Rob Boudrie

None . Open and Production are scores as separate matches.

Interestingly enough, it mentioned he used an STI 40 and engaged with two rounds.

The best one I heard of was someone whose number was very close to a hotel. The hotel wouldn't do anything about it, so he just started accepting reservations and telling the callers their room would be ready.

I don't think I understand what this means. Can you elaborate? Thanks. Troy Gladly. Both rules and policies define how we run USPSA matches. The significance of the difference in this case relates to the process of changing how something is done - there is a differerence between "updating policy" and "changing the rules." If something is part of the "rules", it takes a board motion to "change the USPSA Rules." Is something is a "policy", it takes a board motion to change USPSA policy. These are two conceptually different acts. Also, since we are operating under a dispensation for region-specific USPSA rules, Michael Voigt would have to formally notify the world body we were changing the "rules" again ... after he already told them we were "done." Fuermore, "rules" have been evaluated with the perspective of minimizing variance with the world rules. Policies, such as USPSA classification procedures, are not evaluated by the same criteria. Based on this, it is my personal impression that there is much less of an obstacle to changing a "policy" than there is in changing a "rule". "Rule" vs. "Policy" is a significant difference from the perspective of changing them, however, they are applied in a similar manner once established. Rob

John Amidon has advised me that the description of the classification in the rulebook is just that - a description, not part of the rules. This is similar to the letter from the president published in the rulebook, in that it does not have standing as part of the "rules". This means that the board could modify the classification procedures without the alteration being considered a change to the rules. I am not going to propose any fundamental changes, however, I feel that the 4/6 issue is something that we could tweak. I have asked Michael Voigt to add this issue to the agenda for the next board meeting. Since changing the system to count "all 5" for a shooter with 5 on record would be a modification of a policy adopted by board motion in 1996, it would take another board motion to change it. While we're on the topic, I have another question: Should we change the "average the best 6 of 8 each month" to "average the bext 6 of 8 after each classifier score?". Currently, the sampling interval can effect the classification. Consider a shooter whose average would be 76% if calculated on the 5th of the month, but a lower score (still within the range of the classification) comes in on the 6th, pushing his average to 74%. It's only a matter of chance that the timing was such that the sampling interval missed the peak, and the shooter does not get an A card. Another shooter witn an identical sequence of scores, which arrive at USPSA HQ in the same order but at a different point in the classification cycle, would get an A card. It's like a weather report which generated the "daily high" by measuring the temperature every hour on the hour only - the answer will be in the right ballpark, but not necessarily an accurate high. So, sould we cange from a "monthly sampling" to "rolling average" ? Rob

I looked at the board minutes from 1996 (before I was on the board), and the current implementation is indeed "correct" in the sense that it matches the rules and policies - although a strict construcitonalist could argue that we must wait until we have 8 before making the calculation after the first 4. I agree that it makes little sense to "count 4, ignore 5, then count 6", and I will be bringing this up at the next board meeting. I am also going to determine the organization's official position on the relation of classificaiton policy to the rulebook - it is a "policy" which is explained in the rulebook, or is it a "rule?". I sure wish I had thought to request a notation clarifying that this was an administrative policy when submitting my review comments on the book. Rob

www.searchstorage.com if you want to see what real storage is. Watch out for on-board RAID. Some of the low end raids you get on PC's (for example, the Silicon Image raid controller) can be unreliable at protecting data. I tested by Silicon Image raid controller by indicing failures (pluggin cables, etc.) and it worked flawlessly. The first time I had a "real failure" on one half of a mirrored pair, the controller trashed the metadata on the other drive ... and the vendor (ASUS) refused to even consider it was a "real problem"; answered questions only from the "user error" perspective; and refused to escalate to development engineering. I reformatted the drive and recovered from backup, but no longer trust Silicon Image raid. I've had no problem using Linux (RH9) with Maxtor IDE drives without getting any drivers other than those packaged with Linux. The only "catch" in running SAMBA is that if your network is internal only, it's worth setting the windows registry key to permit unencrypted passwords to simplify your Samba configuration. It's also worth installing SWAT (Samba Web Admin Tool). My Linux and Windows systems see each other's drives via Samba, and it works rather nicely. Add a Linksys KVM2 two system KVM switch and you have a nice Win+Linux development environment. (Especially useful if you like to have your own Apache + MySQL server for development)

Vince - perhaps the next World Shoot can have one of these installed.

