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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate May 2002 |
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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate May 2002 |
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INSIDE SCOOP |
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Some of you may remember, deep in the dusty filing cabinets of your memories, a car in your past you especially loved. Or any piece of large equipment, for that matter... although I doubt people are as apt to build a strong emotional bond to a forklift. Me, I have a particular car in mind. It was a lovely Buick. By now, it's twelve years old, yes, but it's a good car. It runs well, and really doesn't complain, provided you don't give it anything better than bargain-basement gas. Like I said, a very good car. Sure, like all cars, mine has a few... erm... "personality quirks." I term it that way because it sounds better than "mechanical neuroses." It has a little thing with the suspension system, to the tune of it rebounds a little strangely from bumps, courtesy of a little subframe damage earlier in its life. I view it as a bargain, myself; it simulates a cruise in a smallish boat on rough seas to such a degree of realism that you begin to wonder how good the lifeboats are. Then, of course, there's the antenna issue I covered in an article in time past. And a little electrical/sound system thingy where the entire speaker system starts to go nuts if you turn the bass up too high on the audio equalizer. But it's all part of the magic that makes that car what it is. Well, it has come time to say goodbye to my old friend. It's given me 106,000 miles of laughs, and a few articles, even, so it's earned its retirement. I loved that car, and will always remember it. Much like my first ship in Fed. It was a good little ship, never complained. It was a Harrier, and you can stop snickering now because I know for a fact you owned one, too. Most of you did, anyway. As I recall, one of my friends started out with a unicycle. But I digress. That was a good ship. I gave it fuel that came from the worst sources (our only fuel source), overhauled at the last possible minute, and I didn't even know we were supposed to put the landing gear down the first five or six times I landed. And through it all, it never complained. Oh, sure, a lot of buzzers and sirens kept going off, but that really only roused me from my usual "during-landing nap," and therefore can't really be called a problem. (Evidently, those buzzers and sirens are supposed to wake up pilots who seem to have neglected important parts of running a ship - who knew?) But, of course, I had to send that ship to retirement as well when it became a little too aged, a few too many parts fell off in interstellar space, and a little too much oxygen began leaking out. The hallucinations were a ball, but a pig in a tutu isn't the best source of landing instructions, I found. A fun one, sure, but not all that reliable. So, it is with the same sense of bittersweet reminiscence (wow, I can be poetic - who knew?) that I bid my car a fond farewell, and a peaceful rest wherever it's going. Please don't email me and tell me; I'm happy with my delusion of "Buick Heaven." And before I'm swamped with offers from you, my wonderful readers, who may be trying to unload cars of your own, thank you, but I already have a not-new new car, and a nice one at that. Another Buick, even, and I look forward to a happy life with it until its retirement. I have to look into this antenna thing it has, though. And something with the suspension.
DIE SPY
BEAMS! EXCEPT MINE! The spy beam is a very useful device. It comes in all shapes and sizes (depending on your imagination), but all variations serve the same purpose: watching people. I can't help but yank the starter cord on my beam, wave away the smoky exhaust and watch a rather humorous Fedder bumble around DataSpace (I won't give any names, Hazed would hurt me). As much as I like to spy on people, and as hypocritical as this may sound (the little guy in all of us!), I hate to be spied on. It has always been bad to have a conversation with someone only for it to be spied and logged by someone you don't like, altered and then sent to someone you have befriended. This hasn't happened to me; I'm speaking for others. But as many people will say: there is no privacy in Fed. Ah, but why not make privacy? Speak in code. Looking up code numbers, words, or jumbled letters would be impractical and to keep it all secure, you'd have to change it frequently. So I won't write "codes" over and over again for you all to win, but that doesn't mean I won't order my techno-slave, my desktop, and my box-'o-hobbies to do so. Many of you use zMUD and know you can use its programming language to do some nifty things, but some may not realize how much power you can summon with just a little logical thinking and a lot of typing. And it brings me to say I may soon evade your spy beams with an afro-tech genre of encryption used to communicate between my closer Fed buddies via TBs. Mwahahahaha! Take that!
