Tidbits (Timbits + Tedbits)

C:\Hello?
g'day
C:\ping Houston
unknown host Houston
C:\ping Houston again
unknown host Houston again
C:\whoami
you are omniskore
C:\whereami
you are downunder
C:\connect downunder>universe
connecting downunder>universe:done
C:\Ping Houston
Connected Houston ok ASCII MODE ok BINARY MODE ok LIST
Roger, Houston here, we have OmniSkore, let's ROCK AND ROLL
C:\Thank you Houston, beginning transmission NOW

Prologue

After a long year of preparation, the stage has been set for the final world skydiving championships of the millennium. By the end of the month, dreams will come true for the winners, while others may go home disappointed, thinking what might have been...

But that time is nearly two weeks away, and there is much excitement and many great skydives to come first. Let me begin this daily commentary by explaining that OmniSkore, as most of you know, is an electronic scoring system created for real-time scoring of formation skydiving competitions. Over the last few years, we - Ted and Tim Wagner - have endeavored to bring the excitement of the competition to the viewer through the magic of "DZ TV" and the Internet, while providing the judges and competitors with a state-of-the-art scoring system.

OmniSkore is not used to score freestyle or skysurfing. A similar system (also built by Ted and using completely different software) called Pegasus is used for those events. We should point out for the benefit of our audience that while we will try to cover as much of the various disciplines as possible, our first love and passion is formation skydiving. If our coverage seems biased in this direction, well, that's because it is.

Speaking of biased, it was only after months of writing these pages that I remembered that there is a feminine category in FS (don't ask me why there isn't a masculine category). I'm going to try to list the feminine standings on the 4-way results page.

But enough of that. What excitement is in the air here! Our home team Arizona Airspeed is here, representing the U.S. in both 4- and 8-way. Will we show bias towards them as well? Of course we will! But as usual, all excellence will receive its proper due.

The Key Matchups...

4-Way
Defending World Champion Arizona Airspeed is looking to put their third plaque on the Ottley Sword. Perris/France Maubeuge -- the only team ever to defeat Airspeed -- is looking for their first. Airspeed has looked particularly sharp in training and set a tentative world record 39 points at the 1999 U.S. Nationals, beating the old mark of 36 held by, you guessed it, Maubeuge. These two teams will be the ones to beat, and it will be one great shootout. Lurking hard: Norway, Great Britain, and Russia. 

8-Way
This will be the first world meet since 1985 without the U.S. Army Parachute Team present, as Airspeed attempts the very difficult (and never done before) feat of one team winning both events at the same world championships. Airspeed's recent defeat at the hands of the Golden Knights aside (at the U.S. Nationals the Knights overcame a 6-point deficit on the last two jumps), they have been skydiving well. Hoping to end the United States' perfect record in the event is Russia and France.

The Host: Corowa Ready
They've done everything possible down here short of shipping all the flies to the South Pole. Murphy showed up in the DZ-TV room yesterday though, our MX1 video mixer bit the dust and now we have no mixer for DZ-TV. And apparently 4-input video mixers in Australia are as hard to come by as a decent cup of fresh brewed coffee. Any Aussies out there got one to spare? Help!

NOTICE: If anyone has a question or feedback which requires an answer, please send e-mail to my new address: wazunit@hotmail.com. That is the only address that I can send mail from.

At 1000 hours we are still sans mixer and decent coffee (yes, we've found something to whine about). There's blue skies outside, you can see in the picture of the Japanese 8-way team boarding to the right.

1200 - Ahh! Just found the cappuccino bar they set up near the creeping area. Real brewed coffee, and hot chocolate too. Most excellent! Still no video mixer though. DZ-TV is gonna really bite without one...

1800
Boring day...can't wait for the fur to start flying on Thursday!

BTW, I got my regular e-mail working, so ya'll can trash that hotmail address I gave earlier. I get more Spam there than regular mail anyway.

See you tomorrow! Hey, where'd this bottle of nice Port come from? Why, thank you Mário! A very good evening to you all!

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