A Month and a day in the life of Feor, an SWmud Admin

Oct 27th 1998

• Back to the mud after a few days of vacation without any computers. Nice to be back! I had 19 mails, which isn't too bad. I've had days when I've had 12 mails waiting, just from one day. RN was worse though, some 106 unread in bs and 87 unread in idea to name a few.
• Started off with reading mail, going through the stuff one by one. Some of it was just general comments or questions, which I read through and replied to. Some needed more attention and some coding, them damn bugs again ;) I forget what all the mails were about. Liria sent this nice very long mail about some ideas she had for an idea. I printed it out, it'll make nice bedtime reading :)
• Just as I was about to leave for lunch, Morgan logged in. Since I hadn't seen him in a long time, I didn't want to leave and we got into talking about stuff. He told this funny story about a clown knocking on Zurk's newly bought house's door and said "Only Zurk could have a clown as his first house guest". That was hilarious! Of course when Zurk logged in too, I could just sit back and watch the "boys" in action. They make me laugh every time.
• Macross sent in a wiz application so I put that up for voting. I hope he gets approved, nice guy.
• Checked through Mark's account (Mark was the original webmaster), which had a few mails waiting too. A few pics to add and a webpage link. Put in the link and one pic but the rest will have to wait for thumbnails first.
• I really ought to write a new update file one of these days, if I can just remember what has been added to the mud since last.
• Answered a mail from Shmoove asking about the traps he is coding.
• Checked about a sluissi ship that Drifter mailed having problems with.
• Spent some time working and figuring out a bug that Fishu had mailed about sluissi upgrading.
• Read rest of the rn and posted replies to some.
• Fixed a minor bug with the flare tube. Fixed a couple more Sluissi bugs, mostly problems with exits, just a little sloppy coding I suppose.
• Fixed a little bug with interdiction field devices not checking for fuel.
• Added a little thing to the smuggler skill id so that it would better notice special items.
• Skip sent a tell about a bug with medkits that he had noticed when merging them. Did a little testing and fixed that bug, I think.
• Read through the bug group too and fixed small minor things here and there and replied to a few "bug" reports, which were not actually bugs. Was a rather long day, but that's how it usually goes after a vacation with a lot of catching up to do...

Oct 28th 1998

• Started off the day by replying to Liria's mail and her ideas. Only 6 mails at the mud, what a disappointment ;)
• Hades replying to a mail about roleplaying. Bosstone with two mails about how he is forced into inactivity for a few weeks and wonders how the Diplomat council will do. Vengeance wondering about some stuff in space pk. And a reply mail from Jillo. All quite easy to deal with.
• And only 20 unread in bs this time. Hmm, not much to do is there ;)
• Started going over some ship stuff that Scorch had coded earlier for me. Trying to get ships to be more memory saving. Had to pull a few tricks first and modify an existing file to get everything to work. Went off-line for a while to modify the ships to take into account the new changes.
• Came back to a bug report about a ship not being retrievable anymore, and of course it was all due to that changed file.. Sooooo... Of course this meant going through every single Sluissi model changing them too, very nice... And then trying to update everything so that people mght have chance of retrieving their ships. After all this, I was pretty beat.
• Spent rest of the day mostly just talking with Jillo about his plans to travel to the US.
• Spent back some mails back and forth with Ivan discussing the HM sci skill droid programming, which is still not coded. [This skill was moved to HM slicer later, after this log was written.]
• Later on, helped Drifter update his sluissi ship. Helped Dazer with a problem too, them pesky players always bothering me ;)
• And then spent quite a bit of time adding the hm bh skill cabbie bribe++ to cabbie smugglers and testing it out.
• Decided to leave doing the couple other hm bh skills for later on.

Oct 29th 1998

• Just three mail messages this morning, this is getting worse and worse ;) One mail was about a possible law incident and check about that. One from Shmoove asking about traps and one from Vorath asking to become an HM questor. Bs in rn had 24 posts, so I guess everything isn't lost yet ;)
• And what is most amazing is that there were no bugs reported at all!
• So with all three mails answered and no bugs to fix, whats a girl supposed to do ;) Ended up talking with Shmoove quite a bit about something and being somewhat bored.
• I did manage to find a little bug with the shopkeeper code when handling smuggler catalog items and fixed that one.
• I started out doing the bh silence skill (yes, I am on one of those spurts again to get the remaining skills finished), but then stopped cause I got into talking with Morgan.