Contact Area 8 director George Jones (area8@uspsa.org). George was a Chinook pilot in the military, and drives a corporate rotary for a living nowdays.

Another approach is to take an old PC (chances are either you or someone you know has one laying around), installiing an inexpensive IDE drive (www.newegg.com for great prices), and any version of Windows (NT or later is best, so you can use NTFS), and share the drive for backup, and turn the system off when not backing up. If you're feel like a project and want a legit free OS< try Red Hat Fedora (fedora.redhat.com), with SAMBA and SWAT and use a Linux drive for backup.

I have put one up at www.uspsa.org/chat on a trial basis. There are two chatrooms pre-installed on that server - I've started with "phpchat" since it does not use a non-default port (non-default ports are often blocked by corporate firewalls). No, it is not costing USPSA anything extra - we currently sublet space on the server (cutting USPSA's costs to 1/3 of the server rental fee), and even with that, are using less than 10% of our allotted bandwidth. It's not "members only" now, but may be later. I'm also considering re-writing the member info to use the per-user password from the Front Sight label as the signon.

Yes, that is the correct IP - "ev1.net" is "ev1servers.net", the hosting farm we use. Try a few other sites on that server: www.uspsa7.org, www.uspsa2.org are a couple of examples.

Care to be more specific?

I am not aware of any problems with USPSA.ORG - are you having problems specific to the classification update download, or the page in general?

Americans are not required to carry the SS card or any other document on their person except when engaging in licensed activity (driving a car, carrying a firearms in some jurisdictions; and air travel which is de-facto licensed), and it's rare to need the actual card for anything. Unemployment benefits often require the actual card, and the I9 form employers are required to keep to prove the right to work in the US lists the SS card as one of several acceptable "proof" documents.

The subject is not air travel, but the general state of affairs in the US. My wife is a nurse and just went through "privacy training" - lots of stuff like don't release medical information without authorization, even if they are a relative, blah, blah... BUT... the training also mentioned that all medical records are, by law, an open book to "homeland security". Several years ago, the US federal govt passed a law providing a $10,000 per day penalty to any telephone company which fails to provide the ability to tap any phone in the country from the convenience of a government facility. There is a currently a move to extend this requirement to VOIP (voice over IP) services. US citizens can be arrested on US soil and detailed indefinitely without trial if the feds feel their offense is so serious the formality of charges heard before a jury of their peers would undermine national security. You cannot travel by air without carrying official government ID - previously, there was a "selectee" process where you could travel without ID, but would get an extra inspection of your person and baggage. This is not quite the same as requiring an "internal passport", but is a step in that direction. Library and bookstore records are not only open to the government, but telling someone the government has asked for such records is a federal offense. We now have secret trials which are maintained in federal courthouses on a separate docket, which members of the press and public may not see or even learn the existance of by examining public records. One can argue that air travel security impositions are "voluntary", but there are lots of non-voluntary erosions of personal liberty in the US.

I've found the Case Pro to be abbsolutely wonderful for improving the quality of match ammo in both Super and 40 S&W. Other approaches also help, but the Case Pro is the ideal solution since it "rolls" the case back into shape, and does not tend to scrunch the brass towards the head. Also, the Case Pro people are wonderful to deal with.

What is "reasonable" is results posted within the timeframe promised by match organizers. If people made it known this was a consideration when deciding which matches to shoot, I bet the situation would, on average, improve.

OK, I'll answer on-topic: Local clubs in the northeast US vary tremendously in posting times, varying from 1 day to a couple of weeks.

...but...but...if you hit the "hardcover" area and the whole thing falls, is that a REF? "mcoliver" - Is it just a coincidence that your avatar is the logo for the Alludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator?

