Dragonfire Daily News October Edition

DragonFire Daily News

November

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11/25/98 Wedding Bells! Everyone is cordially invited to attend the joining of Millhouse3 and Lindina on Saturday, November 28th, at 8:30 pm Central Standard Time, in the Temple of Enid.
Congratulations to the couple, may you know only happiness!!
What's New ****** 11/24/98 @ 12:40pm *****
Fixes, mostly security measures. Added checks for selling items. Added checks on characters stats so someone other than the character owner does not receive them and use a packet snooping tool to look at them. Also, corrects a bug in Trial account time calculations.
11/23/98

On November 26th, America will celebrate Thanksgiving. Many turkeys will meet their demise, several helium-filled cartoon characters will float down a few avenues, and a bunch of testosterone-oozing men will slam into each other over possion of an oddly shaped brown ball. What is the underlying cause behind the holiday? What does it represent? I did a little reading and pieced together a little history lesson. Enjoy. *smile*

In 1620, a group of Pilgrims set up camp at Plymouth. It was a really bad year; they had a number of things working against them. Ignorance of the area, not enough food, inadequate shelter and (not to mention less-than-flattering) clothing conspired to make it a very rough winter. In the end, more than half of the hundred or so colonists were serenely pushing daisies skyward.

The next year, however, went a lot better. The colonists found a cache of seed corn left by some of the local Native Americans, and ripped it off. They became friendly with another of the local tribes, the Wampanoag, and signed a peace treaty with their leader, Massasoit. With the help of their neighbors they harvested a bountiful crop, and the Pilgrims stopped dying off.

With so much to be thankful for, Governor William Bradford, following a long tradition of European harvest festivals, decided to have a celebration, which we now know as the first Thanksgiving. Well, not exactly the first; several other colonies had similar ideas.

For example, in 1554 French colonists in what is now Jacksonville, Florida held a Thanksgiving celebration very similar to the more famous Plymouth one. A big feast was followed by thanking God for being so kind as to allow them to prosper. Unfortunately they were slaughtered the next year by a bunch of Spaniards, so they really didn't get a chance to start a tradition.

Plymouth's Thanksgiving wasn't the first, but it got all the press. And publicity is everything. So anyway, everyone in the little colony was happy to the point of bursting at how everything was going so well, and there was no death and deprivation and all that other unwholesome stuff to cry about. They threw a party and invited the friendly tribe.

Chief Massasoit and 90 of his warriors showed up, about twice as many Indian men as pilgrims. On the menu were corn in many incarnations; turkey, thanks to the fact that a turkey is one of the few animals that can be hunted with a whiffle bat; and venison, thanks to the locals. The festivities included tests of accuracy with bow and gun, games of chance and general merrymaking (Hmm sounds like a guild party).

The Pilgrim's celebration caught on with the surrounding colonies. So some highly varied dates were set for the celebration, partially due to the fact that no one had any idea as to when the original celebration was.

In 1789 George Washington decreed that a Thanksgiving celebration would be held on Thursday, Nov. 26. Of course at the time everyone was feeling very strongly about independence, so no one listened to him, and Thanksgiving was still all over the place.

The date kind of bounced around until Sarah Josephia Hale, the editor of a magazine called Godey's Lady's Book, a Victorian era Vogue, embarked on a 30-year crusade to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She wrote letters to government officials and editorials in her magazine until 1863, when Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November to be an official day of thanks, and so it stayed. Each succeeding president in his time designated the last Thursday in November as a day of thanks. Until 1939, that is.

In '39, FDR, trying to give the economy a boost by extending the pre-Christmas buying season, pulled the date back a week. Only one problem, most of the states didn't listen. In 1941, the Congress stepped in and decreed that the fourth Thursday in November (which is not necessarily the last) would henceforth be the date for the holiday.

If you yank out all the Christian doctrine, the holiday still stands up. The holiday is, at its heart, a celebration of how lucky we in America are. It's not about football or gorging yourself, until bloated like a tick, you fall off the couch onto the carpet. Reflecting on how much worse things could be is important. So be sure to give some thought this year to exactly what it is in your life you have to be thankful for. You know, no matter how miserable you think your life may be, there is always something that you can sit back and say "You know, I am really happy I have that/him/her/those" about.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow DKoL members, friends, and family. *smile*
What's New ****** 11/19/98 @ 09:42pm *****
Corrected a bug that I introduced in some statistic monitoring that was not multi-thread safe. In other words, it would crash when more than one player would access that section at the same exact same time. Sorry about that. Next time, I'll try to do better. - the late night programming Conan.
11/19/98 Have You Seen Me? I was walking to the Usk hangout tonight and almost tripped over this unusual contraption...

