"Everyday some new do-gooder is trying to save us from ourselves. We have so many laws and safety commissions to ensure our safety that it seems nearly impossible to have an accident. The problem is that we need accidents, and lots of them.

"Danger is nature's way of eliminating stupid people. Without safety, stupid people die in accidents...

"With safety, however well-intentioned it may be, we are devolving into half-witted mutants, because idiots, who by all rights should be dead, are spared from their rightful early graves and are free to breed even more imbeciles.

"Let's do away with safety and improve our species. Take up smoking. Jaywalk. Play with blasting caps. Swim right after a big meal. Stick something small in your ear. Take your choice of dangerous activity and do it with gusto. Future generations will thank you."

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)

I started this site in the fall of '97 as a way to share what info I had about VM's and teach myself HTML. Originally the only thing on the site was the VM FAQ 6.1 which I had just finished updating, some info about the VM trigger, and a little info about Tippmann F/A's. Over time I collected more and more info to post. I eventually got into PPS 'guns and created a section just for them.

Sometime around '98 I started up the VM-68 Owners Group (VMOG). Like a lot of owners groups it started out slow but grew with time. Several months after starting it I passed ownership of the VMOG over to GothicMetal who had expressed an interest in running it if I ever didn't have the time for it. He also ran the Angel Owners Group at the time so I knew he was more than qualified. The VMOG was up for quite some time and then was abruptly taken down along with the whole gothicmetal.com domain. Although I have never been able to confirm anything, I know GothicMetal and his wife had a child around that time so that had a least a little to do with it.

Also at some point in '98 I helped get Palmer's web site up and running. Originally when Brent Hoefling purchased the domain it wasn't going to be the official Palmer site, but that's what it ended up being. I offered to help Brent with the site since I had recently HTML-ized the Palmer catalog. For the first couple years much the Palmer site was based off those original designs that I came up with. I put a lot of work into the Palmer site, but I was never really happy with the layout. In late '99/early '00 Craig Palmer started to redesign the site and he did a good job at it too. There are still some lingering pieces of HTML and graphics I created though. I never received anything for the work I did with the site nor did I expect anything. I'm just proud to have helped out!

For the first 2 or so years I updated my site on a regular basis. Almost daily at times. However, my interests changed and I was going to be getting married in the summer of '99. After I got married updates to the site were few and far between. A lot of changes were going on in my life and I didn't have time for paintball or site updates.