Well I guess I asked for that...

[altivo]

Wednesday! After this many years, I should really know better than to take six days off and agree to be back on a Wednesday. Especially when half the rest of the staff is off too. (End of the year, gotta use up excess vacation.) Considering that just having Wednesday off makes me feel like I had a whole week vacation...

They had two power failures while I was in Ohio. In spite of repeated instructions, verbal and in writing, of what to do if the power has been out, they didn't get all the machines restarted appropriately. (The sequence in which things are done is significant.) And no one remembered to change the backup tape for a whole week. Sigh. Oh, and the cat apparently had a furball attack on my desk.

Got through it anyway, and tomorrow is just a half day with no one else there, so should be much better. Also got a paycheck (payday came while I was in OH) and a formal notice of my annual pay increase. Still doesn't keep up with inflation but it's better than last year. On the other hoof, The price of fuel just went up by another 23 cents a gallon overnight. Then they backed it down by 3 cents between noon and eight in the evening, so the screaming must have been pretty loud.

Playing around with the Alpha at home I realized I can run a MUSH on it. After working out how to make it available most days even though we have dialup (it involves using no-ip.org and doing naughty things to the firewall here) it dawned on me that I could be running a MUSH on the Alpha at work instead. I don't think the bandwidth would be significant overall, and it would tend to peak at night when the library is closed. I've been using the Alpha DS10 there as a private test platform, but it isn't going to be put back into actual work service, and apparently everyone considers it to be my personal property now. As long as I keep using it for testing library stuff, I can justify keeping it active there which in turn would let me create a roleplaying system on it. Does the internet really need another MUSH? Probably not. On the other hand, since the demise of Wild Spirits back in 2003 or so, there hasn't been anything else like it as far as I'm aware. No point in making yet another anthropomorphic system, since Tapestries and FurryMUCK have that arena well covered. But the unique character of Wild Spirits was that there were no humans, elves, or other magical beings. The animals were natural species in their natural forms, but had the ability to talk and reason. They also engaged in a lot of pointless yiffery and drama, but I blame some of that on the administrative structure. This seems worthy of a little more thought at least. Server code is available on the Alpha platform for PennMUSH, MUX, or LambdaMOO. I've got PennMUSH up and running with little effort (well, the software that is; actually setting up the environment would take weeks I think.)

At the moment access is restricted, but if there should be expressions of interest, I'll give out connection details later.

Comments

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Never thought I'd ask this, but what's the latest on fox news?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Neighbor 1/2 mile north of us reports that there are three kits and they have been as far afield as her place. Tuesday morning Gary saw two and the mom playing around our log pile. He used his cell phone to call me from the house but by the time I got shoes on and went out I only got a glimpse of one baby. They are the size of large kittens now, with little floofy tails. Weather here has been unpredictable, but I'm watching for more photo ops.

[corelog.livejournal.com]

I've never been a big MUSHer. But it might be interesting. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

To enjoy MUSH/MUCK you have to like roleplay and verbal games, and also be sufficiently caught up into the theme of the particular world to want to participate. In an era where World of Warcraft and Second Life have come to dominate online game-style interaction, I suspect the much less structured MUSH environment remains attractive only to a few. You have to put more into it in order to get anything out, and what comes out isn't so quantifiable.

I'll have to think this through. If I do it, I'm playing god in a sense, and get to make the world as I would have it. There were aspects of Wild Spirits that I found utterly enchanting, and other aspects that I hated, yet I suspect it isn't possible to remove all the "bad" elements without removing the interest as well. Can I allow predator-prey interaction without condoning pointless blood and violence, for instance? A big issue is the need to make a system that is simple enough to explain, yet complex enough to operate without constant intervention and "judgements" by an official.

I'd welcome your participation, of course. If you have specific ideas that might work, I'm listening.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Yep, sounds like IT related problems to me... :)
Maybe you need to place stickers with numbers on
the machines next time so they will only have to
follow a siple sequence of numbers.

Glad to hear you got a pay raise. More feed for you all :)

What it comes to fuel prices... You guys still
have it ridiculously cheap. €1.44/litre here in
Kuopio, Finland. ;P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It's more an "out of sight out of mind" issue. Since some of the machines are in closets or under desks, they get forgotten, number or not. For instance, the one that mostly handles logging for the firewall is often left offline after a failure because no one pays any attention to the logs but me. The mailing list server is forgotten until someone calls and complains that they can't get mail through to one of the lists. That sort of thing.

I know our fuel prices are relatively low. Unfortunately, we don't have the infrastructure to adjust easily to the change. If fuel costs were suddenly jumped to parity with Europe, our entire economy would collapse here. It has to be done gradually so as to apply pressure for changes elsewhere in the system. The higher prices in most parts of Europe are not entirely supply-based. They include a lot more tax that is used to support alternative transportation systems. The US doesn't even have those alternatives to support. They need to be built first. It's a huge problem.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Well, in Finland, around 75% of it is taxes.
Sure, it would be nice to be able to use the
public transportation here, too, but it is out of
reach to pretty much anyone. I mean, Bus from
Jyväskylä to Helsinkin(around 175 miles?) costs
over 50 euro's on a bus and a little less by train.
Driving there is just over half of that in terms
of fuel cost... And they are saying they are
trying ro offer us a cheap and affordable public
transport.

