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February 22, 2006: Report Twenty-Eight </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 Advancement Survey -

- The Training Sabers -

- The New Coding Staff -

- The Upcoming Code Projects - </center></td> <td valign="top"> <center>

- The Amalgamation -

- The Evaluations -

- The DV Update -

- The Wargame -

- 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">

Ok so, sorry...I've been a bad GM at reporting. This month just flew by and despite having the report on my to-do list, things just kept coming up. I'd love to get to one of these every ten days, but man -- sometimes the day-to-day stuff just takes too much time.

Things iRL have been good. We're in the dregs of the Semester, week six......I'm bored out of my mind and in need of a break. The good news is that the Wife and I scheduled our honeymoon. I will be on a cruise in the caribbean for a week starting March 18th. Sorry folks, you'll have to live without your Jac for a bit.

Other than that, not much is going on. I'm taking over my fraternity's alumni association...don't know if that's good news or not. Still procrastinating finding a job. meh...things are fine. :)

The good thing, I guess, is that I have kept up with DB work. I am finally down to just a few things on the to-do list and I'm moving forward with a lot of new stuff. That's a nice change.

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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">

Speaking of change...that brings us to today's word:

Consistency

Well, really consistency has a lot to do with not changing, but you can see the connection (dumb though it may be). I often talk a lot in these things about the general points of leadership (if you can call then that) and talk about what I would like to see continue and what I would like to see improved (aka everything). I know I've spoken about efficiency and initiative, communication and good intentions (I hate you. Just kidding). One of the things that I have become increasingly focussed on though is consistency. You know, that means that you have some regularity in the things you do so that your system doesn't get backed up (in other words, a fiber-filled diet). Consistency is very important in our day to day jobs and in our projects.

In our day to day jobs, it's important that we keep on tasks with those day to day things (daily to daily). Sure, there's a ton of crap that I would rather be doing than responding to my email (aren't their friends reruns on right now?), but getting that basic task out of the way every day is essential to being productive. One of the most stressful things you can have in doing work is emails that are waiting for a response hanging over your head. You may not notice it at first, but it grows (like a damn monster!). Pretty soon you have 80 emails in your inbox that you don't even know where to start on (Don't look now! It's Emailzilla!). It's not just email though -- you have to look out for those little crappy projects that you just don't want to do but need to get them done anyway (Amalgamation). I've seen it more times than anything that a person in a leadership position gets a little behind and then getting caught up is so hard that they just burn out and quit (you know what I'm talking about). There's no reason why that should happen -- if we stay consistent in daily activity, problems like that disappear.

But there are other points of consistency that we all need work on beyond the day to day stuff (nooooooo). The DB for a long time has been consistently bad about Message Board activity (see what I did there? inconsistent use of the word consistent, relative to the last paragraph. I'm awesome). Some of our leaders, including myself, are generally inconsistent with reporting (jac sucks. Needs more fiber). And perhaps the most disturbing is our inconsistency in some standards. One of the things that my staff has tried hard to do is introduce a consistent proposal and policy format (Pyralisize!). I think that's helped some here. But we still have work to do with promotion standards, retention rates, competition structures, and coding. To some of those thing, Kaek is going to be hounding you like the dog he is to make sure that we are pretty standard across the DB. For the coding part, Radek and I developed a great set of coding standards that we are now putting to good use. It's these little things -- consistency in the non-traditional activities and in the little details of our jobs, that make us go from good to great.

I would argue to you that it is better to be consistently good than randomly great. This is something to keep in mind, leaders -- it will help everything in the long run if you keep on keepin on.

And that's the word.

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

If you don't know about it yet then, well, you need to pay more attention: the DB has just released the first version of the Advancement Survey to the peoples. Famosus did the HTML and Radek finished up the rest of the coding to make this -- and so far the response has been great. In a week we have had sixty-five people fill out the survey with some good pointers.

One thing that has been obvious about the survey from the get-go is the importance of IRC to new members. Consuls, Quaestors, Envoys: if you aren't pushing IRC, you need to be. Members have consistently stated that it has been a staying power for them -- something that some of us have been saying for a while now. Be sure to keep on that.

However, there have been a few vocal voices that are concerned with our Message Board activity. I think it's very hard for some who either can't connect to IRC or are on only during the dead hours -- we do need to make a conscious effort for them to utilize the Message Boards more.

Members have offered a lot of insight to me about what the Dark Council can do to increase our visibility, including sending more emails to the clans rather than just relying on the news page.

