"Fall-In! 2017" Topic

Colonel Bill is like a reincarnated Polish Winged Hussar, highly effective.

With the Deadline to have games listed in the PEL moved to 8/4/17 I should be able to convince my Bro-In-Law to run our Chickamauga game that we hosted at NJCON.

"For those of you threatening to NOT run events.. Pella winning events or otherwise.. then don't. How dare you call me to carpet because of your own lack of foresight…."

With all due respect, I don't think that is the appropriate attitude. We should be encouraging as many game masters to run games insuring the best experience for gamer's attending Fall-In, providing a diverse and abundant amount of games. Contrary to what you think, many game masters don't plan their games a year in advance.

Has anyone with Project Management experience looked at this timeline? It seems there is lag between tasks. For instance, the deadline for PEL submission is 8/4. Ten days later the PEL is published on 8/14. About 3 weeks later Attendee Registration Opens on 9/4. Maybe there is a reason, not sure, but it's fair to question, considering the early cut-off for game-masters to submit their games.

I hope the midnight madness flea market event is a success. Please don't view our posts as just "bashing". The intent is question pre-existing rigid dogma. Maybe there is a better way? For those of us who love the hobby and enjoy attending gaming conventions, we just want to make it the best possible. I know Dan and his team work hard, we do appreciate it, even though we like to "crab".

Hey, who you callin' "reincarnated:)?"

Regardless, its done, its fixed, I'm moving on and looking forward to a great convention.

Colonel B

Bill,

Thank you for your explanation. Unfortunately, I'm not an IT guy, I'm a Chemist so most of it went over my head but not all of it…I'm sure everyone else followed it just fine… as it supported what they wanted to hear.

The bottom line is that the Fall In 2017 deadlines were not posted till after Jun 17, 2017. Your screen shot only proves that people were looking at the 2016 dates which is what I've been saying all along. Thank you for proving my point.

In hindsight, I should have had the year listed as well as the day and the Fall In 2017 web page has been updated to reflect this in order to avoid confusion moving forward.
Regarding cached pages, as I've already stated, I'm not a computer guy so I accidently used the wrong terminology. I was referring to the older versions of the Fall In web page that may still be located on the server. It has been explained to me that this has nothing to do with the data "cached by a browser".

Lastly, when I stated that the website "never listed Aug 21…" I thought it was quite obvious that I was ONLY referring to the Fall In 2017 deadlines and not any other dates posted for any other years or any other purposes. I even mentioned this, but of course it was quickly disregarded by the readers. I will try to be more specific with my statements in the future. I thought the readers could figure that one out…

Fall-In! has been the fastest growing, most successful HMGS show in recent years…. this whole attack on me reeks of hidden agenda. I will refrain from posting show information anymore here on TMP as folks just don't get it… you speak to hear yourself speak and to tear down anything good…

Bill, you should be ashamed of yourself… you posted outdated information in a technical way from a third party website and you knew it before you even posted it that is was wrong and out dated.

You do more harm to the organization that way.. Again, the information you provided was prior to the website being completely updated and was OLD. How many times do I have to say that?

And to think.. I have bent over backwards to help assist you every year for your events… for 7 years running to try to accommodate your every need, successfully too I might add…. and this is how you respect or appreciate HMGS or me.. by stirring the pot and deliberately posting information you knew was outdated before you even posted it? There is a hidden agenda or axe being ground… otherwise, why would you go so far?

But you know what… I will still continue to do my very best to accommodate you and everyone else, because HMGS and its success obviously means much more to me than it does to you.

When the actual page is updated with correct dates for the convention, not once but in TWO places the average person might assume the dates to be correct.

Any HMGS GM would be checking early, and praising the heavens for reasonable timeframe to submit event.

I'm not accepting blame for a misunderstanding created by general incompetence.

I will be happy to spend my time in November running games at my local con instead. At least I knew back in April that their event submissions wouldn't begin until this week, because they updated on their website back then.

