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Meet DA Fillet Show 

    Team DA Fillet Show began as a dream in late 2000 as a bunch of NTN junkies trying to test their talents against the best in Minnesota.  The team of 6 jumped into a conversion van and headed to St. Cloud to try their luck.  Using the NTN style of trivia, the team members were obviously blown away within the first 2 hours.  Assuming they had enough multimedia components, consisting of 1 desktop computer and 1 laptop, all networked off of a cable modem, their hours were numbered.  Things were only going to get worse...16 hours into the 2001 contest; "Night of The Living Trivia" Ted Aamodt, the senior team member called for a coup of team captain John Larson.  As John took his afternoon nap, Ted and the crew began to pack up all the team's books, computers and trivia survival gear with the idea of leaving the contest by the wayside.  As John awoke at 2pm on Saturday and discovered the strategic plan to abandon the mission, he quickly put an end to the idea of leaving without a fight.  After several hours of yelling, arguing and disarray, team DA Fillet Show decided to ride out the storm and stay the course until 7pm Sunday night.  By 7:05pm Sunday, the van was fully loaded with gear, fueled up and the team began the 3 hour ride home to Hibbing with their tails tucked neatly between their legs, their dream was shattered, but not dead, 58th place out of 69 teams.  They would be back in 2002, bigger and better...or so they thought.

    2002 found the team with a new outlook on the contest.  By staying in Hibbing for the contest cleverly themed "Trivia Tube" the team felt their travels to St. Cloud in 2001 left many, would be trivia buffs, behind.  John felt that staying in Hibbing would allow them to have crews of workers coming and going for all 50 hours.  Schedules were done, shifts were assigned and a new home was found for the contest.  2002 brought more serious networking, more computers and even more team members.  Would they have the right formula in 2002?  The team had 6 computers, 4 laptops and because they were out of the radio broadcast range of KVSC, a streaming broadcast was captured from kvsc.org.  KVSC.org being fairly new to the mass streaming business, left DA Fillet Show trying to find an alternative way to broadcast the signal.  The streaming audio was not buffering fast enough, leaving the team upwards of 70 seconds behind real time.  This year, they found themselves struggling to get even the 10 point questions answered before time expired. The results showed; 55th out of 69 teams...now what?

    Enter the next generation of cell phone technology.  A theme announced by KVSC in August of 2002 left the team with a real desire to compete.  "Viva Las Trivia" the 2003 theme, got the team rolling.  4 team members headed to Las Vegas in January of 2003 on a fact finding mission, surely they wouldn't be outdone by the question writers this time.  1 week in Las Vegas, along with cameras, pamphlets, books and inside IGT slot machine information got the team in the position they needed to be.  Learning from 2002 and streaming audio, the team decided to intergrade cell phones into the audio mix.  A satellite player in St. Cloud broadcasted the KVSC audio through his cell phone to the teams speaker phone in Hibbing.  This time, buffering was not going to be a problem.  8 more computers were added to handle the extra players coming to try their hands at the Las Vegas themed trivia game.  The team was now running with 14 computers and 4 laptops, and enough players to fill the seats.  With all of the changes made from the past year, the team was really excited because of the 51 hours of real time music, questions and answers combined with their knowledge of Las Vegas, surely wouldn't leave the team stranded right?  Wrong!!  61st out of 75 teams, their worst finish ever.  This time the team really truly felt this style of trivia was not for them.  Team members, loving the 2003 theme, decided to come back in 2004 for another shot at the title.  For the first time, the team was really enjoying themselves and things could only get better in years to come...This time they would get better.

    2004 brought many high dollar sponsorships for the team.  As preparations began for the Minnesota themed "Trivia Hotdish" contest, Cisco Systems and ADP teamed up to provide DA Fillet Show with all the latest and greatest networking equipment.  A 2900 Switch, Pix firewall, Belkin Wireless system and CAT5 cables galore were all provided to the team.  The team was now capable of accommodating up to 30 computers and unlimited laptops, with the addition of the wireless router.  They fell a little short, only able to accumulate 18 computers and 3 laptops.  This time, they were able to fill all of the seats, at least for a large portion of the weekend.  A few snags managed to pop their heads up throughout the weekend.  Cisco's system, along with ADP's high tech equipment, was just too much for the local broadband company.  At 9pm Friday, only 4 hours into the contest, DA Fillet Show found themselves in a very unique position, they were in the top 10, 9th place to be specific.  As the team began celebrating their early accomplishments, their troubles began.  At approximately 9:06pm Friday, just as hour 5 began, Range Broadband, the local internet company, lost their server, knocking all broadband customers on their system off the internet, including DA Fillet Show.  As time went by, no internet, no radio broadcast and most importantly no points.  The trouble with Range Broadband continued for 2 hours until they were able to get their system back online, but the damage was already done.  The team found themselves in 38th place after hour 6, and slipping fast.  As players began to get frustrated, the seats began to empty fast, by 4am Saturday, there was only 3 players competing, more would come and go, but nothing like Friday night.  As a failsafe backup, a dialup system was hooked up to at least allow the team to listen to the web cast and possibly get points just in case the broadband system crashed again, and it would.  Saturday and Sunday, at 5pm both days, Range Broadband went down for a period of 45 minutes to 1 hour.  This time the team had the dialup system in place and they were able to get a little points during each of the down hours.  Again, the damage was already done on Friday and the never rebounded.  57th out of 71 teams.

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Last modified: 01/14/10.