upa

Various team event queries for rosters

Snippet

Find teams that are at a UPA event in the rostering system

-- find all the teams at the club sectionals
 
select r.teamid, r.name, t.tournamentid, t.name from roster_tournament t, roster_team r where t.name like '2009C%CLUB%SECTION%' and t.tournamentid = r.tournamentid; 
 
-- teams with > 27 players on roster
 
select r.teamid, r.name, t.tournamentid, t.name, p.lastname, p.status from roster_tournament t, roster_team r, roster_player p  where t.name like '2009C%CLUB%SECTION%' and t.tournamentid = r.tournamentid and p.teamid = r.teamid and p.status != 'D' group by teamid having count(r.teamid) > 27;

Why can't women huck?

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So, I've been generating the thumbnails for the videos on the UPA's College Championship Series website. This oh-so-difficult task means I have to watch these videos (oh, the horror) of ultimate. Heaven forbid. Watch ultimate. Woe is me.

I've been watching these and each time I see one of the women players put a disc up, I can't help but think, "Good lord, woman, don't put it as high as long!"

Every time.

I mean, check out the women's division round three video. Both of the hucks are freaking HIGH.

What the heck is it that these women can't huck for crap? Is it that they need to put it high so that it floats longer, to allow teammates to get downfield? Is it biometrically easier to release a disc with the angle on it that makes it go up-up-up? Guys' hucks aren't normally this floaty. I think a guy would be ridiculed for a huck that looks like these do.

Am I just jealous that my forehand hucks were never more than 49 yards long? Could that be the problem or source of my criticism?

You know, that could be it.

But, geez, woman, put it flatter.

Certifiable!

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The last step in the UPA's Coaching Certification program is to take an online test. I (finally) took the test today. An advantage of taking the test online is that it's scored immediately. After taking the test, I knew both that I had passed (yay!), but had received a score of only 93% (boo!). 93%! Sure, it's an A. However, it's not an A+. Where have my priorities gone when I'm not happy with an A?

Out the window, apparently.

I missed the question which asked, "Which of these is an advantage of Spirit of the Game and self-officiating?" both concepts being central to the sport of ultimate. The answer choices were:


a. They force the players to know the rules
b. They provide opportunities to learn conflict resolution
c. The joy of playing over the obsession of winning
d. a and b
e. a, b, and c

Now, this is the only question I had to think about, and think about for a long time (where "long time" is defined in this case as all of 10 minutes). I looked in the handbook for help, without success. Sure, I had 24 hours to complete this test, and sure, the obvious answer from the standpoint of the free-loving hippies of the sport is e, but I'm not sure the "joy of playing over the obsession of winning" (or however it was phrased on the test) is an advantage of SotG and self-officiating. Sure, it's a nice by-product, but is it an advantage?

I chose d. The correct answer was, indeed, e.

So, I have my A, instead of my A+.

And the joy of being a UPA Certified Coach.

Too bad my team is all gone for the summer.

Inspiration and letting go

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Today was the last of the three days I've spent training the next developer for a previous client. The sheer amount of information I had to dump on the new developer surprised even me. I hadn't realized just how much I had developed and maintained for that organization. Three days was clearly not enough time.

I tried very hard to keep my personal opinions of one particular person at the organization out of my interactions with the next developer. Very, very hard. I did okay in my effort, not great, but okay. He understood, however, that there are issues between our two organizations, and did his best to avoid the landmines.

Yesterday was a particularly bad day at work. The above mentioned person that I tried to keep my (not positive) opinion to myself, antagonized Mike to the point of unbelievable anger. It was an eye opening experience for me. I've never seen Mike mad, much less so mad that I feared he might physically damage something (say, a wall or a chair). No client relationship is worth the stress this client has caused me, much less the health of my business partner.

The experience had one very good outcome, however.

I am done with this client. Completely done.

When I said goodbye to the new developer this evening, the stress with this client disappeared. Gone. Poof. As I file through my index cards, looking at what I need to do, I'm crossing out the leftover items from that client. I'm done. Completely done.

The interesting moment will be tomorrow, when I receive some communication about some process at the client's site is failing. I've been composing the response in my mind. It'll go something like, "Most people learn cause and effect by sixth grade, and understand that actions have consequences. You've been rude to us. You've been mean, and nasty, and disrespectful to both partners of this company. Your actions have consequences, and the answer is no."

Done. Completely done. With no regrets.

It's time to spend the time and effort I've been putting into other's projects into my projects. Time to start those projects go, go, going.

Also known as, "Time to do cool shit."

After I said goodbye to the new developer, with the phrase, "Good luck! You're fucked!" echoing in my head, I went to practice.

I haven't been to practice in a long while, from both being gone at OSCON, New Mexico (Kyle!), and Phoenix for pretty much the last three weeks, and injured from GRUB. So, my whole goal today was to keep going, work as hard as I can at the moment, and keep going.

Inspiration comes from interesting places. We were playing five pull, and ended up having to run four sprints at the end of practice. I lined up two people from Tyler, who decided to run the last sprint backwards. Three steps into the sprint, I realized he was actually running backward faster than I was running forward.

Along the same thoughts as earlier, I thought, "No fucking way is Tyler going to beat me running backwards. No. Fucking. Way." and ran as hard as I could.

