Seems like once a year or so 68Caliber.Com crashes and burns. I hate it, because the timing is always absolutely THE WORST it can be to have technical difficulties. It’s especially painful right now, since someone has expressed an interest in buying the site, and a new advertiser is looking to come on board in October. We really look just fantastic right now. I’m sure The Paintball Reject and the band of malcontents over there and elsewhere are having a fine old time right now.

I spoke with my partners this evening, and they’re going to be calling the server people to see about working on the issue or reformatting the server and uploading the backup we have…all 9.2 gigs of it! This is what we had to do last year…for some reason script kiddies and l33t hackers love screwing with 68.

There must be a roving band of digital vandals running around right now screwing with paintball sites…Planet’s been hacked recently, and IPR Fortress is having issues as well. It’s a constant battle, and sometimes the bear gets you. I don’t envy the admins and network guys at PBN. I imagine they fight 24/7 to keep their site up while being attacked probably by the minute.

This past weekend I got to have dinner with Founding Supporter Bob “Hawtie with a Nawtie Body” Cartwright and his amazing wife Julie down in St. Pete Beach and we talked about all things paintball, including a new site for The Ford Report. It’s going to take some time, but in the future I see a new site coming online to better present the information I create every week on the Report, while giving me the functionality and flexibility to do more as things progress, which may happen even sooner if 68 stays down for the count or if someone buys it.

While I don’t suspect 68 is gone, it will take some time to get things sorted properly and back up and running. I’m definitely not happy about the current situation, but I’m crap at doing server-side stuff. I just don’t have the right sort of mind, I guess. I think I’m going to have to learn, so I can effectively deal with stuff like this in the future.

In the meantime, The Juliana Charity game is this weekend at Camp Blanding, and the Tiny Blonde Goddess and I will be heading up to the bustling metropolis of Starke, FL Friday evening to enjoy Blanding and to hang out with TFR founding supporters John Navarro and Billy Smith. Jamie and I are covering the event for PB2X, and obviously 68Caliber.Com will get a piece of the action once it’s back from the dead.

After that, NOCER’s ‘Bloodlines’ game and ‘Assassin’s Greed’ at LCP will start the festivities for the fall ‘hell month’ that’ll culminate in World Cup. I reserved and paid for our room tonight, and I lucked out and found a room which I think will be walking distance to Old Town. This is a good thing, because I plan on getting Epic drunk again. I normally drink very little, but World Cup is the usual exception to that rule.

I’ll probably catch all sorts of grief for the last paragraph there, but those are the breaks. In the past I’ve been labled a ‘role model’ and ‘example’ for the sport. I’m none of the above. I’m just a guy who loves what he does and the sport/game/lifestyle that it is. In the end, I’m just a man, and a flawed one at that.