Major history data upgrade

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Just in time for our first raceday, the Buggy Alumni Association’s database of buggy history has been seriously upgraded over the lat couple of weeks.  Major accomplishments include:

  • The entire backlog of history contributions has now been processed and added to the database.  Thanks so much for your contributions so far, and sorry that it took us so long to add them into the system.
  • Additional data from past buggy books, the History of Buggy presentation, and old Tartan records has been added such that we now have full records of times and places going back through the 80’s and times and places for the top 5 or 6 going back through the 60’s
  • Having more complete data allowed us to add more data to the organization pages.  You’ll now see a summary of the last 20 years of places and times for each organization
  • Similar improvements to the Person and Buggy pages reflect more of their individual histories

So check it all out in the History section

Having this much more data in the system opens the doors for you to help us find errors and fill in holes in the data.   To streamline things a bit more, we’ve added standardized forms for Race, Organization, and Buggy data.  Check those out on the Contribute Data page

Huge thanks to Scott Ziolko for doing the hard dirty work with all of the data for this update.  We never would have been able to work through the backlog without him.

22 hours left. Bid Now!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 4 Comments on 22 hours left. Bid Now!

It’s less than 24 hours until the first ever lead truck auction will close.  Don’t miss your chance to get right up in the action this raceday.

Detailed Auction Info |   Live Auction –> Bid Now

Anyone (Alumni, current buggy folks, other students, anyone else) can get in on the action, and there are still some heat without bidders meaning you can take a wild ride for only $10.  Show support for your team by bidding on their heats!  Don’t wait until the last minute to enter your bids, there is no system for extending the deadline if there is a flurry of last minute action.  Enter max bids to make sure you don’t miss out.

Here are the current (11:45 pm)  high bids: Continue reading →

Heats are selected and the Auction is on!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 5 Comments on Heats are selected and the Auction is on!

The heat selection meeting happened tonight, and we’ve got a raceday schedule to work with.  There are 40 50 teams entering the race this year (18 Womens and 32 Men’s) which is down 9 from last year even though SAE and Beta are joining the fray this year.  Maybe it’s the bad economy. up 1 from last year!

The heats being released also means that our Lead Truck Auction will be underway at 9am this morning.  Get in on the bidding action early and tell all the other alumni (and current students) about this new opportunity.

The heats are: Continue reading →

Lead Truck Auction 2009

Posted on | by Sam Swift

If you haven’t already heard, the Buggy Alumni Association will be auctioning off the chance to ride in the lead truck on raceday for each and every heat. What was previously only the territory of Head Judges and cameramen can now be yours.  In exchange for a charitable contribution to the Buggy Alumni Association, you can see the entire heat of your choice first hand.

The details of the auction go like this:

  • General
    • All heats will be auctioned simultaneously
    • The bidding will start at 9am EDT Friday April 10th
    • Bidding will end at 10pm EDT Monday April 13th
    • Each heat will have a $10 minimum bid
    • The minimum bidding increment is $1
    • You may specify a maximum amount you wish to bid for any heat.  The site will automatically increase your bid in $2 increments as needed until your maximum is exceeded by someone else.
  • Prelim Heat specifics
    • If any person wins the auctions for more than one heat, they will have the option of retracting their winning bids for all but the highest priced heat.  If they decide to withdraw their winning bid for one of the lower priced heats, the 2nd highest bidder will become the winner.
  • Finals Heat specifics
    • Because the specifics of the finals heats are unknown, bidders will be bidding for the right to have first pick of the finals heats.  Runners up will have 2nd, 3rd pick, etc.
    • There will be only two things to bid on for finals: Men’s Finals and Women’s Finals
    • The top 5 bidders for the Men’s Finals will have the opportunity to select a heat in order of their bids
    • The top 3 bidders for the Women’s Finals will have the opportunity to select a heat in order of their bids

Finer details, rules, and on Friday bids all at
http://cmubuggy.org/Auction

Suggestions, discussion, requests for clarification in the forum

We are, of course extremely thankful to sweepstakes for giving us the opportunity to use a spot in the lead truck to create this opportunity and to raise some money so that the Buggy Alumni Association can pursue its mission to support buggy.

Buggy on TV in 1983

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 5 Comments on Buggy on TV in 1983

In 1983, the TV series Evening Magazine (the first US show to introduce the Magazine format to TV says wikipedia) did a feature story on buggy.  Buggy Alumni Association member and 2009 Raceday announcer Mark Estes found the clip while reviewing old tapes in preparation for this year’s broadcast and put it online.