And then they wonder why they don't have
passengers and elevate the fares to keep up with
the running costs...

Welcome to Finland. Reminds me of a folklore story
where the residents of a village known for it's
stupidity tried to illuminate a house by bagging
sunlight outside and releasing it inside the house...
And filling a well by carrying water from a nearby stream. :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I think Finland is moving in much the same direction as the US. The differences are largely due to different starting points, but since The power of the Soviet bloc was broken, many nations have taken leaps and bounds in the direction of US culture and economy. Unfortunately, the same defects will apply to them as to the US, at least in the end.

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

I think my account on FurryMUCK has been toaded. Or whatever it's called when the account is deleted for inactivity.

I would probably get on though.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

FurryMUCK does do regular purges, once or twice a year. If you haven't been online there for several months, you could be gone.

*checks*

Weren't you Kiyo there? It shows you were last logged in 52 weeks ago, but you still exist. However, they say they are going to purge on about May 20 and remove everyone who hasn't been logged in for more than 90 days. So go log in for five minutes. ;p

Once I get up and running (if I do this) I'll let you know. It won't be a hack and build mush, but entirely intended for gentler roleplay. All characters will have to take the form of warm-blooded animals (mammal or bird) that would exist in North America since the last ice age. So no sabertooths or anything like that. Eagles, wolves, mustangs, cougars, raccoons, foxes, ravens, etc. Physical behavior should be limited to what is actually possible for the species chosen, so no flying wolves or tree-climbing horses will be allowed. Social interaction, however, will be as unrestricted as possible, and inventiveness encouraged. For instance, a raccoon might well be able to make a practical basket and a bear could dig a root cellar and store food, even though these behaviors are non-instinctive. If a cougar decides to eat only fish, that's fine, but probably he couldn't decide to eat only grass (his system won't work that way.)

If that sounds interesting, you're welcome to join once I get the kinks worked out. XD

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

Eh I might. We'll see. ^^ No, there IS a Kiyo on there but I was Kiyoshi. I think, anyway. The -shi has kind of just dropped off over the years.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

OK. I tried Kiyoshi first, but there was no such player. Then I thought maybe it was just Kiyo, so if Kiyo isn't you, then you're already gone. :(

[drgnkiyo.livejournal.com]

Eh. Yeah. It really has been a long time since I logged in. I guess if Kiyo gets toaded I'll join as that. Or something.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Good luck! The aspects of MU*ing that most appeal to me are the buildy-programmy-hackery, which will come as no surprise to those who remember my Inform (text adveture programming language) phase a while back. That was sadly curtailed by losing all my work-in-progress in a double disk failure, after which I lost heart.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, at least to start out, this would be an environment in which individual character building would be limited to enough quota to build a den or burrow or whatever is appropriate to their species. Having seen the problems that were caused by infinite expansion of the world on several MU*'s, I'd have a building wizard in charge of the environment itself, and making sure there was suitable environment for the species who appeared. I'd also limit the numbers of individual species to something reasonable, so it wouldn't end up with all predators or something silly like that.

I wouldn't discourage players from coding objects or whatever, but I'd insist that anything visible to others should look and behave appropriately to the setting. In other words, no visible magic or elaborate machines. On Wild Spirits I used to create food gifts (usually apples, since I was a mustang) that gave a secret message to the recipient and then disappeared when eaten. Silly things like that are fairly harmless. Listening devices or magical weapons, however, are not. ;p

Proof positive...

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

"On the other hoof, The price of fuel just went up by another 23 cents a gallon overnight. Then they backed it down by 3 cents between noon and eight in the evening, so the screaming must have been pretty loud."

That's right- if you are pushed, you can push back, people.

Re: Proof positive...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it's hard to push back when there's collusion amongst the sellers. All the filling stations in Harvard change prices together, within an hour of each other, and always to within a penny or two or each other. It's an obvious cartel, and probably illegal, but hard to prove.

Right now their prices are 10 to 12 cents higher than any other community within 25 miles. The problem is, for most people, driving 15 miles and back to get cheaper gas cancels out the savings and they know it. And in a small town or rural area, we generally have no choice other than to keep buying gasoline. We can reduce our consumption somewhat, but when it's ten miles to the nearest grocery or pharmacy and twelve miles to work, and there is no shared or public transportation available, you can only do so much.

Re: Proof positive... the gods laughed

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

It's a similar thing here, except they're a bit slower (prices change one day to the next instead of within hours) and we do have an excruciatingly unnecessarily confusing and inconveinient bus system. For those who don't know, I don't complain about it because...

