Best posts made by 2mspris

@Gingerlily I've always backed that adage that to become an expert with something it requires "10 thousand hours" of experience with it. I wouldn't be surprised if my oldest son hasn't had that amount of time or more towards computer use/building/repairing and coding. There's a reason that he's the "go to" kid at his school when people have a computer issue - and that I once had to go into the school to tell the administration that "No, the teachers at the school cannot send their laptops home with my kid for free computer repairs." after he kept bringing them home. That is his skill set and what he's good with, I would no more cut him off from that than I would tell the prospective future athlete that he can't play the sport he loves - or tell the future scientist he can't do science experiments.

My parents used to regularly send me news articles about the dangers of "too much screen time" when he was little. It's possible I sent them one back, with relish, when they released findings about the benefits of a lot of computer game play.

I have a few of these (though I tended to +who so the @doing isn't there). This is the oldest one I've got, off-hand:

Crack Mux - circa 1998

======================+| CrackMux Connected Players |+=====================
Name Sex Idle | Name Sex Idle | Name Sex Idle

Janae F 2s | Portia F 1m | Tasarla F 13m
Cannabis F 34s | Faith F 8m | Acid M 16m
Puzzle F 54s | Lily F 0s | Caitlynn F 38s
Erin F 1m | Lazarus M 29s | Ash M 6s
Jessica F 24s | Stef F 2m | Ric M 27s
Clove F 4s | Henry DeParre M 1m | Kitten F 4m
Taj M 1m | Ashtaroth M 51s | Judas M 4s
Janie F 42s | Aileen F 18s | Skail M 1m
George M 9m | Epone F 43s | Diego M 5m
Eduard M 15m | Adrianne F 3m | Becca F 22m
Rufus M 1m | Russell M 2m | Chases Bears M 32m
Summer's Kiss F 19m | Inazuma M 2m | Danala F 1m
Nightingale M 17m | Tamra F 46s | Taliahad F 4m
Elaina F 15s | Devinne F 20m | Thomas Sulliv M 1m
Colin M 42s | Miguel M 1m | Valium F 1m
Addict1 - 1m | Lorne M 1m | Olivia F 2m
Lance M 0s | Karen F 50s | Paolo M 5m
Krell M 31s | Nadya F 1m | Special K F 16s
Rips-The-Fles M 0s | Jiriki M 13s | Cocaine M 2m
Wythlock M 5m | Nick M 1m |
====[ 5:46am ]====[ Summer Morning ]====[ 59 players connected ]===========

So, just for disclosure, I'm a librarian IRL. And while I've not got a Discord Book Club in my pocket (our only Discord server is for teen use), what I do have is a Facebook Group that's a bookclub that chats twice a month for people to share what they've been reading with as much/or as little info about their opinions as they like. Open to ANYONE really, but direct invitation to @cirim13 since the magic words "book club" were mentioned. Night Owls Book Group - We chat at 9pm Eastern on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month. It's an aspect of the job, I'm always all for talking about books & sharing recommendations of my own.

@BallisticOrange It is, yes.

Going into the season where I REALLY wish that I could ask people to leave the library if they haven't had a bath in the last week. Particularly since we have a lot of Amish patrons. I get it, it's planting season & farming is sweaty work but when you've done hours of field work, over several days, and come into the library to use the computers in a public space for whatever reason - if you smell so strongly that it forces other people to leave, or at least put a significant distance between themselves and you... Just no.

Reading through this, I would like to submit to a couple of quick things (In one case, it was a thing that I spent years doing building work as staff and just never realized that this was a trick that could be done.). If it's more appropriate to drop this in another thread, I can move it. There was part of this under the section on linking rooms, but adding a part to it.

How can I quickly move a room from being attached to one to one place and to another?

Say, for the purpose of moving something finished from the Building Nexus of a game to the IC grid.

From the original linked-to room, pick up or take the exit.

  take Blue House

Once you have picked up the exit, travel to the new room where the exit is to be linked. Once in that room, drop the exit.

  drop Blue House

To finish you will need to have the #dbref of the room where the exit is to be linked, you can get that through the ways that were already suggested or you can examine the exit link that you just dropped and look for the #dbref that is listed as the source of the exit.

