Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

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Date: 09 May 2006 08:06:34
From: Zero
Subject: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

I played in some tournaments over the weekend. The TD told me that he
submitted them online and the USCF took his money. But the USCF has
not rated them yet. Why is that the case?

Date: 10 May 2006 00:21:04
From: Mike Nolan
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

"Zero" <[email protected] > writes:

>I played in some tournaments over the weekend. The TD told me that he
>submitted them online and the USCF took his money. But the USCF has
>not rated them yet. Why is that the case?

We had the power supply on the priy database server fail at about
8 PM Sunday night. Replacement parts are on order but we had no firm
estimate by mid-day on Monday for when they would arrive (possibly as
early as Wednesday or as late as Friday) so we made the decision yesterday
afternoon to switch over to the backup server. I arrived in Crossville
(from Fort Lauderdale) at about 11PM last night and have been working
on getting things working again.

Switching over to the backup server means that everything entered between
the last backup at 2:05AM and around 8PM on Sunday will need to be
regenerated and reprocessed. This includes memberships and rating reports
from the TD/Affiliate Support Area as well as memberships and tournament
registrations from the webstore.

We know that around 54 charges were made in that time period. We also
know who charged those orders and the office is already contacting those
individuals to get the missing information from them. The first priority
is to get memberships and tournament registrations caught up, since we
have the National Elementary Championships starting on Thursday.

We should start rating events again either later this evening or (more
likely) some time tomorrow morning, but events that were rated on
Sunday may need to be redone by the TDs. Updates to MSA should resume
some time on Thursday.

It's possible your event was rated and the data is sitting on the
hard drive, waiting for a power supply.

When we get the priy server repaired we may be able to recover all
of those memberships and events from it, but merging them with the orders
that have been processed on the backup server since it went online this
afternoon may actually take longer than just redoing them all.

Once we're back up 100%, we will be reviewing what happened, what it took
to get operational again, and how to improve things. We have already taken
the step of ordering TWO power supplies for the priy database server
system, as well as one for the backup server. That probably ensures that
the next failure will be some other component. :-)

One of the projects on the 'wish list' is closer synchronization of the
live and backup servers, which would have made this process somewhat
less painful, though the USCF does not have the capital budget needed
to build a fully redundant automatic fall-over system.

BTW, the USCF Forums have had discussion of the problem since Sunday
evening.
--
Mike Nolan

Date: 09 May 2006 11:36:16
From: LiamToo
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

Kenneth Sloan wrote:
> He said "Wednesday, May 11". Nowhere did he specify "2006"

Was he bluffing though, because he's got the nuts?

Date: 09 May 2006 09:17:03
From: Taylor Kingston
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

[email protected] wrote:
> COMPETENCE AT CROSS-TO-BEAR

As a professional computer programmer of 25 years experience, I would
not necessarily consider an isolated system outage as any reflection on
anyone's competence. An occasional outage is virtually inevitable. Just
this morning the system with which I work is having some problems, and
it belongs to one of the biggest banks in the country and is run by a
Fortune 500 software/facilities-management company.
I would refrain from cheap shots about competence unless there is a
pattern of repeated outages or long delays in fixing the problem.

>
> <The server has been down and they are working on getting the backup
> server to handle everything without losing the last few transactions.>
> -- - Tom tinak

> FROM THE USCF FORUM
>
> Important Note:
>
> May 9, 2006 Downtime notice
>
> Due to a systems failure in the Tennessee office, we are not able to
> post any updates. We hope to resume updates to MSA on Wednesday, May
> 11th. "
>
> May 11th is actually this Thursday.
> _________________
> Steve Immitt

Date: 09 May 2006 08:49:40
From: LiamToo
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

[email protected] wrote:
> COMPETENCE AT CROSS-TO-BEAR
>
> <The server has been down and they are working on getting the backup
> server to handle everything without losing the last few transactions.>
> -- - Tom tinak
>
> FROM THE USCF FORUM
>
> Important Note:
>
> May 9, 2006 Downtime notice
>
> Due to a systems failure in the Tennessee office, we are not able to
> post any updates. We hope to resume updates to MSA on Wednesday, May
> 11th. "
>
> May 11th is actually this Thursday.
> _________________
> Steve Immitt

Steve Immitt might have been looking at the wrong calendar. It's last
year when May 11 fell on a Wednesday.

Date: 09 May 2006 08:45:46
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

COMPETENCE AT CROSS-TO-BEAR

<The server has been down and they are working on getting the backup
server to handle everything without losing the last few transactions. >
-- - Tom tinak

FROM THE USCF FORUM

Important Note:

May 9, 2006 Downtime notice

Due to a systems failure in the Tennessee office, we are not able to
post any updates. We hope to resume updates to MSA on Wednesday, May
11th. "

May 11th is actually this Thursday.
_________________
Steve Immitt

Date: 09 May 2006 08:27:16
From: Tom Martinak
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

>I played in some tournaments over the weekend. The TD told me that he
>submitted them online and the USCF took his money. But the USCF has
>not rated them yet.

The server has been down and they are working on getting the backup
server to handle everything without losing the last few transactions.

- Tom tinak

Date: 09 May 2006 13:30:32
From: Kenneth Sloan
Subject: Re: Why does the USCF not rate tournaments

"LiamToo" <[email protected] > writes:

> [email protected] wrote:
>> COMPETENCE AT CROSS-TO-BEAR
>>
>> <The server has been down and they are working on getting the backup
>> server to handle everything without losing the last few transactions.>
>> -- - Tom tinak
>>
>> FROM THE USCF FORUM
>>
>> Important Note:
>>
>> May 9, 2006 Downtime notice
>>
>> Due to a systems failure in the Tennessee office, we are not able to
>> post any updates. We hope to resume updates to MSA on Wednesday, May
>> 11th. "
>>
>> May 11th is actually this Thursday.

He said "Wednesday, May 11". Nowhere did he specify "2006"

--
Kenneth Sloan [email protected]
Computer and Information Sciences (205) 934-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX (205) 934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/sloan/