THE
EASIEST WAY TO MAKE MONEY IN FED Maybe some of you remember the article a Duchess named Breyer wrote for the January 6 edition of the Fed Chronicle. If not, you may want to take a look here. In case you hadn't read it, basically, she took some poor helpless soul (who, at the time, my character was engaged to), forced him into marriage, and then sued him for a lot of money. Well, I've found that technique to work a few times. However, I'm much different than her. I GAVE people money to marry me. On March 25, what would have been the monthaversary of my marriage to Genike, I was feeling lonely. My husband had not been on in quite a while, and I was mad. So, I did what any normal girl would do, and I decided to hold a Mystery Guest type wedding. With the help of SallyAnne, men were gathered on the Glenlion LP, many of whom waiting to marry me. However, at this time, I had no idea which man/men were going to partake in this joyous occasion. I stepped out of my ship, got on stage, and waited anxiously for the first candidate to step up. An orange glow filled the room, as Darkpumpkin stepped on stage. He received his paycheck for the ordeal, and we exchanged our vows. Later, I found out he had tried to bribe the next candidate to not marry me. Well, 200 megs changed #2's mind, and he stepped on stage to be my next victim. Zealouselijah and I also exchanged vows, and now he was mine. Things got a little hectic from there. Men were scared to marry me! But, the down time didn't last long as Maley and Emcee both rushed to Glenlion to be mine. Maley arrived first, so he was the first lucky man to swap onion rings and sweet words of love with me. Emcee was up next to do the same. Emcee was different, however. He expected a honeymoon! But, another couple hundred megs turned him away from that crazy idea. Again, there was another dry spell. SallyAnne flooded 9 with invitations to be wed to me, and I TBed every male I could find. Finally, I got a man of the wolfy species. Greywolfie sprinted in his wolflike way to be wed to me. He "arf"ed his vows, and got a nice onion ring on the ear. Now, this may seem crazy, but it works! FOs and POs alike made some quick cash by being wed to me. The total ceremonies took less than an hour, and being that it was about 2.00am PDT, not many were in attendance. The moral of this story is: If you ever need a few hundred megs for stat money, builds, or anything else, marry Bratt.
I don't know if it's just me, or if this is some sort of a universal suffering. Maybe it's a matter of perspective. I'm not sure. But either way, it seems like something that bothered the feathers off you before is bound to return to your doorstep sooner or later, usually in the same form. Before you get the wrong impression (too late!), I'm actually somewhat glad to be bothered by this particular annoyance. No, I'm not going bipolar (or no more so), it's just that this is one of those aggravations that has a good side to it. See, it's time to start scaring up airfare to Chicago for this year's FedMeet. As my loyal readers (hi mom!) know, I've been to the previous two years, and I would much like to go again this year. I have a few months to get the airfare squared away, but it's already beginning to pose a problem. Between trying to figure out a cheap carrier, but trying to balance price versus survivability is tricky. And the real hassle is how many choices there really are. Not like Fed. There's no price-matching to be done. Every ticket costs 10,000 IG. There is only one carrier, and, to my knowledge, all you're allowed is carry-on. No, in Fed, transit is a very simple and straightforward matter. Convenient, too. All you have to do is more or less make the suggestion you want to go somewhere, and no matter where you are, poof!, instant starliner. That's service. You can't even find skycaps anymore in the real world, to say nothing of someone conjuring up a jetliner on a moment's notice. Yep, we have it pretty cushy in Fed when it comes to travel. We don't have to diddle around with all the annoying little details we're subjected to in real life, such as making sure we classify ourselves as "one adult" to the airline's website instead of "cargo." (As I've found, the difference is that adults are charged on a per-person basis, while cargo is by the pound.) Frankly, there's really only one flaw in our Fed travel system as I see it. And while the system is pretty good, this one flaw is a critical one. No free peanuts.
'TWAS
THE NIGHT BEFORE PROMOTION 'Twas the night before promotion,
when all through Fed My mobiles were cramped all
"snug" in buckets, When out on the LP, there arose
such a splatter His Hawaiian shirt shone brightly
upon the ground The "messiah" heading the
bunch—it was uncanny As all newbies fly before they hit
the sun, And then, in a loud BOOM, I heard
on the roof He was dressed very loudly from his
head to his toe My bitten nails held tightly,
locked in my teeth He wasn't as scary as I thought he
would be He spoke not a word, but went
straight to his work, He sprang to the taxi, the saints
waved goodbye,
MAKE IT
INTERESTING Interstellar space in Fed is made up of duchies and in these duchies are planets and in these planets are precious commodities with a lot of potential to make groats. Lots of groats. However, sometimes all hell breaks loose, one or two duchies don't agree with each other and trading goes beyond making money and into making the person you're hauling to lose money. Fortunately your planet pretty much has an infinite supply of groats it can make. Everything someone hauls to you, you can haul to someone else. It is kind of like the blame game. Usually some negotiations, ultimatums and sometimes a stream of pointless insults take place between the Dukes/Duchesses. It is never a good idea to send a low ranking and relatively new PO to negotiate and especially if they don't know how to negotiate and have poor communication with their Duke/Duchess on the situation. This is my favorite part: one duchy may haul to another to cause the POs to lose money. The POs simply sit around and complain that they are losing money because someone is maliciously hauling to them. I guess they don't have ship permits. Whenever a PO sits around so helplessly it makes me pretty sick. What even makes me sicker is when the Duke/Duchess brings out the ban brander and starts marking the rumps of haulers. If there comes a time when that Duke/Duchess retaliates by sending his own haulers out after banning many or all of the enemies, I become annoyed. War in Fed is rather pointless to me, but if you must do it at least be somewhat sensible and make it interesting to watch. And keep it in DataSpace for Ming's sake! It is a Fed War! Why take it to a chat room somewhere? That ruins it for the folks with spy beams.
