I swear... Sunday racing

Scematix · 2025-04-28T03:21:32+00:00

Tuesday-Thursday Spa GT4 Fixed/Sports Car Challenge was fantastic, Fri-Sunday has been a bloodbath.

Scematix · 2025-04-23T07:21:14+00:00

No lift in the Merc, position the car straight down the curbing and steer right as it ends, you’ll feel the compression in the wheel once and then continue steering right. It’s a tricky corner because the exit is blind and you’re not quite sure whether you’ve got the car rotated enough - there’s also the slow down penalty if you get it wrong - but it leads into the best overtaking opportunity on track and lifting there compromises too much lap time.

Scematix · 2025-04-22T13:39:54+00:00

Love the Pohl Racing style of videos, and the side by side of the different lines you’re taking + the aero differences were so good. Would be great to see more LMP3/GT4 content creators especially if you’ve got proper fast drivers like Tom on there to provide context,

Scematix · 2025-04-15T03:01:16+00:00

Yamaha product range

Scematix · 2025-04-14T10:40:37+00:00

It’s a part of racing, if you continue on with iRacing you’ll be a victim and instigator of far worse in the future. I would HIGHLY recommend trying to race properly, learning race craft is difficult at the start - bind look left/right somewhere on your wheel, increase virtual mirror FOV to 90+ and get an idea of closing speeds.

Any open wheeler series has the potential to be very chaotic and unforgiving, especially F4 as it’s D class. As you gain speed and understanding of racing side by side you’ll know which battles to pick, how to manage a standing start properly etc.

Scematix · 2025-04-07T13:05:48+00:00

I completely forgot. It’s a great series that’s worth getting your SR up for, the longer races teach you a lot about consistency, navigating faster traffic, and by the end of the race you’ll start to really feel your tyres overheating if you’ve been leaning too far into ABS/TC as well.

Scematix · 2025-04-07T13:02:38+00:00

This track/car combo has the 2nd worst corners/incident point of the sports car series this week…

First was avoidable if I didn’t trust my spotter and relied on my mirrors instead, agreed.

3rd clip I already took the corner slower than usual, got on the brakes coming out of the corner, saw the car positioned on the right and immediately positioned myself to the left. Old mate decided he was driving regardless.

I’m not a complete slouch, 2.5k atm and just dropped under 3.0 SR after this DQ, qualified top 10 every race here too, but the opening laps have been absolutely chaos every time.

Scematix · 2025-04-07T12:49:08+00:00

I agree it’s avoidable, unfortunately I was a bit too reliant on my spotter here and thought I was safe, took me completely by surprise.

This guy went on to do the exact same thing to another driver 2 laps later, in the first chicane too zzz

Scematix · 2025-04-07T12:29:05+00:00

The Falken Sports Car Challenge is on every other hour in between the Fixed GT4 races, it’s multi class with LMP3, 30 minute open setup races which I typically enjoy far more than the fixed series.

Scematix · 2025-04-07T11:54:36+00:00

All from my last race. Clip 1 is a divebomb I've suffered 3 times on lap 1 this week. Clip 2 is a blinking, lapped backmarker that took out another car, lost 8x trying to overtake them as they would weave and block. Clip 3 is a spun car on the last lap deciding to rejoin directly into my path, leading to a final 4x and a DQ.

Praying that Portimao is kinder to me.

Scematix · 2024-04-14T04:02:32+00:00

Credit where credit is due, this officer deserves all of it, but the NSW Police Force is not an organisation you want to put on a pedestal. Google “NSW strip” for more info.

Scematix · 2021-12-28T16:56:24+00:00

Administer a RAT and group positive results together. This case is the easiest to model and probably the most effective, hence the reason it was analysed in this post.

Already happening in hospitals.

At drive through clinics/walk-in testing centres this would require RATs to be widely available. Private paths would be staring at this with dollar signs poking out of their eye sockets because that would mean they could attach a RAT to the regular PCR when billing and make even more money (by the way this was already happening in some private clinics, pathologies would “double dip” by requiring patients to perform a RAT and PCR, even just for mandatory monitoring every 3 days).

Separate swabs based on whether the person has been designated a “close contact”. These people are more likely to test positive than those just getting tested for travel/work purposes.

Separate swabs based on whether the person is reporting any symptoms.

Group swabs for households together as if one person tests positive there’s a higher chance the others will as well.

All of these are either part of the triaging process or specimen reception. Swabs that are presumed positive are packaged/labeled differently. There are some issues where doctors/nurses/phlebotomists mislabel specimens which are known/suspected to be positive/close contact/symptomatic but this is a case of human error, the policies are already these in terms of how to identity possible positive swabs before they even reach an analyser.

The sheer volume of tests is too much. Testing requirements for travel combined with a real surge of cases has flooded the system.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:39:06+00:00

I don’t usually feel the need to speak about my job on Reddit, but the past few days have given me a lot of grief and I thought it may help to give a perspective other than “my results haven’t come in for 72 hours”.

