SOCKS UPDATE (cheat report)

Ok, it has been a very very busy week at work for me. I apologize that I have not updated in a few days.

For starters, I would like to devote a few minutes to SOCKS. For those of you who have no idea what SOCKS is, let me explain.

It's like paintball's capture the flag, but instead of shooting each other with paintball guns, you throw socks duct-taped together into balls at each other. It sounds pretty lame, but it turns out to be alot of fun.

That is... if you cheat.

That's right. I'm calling our fearless leader Tim Nugent and David Caldwell to the mat for "unethical SOCKS tactics."

Here's how it went down:

Game 1: Red Team defeats Blue Team. In a outright display of courage, cunning, stealth and accuracy, the Red Team redefines the term "Shock and Awe" as they grind the blue team into the dew soaked grass of defeat.

Game 2 - 4: Realizing that they have been outmatched, outsmarted, out-maneuvered and plain ole out-played, the Blue Team decides to no longer fight a conventional war. Tim relies on his law enforcement training and brings a mag-ligth to the battlefield to locate and blind the honorable red-team member while his band of thugs swarm around the victim in a merciless onslought of laundry. David Caldwell decides that this is a good tactic, but lacks the mag light. What is his solution to this problem? A digital camera. The only difference here is that Caldwell's treachery produces evidence of his mis-deads.

Here's a typical order of events for the locate and blind method, as caught on camera (click on each to enlarge):

Step 1 - Target Acquisition -
Locate the victim lurking in the dark:


Step 2 - Pre-Emptive Flash
The victim, knowing he's been spotted, is forced to defend himself. The cheater then waits unitl the precise moment for the red-team to take aim, and then fires off his flash - blinding the red-team and destroying any vestige of night-vision that they may have developed:


Step 3: The Kill -
Of course, there is no hope for the red team. His rounds go flying off blindly while the blue team is left to gloat and take demeaning pictures of the defeated hero (Notice that the victim is surrounded by socks, having been pummeled by the horde of blue-team terrorists who lie in wait for cunning trap. It pains me to look at this picture. Where is the international outcry?)


Step 4 - Gloat -
At the end of the game, the blue team clutches their prize: smugly mugging for the camera (it really is sad that an honorable man like Austin would be found in the company of villians):



All told, it was a really fun evening. I now know, however, that the rules of engagement have been forever altered by what will go down in history as the "Treacherous blue team of 2005"