ScoreKeeper News

Volume 53 - October 2, 2017

Changes and More Changes

A couple of years ago, I spent ten and a half months living in Chiang Rai, Thailand and supported ScoreKeeper from there. The purpose of my extended stay in Thailand was to determine whether I would enjoy living in Southeast Asia. It turns out that I do, but it was a big decision and it took me about eight months to finally make up my mind. I had planned to spend a full year there but life got in the way. The deaths of my dad and my sister forced me to return early and I had to settle my father’s estate.

Once I returned to the US, I worked toward wrapping things up in my home country so that I could move to Thailand, perhaps permanently. After slow progress for most of a year, things came together quickly at the end when I sold the Beaver Creek Software headquarters building and my home. I packed up things I wanted to take with me and either sold or gave away the rest. I went from a large 3-bedroom home filled to capacity down to only 32 boxes and two big suitcases. The boxes went by boat and the suitcases came with me on the plane. After seven weeks, the boxes arrived at my condominium in Bangkok and I am still unpacking and organizing everything. Believe it or not, I brought too much stuff. Among the things that will get little or no use here are cool and cold weather clothing. It rarely gets much below 80 degrees here, even at night.

When I officially closed Beaver Creek Software, I discontinued my medical software products and decided to focus entirely on ScoreKeeper. My new company name is not very original, Peter Gysegem Software. This wasn’t a vanity choice. It turns out that using my name this way in my company name means I don’t have to register with the state and since I am no longer living in the US, the less paperwork (and less physical paper) I have to deal with the better.

This is now a one-person show. I don't have office staff to take orders or messages. It's all me. Fortunately, I still have a US telephone number:

541-250-0228

It will even ring on my phone here in Thailand but will take voice mail messages when I am not available (i.e. when I am sleeping). Thailand doesn't observe daylight savings time so the number of hours difference between Thailand and the US is different for standard and daylight savings times. From the Pacific time zone, add 15 hours to your time during standard time or 14 hours during daylight savings. For Mountain time, it is 14 or 13 hours while in the Central time zone it is 13 or 12 hours. On the east coast, add 12 or 11 hours for standard and daylight savings time respectively. And for Alaska (Hi Paul), add 16 hours or 15 hours. Crazy, right?

Here is a chart to make the time zone issue a little more understandable.

Pacific Time Zone Eastern Time Zone Thailand Time Zone
Standard Daylight Standard Daylight All Year
5:00am 4:00am 8:00am 7:00am 7:00pm
6:00am 5:00am 9:00am 8:00am 8:00pm
7:00am 6:00am 0:00am 9:00am 9:00pm
8:00am 7:00am 11:00am 10:00am 10:00pm
9:00am 8:00am 12:00pm 11:00am 11:00pm
10:00am 9:00am 1:00pm 12:00pm 12:00am
11:00am 10:00am 2:00pm 1:00pm 1:00am
12:00pm 11:00am 3:00pm 2:00pm 2:00am
 
8:00pm 7:00pm 11:00pm 10:00pm 10:00am
9:00pm 8:00pm 12:00am 11:00pm 11:00am

I haven't included all 24 hours, just the ones I am likely to be available. Whenever possible, contact me by email and, if necessary, schedule a time to talk by phone. My new email address just for ScoreKeeper is

If that changes, I will let you know. My previous email address will still get to me but please change your records to the new address.

For now, all the ScoreKeeper information on the web is still at http://beaverlog.com but I am planning to migrate that to a new site. I'll keep you posted about that as well.

Setting Up and Testing ScoreKeeper

I assume most schools like to do some testing at the beginning of the season to make sure everything works as expected and to try out any new or changed parts of ScoreKeeper.

Please, don't wait until the day before your first meet to set up and test ScoreKeeper on whatever new (or old) hardware you will be using for the season. You will be much better off testing a few weeks ahead so that you have time to work out any kinks you encounter. This is especially true now that I am so many time zones away and may not be available when you are in a last-minute panic.

Remote Access Support

If you are experiencing difficulties in ScoreKeeper or just want to be guided through an unfamiliar task, I can remote into your computer while we are on the phone. That way, I can show you, step-by-step how something is done or, with a little luck, I can correct problems you may have run into. It is best to contact me ahead of time, if at all possible, to make sure I am available.

New Ordering System

Since I am in a somewhat inconvenient time zone and I don't have an office person to answer the phone during "normal business hours", I gave a lot of thought to how I would handle taking orders for ScoreKeeper purchases and yearly updates. I didn't come up with the ultimate perfect solution but I think what I did decide to do is pretty good.

I will be using PayPal to issue invoices which are delivered via email. For the yearly updates, I will generate an invoice and send it out without you needing to do anything other than either pay it on PayPal with a credit card, bank transfer, or whatever payment options PayPal has available. I will never see your credit card number or other information, just a notice that the invoice has been paid. Once I get that notice, I will issue your new activation file for the current season. If, however, you decide not to continue using ScoreKeeper (which would sadden me greatly), just ignore the invoice and you won't get an invoice for subsequent seasons unless you contact me to renew your license.

My plan is to send out an email newsletter (like the one you are reading) a few weeks prior to sending out the invoices. Any bounced emails should let me know which email addresses are no longer valid. If you know that your invoice should be sent to a particular email address, please let me know so that I can update the information in my system.

Thinking About Visiting Thailand?

If you have ever considered visiting Thailand but are just a bit daunted by all the strange and unknown that would entail, I can help. I can recommend places to stay, places to visit, and foods to eat (and which to avoid). I can even meet you at the airport in Bangkok to get you started and personally take you to some of the sights. Of course, there is no charge for this, I do it because I love it and would like others to discover this wonderful country.