The source of the exit is what you need to link the exit coming out of the room you just drop to. From inside the room, it's a quick task of using the @link <exit>=<room #dbref> that was previously explained.

A small side note of warning with moving rooms around, they frequently get set to Halt when you do this. To clear the Halt on a room, from within that room:

 @set here=!Halt

I'm generally a pretty cynical, particularly when dealing with people who come off as WAY too nice, good, generous and take just a few too many pains to look perfect. I always have a nagging doubt which I try hard to keep in check, most of the time something shows to make my suspicions abate and not be founded.

Every now and then though? I run across someone who is just as bad as I worry. And while a small part of me wants to leap up and say "I TOLD YOU!", the reality is I just feel bad for the people who were actually manipulated by the whole con. I hate fakes.

I have created and played a number of characters that I count as my favorites, easily a dozen of them over the many years that I mushed. In the course of it, some of them even taught me a few lessons in the playing of them!

Hannah@Due Rewards has to be at the top of my list of favorites, even if that was some 17+ years ago that I played her. Hannah was my first character to genuinely be a villain on a mush, and the first character that I played who looked at a long-view. She plotted, planned and schemed to a level that I hadn't really tried to do before in a mush. But honestly, those things aren't what puts her at the top of the list for me.

Before playing Hannah I had usually picked up 1 or 2 people that I enjoyed RPing with and created character connections to, but it had always been rather minor story and wouldn't have really fallen into a genuine character developing change. With Hannah, who was the Tremere Regent/Primogen I gradually built up a great Tremere Chantry with a dozen people that became an integral part of that character's story and when I remember how much I enjoyed that character I don't remember it for the stats that she had (And she was honestly a pretty beefy 8th Gen Tremere.), what I remember is the fun I had as she tormented her ghouls, as she scolded and lectured the "younger" vampires she was trying to teach and train and in her interacting with the others (even though I generally wasn't much of a fan of the politics).

I think I could go on and on listing the fond memories I have of that character but the fact that they are memories I really owe to all those people that I played with on Due Rewards, even the ones I didn't get along with. Hannah was the first character that I played that really taught me that lesson as a gamer.

After her I would be hard pressed to decide who was my next most enjoyable, Jenny@Denver, Crystal@TR, Cierra or Panthea@DC or Lucy@TR are all on the top of my list for different reasons in each case.

I worked as a 911 operator for several years, adults do A LOT MORE stupid shit than teens do. But, as said earlier, it's a generational thing to bitch about the generations that come after.

@ganymede said in Bloopers:

@2mspris said in Bloopers:

... encourage them to come play.

Maved a guest an extremely graphic TS pose.

Two points:

• I can't think of anything more welcoming.
• Hurr hurr, you said "come play."

Well the guest in question did immediately make themself a PC bit and joined the game. The person that the pose was meant for had way too much fun with that for the rest of the time I was on that game, every time a new person showed up they encouraged them to page me.

In the case of the challenge I did, if you accumulated so many steps you got your name into a drawing for prizes X-amount of times. I was pretty pleased with how many steps I did get, but yeah, I figured out a while ago that the amount of time/walking necessary to get way up there on steps. (And I try to avoid running, it tends to screw up one of my ankles if I get too ambitious which just makes it impossible for me to be active while I wait for it to recover.) I mostly just focus on the "Get 10,000 steps.", it's a bit of a competitive thing trying to keep up with my youngest brother (who had been in an ER residency so he was on his feet for 8+ hours a day). It is, at least, motivating to keep active for that alone generally.

@Tinuviel said in How do you like things GMed?:

@2mspris said in How do you like things GMed?:

You're gonna have players who do that. I had a player who did that when I ran the aforementioned scene and exploded the Starbucks. 1 player called 911 and planned to leave. Another player whipped out a phone and proceeded to video as much as they could get. 2 other players jumped in to try to help.

Sounds like perfectly reasonable responses to me. If you want them to investigate the exploded Starbucks, give them a reason to care. Give them a reason to violate their sense of self-preservation.

Sure, sometimes players just don't get it, but other times it's that they're not being given enough impetus to go down the rabbit hole.

