James, where would we be without you? The stone age. That's where. For those uninitiated for any terrible reason, or maybe they're just new, James is the driving force behind, well, everything we do. Changes and updates to the website's code, keeping it secure from attacks, our resident Construct the all-powerful dbb0t and its Discord integration, the million things every Council staff at some point dumps on him? James does it all. He doesn't complain. He isn't afraid to tell us when something can't be done or it's just too complex to implement.

We have given this man literally every reward possible. We even created a new Elder rank for him. It still isn't enough recognition for the amount of stuff James does, or the things he puts up with, and we will be forever sad when the day finally does come that he steps down. We have an amazing infrastructure unprecedented for a Star Wars club on the internet, and we should be grateful every single day to the man that keeps the ship afloat.

Thanks for everything, James. We can't thank you enough.

Zxyl Bes'uliik (Noobi)
Regent of the Brotherhood

I sure hope James doesn’t get tired of the hero worship he has around here. Certainly he deserves every ounce of it, as without him this club would be massively dead.

But not only is James a master coder and problem solver, he is just a plain good guy. Any time I’ve run into issues and bugs he has always quickly found, diagnosed and fixed, often faster than it took me to describe it. All with a friendly :) on his face. And despite everyone finding new and creative ways to add to his pile of work, he still hasn’t tried to kill us all yet.

So congrats James on the 100 Dark Crosses or you know, the real thing you are getting, which is a lot nicer, and still falls very short of what you really deserve.

There are few people that I feel words utterly fail to encapsulate who they are and what they've accomplished. When I met James he was already a legend and after spending the last three years working with him that perception has only grown.

So much of what we do is via the site and coming from the origins of AOL Chat rooms and .txt files being shared with rosters and individuals having to keep track of their own medals where people nick-picked your ID Line by way of audits - this is like living in a Jetson era future!

But, the site is just the surface of what James does. This year he took the final leap of my decades long dream of making custom SW:CCG cards and playing them with people into a reality. This was easily a three year knowledge leap forward for me and I love that he didn't say "no" he said "let me add it to the list."

Which, if you know James, is pretty much a guarantee it's going to get done and probably in ways better than you imagined.

So, whether it's a 100 DCs (which I really hope it is) or something far more impressive, you've earned it a million times over and I thank you for all you've done for me personally and for the club as a whole!

Kamjin "Maverick" Lap'lamiz
Justicar of the Brotherhood

To say James is irreplaceable would be an understatement. From squashing discord bot bugs to implementing half-baked ideas like platform caps on cluster races, James is the proverbial man behind the curtain making it all happen. We could invent new ranks and awards for him and it would never be enough. Thank you for everything you do.

If I had never joined, the Brotherhood would still be here. Maybe a little worse for not having me, I like to think, but it would still be here. And I think that's true of very nearly every individual member, including most GMs and highly decorated elders. But would we have a club in 2023 without James? Well, it's possible. We have other programmers around. Similar clubs have limped along without a James-equivalent. But essentially everything we offer our members besides chat is based on James' work.

Take my own work as an example. I built systems for chat RP. Well, actually James built the logging. And then he built a different, better logging. The bot commands? James did those, not just implementing but honestly a lot of the design as well. The idea of doing sessions through threads? James. Integrating snapshots into sessions? James. And so on. The SA systems, data analysis, that ACC tournament, it's James all the way down.

I think most members are aware of how much work James does but that's only part of it. Anyone who's worked with developers professionally and also worked with James will tell you how special this guy is. He's friendlier, more proactive, faster, and more creative in an unpaid club job than most devs are in the full-time job that puts food on their table. James will sometimes explain that some idea would be bad to implement in practice, but you can hit him with whatever stupid, inane feature request you want and he'll handle it with grace. It's inhuman. We couldn't get better support than James if we paid $150,000 a year for it, I know, I've worked with what that gets you and they're not on his level.

So if he wants a Silver Sash, or a GLS, or a new rank, or a holiday named after him, just give it to him. Does he want my blood? Sure, how much does he need?

Alethia Archenksova
Headmistress

There are no praises that haven't been said about James before and yet, we can't stop saying them again and again because he deserves to hear them again and again. Without James, this place would by far not be the same place as it is right now nor will it be able to evolve in the way it is. James from someone who has literally no clue of what you do to keep this place running please keep it up. You rock!

Our systems are quite literally held together by the lynchpin known as James. Nothing we do is possible without his care and attention. In fact, the fact that I'm writing this in a modal window designed to append this very rec to his award is only possible because of him.

That's why it's not an understatement to say, all is possible due to James. I can't really say anything else. He codes, makes it look easy, and adheres to the whims of fanciful idea types. That's not to say he'll blindly do everything you ask. No, James will be the first to say "well, that seems a silly way of doing it" and then offers solutions based on things he's already built into the systems.

For his perspective, presence, and coding wizardry, I offer my thanks and congratulations.

Thank you for everything.