Wildfires, August Trials, GIFs

Hey guys,

Yesterday I crawled out of the wild for the first time in weeks. I showered, I slept and I watched the movie Dunkirk (because I needed a break and a cool movie theater does that (also the movie is awesome)).

Over the past few weeks, while I had occasional cell reception, the nature of the work (flying drones over wildfires) that we do is so stressful and completely consuming that I didn't have a chance to respond to your e-mails or make a post on here. Next time, before I go out (probz in a couple of days) I'll try and post to let you know I'm leaving.

August!

It's here. And after a stressful and disappointing trip to northern Alberta to try and use a smoke machine to test the system in early July (it was the smoke machine and weather conditions that didn't work, not you guys), Alberta is commencing the official Hummingbird Watch trial. Tbh, I was pretty sure it started in July, but people don't always let me know what's going on or sometimes they change their mind. I just help develop things here people, I don't make the trial decisions. It worked out super well though because we found real smoke in British Columbia and that will do great things when we go into the fall and begin the sales process.

Because Alberta is starting the trial now, this means that August is going to be extremely important, probably the most important month of this summer for us. Buckle up, baby.

I haven't been watching the system at all. I have a meeting with our dev team this afternoon to find out the status of how things have been going. A quick glance at our admin page and it looks like we have a ton of participation right now. Which is awesome.

I did get a note sometime about a week ago that it looked like somebody was running a bot to complete our HITs. I'll provide an update on that later today and our course of action to fix that.

I suspect I will be available for 2 - 3 days starting right now. I have a ton of e-mails backed up, I'm probably not going to be able to answer each of them individually. If you have recently sent me an e-mail and are waiting for a response, please update me in the comments below and provide your question there or send me a personal message on here.

Because August is so important and my availability is going to be so limited, please word vomit me all of your suggestions, concerns, ideas, in the next two days. I will do my best to be around you (here) constantly.

I will also update this thread as I find out new information about how things have been running and won't make 400 of them between now and Thursday / Friday.

I love you. And I love GIFs.

Robert

 

I have your perfect gif right here:

 

I have been waiting for you, Hummingbirdee, to make a comment. I have been waiting a long time.

 

We meet at last.

 

Just got a message about bonuses, asking if our program is still in place.

It is. We just have 0 resources allocated to monitoring the number of HITs that people have completed and sending out that sweet, sweet skrilla. I'm making it a top ten priority today to start figuring out who has hit our bonus threshholds.

 

Did someone say Skrillex?

 

I'm almost certain I have tagged some smoke. I even posted a pic in the other thread.

I'm hungry for the

 

You should get a cool hummingbird cup like I have:



Then we can be BHFFs (Best Hummingbird Friends Forever)

 

Good to know. I wish I could supply all of you. I can't

 

@Robert camera three is still really blurry this morning.

 

Thanks man. Will take a look. First thought, precipitation often gets into the lenses and will stay there for a day or two.

 

I really should have got a screen capture to post here. I will next time I see a blurry camera.

 

Cool, thanks man.

 

Um @Robert, I think we got a pretty big fire here.