Dan,

Seriously dude, you got some real big self-esteem issues, because that response was not only personally insulting, but pretty juvenile as well. You made a mistake. You need to own it, fix it and then move on. Your current hyper defensive attitude garnished with paper thin skin needs some real work. Insulting the integrity of your customer base is probably not the best road to success

Let me try to make it very simple. You said the Website never showed 21 August in connection with FI 17. I went to the Wayback Machine link run by the Internet Archive link to see if they had any kind of record in relation to this problem. WB and IA is a very distinguished and respected non-profit that produces a permanent public, Internet archive by constantly crawling all Websites everywhere and capturing them exactly as they appeared on that date, that time. FI 17 was crawled by WB at 0823 on 17 June. The image was from the WB Website and shows exactly what your Website displayed to the public on that date and time. It is not a chached image. It shows the FI 17 title and logo and underneath information with the 21 August date and nowhere is it mentioned this is from a previous convention. Thus your claim and its use to bash gamemasters was both incorrect and inappropriate, and that was the point I was trying to make, absolutely nothing more.

I wasn't deliberately posting old information, I was pointing out that when multiple GMs indicated "that's what the Website said," they were not lying to you. That was a legit complaint, and here from a neutral outside party was irrefutable evidence. I will admit I do get concerned when I see colleagues taken to task for a management error, and honestly that seems to be the option you take whenever anything goes wrong. You really need to look at that.

OK, LETS STOP!!! DOES ANYONE BESIDES DAN NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT I JUST WROTE OR MISUNDERSTAND WHAT I WROTE BEFORE, AND DO I NEED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS? DID I MISUNDERSTAND WHAT DAN ORIGINALLY WROTE?

As for caches, if you are saying a server side cache was the issue, then that is your problem to rectify and certainly something the gamemaster can not be held accountable for.

OK, LETS STOP!!! DOES ANYONE BESIDES DAN NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT I JUST WROTE AND DO I NEED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS?

Otherwise, seriously, unless something comes up, I have no clue who the CD is, much less target you personally, and I think I can let my personal values and service to the hobby and HMGS over many years speak for themselves.

I will say that your virtuous and understanding perspective throughout this whole thread certainly contrasts with my Satan spawned deception and dishonesty, so I can see why you wouldn't want the likes of me around. So I won't be. Right now FI 17 looks about as fun as a field amputation sans anesthesia and you can congratulate yourself for running Bill Gray away from your convention, if not HMGS altogether.

Ashamedly yours, CB

Dan,

To be honestly frank about all this were I a BOD Member I would be demanding your immediate resignation right now, and yours' would not be the only one being demanded either!

You obviously were aware of the dates for Fall In some months ago, and yet you were only having the most vital information regarding dates updated on the Web Site in the third week of June? That's not only bad planning, but extremely poor management on your part!! Even in your initial post opening this thread on July 6, 2017 you didn't even take the time to mention the correct cut off date that had only recently been posted on the web site!

You then compound your mismanagement by blaming everyone else in the world except, of course, yourself by the numerous rants about this and that here all while not having a full understanding of what you're talking about!

Sorry, you don't get a pass on this one! All the confusion and blame rests on your shoulders, and no one else!! Own it, or give it to someone who will!!!

WOW, this is getting like the Burr-Hamilton duel.

Hey, just a suggestion, why not stage a historic duel, you two as the precipitants. Promote it at Fall-In. Get some period clothes and some cool authentic dueling pistols. The crowd at Fall-In would love it! Have some drama with some dialogue and play acting. And of course beers afterwards.

Have to say this is getting like watching Hacksaw Ridge. Both you guys are important to HMGS. Still, the duel is quite appealing. Better than the Sharpe guys just walking around.

Could happen! Any other comments? A nice little addition to Fall-In!

That's why I LUV the interweb. Sites such as TMP not only let us share information (some of it very useful and helpful), but they allow us to set our better angels loose to count coup on one another.

Mr. Burr….ready?

Mr. Hamilton….ready?

But would I be Burr or Hamilton :) ?

Colonel B

Bill, you know how it goes. Both pick their preference, and if there is a tie, the die roll determines.

Clearly Scorpio should be Master of the Field, if he hasn't already been claimed as someone's Second :)

Indeed!

Colonel Bill

I have to admit I'm really disappointed by all of this and I can't blame people who were put off by it. All that was needed to be said was there was a misunderstanding, a correction to fix it, and making an adjustment to dates so people could be happy.

Dan,

To be honestly frank about all this were I a BOD Member I would be demanding your immediate resignation right now, and yours' would not be the only one being demanded either!

Oh c'mon. Let's get real with each other. There was a mistake made. Nobody lost any money. Nobody experienced a loss of income or quality of life.

Dan does the best he can. He runs around like a chicken without a head at every Fall In. He does his very best to accommodate everyone. And with that HUGH pay increase he got – oh wait – he's a volunteer!

