AutoX Event #4 & 5 (May 12th and 13th)

[NevadaSTi]

Originally Posted by dknv

...And your child liking/loving it too.

Your lucky your daughter is old enough to drive or take a ride along, my son is only 5. When I told him that I sold my STI he was like, "DAAAAAD, ugh!" Then he told me he was sad that I sold my race car. That bummed me out more then anything.

[MattR]

Results are up at renoscca.com

3rd place PAX FTMFW!

[Nick Koan]

Originally Posted by MattR

Results are up at renoscca.com

3rd place PAX FTMFW!

Nice, I saw that. Congrats.

I got 15th in PAX, which is think is one of highest finishes in PAX (with a sizeable crowd anyway).

[Joeyy]

Originally Posted by MattR

Results are up at renoscca.com

3rd place PAX FTMFW!

Good one!..

[Nick Koan]

Originally Posted by Joeyy

Good one!..

You too man. 8th in PAX is awesome.

[Kevin M]

I held on to 24th for Sunday, and I'm actually pretty pleased with that.

[cody]

Apparently I wasn't there Sunday. I'll PM Mike.

[Pat R.]

It looks like Gary Starr is getting a handle on the Z06.

[MPREZIV]

Dammit I sucked on Sunday! Still holding 4th in SM Pax... until Pete comes and kicks my ass...

[NevadaSTi]

Originally Posted by cody

Apparently I wasn't there Sunday. I'll PM Mike.

I guess I didn't race on Sunday either!!!

HuH?

[cody]

Originally Posted by NevadaSTi

I guess I didn't race on Sunday either!!!

HuH?

Send a PM to MikeK. He told me he'd be able to take care of it.

[MikeK]

The fixed results are done, Scott should have them on the website sometime soon. I have no idea where the lost numbers went. I am really sorry about the fuckup, I will be checking for this in the future

Cody, you were 3rd in ESP and 23rd in PAX

Brian, you were 6th in ESP and 38th in PAX

[cody]

Thanks Mike!

[NevadaSTi]

Thanks man. Do we know if we were the only people who inadvertantly left out?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by NevadaSTi

Thanks man. Do we know if we were the only people who inadvertantly left out?

Because the guy that wrote the timing software is a hack programmer.

...results are updated on www.renoscca.org.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

Because the guy that wrote the timing software is a hack programmer.

...results are updated on www.renoscca.org.

While I agree the guy is a hack, the data loss might be attributed to the old version we are running. The author can only fix issues he is made aware of.

[cody]

Thanks Scott!

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

While I agree the guy is a hack, the data loss might be attributed to the old version we are running. The author can only fix issues he is made aware of.

I don't have the 3 hours it would take to list the known errors in that pile. Nor would I want a fix, since every new version reintroduces bugs, since Vitek's never heard of regression testing. I'd rather just figure out our own work-arounds to allow us to get the minimum data we need from the event to use as input to Mike's scoring software.

[MikeK]

I just checked the site for updates to the timing software, the next version is pre-release, look what I found in the release notes:

• Potential Program Lockups - the software could exhibit an infinite wait state (deadlock) and possibly corrupt the staging file in extreme cases. These problems were reproduced only under very high stress loads that should not be seen in normal use. The reproducibility of these issues depends heavily the circumstances and amount of load that the software is managing. It also seems dependent on the speed of your CPU since that affects the multi-process nature of Windows. 2 potential concerns were found:

1. If the Auto-Save Interval was executed in very short intervals, timing occurred VERY rapidly (seconds apart), and if data entry was occurring at the same time. Hard case to reproduce in normal circumstances
2. Movement keys are continually pressed while timing is occurring very rapidly (with a few seconds with multiple timers running).

The solution was to improve and isolate the save processes from other running processes, and thus saving after each car in the staging grid works as expected. This is still not recommended since it will thrash the processor excessively, especially for very large events. Slow machines will see this impact.

It looks like we aren't the only ones who lost data with his crappy software!

[Joeyy]

[/INDENT]It looks like we aren't the only ones who lost data with his crappy software![/QUOTE]

Thanks for all the hard work that you put into timing Mike!.. You should never buy a drink if your out with anybody from the Reno SCCA. I'll buy you a pint any day as long as your wearing your pants.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by MikeK

I just checked the site for updates to the timing software, the next version is pre-release, look what I found in the release notes:[LIST][*]Potential Program Lockups - ...It looks like we aren't the only ones who lost data with his crappy software!

I am not say we were, or that this in some way it is your or Scott's are fault. It is clearly a programmer issue, but perhaps he would realize the problem is more wide spread had we said something when we first encountered the errors.

We are paying for support on this product, and if we don't complain about at least the base functionality that we need not working, how can we expect anyone other than the elite few to operate our timing system?

All I am saying is we have a responsibility to complain about poor SW, especially when we are paying for it, or we have little justification to complain.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

I am not say we were, or that this in some way it is your or Scott's are fault. It is clearly a programmer issue, but perhaps he would realize the problem is more wide spread had we said something when we first encountered the errors.

