Originally posted by: Smokeball
Smokeball: I can?t believe this nick. It was a split-second decision I made one fateful day, 01/03/2001 4:25 PM to be exact.
For the previous 14+ years, my primary hobby was skeet shooting. After years of practice and finally getting lasik surgery (by the same doctor who did Tiger Woods a year and a half later) I finally rose from the ranks of pretty good to a level where on any given day I could beat anyone in the world. Not bragging ? just a fact.
The best shooters like to shoot with very tight choke restrictions which is a little contrary to what most folks would think. The bigger the pattern the more likely you hit the target, for all you need is a ?visible piece? to score. But skeet shooting is a long tedious game where it has been said, ?Those targets are not hard to hit but they sure are easy to miss.?
A tight pattern when centered on a clay target will turn it into a big puff of black smoke in the sky. If you are a little off center, the target will still break but it won?t ?smoke?. When you see the target get one of the edges knocked off, it is sort of a wake-up call ? telling you that you had better get your mind back in the game before you end up missing.
As I became more proficient I usually ?smoked? most of my targets, if not all. My shooting buddies started calling me ?SMOKE?. Since it was a compliment usually used in a phrase, ?Good shot, you really smoked that one!? I was secretly pleased with the handle though I never let on that I really liked it.
Right at the top of my shooting career, the arthritis and degenerative disk disease I?d been fighting for years got the best of me. My last three tournaments (three day affairs) had me leading ?the shoot? without a missed target. Back spasms forced me to withdraw from each. So with great reluctance, ?I hung up my cleats?.
Long story, but like old-timers do, I like to linger in my past memories.
Anyway, after retiring from the ?skeet circuit? I started looking for something to pass my time. Being an active stock and commodity trader I had always had the very best computers that DELL could build. I decided to learn a little more about these machines I used in my everyday life. I found the AnandTech Forums.
I needed a nickname. So I tried to get ?SMOKE? but someone already had taken it. I started to use ?AAASMOKE? (my email address) combining my skeet shooting class ?AAA? and my nick but decided that may be a little too risky. (Ha, use a goggle search for aaasmoke and see what you get.) I tried various names incorporating ?smoke? but could find nothing that had not already been used, so in haste I chose ?Smokeball?.
Now it appears it may even be on my tombstone.