Plenty of News to go around

You have dossiers… use them!

As of late, I’ve gotten a lot of requests to “check” on whether or not someone passed a course. I’m guessing that we have members who don’t check their e-mail all that often, or don’t have their spam filters set properly. 9 times out of 10, the person has passed the course, which means it is listed under that training tab on their dossier. I find it highly irritating when I am asked to look this stuff up. My irritation grows when the member follows the correct procedure (e-mailing their house leadership first) and then their leaders, people who should know better, ask me to look, without any indication of whether or not they looked themselves.

So, before you ask me about any course status, check your dossier and all e-mail first. Especially check your spam folders, since some mail servers don’t like the automated messages. If, and only if, you can find no trace of the course should you e-mail the EP (note: e-mail them first!) and ask. You should wait at least 48 hours from the time you submitted the exam before e-mailing them, though. If the EP does not respond, or says it has already been graded, then e-mail me. I’m happy to help, but I should be the last resort, not the first (except on those two exams I grade). New members will get a one time grace period in which I will gladly explain the investigatory process to them. After that, all bets are off.

So, let this be fair warning: if you e-mail me about course status without having first done everything possible on your end, don’t be surprised if you receive an irritated and sarcastic reply from me. If house or clan leaders continue to do it, then I will ask Kraval to deny any competitions from your units that use the Shadow Academy.

New EP Needed

I need a new EP for the HTML Basics course. The current EP took a long LoA without informing me. You can find the general position requirements on the wiki (I won’t link it this time), but I am adding a few more:

1. For your answer key, highlight all corrections in the first question in red text so that they stand out

2. Provide a sample of your own use of HTML. Web pages made with Frontpage or other such simple editors don’t count. You can either have the webpage up or include the code in your application so I can plug it into an editor.

3. This needs to be an actual application. Explain why you want the job, why you think you’re the best, etc.

No Christmas Competition

Due to time constraints, I won’t be able to host the “Who Stole Christmas” event that I had intended to. Simply put, this is the busiest time of the year for me at work (and I’m buying a house on top of that) and competition participation in my events has never been very big.

Conclusion

Yes, I was serious about everything I said at the start of this report. We are working on several new courses as well.