He didn't beat me.

And I finished the practice as I wanted to: working as hard as I could.

Thanks, Tyler, for the inspiration.

Late night thoughts

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Well, if you're going to kill yourself, it might as well be for something you love. I haven't worked this hard since college. I've certainly worked this many hours before (thanks, Amerigon, for that lovely nightmare), but not in a long while.

Every morning I think I should walk to work. It's only three quarters of a mile to the office. But then I'd have to walk home in the dark, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of neighborhood I'm in. Hate to trip over the homeless guy hanging out at the bus station.

Sheesh, even the McDonald's closed.

Been seeing a lot of the night crew at the hotel. The front desk clerk and I are getting pretty tight. He asked me what I do that I'm out so late every night. "I'm mapping out new routes for the Columbian Cartel." I'm not sure he believes me.

A couple days ago the cleaning crew faked me out and snuck in one afternoon after I had foolishly removed the "Do Not Disturb" sign from the door, thinking the instructions, "No, do not clean my room." would be sufficient to keep them out. No such luck. The poor woman had to figure out how all the bedding from both beds ended up on one bed. Maybe if they didn't keep the rooms so cold, I could sleep without sixteen blankets on me.

That trick I finally figured out. If you want a warm room at night, you have to leave the heater on during the day. Wasteful, but it works. Now the room is toasty warm at night.

The UPA could have bought a couch for the amount of money I'm spending at this hotel. Given that I'm there more than I'm here, it would have been better spent. Of course, I wouldn't smell as nice.

Speaking of, I'm almost out of clean clothes. Two more days and I'll have to decide: dirty clothes, wash them, or just head home.

I'm thinking the latter.

Moe's for bagels in the morning. Mmmmmm!

Three times!

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Heh.

I'm in the Nationals player program three times.

First, as a UPA staff member:

On the roster:

In our team history:

Whoo!

Ben Wiggins is my new best friend

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My butt is numb

Blog
It's 9:20 at night. I have just finished up and launched the website, user-facing part of online rostering for the UPA. I have been nominally been sitting for, according to the timeclock I use, 11.5 hours. That's eleven and a half billable hours.

No wonder my butt is numb.

I need a run.

Going for gold, falling flat on your face

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As I'm sitting here near the end of my work day, I can see one of the silver medals won by Team USA at the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan.

It's a lovely medal: big, hefty, detailed, shiny.

And silver.

I look at it and wonder about this year's Team USA. From the rumors I've heard and the stories told directly to me, I have to officially predict another shiny silver medal for the team I so desperately wanted to be on.

Team USA (that would be the self-proclaimed premier ultimate team of the United States) lost in the semi-finals at Potlatch two weekends ago. Given the personalities on the team, I guess I shouldn't be surprised:

On Friday night most of Team USA gathered for a pre-tourney dinner and then continued on with some libations. Those of us still operating on east coast time—or those not fully willing to join the sub-group of our team known as “team evil”—went to sleep. Others (far more evil) stayed out until last call. The core of evil ended up hot-tubbing in the building where Kati Halmos lives. I don’t have the details on how Kati’s condo mates felt about having Alex Nord running the hallways at five A.M., but I am pretty sure the almighty’s name was soon invoked.

Emphasis mine.

Sure, the tournament was supposed to be a fun tournament, a chance to lighten up and play some fun ultimate.

But, they lost in the semi-finals to another American team.

They lost. In the semis.

As ambassadors of my sport, for my country, this freaking sucks. You are supposed to be representatives for ultimate, not a bunch of over-confident, hung-over, undisciplined lushes.

That the team selected thinks drinking and hot-tubbing is more important than playing a tournament well is wrong. That even the coach thinks partying all night and getting drunk is okay and even encouraged, is wrong.

Potlatch was a tournament to practice, to learn how to play with the other players who, up until this point have probably been opponents, to finetune the offense, to learn where the weak points are on the team and how to minimize them. This isn't a tournament to get drunk every single freakin' night (read the rest of the coach's entry).

So here are my words to Team USA. $1 says you'll never hear them:

You suck.

Those words don't go out to all the members of the team. Those who went to bed early, played well, drank little, worked hard, and practiced diplomacy, I would say, "Thanks," and a big "Good luck! You, I'll be cheering for."

UPA Board Meeting notes

Blog
My presentation seemed to go over well.
 CMS installed:
   permissions setup (previous setup was terribly insecure)
   expandable (World Games application)
 
 Online rostering demo

 Out of online rostering development comes membership 
 accounts, and with that:
   forums
   members only pages / access
   events pages
   move away from yahoo groups for official UPA groups
   
 Also provide
   RSS for tournaments, game scores
   Email checking for bounce backs

 Also need to do automatic check of content:
  broken links
  quality of dated information: pickups, teams, etc.

 Integration of older content/statistics

 Other projects: expand info tracked (i.e. coaching), registration, etc.

Volunteers: dev't server available, needs installing 
before we can set up and get volunteers helping us.

Todd's observation:

The UPA was created to get all the ultimate players together to play in a series. Now, the success of the college series and club series has created a gap between the elite players and the average players. We're almost a victim of our own success. Maybe leagues are filling the gap between the top level of play and nothing.

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