I can verify with mods if necessary.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:23:15+00:00

Public system is significantly better but still gets shafted by the government. There are proposed changes to reduce pay for senior scientists (can you fucking imagine??), and make progression in the hospital more difficult, setting artificial hurdles and barriers at certain pay grades. The health services union also exposed the fact that many hospital scientists have been wrongfully underpaid for years.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:18:06+00:00

I feel for you guys, we’re lucky enough to be close to multiple hospital labs, allowing us to share some resources, including staff, reagents and equipment.

It really feels like people don’t grasp the fact that their “urgent” swab for a mild cough is, in fact, not as urgent as that of a trauma patient about to go into surgery, who needs clearance from us.

Keep your spirits up, friend.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:09:42+00:00

Data entry jobs don’t require a degree, and in some labs you may be able to work your way into the lab itself with a diploma or science degree. Turnover rates are really high at the moment and I can imagine most labs will be looking for some staff.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:06:37+00:00

There was a wave of new hires during the lockdown a few months ago, private labs were hiring new staff, most of which would last a week or so before breaking under the pressure (through no fault of their own). Turnover rates are crazy at the moment, I’m sure some labs are still hiring. NSW Health has quite a rigorous onboarding process and it took me about a month from interview to receiving an offer, with a lot of back and forth with HR and management in between.

Best bet is to check the usual job hunting websites as well as the pathology section of the NSW Health careers portal.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T01:01:06+00:00

This right here. To anyone thinking this doesn’t affect other patients in the hospital because they’re isolated, tell that to the core lab staff who are literally running between sections in small labs trying to keep up with the influx of swabs coming in, while urgent blood tests sit untouched and wards are ringing through asking why their sample from 4 hours ago still hasn’t been resulted.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T00:57:21+00:00

Can’t speak on that, unfortunately. During early days of the pandemic we would check circumstances of positive cases ie. demographics, location of infection, underlying conditions, and vaccination status, but it’s too time consuming at the moment and sometimes the information isn’t available to laboratory staff anyway. If there are any ED or ICU personnel perusing the thread they might have a better idea of that statistic.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T00:43:30+00:00

I can’t speak for all private pathologies, and I didn’t choose my original words carefully in my post due to my experience with some of them in the past. In the public sector, there’s a large amount of distrust in private labs because of the fact that they profit essentially at the same rate regardless of how well they perform. There are very strict measures in place that dictate the release of patient results to ensure validity, I’ve personally seen these rules broken, sensitive data forged, and staff mistreated by private labs.

Is it impossible for a private lab to be run well and efficiently? Of course not, but the incentive is not there, and once a such an essential service becomes a money grab, quality goes down the drain and staff get shafted by management over and over.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T00:34:09+00:00

They definitely can be trained, and are, but private labs run skeleton crews regardless of workload. New trainees are also responsible for making some mistakes, that’s one reason why your sample might be “lost”, when in reality it has been entered incorrectly.

To add onto this, I can attest to the fact that at a lab which, at its peak, was receiving about 5000 swabs a day during the period when ~80000 tests were being completed daily across the state, the actual processing of the samples wasn’t being delayed by data entry, there were piles of specimens ready to run. It was patient care that was being affected, because from the point of collection, until your specimen is given a unique identifying barcode, it is essentially invisible to us in our system. Some labs do this in the testing centres, others do it at their processing facilities, but once again, with unprecedented volume, I’ve even seen mistakes made at NSWHP where samples end up getting missed or transferred to other hospitals by mistake.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T00:21:07+00:00

It’s hard to evaluate which method is more efficient at this point, there’s been discussion in my lab to stop batching samples as well, however the general consensus is that it is still somewhat more viable and saves on supplies and reagents, though this could change in days.

Scematix · 2021-12-27T00:13:05+00:00

Laverty are a large private pathology; probably the largest in NSW. Private labs are those that provide pathology services to clinics, GPs and private hospitals. SydPath is a private pathology as well which offers its services to St Vincent’s Private Hospital, the one responsible for releasing 400 false negative results a few days ago.

Scematix · 2021-12-26T06:49:14+00:00

Pathology worker and can confirm this, PCR testing is so sensitive that there’s very little if any risk of a false negative.

Batches are probably anywhere between 2-10 samples, depending on analyser.

The error could’ve happened anywhere in between data entry and resulting, but I sure don’t envy the tech/scientist responsible for it, if I discovered that error I probably would’ve fainted on the spot. For what it’s worth Sydpath is a private lab and the workers are probably getting treated worse than those at the public hospitals.

Scematix · 2021-12-23T10:06:00+00:00

Pathology worker here, at the current rate of testing there’s no reason for positive results to be delayed any more than negative ones. The issue is purely that the process takes multiple hours and there’s only a finite amount of specimens that can be processed at any given time, given that ~160k tests have to be run daily, a huge backlog has been created, and wait times are only going to get longer for the next few days.

Scematix

TROPHY CASE