A: No car. Haven't had one since I was 22. Got me nowhere and wasted my money. Had an accident with it and it was totaled- then sold for scrap. Nice amount considering the model.

B: Every job I can get to is either by bus or by my third option...

C: My feet, attached to my legs. I walk everywhere I can, and have since I lost my car. I'm 30 now, and don't plan to buy another car until I'm ready to travel cross-country. I walk everywhere, as far as I can- in one day, I walked from Palm Bay to Cocoa... a distance of over 28 miles.

I didn't make excuses, justifications or blame others for my situation. All of you who whistle, yell, catcall and throw objects at us pedestrains from your car windows- enjoy living miserably working to drive, driving to work, and working to eat. Oh, and by the way- your aim sucks.

Seriously, Alt...why don't you ride one of your horses to work? ^_^

Re: Proof positive... the gods laughed

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Seriously, Alt...why don't you ride one of your horses to work?

Simple. Once I got there, what would I do with a horse while I was working? There's no safe place for her to be, and as far as that goes, probably not even a legal space for her to be within the city limits. She can't stand in a paved parking lot all day, and I can't stand for the legal liability if she kicked or bit some kid who was molesting her (quite possible.) The state gives me a legal right to ride or drive a horse on the roads, but no right to leave one unattended anywhere.

The distance is just far enough to be pretty much impractical by bicycle, even without considering that the only routes available would involve several miles on roads that are quite dangerous for a bicyclist or pedestrian. A motorcycle would work when the weather is reasonably good, but not in the winter. A small electric car (none exist like that right now) could be quite practical but considered over a longer period of time, there are ecological issues with electric vehicles: disposing of batteries made of heavy metals, for instance.

Re: Proof positive... the gods laughed

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*nods* An honest, thought-out answer to a question that was more of an afterthought- plus prompt response. Thanks Alt, that's all.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Your MUSH would involve lots of interesting things, not so much
yiff, and you know you have to allow for that in private, but your
Wild Spirits ideation seems to be a cool vibe.

As for coming back from 'cation on Wed...

WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING!?

XD

*hugs*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

What was I thinking? I was under pressure to do it, of course. The boss left last Wednesday afternoon and won't be back until next Tuesday. She and I usually cover Wednesday night together. Having neither of us here means that two responsible staffers have to be found to take our places, or at the least, one experienced one and a reliable helper. So I was able to take the previous Wednesday off, but had to be there last week (Mon-Wed) and this week (Wed-Fri). Then the boss calls this morning while I'm the only staff member in the building, from her time-share somewhere (I've lost track of the places she goes) and tells me I need to take more vacation...

I'm thinking seriously about the MUSH. I stuck the software onto the DS10 at work this morning, and opened the port in the firewall there. If that works OK, I may do a little more preliminary layout and see how it feels.

Yes, I want to de-emphasize the yiff and gossip aspects. I'm thinking of it more as a sort of simulation project, which means it would require some heavy management in a few areas but could be allowed to run freely in others. Would be players will have to send in a web form or an e-mail to request a login, and they'll have to choose species and gender and won't be able to change those without convincing a wiz to let them. Species choices will be generalized, but enough to let me balance the ratio of big to little and carnivore to herbivore. A sort of loose population control. "Bear" can be grizzly, black or brown, for instance, and "Fox" can be red, gray, or arctic. "Owl" can be any kind of owl the player wishes, as can "Mustelid" or "Corvid" or whatever. Environment building will be handled by a wizard only, though he/she will take requests and suggestions into consideration. Players will be able to build or dig a den, but not create a river or a desert. If they need a river, they'll have to pick a spot near an existing one... More realistic that way.

My argument has always been based on the notion that rational animals who could communicate even in limited ways within or across species would develop ways to override their instincts and behave according to cultural or societal mandates that benefit all at least to some extent. What forms this would take remains to be seen. Do prairie dogs sell some of their offspring to the ferrets in return for a guarantee of "protection"? I hope not, but it seems possible. Do prey animals organize a resistance against predators and use their numbers to enforce behavioral changes? Seems unlikely but again possible. Do species with some manual dexterity, such as raccoons and squirrels, trade baskets and braided cords for something else? Perhaps...

Would there be religion? Cultural taboos? Sanctions? Who knows? We have to experiment to find out.

[cetasdolphin.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried a MUSH before but having been on FM and Tapestries for a few years things are getting pretty boring with all the constant yiffing and drama. I wouldn't mind trying to get back to my roots as it were as I first started out RPing on AOL chatrooms and in IMs, shame I can't find the one person who I used to play with online in what could have been my first 'furry' experience. I played a colt to that of a demon mare and her herd and as far I as knew the whole herd group was played by females (fat chance though) it was fun times at least and was quite imaginative at times. Then the whole group moved on and I lost of track of them and I ended up finding the whole fandom of furry online.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

So far I think I can make this work. Just keep your eyes open for a formal announcement. I'll need to set up some things before I can even open it for test play.