SavageAlsatian (9:54:47 AM):
The damned dog, being in one of the most peeved,
perturbed, rotten and unfunny moods possible, must
regurgitate an article for Hazed today. So it's one of those days when the kibble turns soggy, fleas are playing hopscotch on the places I can't reach, the hot tub drain is stopped up with dog hair, and planet owners are sending tight beams complaining that they can't put a reward on my head. To top it off - after slyly conning Hazed and Zeroz into running our planet related articles on alternating weeks, this week it's my turn. As I stared at the gelatinous pile of wet kibble in my bowl, inspiration hit. Since I'm in a peevish mood and there's no planet to chew on, I'll write about my top 100 pet peeves. Pet peeves 1-93 have to do with food. Pet peeve 94: People who complain about spy beams without realizing they do nothing interesting enough to spy. Pet peeves 95-97 deal with fleas. Pet peeve 98: Hot tubs. There are so many hot tubs in Fed we are going to turn into a society of wrinkled Shar Pei hounds. Nearly everyone has one and nearly all of them clog up when I jump in. Pet peeve 99: Rewards of 69. Once again, nearly everyone has one and they've lost their charm. Surely there's other positions, er... I mean rewards available to show some ingenuity. Pet peeve 100: Planets with spelling errors. I know, you've walked through it a zillion times and everything looks great. What you don't see is the 20 times you spelled field as feild. There's an easy way to take care of a lot of these problems, folks. Load your .gen file into a word processor or run a log of the workbench listing of your locations and check for errors using some type of spell checker. Do change the errors you find using Genesis or the Workbench. Don't save your file from the word processor after you check it. You and your visitors will be rewarded by not having to kill any brain cells trying to figure out what an atricle is. Leaves more time for wrinkling up your reward in that hot tub, you know.
Fed teaches us all many lessons. Some lessons have real-world application, others don't. And a precious few lessons require no transcription at all, because Fed is kind enough to give us the lesson in an easy-to-understand format: real life. What actually holds my attention this week - not to mention puts us on the track of life lessons - is the somewhat frustrating fact that for the last few days, I've been inadvertently auditioning for a zombie movie every time the clock passes seven at night. Like every good little Fedder, I'm suffering from sleep exhaustion, a condition that strikes many of us each month, and which is only treatable by sleeping through an entire Tuesday. Most often, this is caused by a condition called MNFC, or Marathon Nighttime Fed Conversations, which interferes with normal sleep. Consequently, every time late evening rolls around, I'm not firing on all eight cylinders anymore. Maybe six. Now, my problems with the sandman are caused by a combination of mild insomnia (can't sleep before one in the morning) and work (can't sleep past seven in the morning). Independently these are annoying, together they mean I am charting new degrees of grumpiness every time my alarm clock goes off lately. I find solace in the fact I'm not alone. Many of you, my neighbor Fedders, often have the same exact problem. Think about it: how many times have you gone to get in bed and your alarm clock goes off before you're even fully in bed? Some of you more than others. And it's because Fed is alluring enough to keep us up most of the night talking to people and doing things other than sleeping, so by the time sleep-time is over, we're really worn out. We signal the rest of the world to our plight by random growls and threatening looks all that day - a system that has worked marvelously well for lions and cougars, and gets the point across with a minimum of hassle on our part. As for me, although my general state of exhaustion is not Fed-induced (blame my boss - I do), it's still having the same general effect. I've been worn out for a few days now, and since it's a weekend, I have some repair work to do to my sleep storage batteries. And so, I leave you with this final thought for all of us suffering as I am from sleep loss... Would someone hit the snooze button? Mffmfmfmmmfmmzfmfm zzzzfmfmfmzmzfz mffmfzmzmmzzmzmmfmffmffm. Fffmfmfmzzzmfmffmmmm fmzfmmmz fm zmzmfmmmmfmm mf mffm_zfmmmm@mfzzmf.mff. [Translating...] Well, folks, I'm off to bed. Should you like to send anything for me to read when I rise from hibernation, feel free to send it to Horatio_TheWriter@yahoo.com! [Sorry, ladies and gentlemen; at first he was dictating with his face in his pillow.]
