Rob Boudrie

Check to see if your company has blocked outgoing connections to your home IP address (assuming you are on a high speed connection), and configure a forwarding port on your router. You can then use windows desktop sharing, or VNC (www.realvnc.com) to do the browsing from your home system, and view the desktop from work.

That is a major bummer and I hope there is a way around it. Any potential winner should be at the World Shoot. Hope it works out. Not an official BOD statement, but my impression as one who was at the meeting when team selection criteria were put into place: The board spent a good deal of time discussing team selection criteria, and it came down to a simple choices: (1) Do we need an "objective" process, or one which provides a documentably fair mechanism for selection which removes "personal judgement calls"? (2) If we go for "documentably fair", what formula do we use? If we go for "judgement calls", who makes them? If we wanted to have a "winning team", with the minimal chance of the formula exclusing a potential winner because of a squirrel like incident, we would simply have someone who knows the players well pick the people - Michael Voigt, Rob Leatham and a few others could do a better job picking a "winning team" than any "formua". If this was a professional sports team with "owners" rather than "members", we would probably use that approach. The problem with this approach is it places a few people in the position of deciding who to exclude ... and opens that person or committee and the organization up to protests from all those who would mkae another choice. Sure, the top 1 or two are easy picks ... but if you are selecting a team of "N" people, the call gets really tough when you are figuring out who is "last chosen" and who is "first not chosen". Which all brings us back to a central question: Is the team a group of people "hired" by the board to "win", or are team slots a prize to be distirbuted under rules set by the board, with "objective fairness" being a requirement for the selection process.

uspsa.org points to the same place as USPSA org, but: (1) @uspsa.com email aliases to not map to @uspsa.org email aliases (2) If you are visiting a members are via @uspsa.com, you will probably be prompted to enter the password twice which is a quirk of Apache domain alaising.

Posted.

I thought I had uploaded them a few days ago, but I just checked and it appears that I didn't. I'll have it done tonight. Rob

Labeling and price no doubt

I am hoping to have wireless running at A7/2005 so bring your laptop if you want to check scores from the clubhouse and don't want to wait for a system to free up. I doubt I'll be able to have the wireless reach the bays though.

There are certain disciplines in which one can earn an instructor rating only after demonstrating great experience and expertise in the field; underdoing an extensive instructor training program; and teaching with or under the supervision of an experienced instructor before you get your credentials from a recognized national organization to go out an teach on your own. Skydiving; Scuba diving; and Aircraft piloting are examples of this. "NRA Instructor" rating is does not share these characteristics. Even if the training counselor is doing his job properly, there is no test for "expertise" beyond the basics; no observation and evaluation of instruction skills where the applicant is actually teaching a class; and the entire "NRA instructor course" can be completed in a few days. Some NRA instructors are excellent, however, the more you know about the prgram the less inclined you will be jump to the conclusion that every NRA instructor is an "expert."

You mean "WPA", and it's good, if your AP can do it. But.. Airsnort's no longer state of the art. 500K IV's is all you need, weak or not (recent 802.11 gear mostly no longer generates IV's in the weak ranges, btw). Most popular 802.11 cards work great, even under Windows. That's a week of dedicated sniffing by a neighbor if all you do is surf wirelessly. A night of sniffing if you do internet multimedia or big downloads over wireless. Ten minutes if you broadcast wireless video. I've tried these things.. gotta keep our customers safe, despite their best efforts. The real geek-fun is War-Flying. We took a friends plane around ~1500' AGL over town and access points were coming up non-stop (little known fact: in open air 802.11 goes a long way.) Yup, meant WPA. I found a SMC wireless with WAP a/b/g for $35.00 after rebate. Worked fine once I turned the SMC "Nitro accelleration" off. Does the current stare of the art also make it practical to break WPA?

