2018 USPA National Skydiving Championships of Artist Events, Formation Skydiving, Speed Skydiving and Wingsuit Flying

Welcome to Omnibits for Thursday, 6 September (Day 2)

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Today is "watch the meet director strain his neck exploring the sky" day. wxcast is rain this morning and clouds this afternoon.

There are lots of people here who have been very helpful to me getting set up for this competition, but I want to give huge, huge shout-outs to two people this morning.

Not sure whether I mentioned this before, but this is the first USPA Nationals I've ever supported where

I did not set up the judging room. I didn't even step in there until it was all done.
I did not participate in entering any teams or competition data into the system. I did not even print a slate.
There were times during the first day when I caught myself looking for something to do.

The VFS and FS chief judge Jim Rees is the person responsible the above mayhem. Thank you Jim for being such a great customer.

He even updated the MFS and 10-Way dive pool images and fixed the database settings to properly define the Advanced and Intermediate VFS and MFS pools -- something he figured out how to do without any assisstance.

The other person is Carlos Felix Ortiz.

Every once in a while I'll come across somebody who makes me look like a caveman in front of a computer, and be happy for it.

Carlos is one of those guys.

I've been showing him the ropes on how to support the omni side of the competition; all the under-the-hood stuff that goes on in this room full of computers. There is a lot to learn, but I've never had to show him anything twice, and a few things not even once. He showed me how to (usually) resolve the "too many open connections" problem I sometimes get even with less than Microsoft's limit of 20 computers online. He figured out how to configure my router and video streamers to pipe the DZTV video feeds through the router to the TVs in the hangar. He introduced me to a free and effective remote desktop tool that lets me view and control all the workstations from any other workstation on the LAN.

Carlos has forgotten more about Windoze administration than I'll ever know. Thank you CSC for landing this guy in my corner -- he's going to be a YUUUUGE help when I have to return home next week during FS.

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We are on hold until 1100 :)

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All day of staring at rain and clouds and now we have a comp load going up. I think first round of Artistics and one VFS team ...