Jock Preferences + Workouts

General Comments and Suggestions
1

I know Shanthi has a whole bunch of stuff on her plate right now, but I’d like to throw this one out here.  I love how for workouts the jockey is automatically set to my #1 preference jockey.  It makes my life a whole bunch easier, especially 'cause I’m a lazy ass what with Shanthi spoiling us with all this automation, early entries, future shipping dates, etc. 

However, since most of my jocks know my horses pretty well, I want my backup jocks (#2 preference) to get some riding time.  As they’re pretty clueless, and I don’t want to default them as #1 while I get them up to speed, because I’ll forget this when I enter races.    Unfortunately, that means I’ve got to look this up for each horse, which is a bit time consuming if I want to set it to the #2 Jock preference for all my ponies, or even just a handful.  So, I was wondering if this could be addressed. 

A couple solutions:

  1. Add a box in each horse’s section (maybe under their name?, or add a third line to each horse’s section) that prints out the names of each of the selected jockeys in order.  CON: Makes the page even longer by 1/3rd, which is not so good if you’ve got a lot of horses at the track.

  2. Have three radio buttons at the top of the page for Jock #1, Jock #2, and Jock #3.  Whichever Jock # is selected, that becomes the default rider for all the horses.  That’s to say that if my pony, Billy Bob Sue, is normally ridden by Jack the Ripper, with Bob the Builder as the 2nd preference, and my other pony, Silly Susie, is normally ridden by Cybil Brown, with Dora the Explorer as a 2nd rider, should I check the box for Jock #2, then Billy Bob Sue will have Bob the Builder as his default rider for THAT particular ride and Dora will ride Silly Susie.  CON: This only works well if you’re looking to exercise a majority of your stable with your #2 preference rider. 

  3. The pull down list could be reordered for each horse so that Jock #1 is at the top of the list, Jock #2 is the 2nd one on the list, and Jock #3 is the third on the list.  K. Berry, if not in spots 1-3, would be in the 4th position, and so on down the alphabetical list.  The default would be at the top of the list, of course.  CON: Might be a pain in the butt to code?

Thoughts?  Or am I just being too lazy about this?

2

All 3 options would be pretty easy to code.

However, I have no opinion regarding the pros/cons, so I’ll leave that up to other people to decide. :wink:

3

Personally, I’d like to see a combination of 2 and 3, if at all possible.  That would cover both possibilities.  #2 for when I want everyone/most to run with another jock, and #3 for when I just want to tweak a couple horses.

But I’d love to hear other people’s solutions/opinions on the ones I’ve proposed.

4

I’d like a single button that I can check which means all my horses would be worked by the #2 or #3 jockey. I normally work all my horses at once with their first pref jockey, so being able to do all of them with their second pref jockey would be tops. :slight_smile: There are already a heap of pull down menus on the workout page so if we could stay away from that then that would be very cool! :slight_smile: This is a good idea Cat! :slight_smile:

So I vote option 2 to keep things VERY simple but still very functional. :wink:

5

Hell yeah! I want Bob the Builder to ride my horse! :stuck_out_tongue:

Number two seems the best out of the three, though I personally don’t watch jockeys =X I can only do one thing at a time, and as of last week it was getting everyone home lol

6

Jase, I think I explained #3 poorly.  Thanks for cluing me into this.  :slight_smile: 

It wouldn’t be an additional pull-down menu for the top preference jocks.  Rather, it would be the jockey list that would be reordered so that jocks 1,2, and 3 figure at the top of the list, and the rest of the jocks would still be in alphabetical order below these top three.  The default would then simply highlight the name at the top of the list–your #1 jockey pick.

To use my previous example for Billy Bob Sue.  The following drop down menu (or whatever it’s called) would appear when you clicked on the select jockey menu thing.

Jack the Ripper
Bob the Builder
Billy Bob’s Third Jock
Berry, K.
Corral, S. (etc.  I don’t know who comes after Berry, K.)

Thus, the top of this jockey list would ALWAYS be highlighted as the default, because that would be the first preference, much like how Berry, K. is ALWAYS highlighted when you don’t have any jockey prefs set.

So, it’s not so much another menu to worry about, it’s simply the order of the jockey list. 

I agree with you folks that the button at the top of the page would be really nice, but it doesn’t solve my laziness problem when I only want to get work-outs with the second jock for a couple horses, not my entire barn.  This will probably be true once the 2yos start next year and you want THEM to work out with their #1 jock, and your 3yos to play nice with your #2 jock, because they already know their #1 jock pretty well. 

If we just have the box and don’t reorder the list, you STILL have to look up the other jock for each horse that you don’t want run on the default.  And that’s just counter to my evil plan to become the laziest owner of them all.

Granted, if we just went with solution 2, you could just run workouts in two shifts.  First your 2yos with jock #1 checked, and then your older ponies with jock #2 checked.  Which might be simpler.  I think I may have talked myself into a circle here.  WHEE!

So, um, yes.  I agree with all of you. 

7

Alternately, I can add another preference to the race preferences section.

Jock #1, 2, and 3 for race entries, as usual.  Then, as another selection, Default Workout Jock.  So you could select that to be jock #1, 2, 3, or someone else (if you were shopping for new jocks), and he’d be your default for workouts for that horse, while the main 3 would still be default for race entries.

Would that be easier?

[I’m also planning on stable-wide stuff, like “Assign Jockey A, B, and C as default jocks for my entire stable”, etc. to save people from cycling through a whole big stable one by one.]

8

I work all my horses separately but then I only have around 10 in work.

Would a check box or drop down on the training page like ‘default jock 1’ ‘jock 2’ etc make it easier? As you already have them saved in the racing section, this may just be an easy way to switch between your desired jocks.

While on jock preferences, I’d like to see a ‘first in best dressed’ for each race, this may encourage people to nominate early to try and secure their jock as opposed to the random selection of the moment.

9

I don’t want to implement a first come, first served setup for entries because that means there is a race to get horses entered.  So, regardless of what else happens, that won’t. :wink:

10

I like option #2 the best!

11

I like 2 and 3 a lot!

12

I like the idea quite a bit.  If Shanthi doesn’t mind coding both 2 and 3, I think that might be best.  Then everyone can do whichever they’d prefer (stable-wide or case-by-case).  If Shanthi doesn’t want to do twice as much work, I think #3 would be more useful in general for me, as I typically only give maybe 4-5 horses a workout at a time depending on who’s at a track and has energy.

13

2 and 3 i think would work. :slight_smile:

14

2 and 3 would be good, but seeing as I’m lazy and only work out a couple of horses every now and then, option 3 gets my vote. :slight_smile:

15

I have to go along with the group, 2 & 3 are best

16

Great Idea!! Has any of it been implimented yet?? I like 2 and 3 also… :smiley: