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Release Notes May 20 2009

OpinioNate

By OpinioNate
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sTeamTraen

+sTeamTraen

Posted
Posted
I've worked in IT for 25 years. The most basic rule is NO MAJOR CHANGES prior to an ANTICIPATED heavy traffic period. Do you think Intuit (Turbotax) would allow a major release prior to April 15th? NO!

 

Maybe the folks at Groundspeak need to take some ITIL training and put in some senisble Change Management policies.

GW7 is an important event, but it's not going to figure as a heavy traffic period. The people going there are a small fraction of the overall community, and many of them would be running other PQs for a normal weekend anyway.

 

Also, you don't always get to choose. Suppose that the 12 "critical" Microsoft patches had not been applied "because it's GW7 this weekend" and one of the issues which they fixed had been exploited today, leading to the site being hacked? Then people would presumably have been saying how Groundspeak needs to roll out patches more quickly.

 

As for ITIL, don't get me started. It probably comes from the same people who brought you ISO 9000. Our operations people ran screaming from the training room. :anibad:

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PhxChem

+PhxChem

Posted
Posted (edited)

In Canada it is Victoria Day celebrating the birthday of Queen Victoria. This is probably celebrated throughout the entire British Commonwealth.

 

Not in England that I am aware of :anibad:

It isn't. It is was strictly a Canadian holiday.

 

(Had to edit my post since the holiday was actually several days ago.)

 

Hard to imagine some countries would dare to be different than the Canada....... :)

 

Seriously, what's with all the angst? Everyone could run the site better.....you did an update on my IMPORTANT day.....doesn't anyone in the US know that this is an important day in (select your country)...oh wait, or was that yesterday?

 

I can just hear people developing ulcers! Thanks Groundspeak (Nate and everyone) for all the updates and ignoring all the angst..even though I KNOW you want to say something......and you just might from behind your screen. :)

 

Every time "something" happens around here, you pretty much know who is going to show up to make a ruckus....and I was actually right on at least one account! Plus, didn't anyone else get the memo about reporting bug elsewhere?

Edited by PhxChem
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Tequila

+Tequila

Posted
Posted

This does seem to be the standard "you are doing it wrong" response.

That does seem to be Groundspeak's attitude these days. Perhaps you can find 199 other people who need the .1 increments and they will put it back :)

 

Enough already - pleazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze!

There are those that relish and look for these topics just so they can put Groundspeak down. It is a pretty easy pattern to see. Their vitriolic jabs are not pretty and to me only make them look bad. It is what it is.

 

In Canada it is Victoria Day celebrating the birthday of Queen Victoria. This is probably celebrated throughout the entire British Commonwealth.

 

Hard to imagine some countries would dare to be different than the U.S.

Funny. Victoria Day was Monday May 18. Her birthday is actually May 24. Sorry, but you missed the holiday this year. Funny that a guy from the US has to tell you this, isn't it. :anibad: I also notice that the person who mentioned this the first time is from Luxembourg. I would not think that is the holiday they were referencing anyway.

 

In order to make it a long weekend, it is always observed on the Monday before the 24th. God forbid we don't have it as a long weekend.

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sTeamTraen

+sTeamTraen

Posted
Posted
Seriously, what's with all the angst? Everyone could run the site better.....you did an update on my IMPORTANT day.....doesn't anyone in the US know that this is an important day in (select your country)...oh wait, or was that yesterday?

I don't think that Groundspeak has a "no updates before a holiday" policy, apart from perhaps "don't update the day before a US holiday", which is presumably as much to do with staff availability than potential peaks in caching activity (and in any case, the majority of US holidays are on Mondays).

 

That said, there are 4 or 5 days which are holidays in most of Europe, which is about 60% of the size of the US caching "market". So if such a policy were to be made, it might be an idea to avoid upgrades the day before the following more-or-less pan-European holidays which don't always fall on a Monday:

- 1st May (approximates to Labor Day)

- Ascension Day (today: 40 days after Easter)

- 1st November (All Saints Day)

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deercreekth

+deercreekth

Posted
Posted

Groundspeak needs a lesson on CHANGE CONTROL and RELEASE MANAGEMENT. Did it really make sense to make a major site update THREE days before the largest Geocaching event all year? There are thousands of people wanting to just access the Geocaching website today and it is COMPLETELY DOWN (and up and down again). Can't even query a single cache, check in travel bugs, ANYTHING.

 

I've worked in IT for 25 years. The most basic rule is NO MAJOR CHANGES prior to an ANTICIPATED heavy traffic period. Do you think Intuit (Turbotax) would allow a major release prior to April 15th? NO!