A
NEWSDROID'S JOB REVEALED! I've heard that a few Fedders think that being a Newsdroid is a relatively easy job. Some of you are sorely mistaken. To clear up this misconception of the hard life and job of a Newsdroid, I will dedicate my week's article to outlining the job of a Newsdroid, the hard work we do, and the crap we put up with. Rules: Complaints From Readers: Deadlines: Email Difficulties: Maintenance and Time Off: Perks:
MADE
TO ORDER, JUST ADD WATER
Upon my return to Fed, I rediscovered many wonders that had, until now, been only a faint memory. The spybeam, the Starship Cantina, armed spacecraft, bounties, gropes, and last but certainly not least, Rich Folk. But my latest discovery surpasses all of the others by leaps and bounds. Genetico, the universe's leader in genetic engineering has finally bridged the gap between fantasy and reality - the real, and that which only dreamers dare to imagine. Four weeks ago, in a briefing to the press, Genetico unveiled their latest, and most impressive accomplishment to date: The Genetically Engineered Wife. Available in sixty-two different nationalities, thirteen different species, and a number of different shapes and sizes, Neo-Wife will be released to the public this coming year. Upon release Neo-Wife is expected to gross nearly 4 gigagroats within the first six months of sales. Neo-Wife comes in a compact shipping package recently approved by customs - simply add water and the woman of your dreams will instantly appear. This is the same packaging used for Genetico's most popular product among Dukes, 'Assassin in a box.' Included in this package, comes a complimentary audio wedding service, along with a handy pre-nuptial agreement already signed by the lovely product's creators themselves (great investment). Not interested in a long-term relationship, just looking for someone to accompany you to those boring business dinners? For such cases, Genetico offers a limited use, thirty-day trial version for half the normal shelf price. If that were not enough to sell any freethinking male, Genetico has implemented the special techniques of gene splicing and gene archive retrieval in order to make a better wife. Remember a certain Baroness you used to pine over in your Merchie days? Pine no more; with only a miniscule amount of genetic material from the subject, Genetico is capable of creating an exact genetic replica of your Juliet, with only a 12% margin of error. With advanced gene splicing methods, Genetico is capable of re-creating not just one past love, but multiple. Like Diesel, but not the way she keeps her place of business? By combining her DNA with that of a generally clean, fastidious female, Genetico can create for you a one-of-a-kind gem of a gal. Still not convinced? Genetico is so sure of their product that they've included a lifetime warranty. That's right, if your Neo-Wife fails to fulfill her duties to satisfaction, Genetico will dispose of and replace her virtually free of charge. Upon release Neo-Wife will be available in all general stores, or you can order directly from the factory at a one time, two for one offer. Genetico's expertise doesn't stop here. After they've mastered what they call the 'dummy genes' that seem to congest the cognitive thought of males of every species, they will begin to produce a number of masculine models. Neo-Husband is expected to begin production within the next five years. As for myself, being a Frognellian, the idea of inter-species marriage is rather unsettling. Because Genetico is yet to develop a Frognellian version, the product will remain, by and large, unused by yours truly.
LOW-QUALITY
UPPER-MANAGEMENT You know, there are some things that, despite the fact they annoy us to no end, I don't think we'd know what to do without them. Those things that just get under our skin and bug us to the point where we begin considering napalm as a solution, but when something is finally done to remove the problem (preferably sans napalm), things seem uncomfortably different. I considered this as I ordered another build for my planet. I, of course, got the traditional message "You instruct your officials to proceed with (insert build's name here) construction." This got me to thinking about those officials. Except for constructing new things or investing in social security, you never, ever hear from them. Not even when the animals escaped from the zoo and took up residence in your ship. Apparently, then, we have similar officials to the ones we have today. Officials who, even when pressed for details about something blatantly obvious, will first deny any knowledge of it, and then deny any connection to it, even if their name is stenciled on the problem in question. Further enhancing the career-survivability of our modern officials is the way in which our Fed officials go about business. You'll note that the message in no way implies they personally are actually going to do anything about what you've discussed with them. All it really says is that they'll pass the message on to someone who can acutally get something done. Typical officials. Maybe it's something in Officials School that they cover, such as the idea of "If you don't touch a potential problem directly, you can't be blamed if it goes wrong, but since you initiated it, you can grab credit for it if it goes right. Either way, we always have the paper shredder." Frankly, though, we can tell our officials are not really up to snuff. Our deficits tell us that rather plainly. If these "officials" really did anything besides fill up their expense accounts, they'd be handling getting those deficits filled, don't you think? No, of course not. Because before they can import anything to fill those -1000 ton deficits, they must first fill out an economic impact study, ask a few thousand people what they think, throw both out and do what they want to do, which is go back on their golfing holiday in Scotland. So perhaps they are doing something about the deficits. That would explain why they never get filled automatically. Shouldst any of you out there in readerworld care to share anything with me, please feel completely free to e-mail me at Horatio_TheWriter@yahoo.com! It's toll-free and absolutely painless! (We take no responsibility for injuries sustained while trying to e-mail us; we sure didn't tamper with your keyboard, and we're not responsible for your cat jumping on your hands as you type. You can't tell a cat to do anything, anyway.)