I'm up here in Massachusetts, and I find this stuff about the TX CHL test interesting. MA instituted a mandatory training requirement a few years ago, but there is no specific range test - you just need to take one of the courses on the list from a "state certified instructor." State certification was easy (I mailed in a copy of my NRA instructor certificate and $50), although I failed at getting myself listed instructor #1 - I did manage to get instructor certificate 007 (actually, BFS007, but they all start with BFS, so I feel some justification refering to it simply as 007). It was considerably more difficult getting a new course added to the "state list", but I finally had a new course approved, and have the paperwork to prove it. The course is "USPSA Safe Handgun Competitor, MA Edition". ("MA Edition" means we explain MA law as well). So, MA residents can prepare for their first USPSA match and for their carry license at the same time. (and no, I don't pretend the USPSA course teaches tactics). Although we can't buy all makes of handguns in MA (due to two sets of requiements, one "double secret" where they will not let a dealer know in advance if a gun complies), our licenses (if issued without a restrictive endorsement) don't have anywhere near the number excusions as the rather extensive TX list ("schools" are the only chl invalid place listed in MA state law); nor do we have any concept resembling a 30.06 sign - business can post anything they want, but that does not turn carry into a crime. The downside is licensing is discretionary, which means anywhere from "easy" to "damn near impossible" to get a unrestricted carry license. All of the New England states issue carry permits (except VT where none is needed), and all do by mail except for RI. The biggest problem with RI is the range test - any NRA or police instructor can give the test - the problem is finding the "Army L" target which no one seems to carry since the bullseye is too large to be useful.

WAP is better than WEP. Cracking WEP using a large quantity of known packets (looking for ones which use "weak keys") still involves a fair amount of work, since you need to get a card which lets you get at the raw data and a utility like AirSnort. Can it happen? Sure. Likely? Not if you live in a boring suburb and no one is targeting you specifically. If you want to get an idea how many access points are out there, get a copy of Network Stumbler - it's not a "hacker tool" since it doesn't break passwords; find non-broadcast SSID's; etc. - but it does give a nice summary and even has an option to work with a GPS. I turned it on and carried the laptop with me while going on the nightly dogwalk (http://www.fsguns.com/images/simon.jpg) and the system showed 14 access points when I got home - only one of which was encrypted. If you think there is no risk of letting others freely access your bandwidth, check out http://www.eff.org/share/ - and that's not getting into the living hell someone could make your life by sending unlawful messages from your IP address.

That Italian rental clerk probably did a better job attempting to understand English than most Americans would of understanding Italian (or any language other than English for that matter).

If you need these for other states, www.packing.org contains a wealth of information and pointers to official information sources.

I forgot one detail - you need to create a Gallery user id for youself, and then email rob@boudrie.com so I can set you up with a private sub-album for your exclusive posting access. (publicly viewable)

I have posted the nationals photos from Dave Ball with the results for the match on uspsa.org, since they were nicely integrated with the stage diagram. If anyone would like to post photos to the USPSA photo gallery, visit www.uspsa-photos.org/gallery, set up an account, and upload them to the Nationals are under 2004 matches. This system works best with full resolution images - it automatically creates the "web sized" ones to display in browsers, and allows on-line ordering of prints from oany one of several services. If you have trouble uploading, or have a lot of very large files, you can send me a CD: Rob Boudrie PO Box 370 Ashland, MA 01721 Duplicates of photos already posted to the Enos forums or other web sites are welcome. Why post here instead of the forums of other locations? Perhaps the best reason is that this location will be supported for a long time to come as it is an official USPSA site, and will be a logical place for anyone looking for historical match photos to visit. Thanks, Rob Boudrie

Eric - Very true. I recently had a case where I was accused of censoring the unofficial IPSC mailing list ipsc@ipsclist.org I offered to let the complainer maintain it so he could see for himself that it is not censored, and send him the admin password. He decliend as he did not have the time - after all, it might have eaten in to the time he had availble to post complaints to mailing lists and guestbooks.