Several people crowded around to ooh and ahh over it, but noone actually touched it. Of course I had to rememdy that...and it prompty disappeared in a cloud of dust. Oh well. It was neat while it lasted. *smile*

What's New ****** 11/19/98 @ 04:32pm *****
A couple important fixes. Elemental jumping logic has been removed. They should not jump no matter what level you or they are. A fix for the Bounty bug that would not clear a character's bounty even after they had been vanquished in battle. Also, a fix for the multi-perm/enchant bug that allowed cumulative affects. Our provider Exodus says they should have the line quality issue straightened out some time next week. I sure hope so.

****** 11/18/98 @ 05:05pm *****
Fix for a crash bug that occurred when items were Enchanted and Permmed, which should have been invalid, but are not. That will be corrected in a future update.

****** 11/18/98 @ 03:05pm *****
Fix for a serious crash bug when handling containers with 0 bulk capacity. Also, some streamlining of the dungeon entrance code to permit faster entry and hopefully stop some of the character auto-movements that sometimes occur. Spells of duration now have a random chance of failure when applied repeatedly. This should prevent the continuous beserks, stuns, and so on while in combat.
11/18/98 What's New ****** 11/17/98 @ 10:48am *****
Water Elementals introduced. The logic for Earth Elementals is now improved, they will not attempt spells that will fail at long distances. There is an added bulk adjustment for characters, bags and backpacks. The bug with putting backpacks and bags in chests should be fixed.

11/16/98 Don't despair! *lol* Yes, Lady Polgara's Realm site is still down, but the mirror site is up and running. Click on the banner below to get there.

11/13/98 What's New ****** 11/12/98 @ 11:45am *****
An optimization for trial account logins. Most won't notice a difference loggin in. Also, a fix for those in combat clouds holding up a dungeon queue.
11/11/98 What's New ****** 11/11/98 @ 11:45am *****
Earth Elementals introduced. You will note the size of the client patch was substantial. This is due to the art for both the Earth Elementals and Water Elementals being included. The Earth Elemental is the only one to appear in the game at this time. Also, a revision that allows a maximum of 72 objects to be dropped in a house room at a time. This was put in place to prevent some people from unwittingly breaking their houses by having too many objects in them. Current items in a house are not affected. In addition, an attempt at fixing the Motion 0 errors. Hopefully, this will either correct them, or at least help pinpoint the cause. A couple cleanup fixes that make the combat messages look a bit better.
For those of you that are having trouble downloading the patches, try this site HERE.
Just make sure you follow the directions or it won't work. *lol*
And here for your viewing pleasure...

11/10/98 Welcome to the Family! Announcing the newest member to the Dragon Knights of Light Wanderers Legion, DeCesare. Be welcome among us!

11/08/98 Congratulations to Members!
Kudos to those of you that were recognized last night for your dedication and participation in the guild.
Receiving promotions in their legions were: Millhouse3, Megamiman, Zenoc, Mirati, JuniorC, KATHIRINE, NorseGod, Natashka, Daneyras, Jelarus, TalosIV.
Medals given out:
Friendship - PeterDamion, Millhouse3, NorseGod, JuniorC, Megamiman, Natashka, Daneyras
Chivalry - JuniorC
Charity - IAmDaLaw
Creativity - LadySkye
Distinguished Member - Flicx, Ezibella, LadySkye
The Queen pulled a few surprises out of her sleeve by knighting PeterDamion with the title of Baron over the Enchanters, and presenting the Prince and Princess, Excalibur and LadySkye, with the Royal Order of the Garter. An honor indeed!
Thanks to everyone who attended; the slightly informal meeting was held in the Square in Usk, amid a lot of good-natured bantering, and a good time was had by all.

11/07/98 Reminder A reminder on tonight's guild meeting - please be on channel BY 8:30 pm EST, 8pm if you can get on a bit early.
Also, for those of you that don't read the message board , DKoL has adopted a hangout...the vendor's Square in Usk, one north and one east from the gatekeeper. For those of you that do a little smithing or alchemy, there is a general store 2 west of this place, so you can pick up your tools and go to the Square to practice your trade. It's a great place to chit chat, as it is not very crowded and some interesting people meander through from time to time. It's also a great way for the guild members to actually sit down and see each other. Hope to see you there. *smile*
11/05/98 Virtual Stonehenge Don't know what to do when the Realm goes down? Go visit Stonehenge! Take a guided virtual tour of this historic landmark HERE. You will need to download some additional software (free) to view it, but it is well worth it.

11/02/98 Only In America
Only in America...can a pizza get to your house quicker than an ambulance...
Only in America...are there handicap parking spaces in front of a skating rink...
Only in America...do people order double cheeseburgers, a large order of fries, and a diet coke...
Only in America...do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters...
Only in America...do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and leave useless things and junk in boxes locked in the garage...
Only in America...do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place...
Only in America...do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight...
Only in America..do we use the word "politics" to describe the process so well: "Poli" in Latin meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "Bloodsucking creatures"....

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