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Verizon customer connectivity issues

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Starting sometime last week, certain Verizon customers (primarily FIOS and a few DSL) have been unable to connect to MotorsportReg.com. We are aware of the issue and are seeking a solution. The problem is the Verizon network which can be proven by connecting to other websites sitting in our network and colocation facility (such as pukkasoft.com, which you are reading now).

We do have at least one Verizon FIOS customer who is able to connect to MotorsportReg.com and in all cases we have been able to troubleshoot and confirm it is Verizon's issue. If you are affected by this, please contact us at 415.462.5603 and we will provide a private debugging method for your Verizon customer service representative to prove they have an issue. We are working simultaneously to get it resolved with their network operation center but since we are not customers we are having a hard time getting any action taken and the more customer complaints, the more seriously they will investigate it.

In the mean time, if you have alternate Internet access such as work or home or via your mobile phone's data plan, you will find that MotorsportReg.com is up and running 24/7 like always. Our apologies for the inconvenience - we'll update here when we have news to report...

Update 10/27 at 8:50am: Verizon has asked any customer experiencing this problem to fill out their whitelist request form. Although it says email, it will also impact web access. It may take up to 24 hours for this to take effect. If, after 24 hours, you still can't reach MotorsportReg.com then you will need to call technical support and tell them:


  1. Can't reach a single, specific site, MotorsportReg.com

  2. Already tried the verizon.net/whitelist request

  3. It is only port 80 that does not work; you have confirmed the site is active by accessing it on an alternate port (contact us at 415.462.5603 for details)



Update 10/29 at 8:42am: We have one customer confirming that the whitelist request did resolve her issues. Verizon is apparently making the needed modification to their network to restore access for impacted customers. Please use the link above if you experience difficulty - but also drop us a note so we can stay on top of it.
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Topics: Misc

National Teen Driver Safety Week

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

4,144 teens aged 16-19 died in automobile accidents in 2006 and almost 400,000 were treated in emergency rooms for crash injuries. I know I was certainly not a great driver at that age as two tickets and two accidents would attest. My parents and I split the cost of my first car, an 89 Chevy Beretta, and the third day I drove it to high school I was ticketed for 48MPH in a 25MPH residential zone. Had the officer not literally first put down his donut to pick up the radar gun, I'm sure my ticket would have been 60+ and my morning would have ended with a reckless speeding ticket instead.

Real smart.

While we can't make teenagers any more mindful of their own mortality, the good news is that we can give them skills to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities from their first major freedom. October 19-25 is National Teen Driver Safety Week. The #1 thing you can do for your child or the child of a friend is get them to attend a car control or safety clinic. You can get a list of events on the MotorsportReg.com calendar and check out Street Survival.

These one-day educational events typically cost $40-80 and have a direct and effective result on teen driving behavior. Lobby your friends and family to get their kids into a hands-on clinic that improves their odds of survival behind the wheel.
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Topics: Misc

Insurance, Again

Date

June 11, 2013 by Mark

The New York Times ran a story this past weekend about the ongoing industry trend to limit insurance coverage for incidents that occur at driving schools. This is not a new issue for any of us, of course, but the article does a nice job of explaining the problem and includes some interesting anecdotes from insurance brokers. For example:


American, like other insurers who have tried the [motorsports] insurance, ran into a series of hurdles. To attract a pool of clients and spread risk, the policies were priced low — an average of $500 to $750 a year, Ms. Bergan said. The number of claims wasn’t a problem, but the cost of the claims was. “Most of the claims were total losses,” she said.



Ms. Bergan's comment does not reflect the data we collected from a wide range of event organizers as we worked with Lockton Affinity to put the HPDE Insurance Program together over the last year or so. Our conclusion was that, given a set of professionally run educational events, the overall incident rate is very low and the magnitude of the incidents that occur is also relatively small. However, every program is different and American Collector's varied from the HPDE Insurance Program in some key ways.

Sadly, the NY Times article also chose to omit any information about the HPDE Insurance Program that would have balanced the negativity of the industry situation (other than a mention as an insurance supplier in the sidebar), in spite of the reporter having spent time on the phone with our partner at Lockton Affinity, Ryan Staub.

The entire NY Times article can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/automobiles/19INSURE.html

So far, the HPDE Insurance Program has been an unmitigated success with over 250 policies sold since the program launched at the end of July, demonstrating that there is definite demand from the motorsports enthusiast community and that driving school participants are more than willing to pay for peace of mind.

