A weekend to remember!

This last weekend was amazing. I apologize to those looking for a Log entry before now, but there has literally been no time to even consider it.

The Course ended today, having netted all those in attendance a marvelous array of knowledge, skills, and interaction that can only serve to Forward the overall training and effectiveness of the region. It was far more then that though. Through informal discussion and interactions with the others present we made huge leaps Forward in planning and solving significant issues that affect all of us day-to-day. It´s difficult to explain without going into sill details About the inner workings of the CCGA, but suffice to say that this wasn´t only a training session - it went far beyond that and became a development session as well.

The most exciting news for me personally (besides passing the Course) was that both the new Quiz module AND (and here is the whopper) the SAR module are going to be adopted. I´ve droned on About the Quiz module a fair bit the last little while - but I haven´t said anything About the SAR module here yet. It´s a huge thing - the largest single program file I have ever written. It was custom written for the CCGA and will track all of the following: Units, Vessels, Equipment, People, Training, Incidents, and Resource Allocation. It will eliminate paper forms and faxing from the process flow from the CCGA and should save thousands of person-hours spent re-typing information.

I wrote it Back in May, but at that time the CCGA office has just gone through a staff change and the new managers for the main portfolios were just coming into their portfolios and the time was simply not ripe for it. But now, after several discussions with the ARTE team, and the office staff it looks like it´s going to go - and basically be implemented as quickly as I can finish off the rough edges and have it live. That news, to put it quite simply, made my month.

So with a mile-wide grin (and I´ll cover off more of what we did on the Course in the coming logs) I will return home tomorrow to my unit, bursting with news and ready to embark on a new era of training for the good people of Halfmoon Bay and the Pacific Region!

PS: In SALTS related news - Tony signed off the MEDs component of the Master area in my Log book - making my SALTS Log now span almost 20 years and home to signatures from two different centuries. After signing Tony had the comment: "You, I believe, are what we call an anomaly" - we both laughed!

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