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October 25, 2005: Report Twenty-Three </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="5"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="50%" valign="top"> <center>

- The Jim Report -

- The Word -

- The Webchat -

- Mr. Calendar - </center></td> <td valign="top"> <center>

- The GJW Proposals -

- The DSC Updates -

- The Timeline -

- The ToL -

- The Props -

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The Jim Report</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

New Year of GMship, new report style. Oh yeah. Completely ripped the idea off. If you haven't seen the Colbert Report on Comedy Central -- you're missing out.

Things are getting back in order around the Real Life front. I had a big presentation last week that unfortunately kept me away from DB work for a few days. The presentation went well -- I think I'll get a decent grade on it. I had a small midterm today that I think I did about verage on. That's fine by me. Other than that, I'm just rying to catch up on some reading that I am behind in. I haven't read for my civil procedure class for almost a month. That's going to be a bitch to catch up on. Oh well.

Not a damn thing is going on for the next couple weeks and I am happy as can be about it. I always forget what losing a weekend does to me in school/DB work. Falling behind is the worst, and going home these last two weekend was like getting kicked while down. Glad that's over.

The wife and I picked out our wedding album. Damn thing is costing $2200 bucks. I'm only getting married once though -- in forty years I should be able to look at the album and say "glad I spent that pocket change way back when."

I need a good idea for a haloween costume. I'm going to a party this weekend where you have to bring food that matches your outfit. I was thinking of going as napolean dynomite and bringing some tater tots.

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The Word</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

Typery

What can one even say about the ability to type. Without it people would have no real way to communicate "Jac is awesome" or (in the case of pretty women) "Jac, please have my baby." Our typing over the years has led to the extrodrinary advances in this club that we like to type up as the DB.

The art of typing, or Typery as I like to call it (Not a real word), can let us have our fun. It can bring people closer (Ast/Mirei). It can help get the job done (we do work?). It can help us maintain this outlet of creativity (we hate RL).

But typery can instill in the internet some very crule trickery. If your wordiness contains the wrong letters in the appropriate order, miscommunication can occur (read between the lines). This leads to fights, hurt feelings and most importantly, ass of you and me assumptions.

Be sure, in this whacky internet club of ours to always take a moment and think about what the person is really trying to say. Are they going out of their way to piss you off? (prolly not). Are they talking about your personally or your idea? (idea). Were you clear with what you said before? (only 7 times out of 10). In my experience in this club, most problems occur because of misued typery. (miscommunication) It's nothing that a short conversation on IRC can't solve (email sucks). Be sure, instead of assuming the worst out of people that mail you to talk things through before you spout off something you'll regret. I see it and deal with it every day (takes up a lot of time). The people who understand typery take a step back, vent to someone else about it and type a measured response (ff taught me to do that). Those that are not as typefficient get themselves in trouble (jac dislikes dealing with miscommunication issues).

Which brings me to my final point: IRC is good. If you are not using your typing skills to converse instantaneously with your co-workers, then your typery is severly lacking. Be sure to connect daily and work as much as you can to communicate there. The dividends pay off in the end.

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The Webchat</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

As we all know, connecting to IRC is the most determinative factor in whether or not a member will be active or not. In that, there is an important advancement in our web-faring ways: we now have a working IRC web-applet. Blade Dranal has been kind enough to find an applet for us and get it up and runnning on our server. It's a robust platform that can do a lot of things that most other java applets can't. You can find the applet at:

http://webchat.darkjedibrotherhood.com/

I have linked this to the activation email that is sent out to new members and I will be making a more permanent link on the site somewhere outside the subdomain listing. In the future we are hoping to make this so that members who join can go directly to their clan channels when they finish the Test of Lore.

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>Mr. Calendar</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

Something I started last May was the use of an excel spreadsheet as the DB projects calendar. I've been using the sheet to keep track of what was going on in the DC, to give people a plac to refer to waht's going on and to keep track of the many daily tasks that I have. Lately, it's been more of a tool for me to keep track of what I have on my to-do list. That's because there was an access problem; I was the only one who could make change.

All of that now changes. I am proud to introduce to you: Mr. Calendar!

http://calendar.darkjedibrotherhood.com/

I found this application on source forge and installed it a few days ago on the server. It has a very sturdy code base that allows for a lot of customization. I've already added the functionality that lets us mark events as complete, finished early or overdue and change the display to mark them as crossed off, boxed, and red respectively.

One of the cool things about this is the category feature. I have assigned a category to each member who was present on the old calendar and one for each clan. Those members can assign themselves tasks on the calendar in their category and by just clicking on the category link we can see everything that a single person has done. In the future, I hope to build some reporting off of this so we can see what is outstanding, etc etc.

Anyone can post to the calendar -- competitions, tasts, anything. There are some groups (like the Dark Council) that can post straight to the calendar...everyone else is moderated by me. If you want to submit an event or project, simply register as a user and fill out the event form. I will be adding some test to the form as instructions. The main three rules are: Put the person or unit's name in the title of the event, choose the category that corresponds to the person or unit, and if there is no category, put it in the general one.

I hope that a lot of use comes out of this. I'm glad to have the change, myself.

A huge thanks goes out to Quejo. He is assisting me by inputting all of the data from the old calendar into this online version so we have it to keep track of. That's a huge job, and I appreciate the help.