In the end, though, we applaud the NY Times for giving coverage to both a sport and a situation that gets very little attention. Here's to hoping that options like the HPDE Insurance Program keep our industry growing!

You can find additional information about the HPDE Insurance Program, as well as purchase coverage online, here.
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Helping The Kids

Date

June 11, 2013 by Mark

Because motorsports for us is as much about the people as it is about the cool toys, we pick a couple of charity events each year to support by waiving the 1.5% MSR fees on registrations. This year we helped a new client, Florida Karting Championship Series, raise over $20,000 for Victory Junction Gang Camp.

We could not be more proud of what our friends at FKCS have accomplished and we are happy to have played our small part in it.

The complete story about the event is posted on eKartingNews.com. More information about Victory Junction Gang Camp is available at their website.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this event a success!

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Tracks you can't drive

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

Something fun for Thursday: our friends have uncovered a number of race tracks in the United States using Google Earth that you can't drive on - unless you work for one of the automakers. These are private testing grounds but I have to say... add a little paddock space and I'll be there!



We all know the cost of building a racetrack is astronomical; imagine laying 5-10 times the amount of pavement for your personal test grounds? Just wait for the automakers to go bankrupt and swoop in to buy these facilities!
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Topics: Misc

When formats collide

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

As the Internet continues to automate processes, we find ourselves running into situations with no clear answer. Here is one error we show to attendees that always makes me chuckle when I review our nightly logs:

Declined $300.00 transaction because: "Your bank is asking me to call for a voice authorization but I am just a computer! Would you please call them and ask why they declined your card? Then you can return and I will happily accept your payment!"


You can only ask the poor computer to do so much. Although there is VoiceXML and text-to-speech... ;)


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Topics: Misc

The sweet sound of silence: account merging

Date

June 11, 2013 by admin

I think everyone has a project where something is nagging them. There's something you know you need to do but either you aren't looking forward to it or you're busy with other priorities so you put it off. Eventually though, you wind up taking care of it and it's as though a weight has been lifted off your shoulders! The sweet sound of silence, be it mental or verbal, when you are no longer distracted by the nag is a wonderful moment.

About two weeks ago we pushed out two "relatively minor" updates to our member merger. When people forget they have an account on MotorsportReg.com or they can no longer access the email address they used, they often create a second (or third, or fourth...) account. For accuracy, we usually want to reduce this down to a single active account per member so we offer an account combining tool. This worked well for merging a single duplicate membership but it didn't know how to merge members that had multiple overlapping club memberships. This wasn't a problem early on but over time it became more and more common resulting in more accounts that could not be merged.

Operationally it's not such a big deal as you can flag one of those accounts as inactive and for all intents and purposes simply ignore it. But... it nagged me. I knew it should work. It could work. But it's a messy process that I wasn't looking forward to revisiting.

When we released our major update a couple of months ago, I was given the opportunity (or forced, depending on your point of view) to review and update the code to handle our newest features. When I was finished, I had a piece of code I was really excited about (yes, we engineer types do get excited about such things). We copy ourselves on notification emails when accounts are joined together and we also receive reports when merges fail to complete. We used to get a lot of those failure emails. You can imagine the sweet inner peace I have found now that the merge tool successfully merges all but a single indeterminate scenario (when both accounts are registered for the same event).

Organizers once again have full and complete control and I have a little more focus for the next project on my list.
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Topics: Features

HIPAA and MotorsportReg.com

Date

June 11, 2013 by Brian Ghidinelli

MotorsportReg.com has the optional ability to collect medical information required for club racing. We occasionally get asked whether or not we're compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) passed in 1996.

Generally these inquiries come from people who work in the medical industry where nearly everyone is subject to HIPAA because either they are a "covered entity" or because they do business with one. Covered entities are defined under HIPAA as:

  • a health care provider that conducts certain transactions in electronic form

  • a health care clearinghouse

  • a health plan


There are a series of handy flow charts that help walk through the process in detail. MotorsportReg.com meets none of these definitions and thus we are not subject to HIPAA.

Whether we are subject to HIPAA or not, we still must comply with PCI DSS and other data security laws and as privacy-minded citizens ourselves, we care a lot about keeping this information secure but accessible for its intended use: saving lives in the case of an emergency. In our system, participant medical information is accessible only in a single report formatted for use by the on-site ambulance or emergency crews. We restrict access to authorized administrators in the same way that paper forms would be protected.