Just remember, the injuried party and his lawyer are the ones who get to decide if the club has to hire a lawyer to prove this point.

There are several types of insurance a gun club should have: 1. Casualty loss on property (fire insurance) 2. Liability insurance - the key here is who is named as an insured. The policy at my local club lists any club member "acting on behalf of the club" as an "additional insured" 3. Director's & officers insurancce - this is not "general liability", but a policy that insures directors against suits by members for their actions (for example, if a director makes a mistake or misses something while acting as a board member) 4. If you club has a bar and/or employees, a liquor liability policy and/or workmans comp may be needed. Check your homeowners policy. Most policies have an exclusion for "business activitiy", but often cover volunteer work for non-profits. Look for exclusions - the NRA policy is full of them - for example, the last time I checked the so-called insurance you could get from the NRA excluded hunting accidents on club property; accidents involving firearms in a vehicle; or suits brought by club members. I found a pretty good policy for my local club from an agent who sepcializes in writing policies for Massachusetts gun clubs, and the only exclusion I remember is non-coverage of child molestation. Watch for an exclusion from suits brought by club members. These are the most likley people to sue since they are around the club the most, and many clubs bylaws consider all family members to be club members, so suits brought by the injured party's spouse may not be covered either. Don't think that none of your members would sue - people are capable of amazing rationalizations when the prospect of "free money" conflicts with their feelings about suing their own club. It's always the other guy's suit that is ridiculous, yours is simply a request for just compensation And finally, check for "claims made" vs. "occurrence". A "Claims made" policy only covers claims made during the policy period or a continuous renewal thereof, whereas an "occurrence" policy covers any incident during the policy term. Consider the implicaitons if someone sues your club for an incident years ago - such as an allegation your safety course instructor did not tell students not to check a loaded gun for bore fouling.

I really like the format combining the stage diagram with the photo. If you would like to have this entire page posted with the results on www.uspsa.org (with appropriate credit) just let me know - rob@boudrie.com

Alaska Air has a 50lb limit, but I've never heard of them requiring it be broken into 11lb packages.

I was just talking about this idea at a recent match - it would seem to give more people their preference, and get more of the people who can't afford to take an entire week off out to the Nationals. Possible problems: 1. Super Squad Unity - Would all the super squad people agree to shoot the full week? Does it really matter? 2. Weather - We are crowning a National Champion. Under an "everyone shoots all days" format, there is a less of a "weather luck score differential" than with different days of shooting for various competitors. This meand we could easily have reasonable speculation that someone list the title only becuase they were unlucky enough to get a day with bad weather. 3. Gamesmanship with people trying to "swithc dates" at the last minute based on the weather forcast. This could be easily managed. 4. Not everyone would be present at the final awards. This would reduce the "bigness" of the event, and create a significant logistical challange with the distribution of the prizes. This would also mean the second set days would be far more desirable than the first. 5. Shooters entering on the second half start all stages with a good idea what the hit factors on each stage will look like. Under the current system, eveyone starts the first few stages without any such data. But the good points: 1. More people could shoot the match 2. Additional incentive to register early 3. More members get what they want. I'll see what our president has to say about this.

I'm looking for opinions on hard rifle cases - something strong enough to fly with, goot for one or maybe two rifles/shotguns. I'm familiar with the Pelican case, but was wondering if that's the best way to go.

Was that the longest wait from the time you showed up on a stage to the time you shot, or the longest wait until the time your squad could use a range it arrived at?

This page speaks for itself: http://ep.llnl.gov/msds/Chem120/lox-oxidation.html

The 2004 Area 7 match had squad sizes of about 7 (8 on Sunday), and everyone got in allowing everyone to complete an 8 stage/7 pit match in one half day. We found that this size gave everyone enough time to get ready, but not enough time for competitors to get tired of waiting. I'll be encouraging the match director fcor the 2005 Area 7 Championship to use a similar approach.