Dan – you have my vote of confidence!

Let's remember this is a convention about pushing little toy soldiers around. Sometimes we'd do well to step away from the keyboard.

TheKing30,

For me and I think most, the mistake is not really an issue. After all it has been fixed, so no harm, no foul. I think Dan's attitude and response to the problem – and IMHO, this is not an isolated incident – is what people are upset about. In particular, continuing to deny a mistake was made in the face of solid facts while continuing to blame the GMs, is not the way to handle the situation. People will react appropriately. TSD101 nailed it IMHO, and while I do understand that Dan is a volunteer, a certain level of performance is a reasonable expectation.

That said, I ain't perfect either, and my last paragraph from my last epistle was pretty stupid, downright ignorant, so my bad and sincerest regrets duly tendered.

And I want Hamilton. He got a Broadway production and he was by far the spiffier dresser :).

Regards, CB

For me and I think most, the mistake is not really an issue. After all it has been fixed, so no harm, no foul. I think Dan's attitude and response to the problem – and IMHO, this is not an isolated incident – is what people are upset about. In particular, continuing to deny a mistake was made in the face of solid facts while continuing to blame the GMs, is not the way to handle the situation. People will react appropriately. TSD101 nailed it IMHO, and while I do understand that Dan is a volunteer, a certain level of performance is a reasonable expectation.

Bill, I've seen you at the conventions. I've read allot of your posts and personally, I think you're an intelligent person with allot of good things to say.

TSD101, I've also seen your posts and feel that you have allot of good things to contribute.

I'll start by saying anyone who knows me understands that I can fly off the handle and say some things I wish I could take back.

If Dan did say some things that you feel are below him, then maybe catch him in an email or pull him off to the side at Fall In and resolve this?

To clarify the tone of my post – This is not to place blame on anyone. Everyone has a valid point. I just hate to see people that I think highly of going in a direction that will benefit nobody.

And I want Hamilton. He got a Broadway production and he was by far the spiffier dresser :).

Yea but he missed!

Fair enough, but on the more important topic, at least Hamilton looked good when he died.

Regards, CB

Submitted my game. Once again, thanks to Dan and HMGS for the revised PEL deadline.

Come back, ViscountEric. The Lord of the Gnomes needs you.

Come back, Colonel Bill. The Carnage and Glory Room will not be the same without you.

And everybody thought that Historicon was the convention with all the drama.

I look forward to the Midnight Madness flea market.

And everybody thought that Historicon was the convention with all the drama.

I kinda think of miniature wargamers as a kind of family….a very dysfunctional family…. but a family none the less.

Fair enough, but on the more important topic, at least Hamilton looked good when he died.

But could Hamilton ever REALLY look at good as Colonel Bill????

Had two games planned for Fall In. After being locked out of the assigned room until 15 minutes before start time at Historicon and now this situation. No thanks.

First. I have no dog in this race. It's been some years since I ventured to run a game. I may weigh in later as to why.

Second. I am not a techie. Someday I'm going to have to figure out how to address the blinking 12:00 on my VCR. Actually I find the soft rhythmic glow somehow soothing.

I just wandered in here in the first place because I always read posts about cons that are within my driving reach.

To the point…

Perhaps someone can explain something to me. I looked at the archived 2017 page posted above. I thought it was something in the nature of a screen shot, but I noticed some of the links were actually active.

Why when you click on the Exhibitor Info tab, it links to a 2015 page?

Like I wrote, I have no dog in this race. Its entirely possible that years of volunteer stewardship of the webpages has led to virulent cross gremlinization. I have no idea. But it is a puzzlement.

HMGS's Achilles heel is that the organization is stuck in the 1980s, and it shows in many ways.

Instead of renting tents with air conditioners too loud to hold painting classes leading to a complete waste, or spending $3,000 USD to mail physical paper ballots, perhaps money could be dedicated to having an actual modern website, with its own modern forum instead of relying on things like buried Yahoo group and TMP? Online voting so we get more than a 10% response to them? A place where people running for BoD could actually write a blurb about who they are and where they want to take the organization?

Perhaps yet again work on registration so there are no more 2 hour line fiascos? A place where photographs of the trophy winning games could be named and officially displayed?

You know, as one of the seemingly rare members under the age of 40, the archaic systems are a turn off and this recent snafu shows a change is needed.

