Rob Boudrie

Adults who either have infants and chose not to impose them on others, or who do not have infants, don't always understand why they should be expected to bear the impact of other people's kids. We could move on to a discussion of putting kids in diapers in public pools

Other than the caliber restrictions on carry, there are many simlarities between Massachusetts and Poland (although things are not that bad in some MA towns, a CCW applicant from Poland would feel right at home in Boston and vice-versa). The last time I was in a car that got stopped, the officer called in two backup units (sirens and all) when we answered "yes" when asked if we had guns with us, but it ended up with the driver (another USPSA member) being let off for the traffic offense, and the officer telling us we were properly exercising our right to be armed.

Has Poland become an enlightened nation, or are you a person of privilige and influence? In any case, welcome to the sport and be sure to introduce yourself if you ever make it to a match in the US. I would not be surprised if I get you your country one of these days, and my wife still has relatives in Poland. Who knows - rumor has it there is a forum member who is the president of his local Polish-American club lurking here abouts.

Rhino - if you talk to my wife, please remember I have a few AR's but no fifty's.

If I took the guns out of the safe for a photo, it would mean I would have an answer other than "I don''t really know ... do you know how many pairs of socks you own?" when someone asks me how many guns I own. That answer generally draws a "you're serious aren't you?" type of response from anti-gunners who ask.

Info about the first major Palm scored match may be found at http://www.boudrie.com/Area7_Palm_Scoring.html This document describes the first major match use of Palm/ASS, and the vairous issues we encountered (which are described in the document) have been resolved. It's an effective system, however, it is my opinion you still need to maintain a paper log of hit counts and time to handle any protests. A7/2003 wrote totals on traditional scoresheets. A7/2004 used summary sheets which allowed 8 shooter scores on one 8.5x11sheet, with carbonless tead-off strips abot 1 1/2" wide each shooter was given as their copy of the stage score.

Alludium Q38 Pumpkin Modulator.

Some thoughts: "Real-Time" WiFi would be cool, but it offers only marginal incremental benefit over picking up Palm scores manually, since the ranges would have to be in range of WiFi, and it creates a financial obstacle few clubs will accept. My opinion is that getting Palm scoring working at a match provides 90% of the value. WiFi would add to the "coolness" factor, but now you're not talking about buying a bunch of out of date Palm IIIxe's or similar, but getting a modern PDA on each stage. We are adding support for the www.autoscoringsystem.com Palm scoring system directly into EzWinScore which will make it very easy to set up a match to tansfer from Palms to EzWinScore. If you go to the setup page, you'll see we already have a field for the Palm transfer directory. That "hook" was added in 2.25 so that the Palm support feature can be released without any database schema change. EzWinScore/Palm integration is currently possible through a separate application, available for free, but requires Microsoft Access to interface to the database and requires a few manual steps to set up. Even so, there are currently two clubs in the US doing this at all their local matches with great success. The fastest way to post scores in "Real time" is to set up a clubhouse area network, and put various workstations around the club for people to pick up scores. I did this with a Linux/Apache web server, and it worked great ... perhaps someone will be interested in doing the same on a Microsoft IIS platform. Uploading from EzWinScore to such a system takes well under a minute when everything is properly configured. We did this at A7/2004, and we actually managed to get overall and stage scores posted before some of the squad members got done packing their gear up and walked up to the clubhouse. My performance goal for A7/2005 is 5 minutes. If the *RULES* ever support different A/B/C/D point values, EzWinScore will as well. Adding features to support variants of scoring not in compliance with the rules is not even on the feature roadmap. The aliases is an interesting idea- we already restrict results to "members only" specifically for privacy reasons. I will have to ask HQ, but I don't see a problem is someone chooses to register with their first name and last initial - just be sure to get the member number correct. Another item on my "wish list" is the ability of EzWinScore to interface to a true multi-user database, so that a major match using several computers for data entry does not have to match stages to specific machines - they would all work on one single database. The trick here is getting the database software for free, and I think I may have a way to pull that off.

Winchester Non Toxic (NT) ammo with a non-standard primer pocket. I think (but am not sure) that the original primers in these are copper rather than brass colored, which makes this brass easier to spot and discard.

If you get a copy of Network Stumbler you'll get a nice report of all wireless access points your system can see (as long as broadcast SSID is turned on), as well as list of channel, speed, and subnet if DHCP is being served. My nightly dog walk is about a half mile, and I picked up 14 access points 12 of which were unsecured. In addition to leaving wireless encryption turned off, most people leave the default router password unchanged. If you bring the laptop to Area 7 / 2005, you should be able to pick up results from the clubhouse within 5 minutes of the last shot. ps: The standard encrption protocols are "WEP" and "WPA". "WTF" is not one of them .

I would ask with total respect and complete sincerity:Have you ever met anyone who disagreed with this statement (short of a criminal or sociopath)? I haven't. And I don't believe I could find one anywhere in this country. While I agree with the idea of being held accountable for your actions, I think it is blatanly ovbious that many of the people in our society don't feel this way. There is a large section of people out there that fall into the "It's not their fault" catagory. For example, the people who are suing the fast food companies because they are fat. Did anyone put a gun to their head and force them to eat crappy food all the time? There are so many examples of this "It's not my/ their fault" type of thought out there that I could fill pages, but you get the idea. It always seems to be about holding someone ELSE responsible for their actions

I don't remember all the details, but I once cured this on a friends computer which would reset to a rogue search engine as the home page after every reboot. I eventually found a vbs startup script which set the registry for the IE home page, and constructed the URL from various substrings so that a text search of disk files would not find it. If you are able to reset the home page, but it changes back after a reboot, it could be something in your startup scripts. Just move to Firefox and be done with IE

I would suggest you write the company and remind them that you spent your time, powder, primers and energe with incorrectly loaded bullets, and feel they should replace the other 500 as well. I would also suggest you ask them to handle this by sending you a letter redeemable for an extra 500 on your next order - it will save them the cost and hassle of a tiny shipment, and remind them they are dealing with a repeat customer - an "everyone wins" sort of deal.

