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_The Seventh of October in the Year of Darkness,

Two-Thousand and Five

*Report Twenty-One
*_ </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="5"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="50%" 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" height="164">

- I can't do this alone, Jac -

- Situational Commentary -

- FDG Money Recommendations -

- Dark Voice Posted! -

- Warbanner Requests moving along -

- DSC Programming started -

- BF2 Server -

- Big Props -

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" Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove." </td> </tr>

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I can't believe that it's already October. No -- almost ten days into October. That's just nuts. In five days I have my two month wedding anni. It seems like it's been a week.

Speaking of a week, this one's been rough. My mom always said that she would get sick each year on the first week of school -- I thought she was only somewhat serious. But, my wife just started about a week and a half ago and she's been sick for the past week. Really really bad cold/cough/sinus troubles. I guess that's what happens when you start getting less sleep and at the same time have 23 dirty inner-city kids touching you and breathing on you all day. Nevertheless, I've been taking good care of her.

School is a bitch. I'm having trouble staying ahead of the reading. It's gotten to well over 100 pages a day. Might not seem like a lot, but we don't get those pretty pictures and graphs that they had even in college textbooks. No -- it takes a good hour to read about 20 pages, so do the math and you should equate to my life being a bore from 7pm till midnight.

I have to say, if you don't watch Lost on ABC, you need to go out and but the season 1 DVD, watch the whole thing and then somehow catch up on this season. The show is phenomenal.

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It's always good when things go as planned -- there have been so many competitions that have been run over the years that have ended up in the toilet due to bad planning and burn out. I have to say that our track record since the split has been phenomenal -- and Korras's excellent work with the RoS just adds to it. Sucks that the GJW was the worst of the competitions we've run. But -- I think some people still enjoyed that, and I can live with it being a low point.

I can see the motivation that a lot of the clans got from the RoS -- it's evident in the emails pushing through and some of the conversations I'm reading on IRC. I think this is an excellent time for Consuls to shore up the troops and keep pressing onward. After a big competition it is awfully tempting to sit back and do nothing for a couple months -- but if there's one thing I've learned in the past couple years it's that motivation has a snowball effect. Success breeds success -- one good project leads to another. We need to capitalize on the success of the RoS and use our motivation to the betterment of the DB.

But don't take the RoS for granted. I already promoted Korras for his work, but I don't think one can say enough about what he has done. This was truly a stellar competition. I hope that each of you wearing any sort of medal from the RoS have gone up and said thanks -- he deserves it. Most of the time, a simple thanks can be better than any award you give someone. It's the little things.

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Some months ago, Kir set out to put together a group of people who could discuss some of the inaccuracies that are common place in the DB fictionally. I mean, we're been around for 10 years now and have never really established where say, our money comes from. Well -- Kir's group decided to look into that and over the summer sent a list of recommendations to me for what they believe is our best course fiscally.

I am adopting the recommendations as a starting point for our financial prowess. As was evident when the DC discussed the recs, our imaginations can all go wild, and so I'm not intending to limit what we can do in the DB. These are meant to serve as guidelines to help establish a better fictional guideline for the DB.

You can view the recommendations here. (linked at the bottom)

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New Dark Voice!

This week we released the newest version of the Dark Voice Newsletter. I apologize for it being a few days late.

I think that this issue is better than the last one and we are taking some good steps in the right direction. I'm working with Trev and Oberst to work out some of the kinks in our process -- but things are turning out well for the DV.

I'd like to remind you all that anyone can post to the DV. There are certain requirements to be on the DV staff, but you can submit articles without being staff members. It's a great way to earn DSSs. If you need an idea for an article, you can feel free to contact myself, Oberst or Trev. We're full of ideas.

Submissions for the next DV are due November 17th!

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Since I built the form for it, I figure I can report a bit on it too. Kaine, Cyris and Muz have been working hard on the warbanner requests and are moving quickly to get them all done. Please remember that if you have not submitted one yet, you only have a little more than a week left to make your request.

I made some changes to the form today and yesterday that should make it easier for the HRLD staff to work. I'm looking forward to the day when we can get rid of the old ones!

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Just a quick note: Trev and I have been working a lot faster on the DSC. We've decided to start releasing it in parts -- focus sing on one area and then moving to another when that is finished instead of doing thing piecemeal.

With that, coding for the DSC has started. Hopefully that will be done asap.

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Like I mentioned last week, Kir has volunteered to help me set up the DB's donation policy and look for potential servers for the release of BF2. We are currently heading the paypal route with the policy setting out clear guidelines for accounting on the account. We are going to have multiple people receive notices of donations and invoices from the server company so a fair tally may be kept. I hope to release that policy and get it all set up soon.

As of now we have settled on the following server. They seem to have the best prices and I have heard good things about their support. It's what the Tal servers are hosted on now.

Mammothgames - http://www.mammothgames.com/

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• Huge Props to Tal for winning the Ros! -

• Props to everyone else who did well in the RoS! -

• Congrats to Goat on getting to DJM!! -

• Yaaay! J`Rai is now a Pontifex!! -

• Big props to Gaidal on getting a lightsaber!-

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