One of the very last posts of 2001 was from me on New Year's Eve. I don't remember whether the title was mine or the administrator who decided that it was a sub topic of something remotely connected with the subject that I was proposing. But, no matter.
Since the change of format this week to the new system, I don't know how to check it out or whether or not it makes any difference. However, after two weeks of no response of any kind and since it was my prerogative, being my birthday, the rare one that is divisable by both sevenses and elevenses, I went back to the subject to give it a boost, hoping that someone would give it some kind of notice. But, alas...
With Ground Hog's (or is it s'?) Day looming around the next corner I'm very much determined to thrust the subject forward a third time in the hope that it will get some serious attention. And it is about time whatever way you choose to take the title.
I don't remember everything I wrote the first two times but I'll simply make the proposal without any but the barest essential elaboration.
As soon as possible post all swimming times in seconds only!
Eliminate the use of minutes, or hours entirely. Having just yesterday having competed in the National Championship Event, The Hour Swim, (a Mail-in Event) I could consent to keeping the title. But for all listing and taking of times it would be 100% beneficial to use seconds only.
The only reason to oppose the notion that I can think of would be related to the existing hardware. But transpositions would be easily done until the mass of the hardware is ready to conform on its own. My guess being that the computer timing systems would need only a nudge to adapt.
Sprinters, of course, wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. But all swimmers who have a use for splits in their calculations run into stumbling blocks, not to mention common errors, that are bound to creep in whenever minutes become part of the results.
I have one other helpful suggestion to make on the subject, and because of the opportunity, why not... If Splits, for example, of a 200 or a 1500 were listed in reverse order, it would be infinitely easier and more instructive to see their value and significance.
Parents
Former Member
Doug,
I'm not necessarily against your proposal, but does the convenience of calculating split times justify effort and expense of reverse engineering all the software packages we use to post times, or (shudder) manually recalculating them and fat-fingering the converted times into a big word processed document?
I see your point that if we were starting from scratch, it would make more sense to list times in seconds (exclusively base 10 mathematical calculations), rather than our more traditional methods which mix base 10 and base 6 calculations. About all we would lose would be the cache of swimming a 100 under a minute, or a 200 under 2 minutes, or...
However, I keep coming back to the fact that USMS is a volunteer organization, and volunteers run every USMS meet I have ever attended. Yes we could do what you suggest, but given that we do not have a limitless labor pool, is this the best use of our volunteers efforts? I missed your previous posts. Could you review the bidding on the other benefits you see in addition to more easily calculated split times?
Matt
Doug,
I'm not necessarily against your proposal, but does the convenience of calculating split times justify effort and expense of reverse engineering all the software packages we use to post times, or (shudder) manually recalculating them and fat-fingering the converted times into a big word processed document?
I see your point that if we were starting from scratch, it would make more sense to list times in seconds (exclusively base 10 mathematical calculations), rather than our more traditional methods which mix base 10 and base 6 calculations. About all we would lose would be the cache of swimming a 100 under a minute, or a 200 under 2 minutes, or...
However, I keep coming back to the fact that USMS is a volunteer organization, and volunteers run every USMS meet I have ever attended. Yes we could do what you suggest, but given that we do not have a limitless labor pool, is this the best use of our volunteers efforts? I missed your previous posts. Could you review the bidding on the other benefits you see in addition to more easily calculated split times?
Matt