-> <table width="453" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;" height="1511"> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" height="62"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" bgcolor="#333333" colspan="2" style="border-left-width: 1; border-right-width: 1; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1; border-bottom-width: 1" bordercolor="#333333" height="50">

_The Twenty-Seventh of September in the Year of Darkness,

Two-Thousand and Five

*Report Twenty
*_ </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">

- Shake, Sh Sh Shake that Jac, girl -

- Situational Commentary -

- Kir added to Alacrity Staff -

- Praetor Evaluations Moving Along -

- Firefox = Justicar -

- Handbooks Enter Edit Stage -

- ToL Coding Almost Finished -

- New Subdomains -

- BF2 Server/Donations Update -

- Rebirth/Projects Update -

- Big Props -

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" If you can't laugh at yourself, there's always someone there to show you how it's done." </td> </tr>

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The fifth week of law school, I have noticed, is always a drag. It's just very hard to stay on top of everything at this time. I have no idea why, but it happened the fifth weeks of last year, and this week is a drag too. I'm aight though. Just need to catch up on a couple of reading assignments then I'll be good as gold.

The wife started teaching this week. She finally received her teaching credentials from Ohio and has taken over a classroom as a long-term sub. Hopefully the teacher (who is on maternity leave) won't come back and my wife will get the full-time spot come January. now that she's back at work, I'm picking up a little more slack around the house. the good thing is though, that I get home before her, aka DB time.

I cancelled the computer order that I had placed with Dell. After thinking about it, I realized that I just wanted the sweet monitor, and that wasn't a good excuse for buying the machine. I have a lot of good parts in my old PC, so I'm going to buy a new mobo, chip and RAM. I'm looking for a socket 939 board for an Athlon 64 3400+ that has AGP, dual core ram capabilities, along both with SATA and ATA connections. if anyone has any good recommendations, let me know.

OSU rocks. LSU losing should bump us up another step in the polls.

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I was talking with one of the important players in this club last night about the DB in general. We discussed how there are times that this club really feels like it's losing it flare. This person commented that there are too many people that have nothing but self-serving interests, that drives people off and just makes for a situation that isn't fun.

I don't mean to discount that perception at all. I think that there are valid points to that. People need to be looking out for the interests of themselves, but not all the time. The DB's future should be put first, and if you are a leader, the member's interests above your own. No one should ever be driven away because of a selfish leader, and if there is a problem there, I should be notified.

However, as I told this person last night, there is an ebb and flow to the DB that moves not just with what the club is doing, but more importantly that moves with the unique perception of the person looking at it. I am always pretty upbeat and optimistic about the club because my position affords me a view that has a lot of information coming in. I generally know everything that is going on and can point out each place that progress is being made. it's a big picture view that comes with being GM. Of course -- I deal with all of the bullshit too, but that's not enough to shake my confidence.

Others, though, may not get the right information, may not talk to the right people, and that will lead to a negative perception. For instance, one person commented to me after my last report that for a long time they had thought Trev should be fired since the DSC changes weren't occurring. Then they read about the 1.3 megabytes of documents that Trev had sent me for review and the information brightened that person's perception. Trev's been getting his work done -- it's just hard to show it when the work is in a stage not ready for release. That's why I've always defended the DSC -- it's a HUGE work effort. The information flow will always be imperfect here. The DC tries to get out as much as possible, but it is never enough. A lot of times, one just needs to take a step back, look at the situation and say "is this the way it really is, or is there something I don't know?" Never assume the worst of people, projects and the like, because most of the time you will be wrong.

It's all about perspective, and from mine -- things are going great.

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I sent Kir a list of projects that he could choose from the other day and he decided that he wanted to help out in writing an Alacrity document. So, now we should be able to get a few more of these out faster with both Kir and Pyr writing them for me to review.

By way of update, Alanna is now holding onto the newest Alacrity document that I approved on a final read through. She is editing it and we should have that released soon after she gets that back to us.

As always, I am looking for ways to increase the visibility of the Alacrity. Any suggestions are welcome.

View the other Alacrity documents here.

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New Praetor Policy

Like I reported last week, I am in the process of discussing the Praetor situation with each DC member to determine who does and doesn't need them. You'll notice that there were two removed this past week. To match the other societies that have the assistant to the Society leader in the internal rankings of the society, the ACC has moved Halcyon to Deputy Combat Master instead of P:CM. He will essentially have the same duties and functions as before but is not considered a part of the Dark Summit like the other Praetors. Also, P:OHC has been removed since there really wasn't enough work to justify the position.

I'll keep you updated on the rest as we go through them.

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I'm sure that if you're reading this you know that Firefox has been appointed and confirmed to the position of Justicar. I have every confidence that he will do a spectacular job.

With his appointment, I am going to be letting him take over the elements of the proposed CoJ changes. he will be working to get a new structure put in place as per the DC's recommendations. As noted in news posts, FF is working to get a web site established as a place where he can keep track of policies, charges, cases, etc. Further, I am making some coding changes in the web site to make this all a little easier.

You will be hearing more from FF as he gets settled.

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Just a quick update: I received three more finished handbooks this week. Now the GM, MAA, HM, SHW, KHP, OHC, KCB, PCON, CM and LH handbooks are ready to be edited. Donitz has volunteered to help with this, so I am sending them his way to work on them. I will post them as he returns them to me.

If you don't know, each Dark Council member has been working to create a handbook that describes their position and its duties in order to help with the eventual transition to someone else.

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For a couple months now, Spears and I have been sending back and forth different versions of the new Test of Lore. We finally settled on one about a month ago, had Alanna edit it, and I've been trying to get to coding it up.

Well, this weekend I finally got to code the main part of the ToL, and then Jam3z helped me in the process of each ToL getting graded. Thanks to jam3zy for that.

I would say that the coding is about 85% done. I need to go back in and make a few changes to the text and then make it so that the people have to re-do questions that they miss. From there, the test needs to be linked up to the initial activation emails and we'll be set.

The reasoning behind this project is simple: we only retain about 33% of the members that submit the join form. Most of the initiates either don't know what to do or are too intimidated by the current Test of Lore to complete it. This is not to mention the potential of having to wait 2-3 days to actually get into a clan.. Thus, we are losing a ton of potential members. The new Test of Lore will allow an initiate to activate their dossier and proceed straight into a self-grading test. When they pass it, they move directly into the clans. No more waiting for HM grading or MAA transfer approval.

Now, I know that some people don't like this because it will A: increase some of the dead weight in the clans and B: let in some people that are just plain dumb. But the dead weight can be easily dealt with if you follow the steady AWOL policy that we outline in the Welcoming New Members Alacrity document, and, well, we already have a lot of dumb people, so that's a moot point.

If this increases out percentage of members kept, then it will be a great success. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action.

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Two new subdomains this week:

• House Exar Kun: http://exarkun.darkjedibrotherhood.com

• House B ane: http://bane.darkjedibrotherhood.com

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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.

The following are the server companies that Kir has dug up. If you have any experience with any of these companies, please email me and let me know your recommendation on it.

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

VSK Gaming - http://www.vskgamingservers.com/

Xgameservers - http://www.xgameservers.com/

BFG - http://www.bfgservers.com/

AOWC - http://www.artofwarcentral.com/

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Nothing actually to report this week. We've been busy with updates to the old website.

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• Gigantor props to Jam3z for his ToL coding -

• Props to Pyralis for his constant work -

• Congrats to Ylith on the Grand Cross!! -

• Yaaay! M'Kel Kahn got a GC! -

• W00t! Strat got Epis! -

• Big props to Virulence on getting a lightsaber!-

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