You obviously have a system that works - but I can assure you there is no way I would be able to get the staff at Area 7 to have results out in 5 minutes, including printing and manual verification of all scores for correct data entry before posting, if we used manual data entry. From the competitors point of view, a 5 minute delay is a 5 minute delay - no matter how the match manages to provide that service, accurate results in 5 minutes represents a job well done. Moving off the Palm topic... When you are trying to get result up in a time measured in minutes rather than tens of minutes or longer, the printing of results becomes a major obstacle. At the Area 7 (190 shooters, 8 stages), the final printed results for all stages, divisions and overall ran 86 pages. This presents a few problems: 1. Even a fast printer takes time to print that many sheets (figure 4 minutes with a 17ppm printer; much longer if you've borrowed an old or cheap printer from a member) 2. It takes even longer to post them - if you figure 2 minutes to get your stuff together and 6 seconds a sheet (with overhead, removal of the previous version of the results, etc.) and you've got another 11 minutes. So, posting paper results will increase a 5 minute latency (possible with Palm OR manual data entry to) to 5+4+11 (20) minutes or more, a fourfold increase. And that's assuming no glitches in printing, finding the stats stapler that some RO took to use on a stage, etc. 5 vs. 20 minutes may not sound like a lot, but it can mean the difference between a shooter coming from the range finding his/her scores are waiting and having to wait a bit. Posting results on an in-house network can reduce the posting time to 2 minutes or less. Granted, the time may be a bit longer with MSS since it does not have the integrated posting feature of EzWinScore (feel free to correct me if I am wrong), but it still should be simple. We did this at the Area 7 by setting up an in-house web server at the clubhouse with 3 systems running web browsers to provide workstations for competitors to check their scores, and a 4 port wireless network router (the 3 systems and web server were hard wires, and we used wireless ot the laptop). The browser clients can be old systems (ours were ancient), as long as they have a web browser and ethernet connection. This allowed us to upload results the way they vote in Chicago - frequenlty and often. For example, when I first ran the final results at A7 I had a couple of missing scoresheets (one of which turned out to be someone who did not shoot the stage, and the other was quickly recovered from paper backup). Since people were on the way to the club from the ranges and we wanted results quickly, I posted the results to the network; resolved the missing scoresheet issue (a 5 minute job); and posted again. At a nationals or World Shoot, it would be possible to have stats upload their current stage results to an in-house network every hour on the hour. Add a DNS server to the web server and configure your wireless appropriately, and members can even get near-real time results on their own laptop. The key point is that it possible to have results posted and *available to shooters* within 5-10 minutes of a match - anything less is not the "best" possible service. Remember, the time is measured from the last shot to the time the shooter can actually check their score (you don't get to stop the clock when you printer starts)

The classification database is updated monthly, generally a few days after the 10th. Forget the CD burner - just get a USB keychain drive - even the small ones have plenty of room for a classification database and results from the match.

Move the World Shoot to Palm scoring and you can assgn the 5 input voluneers to other tasks; do the entire match on a single laptop; and leave the stats crew of 1 with plenty of time to hang out and take photos. Set up a in-house web server on a network of PCs in the clubhouse and you can post without doing a Martin Luther impression. You'll even have results up in about 5 minutes. Just ask anyone who was at Area 7 this year if this really works.

If you ever report a gun stolen, make sure the agency lists it in NCIC (they should automatically), and if you move, contact the agency to have your new address added to the case file. If the gun is recovered, the police agency which finds the gun will likley contact the reporting agency, rather than try to track down the owner. Sometimes guns go make it back. A local shooter actually recovered his Ed Brown comp gun from the property room of a major US city years after it was stolen - and they even threw in a copy of the ballistics examination of the gun and the death certificate of the miscreant. (Getting shot 8 times while out on bail terminated the need for the department to keep the gun as evidence)

Free hosting on the USPSA.ORG server to AREA and SECTIONAL sites - contact rob@boudrie.com for details. (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Php/Perl/CGI/Shell/Pop3/Cpanel)