Ok, so a virtual High Five is nowhere near enough. How's about a virtual High Five Hundred to Richard and the others who suffer on our behalf. Thanks is not enough, but it's what we can offer most sincerely. Please email me info on where I can contribute a little bit more tangibly.

I was thinking the other night about where we are and where we have come from. I remember when SATCO was run off a 56k modem in some guy's basement only on the weekends. Multi-player and vox were a dream. Full duplex sound cards had not been invented yet. Multi-player was us basically telling each other where we were on text.

What a journey! And it really comes down to everyone showing up and contributing in their own way. I'm not nearly as active as I was 7 or 8 years ago, but when I login, on the rare occasion, I still feel the intensity of making that first call on the radio. I think it comes from people bringing their "A" game to the environment and pushing others to do the same.

RJ

I own a server in Kansas... It has Windows Server 2003 running on it. Would that work for your purposes?

Thanks, Andrew.

We need Linux for this box.

quick look around at some of the more know hosting solutions are showing dedicated server for around $100 to start with their basic options and features on up

The biggest difference is the hardware you get. This is a company we use in Germany - plus we get a 19% reduction for VAT.

http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktma...roduktmatrix-ex

Great machines and pretty low prices.

This is where USA-W2 is currently located. They have pretty much moved out of the personal server business.
http://www.gogrid.com/servepath/dedicated-...er-specials.php

VP Webs is working on getting things back up and running following an issue with the SQL database.

USA-W2 is down. Probably going to need a new drive. This may take a few days.

Here's the thing...

If you work for the FAA, you're not supposed to be freely giving out this information. And if you give out the information, you shouldn't be telling a bunch of people you did so. The Freedom of Information Act is the only legal way to get sector file, SOP, and LOA updating accomplished. Because once the information is released under FOIA, it can be disseminated to anyone. So, either people have to keep it quiet (you can't have people going to visit ZTL saying, "Yeah, one of your guys works for us and gave us all your info,") or you have to go through FOIA, which usually doesn't take more than a month or two.

As to whether or not you could get in legal trouble for it, that'd be a tough sell. If anything could happen, the person who disseminated the information could get fired. All of the information you have could be obtained under FOIA, and the real legal issue stems from the fact that you didn't use FOIA to get the same information.

Much greater clarification is needed on this and a number of other topics for ARTCC administrators. And because those roles change so frequently, getting it written down in an easily-accessible document or something would be a great help.

Exactly....


FOIA is your friend and keeps your friends out of trouble. Anyone remember Fairfax O'Reilly?

People need to understand talking friends at the FAA into sharing things can put their careers in jeopardy and cause further problems with VATSIM. There is good attention from the FAA and bad attention from the FAA. We prefer the good attention. The last thing we want is for the FAA to take a big negative interest in VATSIM and start poking around, firing off nasty grams to Marinakis. We've been on the receiving end of these before and it isn't fun. Because the reality of it goes this way, when push comes to shove with the government or law firms, we'll throw you under the bus. I know it sounds incredibly heartless but if you have done something wrong, we won't risk the entirety of vatsim to save you.

RJ

What are you trying to say Richard?  Yes, Alan and I are friends, what's that have to do with his questions?

Since he is strictly pilot side and you do both. Thought it might be reasonable for you to explain what an ATM does on a day to day basis to give him a better insight as to what is going on.

Am I totally out of mind here?

Richard,

He would have an ulcer if he returned to this. I'm pretty sure he was sick and tired of things when he was on VATUSA staff and how we were treated by the BoG during that time period, it could only be magnified now. You sat in his living room, so I think you know his character. When somebody like him throws in the towel, it means something.

Alex,

Think we're talking about two different people. Andrew mentioned the person he was talking about as being the ZTL ATM in SATCO and a founder of VATSIM. That is Joel Lesser.

The communication thing....you're right. How the message is delivered is key. I also think there is an element of mistrust between the BoG/EC/USA. ATM's are convinced that VATSIM is here to dumb it down to IVAO and the Zone. Nothing could be further from the truth. What they want is quality training delivered in a timely manner with a minimum amount of delay that serves no relevant purpose.

The BoG/EC also have an issue in that they don't totally trust some of the ARTCC staff. When they find a staff member lying to them or playing games under the radar, it just reinforces their belief. Right now, we know about a DATM that is using double connections with a fake account to boost the stats at an airport he wants to make a major. If you're reading this..knock it off!

Don't always assume the worst. Those guys don't wake up each morning wondering how they can "F" with the guys in VATUSA. Like the off-peak thing. For whatever reason it was never discussed during the GRP review and GRP doesn't really allow for it as practiced now. So the common sense thing to do is put things in a holding pattern and get it resolved at the yearly review. I feel the off-peak issue is different than say a plain and simple GRP violation that just needs to stop. This issue has circumstances that sets it apart.

From a ZOB standpoint, We (ZOB) can further our training efforts if the the Founders and BoG would just let us run it our way.  For years prior to the GRP release you go and look at ZOB's training records and you will find that we had 10 people on staff and training was being conducted every night.  Now with this new GRP, we have had less active members mainly because we have 3 Class B fields, only 1 of them is considered a "major".  Now VATSIM is trying to tell us that we need to COMPLETELY redo our training outline (Which I did in about a month of late nights).

Essentially back in our hayday, we gave the student an option as to which airport they would like to start their training at.  Naturally, people who lived in the Detroit area would choose KDTW to start their training, same goes for PIT and CLE.  Now we cannot do this.  We have to say "Ok read up on the PIT and CLE SOPs and we'll go over lesson 1 tomorrow" type of deal.  People don't want to train at 2 airports simultaneously.  This is where the Major/Minor cert lacks for us.  We are simultaneously training students on 2 rather large airports in the National Airspace Sysytem (Real World) and VATSIM and the makers of the GRP will not give them to us.  They based the major certification on traffic levels.  You want to talk about Traffic Levels?  I dare you to compare KBUF and KDTW in the past couple days.  No events have taken place at all, just pure people getting on the network.  So why not make KBUF a major?  It has more operations in the past week than KDTW.

Also, rumor has it that they want to take away KDTW from the Major certification list.  You have no idea how livid this makes me.  Here at ZOB we have 3 Class Bravo Airports, I don't know if that means anything to anybody else, but that sure as hell means something to me.  Now they are going to take away our only Major airport.  Look at any other ARTCC that have 3 Class B Airports and tell me is only 1 of them is considered a Major. Something isn't right.

My whole campagin when I was the DATM was to let us (James Hamilton and myself) run ZOB how we want to, and not be bound by these GRP rules.  I have written emails to Staff Members of the network, only to go unanswered (suprise?).  I ended up getting so tired of the politics, and the constant emails we would recive saying "Someone has complained about your training program..."  Only to find that they were completely false and in some cases exaderated to the point where it was false.

So Richard, if you want to talk about this 1:1 training, I will show you the flow chart I made for the Training staff on the steps and lessons required to comply with the GRP and you can see that even you would not want to go throgh what the GRP is making us go through from a training Standpoint.

TK

Let's start with this first:

I'm and sick and tired of rumor control around here. I hear more incredible stories out of VATUSA than anywhere in VATSIM. So, right here, right now, who told you DTW was being taken?

Second,

"I have written emails to Staff Members of the network, only to go unanswered (suprise?)."

Who and when? If you have the emails send them on over.

Third,

Send me your flowchart.

richard AT vatsim.net