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_The Twenty-Ninth of June in the Year of Darkness,
Two-Thousand and Five
**Report Seventeen
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[- You don't know Jac -](#1)
[- Situational Commentary -](#2)
[- First Alacrity Entry in Final Stages -](#3)
[- Jac + Coding + July = Mav -](#4)
[- Beta Testing to Begin On Rebirth Site Sections - ](#5)
[- AWOL Reminder, Policy, Other News -](#6)
[- Rebirth/Projects Update -](#9)
[- Big Props -](#Props)
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"God must love stupid people, He made so many of them." </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" bgcolor="#333333" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="20"> <>- You don't know Jac -</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="5"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="340">
So, How's everyone doing? Good good. Glad to hear it.
I myself am tired as a mofo. I't been a semi-rough and very busy 3-4 days IRL. Until last night, I hadn't been able to get on the computer since last Friday. It's just been crazy. Here's the recap: on Friday I went to my Mom's work to do some database design. Of course, I ended up spending an extra 6 hours there trying to make the code impossible to creak, sinc ethese people always do the weirdest things with their shit. Then Saturday, my brother omes down for the day and he, my dad and I tore up carpet in the second floor of the house and screwed down creaking floors. Saturday night I had a couples shower for the wedding. That lasted until 3 am. Then Sunday I had to go golfing to entertain some of Angs friends boyfriends while the girls went to a bridal shower. Golf in 92 degree heat = sunburnt Jac. Then Sunday night I had to organize presents. Then Mondy was put-wedding-invitations-together day. That took 9 hours. Then Tuesday my Mom was home slave-driving me the you-must-paint-all-of-the-ceiling-and-trim way. Finally, today I have goteen a break from the insanity. My apologies for the late report, anyway. I think I was excused, given the circumstances.
So, wedding showers are sweet. People like give you presents and stuff, and really, the only thing you did was decide to get married. I'm down with that.
My coolest part of Saturday night: the parents hand me a gift that I start opening. I ask who it's from. They respond "John Spears." No one in the 35 people in the room have any idea who it is, but me. So I explain it to Ang and she shouts out "IT'S FROM ONE OF HIS MAGICAL INTERNET FRIENDS!" At which point, everyone else was even more confused, so I tried to explain IRC and such, and they were even more confused. But, long story short, the identity of the DB was psuedo revealed, but the people were so baffled by the idea that I have internet friends that they had no clue.
So anyway, Spears got Ang and I a grill tool set. Big spatula, fork and tongs. It was seriously one of my top 3 gifts of the night. I grill out like every night I can, so out of everything, I think Spears's gift will get the most use.
I'd just like to take a second to thank Spears. That was a really cool gesture and Ang and I really appreciate it. Now whenever I cook a hamburger, I'll think of the DB. :) It's like Spears way of saying "fill up so you can do your job!"
To continue on: I head back to Columbus this Friday. Thank God. Back to my dual monitors, my fast computer and my own bed. Jac productivity will = high.
</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" bgcolor="#333333" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="20"> <>- Situational Commentary -</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="5"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" align="center" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" colspan="2" height="259">
This is the time of year that I like to refer to as "Summer." I created this word to represent what happens during these months. The 'S' stands for sun, that thing that gives us heat and light. The 'u' is for "Under the Sun" to represent that people are outside. Then "mmer" stands for "Most Members Enjoy Reality." This represents the experience of a ton of members going on LoA, the rest of us getting tired and cranky and blah blah blah. This is always a rough time to get through because things slow down a lot.
It happens every year. Last year at this time we had that damn GJW. I had to force myself to keep going at this time last year. This year, the IGs have ended, nothing really big is happening for another month, and people are all hitting their LoAs.
During this time, we all need to keep our focus. Even though it is tempting to turn on TNT and watch their movie marathons all day, we need to keep our heads about us and make sure we are getting our shit done. I'm struggling just as much as the next guy, but I realize that if I waste time, I'll run out of it. We need to waste as little time and effort as possible.
