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

Welcome to Omnibits for Wednesday, 5 September (Day 1)

0615

The wx forecast is looking much better than it was 12 hours ago. VFS competitors are gearing up and our humble team photographer and Omni Assistant, Carlos Felix Ortiz, is headed to the boarding area to take ... team photos. It will take a couple of rounds to gather those all up, so plz be patient.

Send all compliments to my gmail address at tedcwagner; send all complaints to your local congressman.

0800

Arizona X-Force that is one beautiful video. Good VFS and good videographer work are a beautiful combination..

1045

We are rolling along here! The weather is cooperating (fingers crossed). Two rounds of Advanced and Open VFS already done, and one of Intermediate.

Big time thanks and kudos to Carlos for the tremendous job he's doing taking team photographs, getting them ingested into the bowels of OSHD, and putting out other fires all at the same time. REMINDER: If you share a team photo on social media, please don't forget the photographer credit!

Big time sarcastic thanks to Microsoft for making my life so easy (cough cough) with Windows 10 updates. Their most recent gift is the introduction of "Domain Firewall" which turns on every time a PC is connected to a new network. Unfortunately it's a notwork until that "Domain Firewall" is turned off. Just one year, Microsoft? Please? Just one year without one of your updates breaking my setup. That would be nice.

1700

Who isn't familiar with Chicagoland Skydiving Center? This is my first time here and I'm very impressed. Here's some snapshots from an afternoon leg stretch.

My office. Clockwise from bottom: 4 copy stations; my workstation; Internet support (.mp4 file creation and HTML files); database server; two video transcode servers; and three DZTV servers. A total of 20 computers in the LAN for this meet. (Not seen: three JukeBoxes and three OSHD scoring systems.)

The Pro Shop. I had to snip the unawares salesperson since she was clearly talking to an IRS auditor on the phone.

The Flight Deck Restaurant. The menu is not big but the food and service are both VERY good. I love the model P-51 hanging from the ceiling.

I don't know how they play basketball on that court. It looks kinda soft to me.

The Meat Director, Sir James of Hayhurst (in the red shirt), surveys the battlefield. The Flight Deck Restaurant is in the background.

The main hangar. (Actually, the only one.)

View from just outside the judging rooms. Two JukeBoxes are on the far wall and one more around the corner from the bottom of the stairs. So now all you Texans know in advance.

The VFS judges at work on Round 4.

wx hold again ...

Here's a note that interesting, at least to me: this is the first meet I've ever supported where I did not set up the judging room. FS Chief Judge Jim Rees did every bit of it. A strategic error on his part, but that will hit him later ...