We are paying for support on this product, and if we don't complain about at least the base functionality that we need not working, how can we expect anyone other than the elite few to operate our timing system?

All I am saying is we have a responsibility to complain about poor SW, especially when we are paying for it, or we have little justification to complain.

Excuse me? "Little justification to complain"? That's not how it works. If it's our responsibility to beta test his crap software, he should be paying us. I have every right to complain if his garbage software that we pay for every year is worse and worse with every release. As far as I can tell, we're paying him to make his product cause us more issues. That I can bitch about 'till I'm blue in the face without every sending him a single bug report.

Making his software is not my job, it's *his* job to provide us with a solution that doesn't require us to constantly verify and repair the results without paper timing backup. Hell, in this day and age, it's downright pathetic that he can't write something that doesn't require manual backup.

If I were to write the software for our region, I'd do it for free and there's no way in hell I'd release it if it worked as poorly as the current version of AXWare. You can't even enter people's names in the morning w/o it munching the data. That's beyond basic type testing. How can you release a version of this stuff that regions rely upon without ever even testing entering just two users? There's no excuse for that, other than professional incompetence.

We have absolutely ZERO "responsibility to complain about poor SW" to the author. We pay him, it's his job to make sure it's right *before* it ever gets in our hands. For every bug we find, we should be getting a free year of licensing because he's not providing us with what we're paying for. That's where the responsibility lies.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

Excuse me? "Little justification to complain"? That's not how it works. If it's our responsibility to beta test his crap software, he should be paying us. I have every right to complain if his garbage software that we pay for every year is worse and worse with every release. As far as I can tell, we're paying him to make his product cause us more issues. That I can bitch about 'till I'm blue in the face without every sending him a single bug report.

Making his software is not my job, it's *his* job to provide us with a solution that doesn't require us to constantly verify and repair the results without paper timing backup. Hell, in this day and age, it's downright pathetic that he can't write something that doesn't require manual backup.

If I were to write the software for our region, I'd do it for free and there's no way in hell I'd release it if it worked as poorly as the current version of AXWare. You can't even enter people's names in the morning w/o it munching the data. That's beyond basic type testing. How can you release a version of this stuff that regions rely upon without ever even testing entering just two users? There's no excuse for that, other than professional incompetence.

We have absolutely ZERO "responsibility to complain about poor SW" to the author. We pay him, it's his job to make sure it's right *before* it ever gets in our hands. For every bug we find, we should be getting a free year of licensing because he's not providing us with what we're paying for. That's where the responsibility lies.

I don't know what world you live in, but the world is full of crappy software from vendors both small and large. If you don't complain to the people who can do something about it, you are wasting your breath and shouldn't have expectations that they will get resolved.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Dean

I don't know what world you live in, but the world is full of crappy software from vendors both small and large. If you don't complain to the people who can do something about it, you are wasting your breath and shouldn't have expectations that they will get resolved.

That may be true, but I'll be damned if it's "my responsibility" to do so. The only person responsible is Vitek, since it's his program. I plan fully on making my complaint heard loud and clear the next time the renewal is up and I as a Reno SCCA board member vote not to renew it. Vitek can go straight out of business if he thinks it's okay to pawn off such untested crap on us believing (as you do) that we'll just go ahead and debug it for him. It's not my responsibility... I've already got enough software that is my responsibility. If I were to release crap like he pushes, I'd be fired.

Besides, it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect that as a professional software developer selling software that's basically mission critical to a race region, that he does minimal regression testing. But it's obvious that he doesn't know a multi-threaded application from his own asshole, let alone understanding proper QA processes... so complaining to him is a much bigger waste of my time than simple refusing to pay him any more money. It will never be right.

[Dean]

Originally Posted by sperry

That may be true, but I'll be damned if it's "my responsibility" to do so. The only person responsible is Vitek, since it's his program. I plan fully on making my complaint heard loud and clear the next time the renewal is up and I as a Reno SCCA board member vote not to renew it. Vitek can go straight out of business if he thinks it's okay to pawn off such untested crap on us believing (as you do) that we'll just go ahead and debug it for him. It's not my responsibility... I've already got enough software that is my responsibility. If I were to release crap like he pushes, I'd be fired.

Besides, it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect that as a professional software developer selling software that's basically mission critical to a race region, that he does minimal regression testing. But it's obvious that he doesn't know a multi-threaded application from his own asshole, let alone understanding proper QA processes... so complaining to him is a much bigger waste of my time than simple refusing to pay him any more money. It will never be right.

Since you are not T&S chief, I don't expect you to complain to Vitek, but it was your responsibility as well as mine in the past, and currently Mike's to make sure we have a reliable means of doing timing and scoring for the region. Waiting until our next renewal next March or whenever does not address the current situation.

Unless we want to change vendors, our only recourse is with our current vendor no matter what we think of his product.