Some organizations like the SCCA have stopped asking for medical information on their registration forms. I think it's a combination of risk management and advances in medicine. ALS crews reportedly don't trust the blood type written on a helmet because they can test it in seconds making collection a moot point. With concerns around identity theft and increased sensitivity towards privacy, we expect to see more clubs drop this requirement.
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Topics: FAQ

We're Beta!

Date

June 11, 2013 by Mark

obl_beta_badge.gif
Fun badge from SlideShowPro.net
After many months of Brian coding his fingers down to nubbins, the next major evolution of the MotorsportReg.com Eventmaster360 motorsports management platform has gone Beta. We are very excited about this release as it both fulfills some major feature requests by competitive event organizations (such as a Permanent Number Manager and Order Form Dependencies) and also brings many, many smaller enhancements that will improve the experience for everyone who uses it.

We are particularly proud of the flexibility of the Permanent Number Manager, which allows organizers to enforce number uniqueness on a class, event, year, etc basis. It will even allow sharing of number pools across organizations in support of cross-regional or cross-divisional events.

The new order form has been streamlined both for the organizer as well as for the attendee, leveraging a lot of Javascript to make it as interactive and seamless as possible. Organizers can now set requirements such as "if you order Package A, you must also order Package B", which should go a long way toward eliminating incorrect orders and after-the-fact package editing, as well as associate questions and actions with packages directly instead of just placing them generically at the top of the page.

Our newly revamped Who's Attending feature can now optionally list car make/model, class, and sponsor and can be made publicly visible so potential attendees can scope out the competition before they sign up. We've also updated the Email Blaster with a much slicker UI that makes communicating with your members and attendees easier than ever.

This release includes some new technologies under the hood, too, which will speed development of new features. Once the Beta period is over and we are live with the new code, we'll be starting in on Round 2 of our To Do List. Next up is Deferred Payment Processing, which will allow organizers to collect payment information at the time of registration but not actually process the dollars until some arbitrary later date. Defered Payment Processing will be an industry-first in motorsports!

And wait until you see what we've got tee'd up after that!

We are in the home stretch of a process that began in mid-2007, so please bear with us as we finish up the last bit of bug hunting and code polishing. Look for MotorsportReg.com to gain some fantastic new features in a matter of days.
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Topics: Misc, Features

Meeting The SCCA In San Antonio

Date

June 11, 2013 by Mark

SCCA Convention Logo 2008As many of you know, we've got some pretty amazing new features coming soon that will really benefit competitive organizations who use MotorsportReg.com. Things like Deferred Payment Processing (to prevent refunds), Order Form Dependencies (to account for required compliance fees, etc), and a Permanent Number Manager will bring a new level of efficiency to competitive event administration.

With these features solidly under development, we here at Pukka Software headed out to the SCCA National Conference in San Antonio Texas in early February to demonstrate MotorsportReg.com to SCCA Region administrators from across the country. The response from these hard-working volunteers was fantastic and we truly enjoyed getting to know SCCA people from other parts of USA. Our SCCA customers here on the West Coast, San Francisco Region and Oregon Region, had nice things to say about us in their Inter-Region Cooperation session and we very much appreciate their support and encouragement.

One thing that struck both Brian and me was the incredible dedication to the club that SCCA members and volunteers exhibit. The sense of community was overwhelming and it was a particular privilege to be in attendance at the awards ceremony on the last night at which a variety of volunteers were honored. Several SCCA luminuaries including Kjell Qvalle were inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame and Kjell was kind enough to share some memories of his many decades in motorsports. A truly amazing experience all the way around. We would particularly like to thank the SCCA Events team headed by Melissa Flesher for taking such good care of all the vendors - you guys made us feel very welcome. Brian and I are both proud to be SCCA members and we look forward to serving the club for many years.

Speaking of serving, we are happy to welcome a few new SCCA regions to MotorsportReg.com. SCCA South Bend Region has come aboard, as have Central Kentucky Region, Kansas City Region, Mississippi Region, and Southern Indiana Region.

Outside of the Sports Car Club of America, the Badger Chapter of the Audi Club of North America has begun using MotorsportReg.com, as have Adare Motorsports and Cascade Sports Car Club up in the Pacific Northwest.

Thanks to everyone for their support. We look forward to serving you through 2008 and beyond!
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