World Cup, we run 2 unique timing systems just in case we have a problem. We call them System A and System B. In the first race today, I hear "Start/Stop" on the radio due to timing. I walk in only to find Ken watching his Windows 7 computer reboot. Yep, the Serial/USB adapters caused a problem and the computer totally froze up like an igloo. Well, that is why we have a System B and he switches over to System B which is running the same program, but the DOS version (remember DOS?).
The DOS version just works. 100% of the time. Never causes us a problem. IT JUST WORKS, which is great when you have a hundred or so people standing outside freezing their toes off. And, if it ever fails due to a power failure, it tends to reboot long before the monitor comes back on. Thank god for System B.
Next problem. Something we call back up hand timing. It is the absolute fail safe if we loose everything. The standard is to use an Alge Timy. Another 2 pieces of equipment that JUST WORK all of the time.
Except today.
Both of them failed. One won't stay turned on. The other one won't turn on at all. It is good to have something for the technology toss. Nice. (It is now 10pm at night and we are in Sudbury and it looks like I have fixed one Timy with a software update, but the other one is still dead).
Lastly, our 2nd set of displays. The ones we show off with by putting them up at the start so that the coaches can see the times of their racers. Nope, can't get those working either and I give up on getting those to work after about an hour.
Now at the hotel, with a fixed Timy, I can now test the display boards. Guess what, they work fine. Next test is to have them hooked back up to the computer that they were hooked to during the race which means that they were being driven by a USB/Serial adapter. This is the same computer that froze up solid this morning.
So, after all that, Murphy left and we were able to get the rest of the races in without any surprises. We are now in Sudbury and get to do the same thing again tomorrow.
It was also great to meet up with some old school friends (high school). Their kids are racing and we got to share some stories of some very fun times.
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