VFTD Odds'N'Ends

I have been remiss lately in welcoming the newest members of the Deadbox Puppet Army. Apologies & Greetings! The most recent recruits include Nikilwig, (that paragon of paintball perspicacity) Nick Brockdorff, Cinic, Cassius Dixon & Greg. If I've missed anyone I blame Blogger because it doesn't track join dates after a brief period of time. (Curse you Blogger!) VFTD would like to welcome the most recent recruits, named and unnamed, to the Deadbox Puppet Army--and encourage you fence sitting lazy slackers to step up to the plate before it's too late. You don't think we're in the world domination game all alone, do you? (Hell, half the paintball industry "borrows" VFTD's style & schtick.) The Freemasons have a few hundred years head start. And don't get me started on the Illuminati. Ever hear of the Skull & Bones? That's right. The DPA needs to make a move by the end of the year if we want to see some movement in next year's Janes' Conspiracies of the World. No time like the present. So join now and make a difference. Slacker.
Benefits of joining are membership in a truly elite club--paintballers with both good taste and (probably) a 3 digit IQ. Then there's the secret handshake--only available in person, it's a secret handshake after all--and magic decoder ring. (Currently on back order.) And finally the opportunity to purchase a handsome DPA T-shirt. (See link and image on sidebar.)

UPDATE: VFTD also welcomes aboard recruit(s) Devon Stuart & Gabriel Aponte who had the good sense to jump in post haste and maybe get a personal mention--which in fact is what just happened.

VFTD would also like to take this opportunity to thank y'all for the recent spate of Facebook "likes." (At least those among you who actually made the effort.) As regulars know VFTD would prefer to be feared than liked but still appreciates your social network literacy and conformity to the stalkers' & attention whores' favorite interweb portal.

If Only I Played the Violin ...

or self-medicated on heroin. (Or was it opium?) I'm never quite sure. Perhaps then I could alleviate the raging boredom. You know, like Sherlock Holmes. He of the notoriously low boredom threshold. Or maybe somewhere in the wide world of paintball SOMETHING INTERESTING COULD HAPPEN. It was so bad earlier I started reading the postings on Facebook. And I thought I was bored ...

Did you notice the recent PSP announcement (there never seems to be an off season when it comes to cluttering up my emailbox) that the new AES tourney series was a PSP affiliate series? (I deleted the first one too.) Seems they will be running 2 conferences with the northern conference in a region of the Midwest more or less overlapping that of the Vicious Series. And that the Vicious Series will be switching to a Millennium style of Race 2 (with 2 matches proceeding on the same field simultaneously or thereabouts.) Does that mean the Vicious Series is no longer a PSP affiliate? Oh and it's vaguely ironic that GP (& the Fergs) [formerly of DSS & Vicious] is headlining the AES series of events.

A query arrived in the mailbag recently wondering what I thought of the idea of trying to organize larger scale combination paintball events. Something like a Big Game and tournament to occur over the same weekend at the same venue--perhaps as the coordinated effort of multiple promoters. Part of the notion being that some of the logistical expenses overlap, some of the players interest may also overlap and the whole thing would have greater appeal to industry sponsors and supporters. What do you think? And while you're thinking take a moment to post those thoughts in the comments. (For those of you who weren't sure what to do with your thoughts.)

Periodically VFTD will receive requests for guidance or assistance from teams and players at different levels of competition that go well beyond the specific questions I'm (usually) happy to respond to in Baca's Mailbag. In the past I have tried to offer what is hopefully some helpful advice and encouragement but recently the numbers of this sort of request have been growing and as a practical matter I simply don't have the time to respond to each one individually. The language barrier has also become a more frequent issue as many of these requests come from all corners of the globe. For those who have lately received something of a stock reply, my apologies. And for those who are relatively new to VFTD there are quite a lot of posts in the archives covering practice routines, drills and the like. The search function isn't great but will help sort things out. As always I'm happy to respond to specific questions whether they become a mailbag post or not.

VFTD Notice

Seems Blogger has been on the fritz since sometime last night. The automated response pages assure that everything, including prior postings, will be back to normal at some point in the near future. We'll see. It appears the only missing post is the Zack Patient Pro*file. In the meantime solider on, Sunshine.

UPDATE: I can't replace lost comments but if the Pro*file doesn't return I'll repost it tomorrow sometime.
UPDATE2: Zack is back. Still nothing on lost comments.

Hey Hey HEY!

Calling all Pro slackers. Here's a gentle reminder for all you lazy good for nothing pro players if you want to see your Pro*file posted here at VFTD. I don't want to hear about school, job, girlfriend, charity work or any of the rest of your hackneyed and lame excuses. The price of participation is you making a modest effort. For more info look here or drop me an email. (Or have your personal assistant do it for you.)

Over at one of my favorite watering holes somebody leaked a copy of a possible NPPL Chicago field design. It is one of two under consideration and it is a copy of the original that was scribbled on at an HB meeting called to discuss the various submissions. The scribbles are suggested changes (like moving the carwashes further toward the center of the field and switching the Dorito wire corner SDs for the nearby Temples.) An owners vote was supposed to decide which one would be the Chicago layout but apparently the drama continues. It is rumored that white smoke will rise from Eric Crandall's barbecue once a final field is actually chosen.

