A report, wherein Muz teases a coming project, asks for volunteers for another, and talks a little bit about other rambling topics. Brought to you with limited commercial interruption by Glenmorangie Single Malt Scotch Whisky.

First and awesome, Sai has been working on the Lightsaber Combat Guide refresh for me. His team includes such heavies as Sildrin, Timeros and Xanos. They've been working to not only update and expand the information, but also to serve as a resource for writing the various forms in fiction (and the ACC) properly. What I have seen and been involved with has been pretty cool so far, to say the least.

Sildrin has put together a sneak-peek presentation of one of the forms (Niman) for us to drool over. You can find it on her staging site at http://lsg.sithtower.de/

Hand in hand with that project, I'm also seeking volunteers for a sister project to the Saber Guide. The Hand-to-hand guide will be going through a similar refresh/expansion, and I need people who are looking to trade some hard work for fortune and glory...or at least medals and promotions.

I'll be needing ACC fanatics and Hand-To-Hand fanatics. Shoot me an email with why you think you'd be perfect to take up one of thevery limited slots on the team. In case you're lazy, the email is [Log in to view e-mail addresses]

Time waits for no man, they say. It's been a busy couple of weeks, and it promises to get busier. I've got teams working all over the place, from coding work to working on sexifying the join process and further work on so many elements of what works behind the scenes that it's not even funny. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade by announcing them ahead of them, but it's been a heck of a busy year so far.

A big part of that are the impending changes to the journeyman promotion system. There has been a LOT of heated discussions about the way we currently have been perating versus what we are considering, but the reader's digest version is that we've lost the plot. We've been so concerned with getting everyone to DJK as fast as possible that we've made some shortcuts and it's been doing our new members a disservice...it's been doing the club a disservice.

After more than a couple hundred emails flying, Kalen Raken and I have been hammering out a good compromise. We don't want people to wait forever (and lose interest) between the ranks, but we don't want people to do the absolute minimum (and not get a good cross-section of what the club really has to offer) either. We'll be accomplishing this change through a couple of different means, so stay tuned for details.

Earlier, I promoted a few people who really deserved it to Equite Three. Something I also did for those fellows is tweak out a couple of new robes for them as well.

Motresor begged an orange set of the Plagueis-won robes off of me, and he kinda started the ball rolling. I ended up putting them into the selector as an option under 'sunrise', btw.

And then I got a little time on my hands, so I did a retouch on an old classic: the uniform robes. These guys are from i think the second batch of robes that I ever did, and they were looking a little dated. And since Scion (firebird) shows his character as in uniform, it was an easy one to roll out for him.

That left Rian, who had a pretty specific idea in mind, starting with some TOR robes and mixing them up with some Tal-earned robes. We added some spikiness and a bi-color hood, and there we go.

And while i had the graphics programs out and rolling, I also worked up some avatars for Kalena nd Valhavoc, so that we had a full roster of avatars on the DC...so our newsreports didn't look so bleh.

Been playing TOR a little bit while I've been down sick from work. It's a fair bit different from the last time i played, but still an awful lot of fun. Cethgus dragged me kicking and screaming into a raid (apparently, there is a shortage of healsluts), but it was a lot of fun to be had. Even though it has been since august since i played at all, I didn't do near as bad as i would have thought healing a team on an alt i rarely played even back then. Fun stuff.

I understand he's putting together some new raiding parties, so if you're interested, Hit Ceth up.

In personal news, my hearing has been getting slowly better, and combined with a crash course in lipreading, i can handle normal conversations. The ear-nose-throat specialist today decided to cut into my eardrums and stick a vaccuum up in there to suck the nasty shit out. It was every bit as unpleasant as it sounds, but it cleared me to go back to work tomorrow, which is better than being constantly in Ashia's way while she's trying to take care of my son.

In celebration of being able to go back to work, I am having my first scotch whisky of the new year. Probably ill-advised, but as Morotheiri once said...."We all have to die."

ASK THE GEE EMM!

Marick asks: Orvs not really dead, is he Dad? He's just playing dead...right? Right...?

Sorry, Wally, but Orv has gone to the great nose factory in the sky. I think there was a british kid with round glasses and a forehead scar involved.

Baxir asks: If your character died instead of mine, what Species/Order/etc would you have made in Muz's place? Would he/she have both arms? Remember, this has a right and wrong answer.

Species? I don't know. I'd probably go alien this time. I'd still be krath, and I'd start out with both arms, just like Muz did (trivia question there). As far as right or wrong answer? 73.

Mirado asks * Ok, got one for you. What are YOU, Muz Ashen, going to buy first when possessions goes live?*

I am likely going to go hog wild on saber stuff: crystals and components and the like. With the rare stuff that i want, i'll probably be waiting and watching for the cool stuff to appear every time the shops refresh.

And that's about all I have for this evening. Thanks all, and have fun.