Paintballs in the freezer
Why, why, WHY have I never thought of this?
"...Which leads to the next item - the office Christmas function," the Boss says to the assembled masses of the IT department. "The office function or the building function?" one of the helldesk geeks asks. "Just the office," the Boss says. "The director and I have been talking and he's keen that we all do something …
I find it a little churlish of Simon to be having fun at a Christmas party when many of his fellow BOFHs and PFYs are being denied similar enjoyment by Scrooge-like corporate entities in this time of financial instability...however great paintball (with frozen balls) might be
Paris and frozen balls - I think not
Kind of expected all the presents to be replaced with software from Ep38.
Having been paintballing recently on a stag do where the condemed and his best man had to run the gaunlet to get their weapons during the final round (i.e. use up all ur leftover paintballs) this really made me laugh...
Hope we see a few more BOFH's before xmas...
R
Absolute class, i nearly needed a new monitor after that(must remember never to drink while reading the BOFH).
I really thought they had given up on the paintball idea and offering to to share the christmas treasures should have set alarm bells ringing if not with the boss and director but the helldesk geeks should have known better,
The only thing missing was Vagners Ride of the Valkeries or the music from Predator blaring out over the PA system.
Roll on the New Year.
It's unlike the PFY to make such a generous move - unless it was part of a plan to lull everyone else into a false sense of security...
Excellent, nonetheless!
And paintballing really hurts if you aren't adequately prepared (speaking from experience, here!)
Mine's the well-padded, ankle-length one with the extra-high collar...
In light of a recent managerial u-turn on the policy of working from home over Christmas that sounds like perfect retribution. Perhaps there's time to convince people a sedate pub lunch isn't the way to go. Now to implement the automatic building management system for having the shutters automatically close and lights go out at an opportune moment...
Is a myth, because:
1) The paint in paintballs contain too high an oil content to freeze in a freezer.
2) If you had high H20 content balls, H20 expands when frozen, so they would not fit down the barrel.
3) The gelatine shell becomes extremely brittle at low temperatures, so they would shatter in the barrel.
should have been put to rest long ago. Mind you, a well chilled paint ball does tend to transfer a lot more kinetic energy to one point before distributing its contents onto the target.
I have not as yet tried immersion in liquid nitrogen though. Anyone know the solidification point of the fish-oil based contents?
Now if they had gotten just a wee bit more creative and supplemented the contents of the paint balls with more interesting materials.
One wonders - oh like, the perfume / cologne worn on a regular basis by the office hotty / hunk - would make for interesting explanations to now former significant others / spouses of either gender or persuasion.
The gift that keeps on giving...
*Mwahahahahahaaa*
On an episode of "How Its Made" (Canadian produced show shown in USA) they did a thing on paintballs. Turns out that in the show they were made of perfectly edible innards. In that case they just might freeze. In any event, ones that had been "conditioned" at a lower temperature would be more painful on impact. I for one would want to be on PFY's team!
Funny, someone writes paintballs in the freezer then people start thinking, "oh, they must be assuming water and that it must freeze".
All it has to do is become more viscous to have the intended result, we're not arguing about putting one through 4 inches of concrete. Ideally it will be cold enough that it does not break open upon impact, it's much easier to hit your target after they've fallen down from slipping on little balls all over the floor, 'course an extra couple packs of BBs or a quart of oil on the floor would tend to reduce the number of reloads needed.
Putting paintballs in the freezer will make them more brittle and prone to breaking more easily. Which defeats the idea really. What you want to get are some really cheap and nasty punter site paintballs, rather than the top end ones. The cheapest ones are like marbles :D
Nothing sobers casual sporters more than someone fronting up with their own tackle - be it bowling ball, pool cue or paintball marker and face mask...
The term "friendly game" ceases to have any meaning at that point.
Dave Ingram: you put the Jaffas(tm) /in/ the marker, you put the JAFAs /in front of/ the marker...
Jon (in Hamilton, NZ)
You don't need to freeze the paintball completely, just keeping them at a relatively low temperature keeps the shell more stiff and means that they flex less in the air (and thus fly more straight). But then I'm going back nearly 18 years to when I used to go paintballing more or less every week.
If you buy decent paintballs, you don't gain any advantage from doing this these days.
As for freezing the shell, well unless your gun is very gentle on the balls (!!!??!) then you'll end up with them shattering and exploding inside your barrel when you fire.
I think that the most painful thing I've ever been hit with (from a paintball gun) was probably a boiled sweet. Unless you count the time that I was shot in the knackers from point-blank range, which hurt quite a lot more.....
Building cameraderie and teamwork in /your/ team against /someone else's/ team.
My top shot: someone rounded a tree and I swung up the marker onehanded and fired an instinctive shot - which got him in the forehead just above the face mask.
My top hit: I felt a light tap on my stomach and looked down at the splatter of yellow paint. I couldn't see the shooter and I could tell by the lack of force that 'd been tagged at a phenomenal distance. When I got back to the base to register the hit, the bloke who'd tagged me was there - he'd been tagged an instant after he'd tagged me. Fantastic shooting on his part.
Would love to go out and practise more often.
As well as replacing the oil, how about replacing the pigment / dye with something a little more permanent than the standard water-based wash-out stuff? :)
As an added spot of fun, since it's taking place in the office, accidentally-on-purpose leave a few patch cables lying around...