Oct 30th 1998

• Started off the day with a headache, so it'll be one of those days again. Just 1 mail, this is getting pathetic I think. Read the mail (from Quis) and replied to it.
• Idea group was really spammed with bs, so used my ultimate powers (evil grin) to tell them to cut it out.
• Scorch had reported a bug with sluis ship retrieval, which I fixed and posted a reply about doing so.
• Tinkered a little with the compare skill, trying to fix the compare sabers thingy for primary jedi.
• Then I spent quite a bit of time chatting with Jillo, which was very nice. Then I spent a lot of time chatting with Zurk and Morgan.
• I coded it so that diplomat team leaders have priviledges to remove posts from their teams board.
• Mailed a few other things and posted about something else... it's that important business correspondence that we have to keep up with ;) So most of the day was spent just dealing with administrative things, some of them far from pleasant too...

Oct 31st 1998

• Another usual start for the day, first the mail then wading through rn. Four mails, most of them could be replied just shortly, no major catastrophies going on :)
• Rn had a bug report about the smuggler catalog, which I fixed.
• Added in the two bh "skills" for levels 30 and 50 to do with player killing.
• I finished up the silence skill.
• Coded up the disorient skill as well, although it's filled with bugs though and wasn't put in the game just yet. Quite pleased with the progress of the skills now, about time to get them finished.
• Then spent a couple of hours working on the upcoming lottery thing. That was enough to fry my brains for the rest of the day.

Nov 1st 1998

• Not in the mood to write much, so this'll be short.
• Spent the day reading and replying to mail.
• Then finished the lottery stuff and put it into the game.
• Battled some more with the disorient skill, but it's still acting weird. Might have to figure out some other way to do it.

Nov 2nd 1998

• I think I am getting tired of this writing already ;) Been very sleepy all day too. Also forgotten most of the stuff I did today.
• I know I finally got disorient working as good as it'll get and put it into the game. And did the usual mail reading and replying. Mail and rn usually take up a considerable amount of time every day.
• Ok I did setup Vorath for the quest.

Nov 6th 1998

• Err where has all the time gone... or more exactly 3 days... Hmm. I guess the main things which I've worked on were the surprise attack for BHs [Editor's Note: This skill was removed as part of later guild updates.] and now I even forget the second thing...
• Logged and had 5 mails waiting. Two were from Decoy and Tunses wanting me to fix up their sluissi ship, which I did. Another mail from Corax asking about torpedoes in sluissi ships.
• Then a mail from Rooster informing about couple of bugs with a certain ship. Fixed those ones.
• Before I tackle some other bugs in mail, I had to promote Macross to wiz and show him around a bit.
• Then I checked the other bug with the ship Rooster also sent me.
• Checked on one bug on Nystao that Dazer reported.
• Tinkered some more with the lottery system adding a little surprise for some players.

Nov 7th 1998

• Started off the day by marrying Beth and Parnell and then ridding a very troublesome pervert player.
• Then fixed up Sariss' and Mattdravis's sluis fighters.
• Then I spent a considerable amount of time digging into the space code and making it possible for capital ships to land on HM docks.

Nov 8th 1998

• In the morning logged on mostly just to read mail, which I had four. Question from Tade, a notification from Hagge, a question from Luka and a plead from Spekkio.
• And then closed up the lottery, now waiting for the drawing.
• And read a little rn.
• Later on I organized the drawing. So much for that thing :)
• And setup another person for the HM quest. So many people applying, but hardly anybody finishing ;)

Nov 10th 1998

• Another day missing, this really is not working... Hmm what did I do today... Checked through charge code [this skill was renamed to 'rush' after the writing of this journal] that Quis had done and when Morgan logged in we tested it together.
• I put in the memory saving ship system, now just have to wait for reboot to actually see it in practice.
• I looked through Bugsy's wiz test area and gave some comments.
• Also strolled through Macross' area.
• Then I worked offline on a 30 room area doing the outline for it.