We need help from you identifying the people featured in the clip.  We’ve posted screen captures of most of the folks here in a new album in the gallery.  If you know any of the people, leave a comment on their picture, and help us out by spreading the word to other alumni that might know them.  If we get enough good info, we might be able to put together a little retrospective piece for inclusion in this year’s broadcast.

Thanks members #50 and #200!

Posted on | by Sam Swift

We’re hard at work here at Buggy Alumni Association headquarters getting ready for raceday, and we just wanted to thank everyone for their support so far.

Today, we happened to reach two membership milestones on the same day, and that seems post-worthy.   Thanks to Thomas Felmley and Michael Preysman we now have 200 website members and 50 dues paying members!  (note: the online dues paying member list is incomplete, we have separate records of people that signed up and paid in person at homecoming).

We’re not even 6 months old, so it means a lot that we’ve been able to connect with so many people out there.  Other evidence that we’ve got a good thing going here is that all winter we were averaging a couple of hundred visits to the website each week.  Last week’s rolls report, pictures, and buggy books drove in over 1,700 visits.

If you haven’t registered on the site or become a dues paying member yet, do it now.  Dues paying members will get our Raceday Preview by e-mail (which will be worlds more informative than the rolls reports) plus admission to the raceday reception, and a raceday wrap-up report.

Join Now!

Buggy Times, 3/21/09

Posted on | by carsenkline | 7 Comments on Buggy Times, 3/21/09

Aside from the Rolls Report, here at Buggy Alumni HQ we’re coming up with ways to feed your inner gambler. One way we’re doing this is by taking times at various spots on the course to give a cross section of team performance. Today we give you times from down in the chute: transistion to chute flag, chute flag to window 0, and a ratio of the first time over the second time. We recorded as many times as our crude stopwatches would let us. Here’s today’s sampling. It was a pretty slow day overall, with SDC and PiKA well off the pace.

The ratio is a number we’re throwing out there to give some idea of how well the buggy maintains its speed in the turn. For example, Mirage came into the chute flag nearly 0.8 s faster than Psychosis, yet Mirage had only a 0.3 s advantage after the chute. Where’d the half second go?

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at a different part of the course.

Raceday Events Announced

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 1 Comment on Raceday Events Announced

Hopefully you got an e-mail last night announcing the Buggy Alumni Association’s plans for our first raceday.  If you’d like to be sure to receive future announcements like this, make sure you register on this site.

Lead Truck Auction
Bid on your chance to ride in the lead truck to view the action from a perspective never available before. We’re currently planning on running a silent auction to auction off one space in the lead car for each heat. The auction will take place starting April 14th – the day after heat selections. Check out http://cmubuggy.org/Auction for details.
Partnering with cmuTV
cmuTV is eager to provide the best coverage they can on raceday, and they realized the best way to do that is to have buggy experts on the air with them. Andy Bordick (PiKA ’94) and Mark Estes (SN ’87) will be on the air during the races broadcasting from the top of hill 2 and live from the chute. We’re also helping to collect historical footage cmuTV can use in the time between heats. In addition, we’re working with cmuTV and WRCT to make sure the cmuTV audio is being played in the chute for everyone to hear. Continue reading →

Carnegie Mellon Today features the Buggy Alumni Association

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 1 Comment on Carnegie Mellon Today features the Buggy Alumni Association

If you haven’t already gotten it in the mail, check out Carnegie Mellon Today’s article on Tom Wood and the Buggy Alumni Association.

Tom provided the Buggy Alumni Association with about 75% of the data we’ve gathered to date in our history database, so we are very glad to have him around.

Happy New Year to everyone, and happy first day of class (aka when classes start to interfere with the build season) to all the current students.

Thanks for a successful kickoff

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 1 Comment on Thanks for a successful kickoff

Now that everyone has had time to travel home and get back to reality, we wanted to thank everyone who came and made the Buggy Alumni Association’s kickoff weekend a really big success. It definitely felt more like carnival than homecoming seeing so many buggy folks around campus. We’ve only officially existed for a couple of months, and I think we’ve got a lot of momentum. Some stats to make the point:

  • We’ve now got over 100 buggy alumni registered here on the website.
  • 7 people have registered as dues-paying-members through the website, and many more did so this weekend in person.  Those numbers are still being tallied
  • Our history database already has information on 1,592 people and 196 buggies plus many data contributions that we haven’t had time to add to the database yet.
  • The website has had over 1,600 visits from more than 800 people in just 2 weeks

So check out the pictures from Homecoming and let us know in the forums what you’d like to see happen at Carnival.  We can’t wait to see everyone back again.