This is turning out to be a good resource -- I'm looking forward to hearing more.

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

I hope you are all enjoying the new training sabers. Worry not Dark Jedi -- the new ones for you are coming. :)

There's a little confusion that seems to be out there regarding the process to get a training saber. I just wanted to state it again for people:

• 1. Gain the rank of Acolyte
• 1. Gain the rank of Neophyte [ACC: CL:1] in the ACC
• 1. Take the Training Saber Test

Easy enough? You can swap the last two requirements, but if you get neophyte last, you have to email the HRLD for the saber itself to be added.

You can email me or Muz if you are still confused.

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

I've mentioned this to a lot of people already and I'm sure you've seen the names around a bit, but I have found an excellent coding staff to help revamp the site. They are Radek, Aerick, and Dessan

Radek has been doing some awesome work already. He helped me greatly in developing the coding standards, has worked on both the training saber and advancement survey forms, has been reworking our function library and is currently doing some work on the Tournament Results form. He is a very talented coder with an excellent work ethic -- his help is a great asset to the DB.

Aerick also stepped up when CG and Jam3z retired to help out. He has gone through and created a document that details our database structure and has helped me organize for changes there. Currently he is working on some changes to the join form, including a name checking function that will weed out all of you Anakins out there. The function is a complete bitch to write, and I really appreciate Aerick's help. He has great knowledge of both PHP and ASP and I'm grateful to have him on board.

Last but not least, Dessan is my bitch work coder right now. I gave him the short end of the stick because he said he was good at understanding code and hacking it. But don't think that's bad -- Dessan is doing some things that are gigantic moving forward, including calendar and message board integration into the site. He's being an awesome help.

So, now that you know who they are, if you see the coders on the street, be sure to wave and say thanks!

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

Couple quick notes on coding while I'm at it. The following are the current/upcoming projects that we are covering:

• Tournament Results Update: Radek is working to de-ecel the tournament results page so everyone can use it. He is adding administrative functions so matches can be deleted and so that Clusters of Fire can be recommended automatically. His work here will save hours and hours of time down the line for Smoke and others.

• Join form updates: Aerick is adding a field to the join form that is going to ask people how they found the DB so we can work a bit better on recruitment. He is also coding the name check function that will ensure that no one is using illegal names

• Calendar changes: Dessan is updating some pages on the Calendar to make it much easier to navigate and use.

• Lightsaber Picker: Muz has sent in the new graphics for the lightsaber. I am working on updating that script to work with the new graphics.

• Robes system: with the upcoming robes changes, we need the database to store robes in the same way that it does custom sabers. I am writing up the requirements document for this change and Radek will be picking up the project

• Function Clean-up: The function library in the site is an absolute mess. To quote Radek when he first saw it all: "I'm amazed that this actually works!" Radek and I are cleaning up that library and making a new, clean documented one

• MAA tools: We're going to give Kaek the ability to edit requests. Yaaay! This is still a bit down the road.

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

If you haven't read it yet, please read the Amalgamation changes. These are important changes that have slimmed down the dark council to a more manageable level. I like the changes so far. I'll be taking down the direct links at the top of the news page in a day or two. The documents are linked from the Policies page still though.

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

This past month, Kir came up with a form for him and me to use when evaluating Dark Council Members, Consuls and Auxiliary Staff. That evaluation process is going to start this week with the DC members. I will be filling out the form and meeting with each member to go over the results and give them suggestions for what to improve on. Consuls will come next, and then Auxiliary staff. Just fair warning that it's coming.

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

For those of you who didn't hear: Ziltopia, our Dark Voice Editor got married!!! Yaaaaaaaaaay! That's good stuff. Congrats go out to her and her husband!

The wedding though and her moving brought some delay in the Dark Voice. We expect it to be out this week. Sorry for the delay.

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

Many of you will remember that each iteration of th Rebirth proposal had a little tidbit of information about what eventually will come on as a wargame for the DB. Well, that's been on the backburner forever, and I'm now working with Donitz to move it back towards the front.

Don't get too excited -- we're still a long ways out. A lot of coding will be needed and we will need to plan for everything. But Donitz is doing a great job at answering my questions so I can better understand what we need.

Donitz will be working on my staff for a good while helping me develop his wargame to the point where we can code it and launch it.

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<center>- Big props to Zil for getting married!!! -

• Props to everyone who was promoted since my last report! -

• Props to everyone who were medaled since my last report! -

• NO props to me for doing a good set of props... -

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