Nov 11th 1998

• Four mails, two from Luka about some BH & Dip stuff, one from Zygo asking about wizzing and the last one from Quis asking about the Dip language skill. All were solved just by replying to them.
• Fixed one thing with the healing suit and then another thing with the dosage applier.
• Then I tested and tried to figure out something for a question that Macross had.

Nov 12th 1998

• 7 mails this morning from five different people. A nice one from Mattdravis thanking me for fixing his sluissi ship and telling me I am doing a great job.
• A mail from Savrip asking me to contribute to the Imperial page he is making, hmm, what should I write :)
• Couple mails from Bugsy about his area, to which I replied right off.
• Mail from Ivan telling about his progress with the droid programming skill.
• A possible space/ship bug report from Javelin, that'll take some looking into.
• And another mail from Ivan asking me to read one doc about a project we're working on.
• I started off by checking on the public ship bug... *sigh* Fixing that took a bit of time and only reboot will tell for sure.
• Next I checked the droid prgramming skill and mailed a comment to Ivan. Read through the doc Ivan asked me to and replied to a mail from Savrip.
• After that it was time to read through rn... which ended up being nothing but bs, once again.
• Then I checked and commented on a topic that was up for voting.
• Wrote up some things I should mention in the new update file I should be writing for the webpages soon.
• Logged in later again to find three new mails, from Ivan, Siobhan and Morgan. More droid programming discussion with Ivan, Siobhan sending in a wiz application and Morgan replying to an idea I had.

Nov 13th 1998

• Here we go again just two mails one about a possible space bug, which I don't think it is, and another request for a sluissi ship fix.
• Then checked on some space firing bug that was reported. Couldn't reproduce the error though.
• Added mecharmor to the smuggler catalog.
• Posted a couple things up for commenting by others.
• Then got bored and deleted a bunch of old players who've never even chosen a guild for themselves.
• After that tinkered some with ship damage reports showing off the components correctly.

Nov 14th 1998

• 7 mails... rather impressive... from five different people. Yabba yabba about detonators and yabba yabba about double damage. Guess I'll check those sometime later on.
• Short mail from Ivan about the mecharmor addition I did to smuggler catalog.
• Another mail about a possible bug with a monster. *sigh* And one mail from Jillo asking about hm drink. So this leaves me with 3 mails on my to-do list. All that mail stuff can wait...
• Rn bs was filled with larger than life issues.
• I fixed one bug reported about shopkeepers.
• And another bug with the smuggler catalog.

Nov 15th 1998

• Yep, yesterday actually was that short, only mail and rn day and today will probably be the same. 7 mails again, this time only from three diff. people... Lots from Jillo saying woo this and woo that ;)
• And a typoed panic file I had to copy over.
• And a couple of mails about somebody wanting to wiz.
• Fixed something with the healing suit.
• Helped another wiz with a coding problem.
• Checked on something with the dosage applier.
• Checked on something else with the pk totals.
• And replied to a couple of things in rn and boards.
• And did a gazillion little things here and there and answered questions about stuff. For an only mail/rn reading day, was rather busy though :)

Nov 16th 1998

• Much mail I had ;) Five! Couple requests for easier to understand messages in some skills, hmm.
• And somebody wanting me to investigate whatever happened to his two sluissi ships, ho hum.
• Rn had a few possible bugs I could check into perhaps later.
• General health not very good, so I did not feel like doing anything. Rest of the day spent just chatting with a few people.

Nov 17th 1998

• Just one mail today, how odd ;) From a player to inform that soon he will be mailing me a list of comments about certain skills and how they could be improved. Hmmm.
• Then I worked on adding a newbie channel to the mud.
• And then did the newbie kit and other stuff to help new players get started.
• Later on logged in to read 5 mails from players wanting to be newbie helpers. Very nice! :)
• Then I downloaded a few files, which I could work on off-line sometime.

Nov 18th 1998

• Six mails, all from people wanting to be newbie helpers though.
• Then went back and checked on some of the mail from the weekend, checking things out and replying to the mails.
• Later on logged in again to find four new mails. A few answers to the mails I had mailed before and a couple of new things to check out.
• Worked quite a bit of time with thermal detonators doing some changes and then testing those out.
• Checked out a little quest that Scorch had written and mailed comments.
• And then just read rn, nothing important there.