Not only that, but there is a zone extending a couple of weeks before the nationals and at least a week after during which it will be hard to get competitors and workers.

You are assuming that area directors looking for a match venue are in a much stronger negotiating position than is often the case. If you start laying down this kind of constraint, the pool of clubs willing and able to host and Area championship shrink dramatically. A few years ago, I had to combine the Area 7 designation with the NY State Championship since there were no "takers" - and that was without stepping in and telling the clubs "you WILL use this date" and "if you want to use another date it must be for a reason on a very short list". If I started laying down those kind of conditions, the shooters in my area would soon be talking about the good old days when we had area championships. Each Area Director has emailed the entire board every time a date is proposed for an Area Championship to give others a chance to object. The overlaps this year are minimal A4/A7 and A1/A8, and no one was blindsided.

Area 7 has always been shot in half of a day. We don't cut down on the number or size of the stages, just on the waiting time. If you want to get an exact view of the stage and round count for any of the Area Championships for recent years, visit the USPSA web site and look up results for each stage to get round counts. As to "Travel for for hours of shooting" .... When you shoot an Area Championship, you are typically travelling for less than 5 minutes of trigger time - all of the rest of the time is overhead spent waiting around, being scored, getting ready, etc. A squad size of 7-8 shooters leaves plenty of time for each individual to get ready; not enough to get bored waiting around; and keeps you moving quickly enough to fiinish before you get tired or the heat/rain/whatever gets to you. Rather than jump to conclusions about the half day format, I suggest you check with some people who were there. There is a full thread of discussion about the 2004 "half day format" Area 7 Championship at http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?...opic=14223&st=0 , but I'll save you the trouble of following the link by copying Phil Strader's (gmshooter) post on the match:

A question for everyone: If two pairs of Area Championships have to overlap, there atre two choices: 1) So far apart is it unlikley anyone will shoot both 2) Close enough to shoot both - the downside of this is that it increases the number of people adversely impacted by the overlap. So, which approach is better? We have approach #1 this year. Would it have been better for A8 and A7 to overlap so they could be done in one long car trip, or does it make sense to make sure the A7 and A8 people not up to such road warriordom don't have to choose?

Host clubs have to deal with facilities; staff; and other scheduling desires (like not putting an area chmapionship two weeks before the nationals). I feel very luck that a first-rate club with a highly qualified and motivated match staff stepped forward. The fact that the only two viable choices they were able to come up with where an A4 overlap and a couple of weeks before the nationals (and they chose the overlap -with my blessing and the approval of the A4 director) bothers me much less than scheduling the match at a club which was short on staff or experience.

While the "swap for a different serial number" would not be compliant with the Caliban registration/DROS requiements, replacement with a "like model" for repair purposes is permitted by the ATF. Even so, many manufacturers insist all new serial number frames go through a dealer. Too bad for MA, since (a) there are many guns dealers cannot transfer into MA, but are legal to posess if you get them another way [moved here with them, bequest] and ( A frame is not a gun under MA law.

It's also worth checking to make sure the club you shoot at is sending in their classifiers promptly. If they use on-line classifier submission you can check by selecting "additional content" at the USPSA web site, followed by "Classifier and match uploading", at which point the left menu will contain a button labeled "Status of uploaded classifiers." All classifiers received and paid by the 10th of the month will be included on that that month's update. If a classifier is awaiting processing, you can see if the fee has been paid (and paid status is updated in real time if the club pays on-line via credit card).

I don't know the squadding schedule for A4, but Area 7 will be shot in one half of a day. We will have squads on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If Area 4 will either let you shoot the entire match on Sunday or finish on Friday, you can spend Saturday travelling between the two matches. If someone needs other accomodations (such as a shoot through to make a fight), we will do what we can - talk to myself or the match director (once we have the details up) and we'll work with you. In general, however, I cannot recommend shooting a match under the pressure of "have to be done by xx:xx to make a flight" - much easier to use a middle day for travel.

It's amazing that people are talking about the NBA suspension being excessive. If I violently hit someone at work, I can assure you that my boss and the HR department will not be having a discussion about the length of my suspension.

Scheduling area matches is always tough, and I did consult with the ARea 4 director before giving my approval to the date. Although getting registrations in early is the best approach for someone wanting to shoot both Area 4 and Area 7, confirmed registration on both of these matches will be about the only way to get a assignment during a "full" shoot time.

Actually, NY law on this is rather strange. Junors under 21 may not handle a handgun UNLESS: (1) They were issued a NY pistol permit issued before the minimum age was raised to 21. Chances are, most of the people this may have applied to have passed 21 by now. (2) They are non-residents of NY who are handling the gun under the exemption provided by NY penal code 265.20(13). Non-resident juniors are welcome; resident ones are not. Sort of like Massachusetts where a non-resident alien can mail order a handgun/high capacity rifle license, but a non-citizen legal resident alien (like the MA resident who shot IPSC in Israel for many years before moving t the US) cannot.

I have just received confirmation from the Rochester Brooks Practical Shooters that the 2005 Area 7 Championship will be held from June 9-12, 2005 at their club just outside Rochester, New York. I am confident that this club will do every bit as good a job as the 2004 host did with the Area 7. As long as Team Shroom places as much effort into the match as they do decorating their staff car for the nationals, the match will be in create shape. Final registration details will be posted when they become available.