Starting Thursday afternoon we are loading up and moving AlsFastball by car over to Moline, IL for the 2011 ISC World Tournament.
We will likely be down until sometime Friday evening or Saturday morning, so please have patience with fastball news sent to us for posting. We will get to it as soon as we can.
If we can we will post short news items to NEWS-2 while on the road.
WORLD TOURNAMENT PRIMER:
For all the information on the ISC World Tournament, please go to the 2011 ISC World Tournament site.
The direct link is: http://www.iscfastpitch.com/index.php?page=203
On this site you will find all the BRACKETS and all the RESULT pages.
NEWS FEED:
We plan to do a Live Scoreboard for each game on the main diamond (D-5) and we will add in updates as well for other games on the other five diamonds as we get them.
I hope we see every fastball fan in Quad Cities!
Al
Friday, 4pm
The Eagle has landed, safely, in Moline. 4pm Friday. Uneventful trip. Highway 69 won the award for the most dead deer and assorted road kill while Highway 94 won for the most assorted rubber products on the road. A lot of construction but very little slow down the trip.
I did very little posting on the trip as I was on a new HP lap top with IE-9/Windows 7, which fails to work with Java it seems effectively killing my ability to use the software to post anything.
I am back on my old HP lap top which is using an older version of IE and waiting for a miralce cure for the new lap top.
So much for the great new software from the Bill Gates funny farm, as usual they have not tested their new toys with the other children.
This seems to have been fixed by dumping IE 9 and moving to Firefox. Typical of MSN they released more crappy software without testing it first.
Now to catch up on all the team roster updates that did not stop coming my way while on the road.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Well two games in and the games were great, see a short RECAP
The ball complex at Green Valley looks great! A good crowd out for the first night of the tournament.
1am Sunday morning and Gary is still working on the software that produces the box scores. This is the first time since 2000, as I recall that we have had this much problem with the software - Sparky where are you when we need you!
Once Gary gets this fixed we will be posting the box scores on the main summary page.
Meanwhile we have given up on trying to use a new lap top to report results on the ISC page as reported earlier, Windows 7 does not play well with the other children (including Java) so we are back to the trusty older HP lap top. Its a known problem and Billy Gates has thousands of people working on solving the problem, yeah, right.
Very much looking forward to the Hall of Fame Induction and Breakfast in the morning. Dave Blackburn was at the park this evening which was great to see.
Congratulations to Dave and all the other Class of 2011 Inductees.
MONDAY
I had hoped to be able to write a blog each day of the World Tournament however we have been kept so busy its been impossible, so far anyway.
Sunday, one of the best Hall of Fame Induction cermonies ever. An outstanding job by John Thompson of Kitchener in organizing and in MC'ing it. John also virtually saved the Hall of Fame for the ISC by forming a strong committe whom he led in the fund raising and planning necessary to make this a viable and successful event.
The induction speeches were simply outstanding this year. Attended by a large crowd and televised world wide on BallparkRadio.tv, this was the best show in town.
A full day of games on Sunday and the usual little techincal glitches that seem to pop up every time we take the show on the road to a new location. Thanks to the legion of fans who follow www.iscfastpitch.com by Monday morning we had a few dozen emails pointing out some broken files and incorrect links that enabled us to clean up the data and to streamline the process a bit. We worked out of the hotel on Monday morning where the internet was a bit faster but it meant we fell behind on the Monday games. Luckily by the time we reached the ballpark after lunch time the Game Controllers had a complete set of reports for us and Gary Baughman had most of the HTML files keyed in and checked over. Hopefully we are now on a roll and will be able to update the scores as the games end and add on the HTML box scores shortly after each game.
The scores are being posted on: SCHEDULE AND RESULTS PAGE
By Monday evening have observed that the numerous announcers and scorers we get to site beside in Moline have all been very friendly people and good at their jobs.
A lot of changes this year including the absence of my boss, Ken Hackmeister. I have worked directly for ken since 1999 and he is the best boss I have ever had. He is still on the job for the ISC but working from home in Salt Lake City, UT. His absence has been noted, so many people miss him.
Also for the first time my partner in crime, Gary Baughman is not beside me. He is sitting in a trailer out in right field while I sit in my usual spot in the centre picture window with the score keeper and the announcer on my left and the BallparkRadio production staff and equipment on my immediate right. Good neighbours but I miss having Gary beside me, we work as a team. He is emailing me the game stats right after he gets them and keys them into his computer. They come in batches of 4-6 this time of the week, depending how many games were just played. This year I get my actual scores from the Game Controllers led by Doug Bach by way of a Game Summary Sheet after each game. I see the game on the main diamond and enter the score onto the master schedule right after the game ends. I also do a Live Scoreboard for each game that is going on in front of me on the main diamond.
