The Curling Odyssey

[Ardbeg... innit]

Well, stage one is over. Nothing like a little vacation in Green Bay Wisconsin in February to refresh and renew... not.

Long days, fast food meals, high stress when the server was hacked. but we made it through and my efforts won me the opportunity to be in charge of all stats operations at the US Olympic Trials in Fargo, ND in November (yeah, the vacation hits just keep on coming, right in the middle of my old Hedo time slot).

NBC Sports network did the coverage of the finals, we were situated right above the time clock so I got some major "face time". Here I am doing my supervisor thing with my "deep thought" face, with the two coaches to my left trying their best to keep up and failing miserably.



Home for a couple days, then gone for 2 1/2 weeks. Curling at the US Seniors in Portage, WI 2/20-2/24, off to Sochi, Russia to do stats at the Curling World Juniors, return to run the US College Curling Nationals in Duluth March 8-10, THEN HOME!

[New Mama]

A jolly bunch of folks eh? Not the poster for 'curling is fun'.

BTW, I used to watch curling regularly in the 70's when I lived in Detroit but somehow drifted away from the sport when I moved to Chicago.

[Tex]

I had the same thought - a severe look on long faces.

[nolaflacav]

What does one gain by hacking a curling server? Did the betting line suddenly move in Vegas?

[Ardbeg... innit]

Those coaches are paid and they are from the two competing teams, neither was very happy at that particular moment, a lot of stoopid mental mistakes going on at that moment, plus we were in the eighth day of the event, everyone was pretty much wiped out. Their reputation was on the line, down on the ice, hence the stern looks.

I was in the middle of mentally grading the previous shot, and the one guy was leaning over about to ask my opinion about some aspect of what happened.

All of that indicative of a bad shot on the ice, one unhappy coach (from the team that just shot), another unhappy coach (concerned about how his team will respond), and pensive stats people mentally going through the checklist to try and get the right information into the system.

As to hacking the system. The guy who runs the system and wrote the software Gerry Geurts www.curlingzone.com has no clue why his system was hacked. His service provider is investigating the breach, and have set him up on another server, he has beefed up his security package in response. Basically, someone tapped into his server, set up a new admin account and locked out the database. Gerry was helping out with the webstreaming (this was early in the week, before NBC came in) and had to leave that to work on the hack issue. He basically rehacked into the system with a new admin account and reopened the database, but was unable to delete the hacked admin account... hence the new server. From our side of things, we immediately went to paper backup and when the database was back open one helper and I did data entry while the scorers continued on paper until we caught up.

It was a frantic 45 minutes or so in total, but as long as you dont panic, its manageable... we didnt lose a shot, which is the goal.

[Chicago Jake]

Well you look good in yellow.

[Merlot Joe]

Gordon you look like you ate a bad Hot Dog and it is not sitting very well ;D ;D

Those two coaches look like they are part of some of the old USSR teams of the 1970's and 80's.

[Ardbeg... innit]

Feb 18, 2013 13:08:56 GMT -6 Chicago Jake said:

Well you look good in yellow.

Nice of you to notice.

[Ardbeg... innit]

Feb 18, 2013 13:25:53 GMT -6 Merlot Joe said:

Gordon you look like you ate a bad Hot Dog and it is not sitting very well ;D ;D

Those two coaches look like they are part of some of the old USSR teams of the 1970's and 80's.

After 8 days of eating arena food, tell me you wouldnt look the same!! ;D

The coach on the far right had to be booted out of the Officials area during the next game, he had a liter of some deep amber colored liquid in a square shaped bottle... drowning his sorrows.