Nov 19th 1998

• Just one mail asking about the webmaster's e-mail address.
• Rn had nothing interesting in it either.
• Just as I was done writing that Thundar started bombing me with mails about what he thinks should be done to improve the HM merc skills. Nice five mails. ho hum.
• So replying to those took a bit of time, since most of them required checking up on some code and some even some more coding.

Nov 20th 1998

• Four mails today, mostly from Scorch. He's doing some miniquests and told me of his progress.
• Rn was quiet as well.
• Added some more pics to the webpage.
• Removed the Newbie Helper pretitle and made it [NH] instead.

Nov 21st 1998

• First thing I had to do upon logging in was fixing a players condo which wasnt loading due to a room description that was too long.
• Just one mail about the newbie helper thing.
• Wrote an update file for the webpages about the most important things done in the past few months. Won't be adding it just yet though. Waiting for the new races [Bimm, Falleen, Ithorian, Sluissi, Trandoshan] to be added first.

Nov 22nd 1998

• Slower day on the weekend. Just logged in mainly to read mail and rn and noticed I had gotten 10 unread mails! All of them from different people too.
• Five mails were about abuse on the newbie line, people reporting abusers and the abusers saying that didnt do anything. *sigh*
• Then a couple of things which needed checking on.
• Looked at a ship bug that was reported and then fixed a few typos with a sluis ship.

Nov 23rd 1998

• Guess what I am going to say first? Heh, yeah.. I had mail ;) Well reading mail is how I start every day anyhow, so I mention it first here as well.
• Before I could read any of the mails though I got bombarded with tells and some wiz discussion, which went on quite a long time.
• While talking along, got another two mails as well. Only one of the mails had to do with coding something. The rest were just asking for my opinion or clarification on some things. Just the conversations, mail and rn took me 2.5 hours, so that was enough for the day.

Nov 24th 1998

• Seven mails from five people. Nothing code specific, just mostly replies to my earlier mails, arguing with me about things and notifying me of things that had happened.
• Went through a list of bugs that we found and fixed them. Mostly had to do with space.

Nov 25th 1998

• Three mails, read and delete, nothing special in them.
• Went over Gamorr, Bimmisaari and Rodia adding in gardens for the upcoming Ithorian cultivate skill.
• When I got back later on I had seven mails waiting, six of which were from Morgan and replies to my earlier mails. Mostly about the new races and especially the Ithorians and cultivate skill.
• Went offline to write a couple of documents about future projects, which I wanted to show to Morgan for comments.

Nov 26th 1998

• Yet another day, yet another bunch of mails. Getting bored yet? ;)
• Looked over quests Scorch had coded and asked Ivan to check them out too.
• Liria had a nice idea about her area to which I replied. Quis inquired about something.
• Retreived a couple of sluissi ships from a backup to two players with whom the recovery contract hadn't worked.
• Then I worked rest of the afternoon on a couple of additions for the diplomat council chambers.
• Added a few rooms for the leaders and a really nice board reading room. That was actually fun coding.
• Had an idea for a new diplomat skill, and I mailed details about it to Zurk and Sweepy for approval.

Nov 27th 1998

• Last day of the journal! A month and a day. It was a nice idea to keep the journal. I just find out I am too lazy to keep it daily. So guess this will have to do. As you may have noticed, most of my day is spent reading mail and rn. I usually prefer to check up on things right as they come along, so I often just read one mail, check on the bug mentioned in it, fix it, then go back and delete that mail and move on to the next one. After that the same with rn. So, on most days I don't have time for much else. Or if I have the time, I don't have the energy anymore, so the rest of the time just goes along chatting with some people.
• This day began with reading through three mails. Two of them were like requests and questions, while one was just a statement to let me know about something.
• I answered to the two mails and then moved on to read rn. Nothing special in rn today.
• Had another idea about the Ithorian strengthen skill, which I mailed about to Morgan.
• Then I worked on the two new diplomat skills, immunity and diptitle. Immunity took a bit longer cause it needed testing.
• Edited the player_council panic file to have more details about the council stuff. Still too many good skill ideas left that need to be coded for it.
• Ended the day by starting work on a small area.

So there you have it :)