 

Maybe the folks at Groundspeak need to take some ITIL training and put in some senisble Change Management policies.

 

Then their PAYING MEMBERS would have a chance to use the services they paid for? Especially prior to leaving for a major geoaching event? :anibad:

 

Wow. Have them go to ITIL training? Seriously? Wow. While we're at it, let's put the extreme SOX lockdown on everything(cache containers cost money, right? So anything that touches a cache needs to adhere to SOX). Then we'll never get any site changes, and I'll never get to use DeLorme's Cache Register. :)

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jholly

jholly

Posted
Posted

Re updates: I've noticed a pattern of them occurring from around the 15th to the 21st. So I just expect them every month around that time. Of course it would be nice if there was an annoucement in the Geocaching Announcement forums that nobody reads.

 

Jim

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mtn-man

+mtn-man

Posted
Posted
In order to make it a long weekend, it is always observed on the Monday before the 24th. God forbid we don't have it as a long weekend.

Hopefully you didn't miss your day off on Monday since the weekend celebration was last weekend. LOL! :anibad:

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Tequila

+Tequila

Posted
Posted
In order to make it a long weekend, it is always observed on the Monday before the 24th. God forbid we don't have it as a long weekend.

Hopefully you didn't miss your day off on Monday since the weekend celebration was last weekend. LOL! :anibad:

 

Had the whole 9 yards. Fireworks. Vicky rolled over in her grave. Good time was had by all.

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Neath Worthies

Neath Worthies

Posted
Posted

........

- Ascension Day (today: 40 days after Easter)

- 1st November (All Saints Day)

Thanks for confirming what I've always thought to be the case - the UK is not really part of Europe :laughing:

They're certainly not holidays here (nor as has been said is Victoria's birthday nor Commonwealth Day) B)

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Gushoneybun

+Gushoneybun

Posted
Posted

Thanks for all the hard work, <_< some great improvements I especially like the CAaR.

 

 

Do bear in mind that around the 20th June it is worship chocolate day for the Umpa Lumpa's :laughing: so best not upset them B) and bring any more updates out to make the site even more efficent. :wacko:

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Hynr

+Hynr

Posted
Posted

Since you haven't given an example of "strange", it is hard to know what the problem was.

 

I made use of 0.1 gradations. I have a route PQ that neatly fit under the 500 max with 0.9 miles. I lose a lot of a caches with 0.5.

 

If strange values cause problems, edit for them.

 

This may just be another case of "I'm just doing it wrong", but I have lost function I made use of.

 

I'm not the programmer developing this feature, so I can't provide specifics. I am simply relaying the reason I was given for the change.

 

I have to say, though, that in the trade-off between helping the PQ generator by standardizing the distance from route entry and providing a completely customizable entry field, I tend to side toward helping the PQ generator.

I too would advocate going back to the previous input box as well as the mi/km radiobuttons. To justify changing to a drop down box by saying that the mask for the previous entry control was not working perfectly is a bit silly. If the previous edit box was letting folks type in o,1 and not filtering that, then that should be a pretty simple fix.

 

I have been playing with this feature for a few hours and I find the inability to set exact distances in the search radius to be a problem (in both the new route edit screen and on the PQ set up). Here is why: When using CAaR it is nearly impossible to judge what you have to do when your query returns 500 caches. Let's look at a very common use of this tool: you set up a route with a 2 mile band; it results in 500 caches; then you set the band to 1.5 miles and its now 120 caches. The next logical step is to want to try 1.9 miles and if that results in 300 caches, I want to then enter 1.95 miles. That was working great before.

 

I also miss not being able to control metric versus english units. I used this interchangeably depending on specific situations. I would like to still have access to both, but would be quite happy to have the default set to correspond to my choice of units in my profile (I guess that is how it was). But I would really not want to change my profile every time I want to use km in a PQ because it affects too many other places.

 

Whatever logic you apply here is the same logic that would have the radius input box on the original PQ setup changed to this extremely limiting new approach. Please don't tell me that that one is going to see the same change.

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Parabola

+Parabola

Posted
Posted

Thanks for all the hard work, B) some great improvements I especially like the CAaR.

 

 

Do bear in mind that around the 20th June it is worship chocolate day for the Umpa Lumpa's :o so best not upset them :D and bring any more updates out to make the site even more efficent. :lol:

 

That's for posting that. I almost completely for got about the Umpa's. :P I've got it mark on the calender now. :(

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