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The GJW Proposals</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

I announced in my last report that I was collecting GJW proposals from DC members for the upcoming GJW. Well -- I was very pleased with the effort put in by the DC members. Each person in turn put a lot of thought into what they wanted from a GJW and came up with some very unique ideas. I had asked them all to show how they will do better than the last one, and I think that if I handed it off to any of the applicants, it would be done well.

Only one person in the end can be the head man in charge, though. In a close examination of all of the proposals, I have chosen Kaiann's over the others.

Kaiann's proposal was very complete. It was evident that he has been thinking about this for a long time. He had 14 pages of planning, ideas and solutions and I don't think there were many stones unturned. I am working right now on going through the proposal again and making comments on it and suggesting changes, but I think we have a plan here that will eventually lead to a great GJW.

Kaiann will be leading a group of DC members in running this. I will be setting up the mailing list and such this week after Kaiann and I talk, and as a team, we will all make sure that this GJW is the best yet.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, well, this is a pretty big deal. It is a big opportunity to show what you are made of, running a Vendetta. not many people get a chance to do it -- Kaiann has a good opportunity here to advance the Vendetta system in the way the Order Leaders have been recently with the successful RoSs

So congratulations, Kaiann. We'll talk soon.

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The DSC Updates</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

Trev and I have been working quite hard on getting the new DSC up and running. We currently have three sections that are just waiting on the code to finish and 15-20 more in progress.

Outside of that though, Pyralis has taken it upon himself to make changes to the old DSC that will make it more usable for the foreseeable future. The DSC hadn't been updated in a while, and Pyralis has hit up some changes that were long overdue. Here's the breakdown:

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/index.html

Summary: Table of Contents restructured - subdivided into sections

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/ranks.html

Summary: New, unambiguous table. This actually shows the GM ascending above all orders now.

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/awards_general.html

All 12 subsidiary, dependent pages were also updated, including the creation of a "seal" page.

Summary: Added the new medal images (and created smaller versions) to both the DSC and updated the main DB folder that dossier.asp (et al) refer to. Crisp, clear, unambiguous descriptions associated medal upgrades added. Organized table formatting added.

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/awards_vendetta.html

One subsidiary, dependent page was updated (large crescents)

Summary: Unambiguous descriptions of associated medal upgrades added. Organized table formatting added.

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/awards_other.html

Summary: Unambiguous descriptions of associated medal upgrades added.

Organized table formatting added. Revised the description of the DSS to include authoring/editing proposals.

For all 3 award pages, updated some of the "awarded by" references. There was actually a chancellor or two or three still in there. Also an emissary.

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/identification_system.html

Summary: Basically redid this entire page. It's entirely unambiguous now and removes HUGELY outdated sections which were appropriate only when we were associated with the EH. Also made the example much clearer and more explanatory.

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/dsc/heraldry_of_the_brotherhood.html

Summary: Replaced the "holy-fuck-that-was-old" GoA example with a warbanner and associated descriptions of each warbanner feature. Still waiting on the final Warbanner guides

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The Timeline</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

The timeline is something that was released 2 meetings ago that I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of.

In the recent past, there was some discussion among the Dark Council and Clan Summits about just where the Dark Brotherhood stands within the timeline of the Star Wars universe. As a result, Xanos composed and recently finished a brief timeline for the Brotherhood. While we have plans to expand this timeline to try and encompass a more detailed history of the Brotherhood, this is a great start. In the future, we will be adding a LOT more to the history of the Brotherhood, including stuff like GJWs, formation of the clans, and other major stuff.

You can view the timeline from the DB Policies/Projects page:

http://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com/dbjedi/policies.asp

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--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The ToL</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

I completely missed talking about the new ToL in my last report, much to Spears's dismay. Oops.

If you haven't heard, we have made a huge upgrade to the Test of Lore. Now, a member can find us on Google, fill out the join form, take the test of lore and be in a clan within a 30 minute period. This has already marked a huge increase in the number of members joining clans. Whereas before we only got maybe 30% of initiates to take the ToL, now it is approaching 70%.

There is some discussion on whether or not this will lead to just more inactive members, but I think it's important to remember that a clan can do a lot in the first few days to make a member active. To catch them in their most vulnerable stage and bring them in to our addictive club can't happen if they are sitting as INIs. I think in that respect, this is an excellent imporvement; the clans now have more direct access to the recruits earlier.

We are going to be looking soon into advancement all-around at the low levels of the club. We want to examine the SA's role in getting people past APP and look at the process of getting members to stay. I think the IRC guide and the webchat will play an even larger role in this as time goes on.

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BIG PROPS

--> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="20"> <><li>The Props</li></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" style="border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1;" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" colspan="2" height="5">

<center>- Big Props to Quejo for his help in filling the Calendar -

• Huge props to Pyralis for the DSC updates -

• Props to everyone who got a Seal of Conquest -

• yaaay Kaiann and the GJW! -

• Props to Shin'ichi on KAP! -

• w0000t! Muz got KPN! -

• Props to Cyris for becoming Herald -

• 6 Huge props to Kaine - one for each year of service. -

• YAY KAINE! -

• GO KAINE! -

• PROPS TO KAINE! -

• YIPPIE KAINE! -

• WOO-HOO KAINE! -

• Thanks, Kaine. -</center>

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CLOSING QUOTE

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