Kpinder,

Here is a good explanation from Wikipedia:

"The Internet Archive has capitalized on the popular use of the term "WABAC Machine" from a segment of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, and uses the name "Wayback Machine" for its service that allows archives of the World Wide Web to be searched and accessed. This service allows users to view archived web pages. The Wayback Machine was created as a joint effort between Alexa Internet and the Internet Archive when a three-dimensional index was built to allow for the browsing of archived web content. Millions of web sites and their associated data (images, source code, documents, etc.) are saved in a database. The service can be used to see what previous versions of web sites used to look like, to grab original source code from web sites that may no longer be directly available, or to visit web sites that no longer even exist."

It doesn't hit every Website every day, only periodically, and Fall Ins 2017 listing is kinda small because I believe the current Web address is recent and used to redirect folks to the YM server where it is stored. Fall In has been hit 33 times since 2003 and three times in 2107. See link .

Thus if the Exhibitor tab took you to a 2015 list, then that is what it did when publicly available on 17 June. The Wayback capture included the entire FI Website, not just that page.

As to why it was like that, I don't know and Wayback doesn't either. It simply records and displays what was there.

Count this as for information only, as I am going to put this behind me and have a good convention.

Clear as mud?

Ciao, CB

Let me followup with an example that might be clearer. Dr Chris Flaherty runs at Website on Ottoman Empire uniforms at ottoman-uniforms.com . For whatever reason, he also included a section on the Piedmont/Sardinian/Italian corps that served in the Crimean War alongside the French, British and Turks.

For about a year, my guess because of a redesign project, the pages and images of the Italians flat disappeared. They have since been republished, but at the time I accessed the Website, for a period of several months, they were gone.

Not a problem because using Wayback I was able to access a capture of his entire Website that was picked up about a year prior. On the day it was captured by Wayback, the Italian pages and images were still up, so voila, problem solved.

Clearer?

Regards, CB

This all just reinforces a long held suspicion. Computers are magic, and I am wall to wall no-maj.

Col. Bill,

Please stop trying to force IT information into my techno-jurassic brain. It hurts…make it stop…
whimper….

(Please note: the techno-jurassic brain is mine, not anyone else on TMP or associated with HMGS.)

Scott

We can always dream, TSD101. :-) That said, you are spot on with your comments.

Enough quarrelling! Let's get down to drooling and slavering over what we will be buying, and selling, and playing, and running, and drinking--the important things in life!

Concur. That is the best post so far Capn. This is supposed to be fun and I know I am looking forward to Fall-In.

Well, the ironic things is – many of us are fighting/trying to register our games to support the con.

Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!

YouTube link

The vendor registration packets have gone out, if any vendor did not receive one, please contact me, exhibitors at fall-in.org

rmcaras, actually, that is pretty funny :).

Colonel Bill

Don,

I add you to my "Please Come Back" list, along with Colonel Bill and ViscountEric.

Your games always look great and are well attended.

Hope to see you there.

Temperature down below normal, I'll play Ahhhhnald, and say, "I'll be bach."

Colonel Bill

Both leading GMs, both should be there to put on games for the gamers. Remember your fans. :-)

Fans, I got fans?

Ciao, Colonel Bill

Legions, Colonel Bill.

I know because I'm one of them and go to all the meetings.

Either way you see it.

There will be the Toys for Tots Charity Event again this year. It's or 12th year running the event. We look forward to seeing you buying raffle tickets and bidding on auction items.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Sanata Moe

Wait, what???

Just a reminder: only two more days before the new and improved PEL deadline of August 4th.

Fans, I got fans?

Ciao, Colonel Bill

If you like hockey – I'm sure you've heard of the "Traveling Jagrs"?? There is a secret society called "The Traveling Bills"…

TheKing30, Nah Bill would more likely have the traveling Hansons…………..

Oh goodness. That would be funny!!

<Temperature down below normal, I'll play Ahhhhnald, and say, "I'll be bach." Colonel Bill>
Uhhh, I hope your return doesn't involve an SUV crashing in here and lots of very accurate automatic weapon-fire….

Ok guys, vendor packs are out, web site link for vendors should be working (I don't do the website so please lets not go there any more).

Events are rolling in so thank you…. lots of cool events and lots of theme events this year…. Thanks for getting them in and not all at midnight tonight!

Brochures hit the printer and should be in your guys hands shortly….

And please… don't forget Toys-4-Tots!!!

"techno-jurassic brain"

Bob has a carrier pigeon. Would that help? C

Cleo,

Most assuredly :)

Scott