SUMMER
PLANS I'm having a lot of trouble being inspired tonight. Perhaps taking my grandmother to a five-hour bingo event (she can't drive) warped my fragile little mind. Was it the thick haze of cigarette smoke or the seemingly eternal boredom? I'm not sure. With the last bit of inspiration I have (and leaving a little to recover with over the next week), I will list my plans for my summer that are relevant to Fed: I. Build my time machine. These are always useful to have around. Have you ever found yourself angry at someone, so you quickly type an angry email and send it to them without considering if it was what you really wanted to do or say? The time machine would allow you to go back in time and smash the computer before you sent the email. II. Fine-tune my exchange. I miss finding my deficits only in the agricultural digests. Hopefully I will be able to achieve this by very selective building and production point management, making it produce loads of groats and a Squire's goldmine. III. Map Sol. This is something else I've meant to do for my own gain. Using zMUD's nifty mapping tools, I'm going to map Sol. My last maps were terrible and zMUD's included programming for mapping was very buggy. VI. Finish my planet design. I have a lot of work to do on it. There's nothing much more to say about it other than visit it when it is completed.
Since no new review requests have been submitted, the north wall of my doghouse has been the subject of my exploring efforts this week. The title of the review took up more space than the text itself so I've decided to just summarize it for you here: Wood, wall, moldy, only one location. The rest of my week was spent hacking into the Fed code and installing my backlog of Senatorial Canine commands. Usually Bella finds my pawprints on the machines immediately and erases my efforts, but this week an overabundance of rounds bought her by students grateful to see the beginning of summer led to a little laxness on her part – or the inability to actually focus on the machines or code while her head was parked in a puddle of stale ale spilled on the table. Thankfully she assured the more alert patrons of her continued existence by the snores that masked out even the moaning produced by Traders visiting the upstairs rooms at CDs. For as long as Bella is unconscious, the following commands have been installed by yours truly, for the benefit of yours truly. ROLLOVER: Logs player in and out of Fed until each active player with a 69 reward has had an additional 27 reward placed on his or her head. Be sure you are pretty flush with groats before executing this command; every player and their marsrat seems to have a 69 reward these days. FLUSH: Useful whenever players that usually reside in the Cantina decide to take a shower. Probably the most effective but least used command in the new command set. INTERFACE: The interface command was actually introduced into Fed in 1996 by Bella. Beta Testers refused to stop testing, so this command was not widely distributed. My update includes INTERFACE LEG for galactic canines wanting to participate in a little leg loving with human species in DataSpace. MARK playername's SPACESHIP: Teleports a canine to the LP of playername, and leaves a conspicuous puddle stain on the hull. DIG: Adapted from other on-line games, the dig command allows vertical progress downward from the current position of the player. Options include a dig level, sling factor, and mud retention for later ventures into CDs. COVER: Used in conjunction with the DIG command, this allows the player to snert puzzle objects in Sol and hide them discreetly. DRAIN: Simultaneously pulls the plugs in all the hot tubs in Fed, resulting in mass flooding and many players caught naked and shivering in compromising positions. RENAME: Used with two parameters. All instances of the first parameter found in player names are replaced by the second parameter. For instance, RENAME WOLF SNERT results in a playername of GREYSPACESNERT. Likewise RENAME CAT NAKEDRATMOLE results in a playername of KARISNAKEDRATMOLE. Does not work with any playernames that include the letters A, L, S, A, T, I, A, or N (in that order). UNBANG: Resets fighter triggers so that they no longer xt a BANG! BOOM! Or KABOOM! When they shoot down an opponent. Instead the text they transmit reads: I WANT MY PLANET REVIEWED! NAG: This one emails every newsdroid and event host in Fed with a reminder that their articles are late. It automatically produces a signature of a certain demi-goddess. Please feel free to send in your command suggestions; I'll install a few every time Bella ties one on.
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