So keep it up, homeboys and homegirls. Fall is just around the corner.
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<>- First Alacrity Entry in Final Stages -</td>
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I am very pleased to announce that the first of the Handbook Addendums, now called the Alacrity of the Commander, is almost finished. If you don't know what the project is, here'a synopsis: The DC members and a few others are all creating handbooks for their positions. These handbooks descrie the general expectations, hardships, duties and the like of all of the DC positions, CON, and PCON. The handbooks themselves, wheile going into some detail, still don't carry the detal that is needed to truly teach someone how to properly do a task. That is where the Alacrity comes in.
The Alacrity of the Commander is a series of addendums to the Handbooks. These addendums will each cover a single topic in detail. Once you read the addendum, you should have significant enough knowledge in the subject matter so as to be able to perform the detailed tasks properly. We currently have over 40 of them slated for production.
Dark Adept Pyralis and I have been going back and forth on the first addendum. This one is on the subject of "Welcoming New Members" and is aimed at the clan leadership in helping to cover all of the bases in what needs to be done when a member joins a clan. By "covering all of the bases" I mean that the addendum is pack with 7 pages of great information. Currently, Alanna is proofreading the document and when she is done, we will release it.
When finished, these addendums will be a profound help to the Brotherhood. No longer will people have to guess at what is expected from them when they ecome a leader. We are spelling it out very precisely.
I'd like to thank Pyralis for his work on the project. His skills never fail to impress me.
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<>- Jac + Coding + July = Mav -</td>
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This is just a FYI for everyone.
Mav always has the authority to speak for me whenever I don't speak first, but for the next month, he is going to be stepping up to do that more often. I have asked him to run the more day-to-day affairs of the DB while I dedicate all of my time to special projects (Read: Rebirth). Mav is going to be handling problems that arise, issues, proposals and everything while I am a busy little man.
With that, please make sure you CC Mav on everything. He already should be, anyway, but just make sure you pay attention to that especially this month. Thanks
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<>- Beta Testing to Begin On Rebirth Site Sections -</td>
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This week will see the start of Beta Testing on some of the new site functions. No the website is not fully done, but we have enough of a start that I am going to have a few select people running some very strict tests on the site.
For those of you not familiar with website beta testing, it's a very tedious and menial process, but probably the most important stage. I am going to have people go through every form on the site and enter in certain data into every field over and over again to check every possible data entry in the forms. This will come back with lots of bugs that we will then go and fix. Fun Fun fun.
Anyway, just thought you'd like to know.
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<>- AWOL Reminder, Policy, Other News -</td>
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Reminder to everyone: IF YOU HAVE NOT LOGGED INTO THE SITE, YOU ARE RISKING HAVING YOUR DOSSIER DELETED ON JULY 14
Here's the policy and rundown on what is going to happen on July 14. All members who have logged into the site at least once by that time will be safe. Their dossiers will not be touched. Anyone who has not logged in and is BELOW the rank of DJK will be deleted. This included deleting their history, medals, ACC stuff, everything. I will have a backup of the database just in case, but for the most part, restoration of dossiers that have been deleted will not be allowed. For people above DJK, the dossiers will not be deleted, but rather will be set ot invisible. These dossiers will be marked to show that they did not log in during this purge. The next time we do an AWOL check like this (a year from now, maybe) if they have still not logged in, and they are marked from this purge, they will be deleted. Easy enough?
In other news, in order to run the AWOL check I had to build a really nifty script. Basically, it's a mail merge script. It was easy to do, but I had never really though of how to implement it before. I am hoping to build a public version of it for the new website. In this, a leader will be able to send personalized emails out to clan members without having to write them all out. If you are familiar with how mail merges work, I did it in the same way. { {NAME}} indicated that the script should insert the member's name. { {DOSSIER NUMBER}} and { {RANK}} were implemented as well. I think it will open up some good possibilities in the future.
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<>- Big Props -</td>
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- Yay for Spears for getting me a present! -
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You do realize the only reason they give you stuff and have showers is because its a way to trap in the groom, right? :P