Kite Flying in Bellevue Downtown Park

We flew Eitana's kite today in the Bellevue downtown park. There was a brisk wind that kept the kite up until Eitana got bored. We watched the R/C boats on the pond and then played on the big play ground. It was a refreshing outing.

Cascade Striders Track Meet Network did not work

The great plans we had for applying technology did not work very well. It took 90 minutes to get the printers to work. The HP jet-direct card was invisible on the network. The wireless network broke down during registration. We needed to move all six machines and three printers into the finish-line tent. Next year I shall have three wireless routers strung out around the field with a repeater in the middle cranked up to 250 mW. Next year I shall make sure all the laptops have pre-installed printer drivers and pre-configured ports for the jetDirect and other print-servers. Next year we shall test under more extreme conditions and simulate network outages to accelerate recovery. Next year we may attach the WAN port of one of the routers to the public Internet, instead of using a coach's phone as a modem. Next year we shall keep the .mdb master Access database on a very fast flash drive so that the Microsoft Access transactions can flow faster.

Meet Manager does have some cool features. The fact the Microsoft Access can handle fifteen transactions per second from eight separate machines on a high-latency network is cool. Meet Manager enabled us to upload all results to the public Internet in two clicks. All results can be posted in real time. And using a phone in the announcer's booth to read the results from the public Internet did indeed work. The photo finish stuff enabled us to resolve a tie (going down to the thousandths of a second from the photo finish). And meet manager's interface to the electronic finish line stuff was flawless.

Cascade Striders Track Meet Network Set-up

So the Cascade Striders are hosting their track meet on Saturday, May 31 at Samammish High school and as a parent of one of the kids who practices and competes from that team, I have been enlisted to help host the meet. As a spectator, I have watched how the other teams host track meets this year (and last year) and I am always extremely disappointed. The meets are disorganized. There are not enough volunteers in the field events. The heats take forever to start. The athletes, coaches, and spectators wait impatiently as the meet coordinators lazily arrange for the next event or wait for some unknown reason. The meet is always hopelessly behind schedule by the second or third event.

Among the reasons for these failings is the lack of communication among the meet coordinators and hosts. They hand-write results, heat lineups, timings, then need to "run" (they usually walk slowly) these results to the different stations. So this year the Cascade Striders are trying to bring the organization of a track meet into the 21st century. We purchased a 6-license pack of Hy-Tek's "Meet Manager" software and arranged to borrow a bunch of laptops from parents. I set up a wireless network and we arranged for a blackberry to be used as a modem attached to one of the laptops to give it public Internet access.

The announcers in the booth can either WAP the results down from the Internet on a cell phone to announce them or access a text file exported by "Meet Manager" to read the results. The registration, awards, and administrative laptops in the concession booth and admin building keep track of who paid, who is registered, who gets which medal, etc. The start/finish machines interface via meet manager to the electronic start / finish equipment.

What have you done for me lately?

There is some discussion today on a mailing list to which I subscribe regarding the question raised at the bottom of this blog entry. I would like to see some of the petro dollars going to good use.

Wonderful Weekend Weather

We went wading on the lake shore at Idylwood park where we built an awesome sand castle, complete with moat, draw bridge, and outer perimeter wall.









We had the best weather all weekend. Track practice was warm and sunny. We cooked and ate Bar-B-Q in the back yard every night.

Lag B'Omer

Trioxane and some sticks were all we needed to get the bonfire roaring!

Breaking: Fat People cause Global Warming!

This is the best journalism to come out of the LA Times in many years:

"...obese people are disproportionately responsible for high food prices and greenhouse gas emissions because they consume 18% more food energy due to their greater body mass -- and require increased quantities of fuel to transport themselves and the food they eat"

Who would a thunk it?

We need a global tax on body mass index (BMI) to buy up charcoal and bury it in the Mariana trench.

Balmer talks about Yahoo, Work / Life Balance, His Heritage

The original Hebrew version of the article is much longer and has more depth than this abridged English version. "...float like a butterfly, boom, boom, boom, sting like a bee."

Microsoft Language Translation on the web

We (Microsoft) finally have a decent, competitive translator up on the web:

http://www.windowslivetranslator.com/

Check it out! 检查它! ¡Compruébelo hacia fuera! فحصت هو خارجا! Vérifiez-le !

Photos of "Wings of Eagles" Track Meet 5/10/08

I am also putting videos on youtube.