Absolutely, those were reasonable responses to me. If I want only the players who will do a specific thing, then it's my responsibility to say that from the start. And I wanted pcs to be doing what they were going to be doing when that happened, to me that is the point of running something for players - otherwise you might as well just write up a narrative and post it to a bboard's news reel. The GM is responsible for providing NPC reaction to what the players are doing - the PC who elected to call 911 and leave? She did have to figure out how she was getting out of there. Her car was parked close to the explosion, she couldn't get her car, she was going to walk out - but which direction when a crowd was rushing to get away as well, will she dive into the crowd and potentially get hurt? Will she go a different route, etc. The PC who videoed the entire thing later told a cop she had it all on video, but refused to give over the recording, etc - that turned into plotline that also went on for a few weeks. Communication is key, but it's also important to be flexible.

Parents who clearly should not be that.

Who are incapable or simply don't care to teach their children how to behave in public, nor care about the fact that they are being obnoxious little shits. 1 woman with 4 children, and every child is playing a different video game on a different tablet computer, with the volume as loud as it goes so you can't hear anything except the sound of game.

And if you ask if it's possible for the volume to be turned down slightly, you get cussed at by the middle child and mom starts to giggle.

This topic makes me feel old, thanks for that @Arkandel!

With that said, I've been doing this hobby a LONG time and I've come to several personal observations when it comes to RPing the IC romances/TS/Etc. YMMV on these, of course.

1. While I've played Poly characters before, it's actually rare and I kinda suck at it. In part because...

2. I'm REALLY picky about just who I want to have my character in IC relationships with. If it's not someone I know, I tend to quietly "check references" because I've had some truly bad experiences with people failing to recognize that IC intimacy does not equal OOC intimacy and that makes me very uncomfortable very fast. (And in a couple cases led to RL stalking that had to be addressed to the NOT FUN of everyone.)

3. Having been on the staff end of actually being called in to help mediate a situation of "we're gonna have a fun, if a little rough, kinky sex scene" that 2 days later turned into the female PC trying to start a super-war by telling Mages & her Changeling IC Boyfriend that her PC had been raped by a werewolf (Who didn't know she had an IC boyfriend, insert other complicating crap such as them spending time in her bed which probably would have smelled like said boyfriend who also lived with her.) - who was then being hunted down by those she reported it to, and she OOC several times lied and told players that it genuinely happened that way - and ultimately logs of both the scenes and OOC conversations involved between people had to be read by staff - I rapidly lost interest in paying any attention to who spends time with who situations and am a fan of OOC disclosure because that type of train wreck really does ruin the fun of many people.

I got it from @EmmahSue but still it should be shared!

Hermione gives no fucks!

@Coin said in MSB MU*?:

I learned Mage that way, too. @Fortunae was crazy good at explaining it, if you gave him time. Man does like to talk.

Like water is wet.

@2mspris
I force my children to bring headphones for their electronics. Not because I give any fucks about the people around me, but because -I- don't want to have to listen to the same goddamn 3 stanzas of a shitty game song or whatever fucking youtube video my youngest has decided he absolutely MUST WATCH RIGHT NAO OMG. So... to all those people who have sat near me and my kids? You're inadvertently welcome!

The only time my kids are allowed to play the sound on a video game is if it's in their own bedroom (which they each have their own stuff to play on in their respective rooms), if they have headphones (but if we are in public they are only allowed to have one plugged in their ear, because I can't stand it if something is said to them and they seem to ignore it, or if they are so tuned out of what's going on around them that they fail to pick up on the things that might require their attention), or if I'm at work and not around to tell them to turn the volume off. I'm not a noise pollution from multiple sources-sort of person - it tends to give me a headache really fast.

On the other hand though, they can play rock music as loud as they want in my house.

We got fitbits last year, winter is harder to keep up with the steps but all summer/fall since getting them I was managing the 10,000 steps a day walking. It took effort, I have to admit, but it felt good to be doing. I live in a small town where almost everything is within walking distance.

Writing an application for a grant. For work. When you've never done it before, but your boss is sure you'll do great at it because "you're a good writer".

Getting right on that, no pressure! flail

Ahh Facebook-people... I get it, you're pissed at me so you Unfriend me. Meh, whatever. But goodness - unprovoked blocking on Facebook, that'll show me! (Granted, this is as much a RL as it is a mushing-bitch. I'm gonna start keeping a tally of mushers who block me on Facebook. )