The MSXL, the PSP's newest (first) (only) supporting league [Why aren't these guys an affiliate and what's the difference? Enquiring minds] has taken a big step and they are offering an Open Division of play for players ranked pro down to D2. It will be interesting to see if this gets off the ground. So far it looks like a couple of "local" PSP D1 teams are on board. Could be an excellent opportunity for regional D1 and higher ranked players to consider putting new teams together as well as this provides them a place to compete without the expense and uncertainty of jumping into the national fray right away.

UPDATE: dropped by the Big Bullet (after checking out Steve's guest posts at T-Square) and it looked like a brand new site. Looks good. (The purple is gone.) and it's very easy to skim through all the different items quickly to get an overview of what's happening. Also, the right sidebar is dominated by links that go the extra mile and list a number of recent postings on the various sites represented--so if you want to make sure you haven't missed something at the Bullet you can skim all the new stuff at loads of other paintball sites. (And even better, it means you can officially leave Twitter to the teenaged girls--as well as those who might as well be teenaged girls. [You know who you are.] Twitter is not for real men. Call me backward, Neolithic even but if Twitter doesn't make you uncomfortable you probably ought to check your hormone levels, ladies.)

VFTD needs your help

Okay, maybe not your help specifically but somebody's help--assuming you have buckets full of computer savvy. Here's the deal; seems the worst of my problems kept returning because a seemingly harmless generation file was added to start-up and operated thru the browser (both IE & Firefox.) Anyway, I seemed to have scraped all that out except, except my new and freshly installed browsers still once in a while generate unsolicited and/or redirected web pages. This seems to be mostly a nuisance but I'd like it to go away. I've used Malwarebytes to clean the hijacker & rogues, Ad-Aware for the nuisance crap and CCleaner for the registry and start-up. Got any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Inside VFTD

All is chaos. Sorta. More or less. Today it's more. I wanted this week to be a break from the serious biz of paintball and that got derailed almost immediately with the sudden canning of Eurick at KEE on Monday and it's all gone downhill from there. I know, I didn't have to do a Suicide Watch either but stuff happened--and keeps on happening--that's hard (for me) to ignore.

I'm waiting on a few pro*files but it would seem that, like the rest of you, the typical pro is a lazy slacker too. I can't post what I ain't got. While I'm at it let me, one more time, encourage y'all (pro players) to drop me a line and get involved. It isn't hard--look at some of the guys who have already done it--and while it may seem like you're crassly self-promoting, so what?--peeps are interested. Trust me. The Pro*files are popular and you can always say you were just helping me out.

I'm also waiting out technical difficulties to get the latest installment of Ask of Coach produced. Server issues this time supposedly, all that means is (again) I got nothing. Except a list of post subjects I'm interested in, most of which are fairly serious and all of which require some thought and effort. Two things I wanted to avoid this week.

There's also a new (big) interview in the works with a uniquely placed individual who covers the gamut of big time competitive paintball. Feel free to guess who it is but I ain't gonna tell you. It's gonna be a surprise.

I was also considering doing the third annual VFTD awards (for the first time) by asking you lot to contribute categories and nominees but I can see that getting out of hand very quickly and you'd be surprised what a poor sense of humor some of the folks involved in paintball have. However, if any of you want to contribute ideas, categories and/or nominees I'm willing to see how it goes. (Winners could receive the golden pod. "And the Poddy goes to..." A universally recognized symbol of excellence and achievement in a category yet to be determined.)

Un, er, Redacted

The post I pulled last week has been re-posted to its original date, 1/25/10. It's irrelevant now and not really worth your time--if it ever was--but the curious can have a look. It's called 'T Minus 90 and Counting'

Paintball Preview

Hey kids, it's still Monday in a few parts of the world. And since it's Monday that means a new piece has been posted at Baca's Blog over on the Big Bullet. (Bobcat, please disregard this notification.) Today's post is a little rumination on cheating and the hypocrisy of most ballers, and in this case, the holier-than-thou woods types who would sooner sacrifice their first born than play on. Not that I'm a big fan of cheating, I'm just a realist. After all, refs exist for a reason. Come to think of it that's probably the best reason not to cheat. Quit cheating, put a worthless ref out of a job. (Not that all refs are worthless but seriously, the minimum standard ought to be knowledge of the rules.)

Tomorrow's MLP Held Hostage will be the last three events in review as well as the latest from Warsaw.

Also, along with the promised posts from last week that I haven't posted yet there will be the next Xball: Play of the Game post on laning later this week along with another Ask the Coach; Episode 2--Shooting with Either Hand. And adding to the queue will be posts entitled, The X-Factor (about the lifecycle of a pro team) and, Left Coast Bias (which I hope to post shortly.)

Housekeeping. No new recruits enlisted into the DPA last week so no enlistments post. *hint, hint*

Also, if anyone has any questions about the MAO I'd be willing to take a shot at answering so post them in comments. Otherwise, my final remarks will appear in tomorrow's MLP post.