w a c k o 2 k [97.01.27 - 97.12.23]   h i s t o r y  



01.26.97 - (f) - It begins.    After several discussions of Wacko with various

                people, I think we're long overdue for an overhaul.



Current Proposal for Wacko:



                room #1000 will be the new parent.  #2000 the starting room.

                It's open, so people can currently link in building they are

                proprosing for Core Wacko.  (The middle 50-100 rooms).  The

                most wacko stuff will be used for the middle.  we'll probably

                retain 'control' of the middle stuff.  Considering that it is

                the first impression newbies get of Wacko, then Den & I retain

                complete control of who gets linked where.



                Now, let's say Person A builds a nice area.  (Nice meaning:

                when you explore it, you still enjoy exploring.  You aren't

                bored and think exploring is a waste of time).



                Initially, there is only Core Wacko.  I look at Person A's

                area (Called Area A, for example).  If I like it, and Person A

                wants a link, then I find a wacko place to link it in.



                Assume Person B wants a link for Area B.  They can ask either

                Me for a link to Core Wacko, or Ask Person A for a link to

                Area A.



                And so forth.  People with linked in areas are sort of 'in

                charge' of managing who gets linked.  And what gets linked,

                in a way.



                The Point?  To Maintain as high a level of goofy/good/nutty

                building as possible.  Building neat places inspires people

                to build neat places.  If wacko is full of neat places then

                it will be very very cool.  Especially when compared to the

                scattered rooms and random links that it is now.





        (f)     There is currently an open invitation to have areas linked to

                and from #2000.  I'll take a look at everything, and start

                linking areas together in goofy ways.  For fairly obvious

                reasons, I reserve the right to add links to the submitted

                entries wherever I want to in order to merge different

                submissions into Core Wacko.



01-27-97 (f)    There are a ton of globals (45 or so) so looking at the list

                of globals is one big headache.  I changed it so all globals

                are murky except for some new globals which tell about the

                other ones.  Also new is a global 'secret' which lists all

                the globals which were originally secret.



 1-28-97 (f)    GEEZ, is learning muf hard work!  I spent 3 hours figuring out

                how to use the editor, and how find works.  I did manage to

                get the chat program working, tho!  there's now a column in

                find where it finds people @set me=_chat:yes.  Hopefully now

                there won't be so much of a 'nobody wants to talk!' epidemic



 2-2-97 (f)     Well, after talkin' to the fellow folk in boston during my

                visit, it looks like the nuke is going to happen on 3-1.

                I.e. 1 minute after 2-28-97 11:59pm



                Everything has to be in #1000 to be saved.  Made a new global

                'safe' to tell you if you are currently in a saved room.



                Nuke will happen in this order:  Rooms, People, objects.

                

        (f)     At popular request, changed the connect notifier so that it

                doesn't use *.  (i.e.  *[ch'od has connected]*)

                it messes up notifiers in tinyfugue.



        (f)     There is a problem.  red-branch is going away.  Byte is

                going to graduate soon.  Which means the end of red-branch,

                sort of.  Byte is going to buy red-branch, but that doesn't

                mean there is a place to connect it.



                Possibilities include:

                        Paying $150/month to connect red-branch to another

                                network,

                        Paying $30/month to run wacko on another server.

                        Finding another site.



                Still have a couple of months before this happens.

                Need a backup site to inform people of the new location if/

                        when this happens.



 2-3-97 (f)     Just got back from my boston trip.  Met byte, lostpup, spider,

                cumquat, figment (for the 1st time) and Selma. (FINALLY).

                Had a handful of conversations about Wacko.  There were some

                excellent ideas:

                        

                        1)  The Flood, which is a definite go.  The flood

                                being the destruction of the world a la Noah

                        2)  Wacko seriously needs more social events.  Like

                                a social period, to meet new people.  Or a

                                Wacko suggestion hour.

                        3)  Pondered the idea of having the rooms around Core

                                Wacko be a 'Wackopoly' board, which is actually

                                a playable game using audible pieces.

                        4)  An 'Age' counter - to know how 'old' one is. and/or

                                the 'active age' vs 'idle age' of a player.

                                Good for knowing who veterans are.

                        5)  Possbily a public notice of 'what has been

                                suggested, what is being worked on/considered',

                                etc.  This may be linked with #2 above.

                        6)  Modifying 'boot ch'od' to work with any player.

                        

        (f) This actually came up during a talk with byte.  It's a simple,

                obvious, but rather signifigant fact:



                I don't have the time to do all this stuff.



                What exactly does that mean.  From a realistic point of a view,

                that means one or more  of the following paths must be taken:

                        1)  Make a priority queue, work on them in order.

                                This is fine, but it'll be slow.

                        2)  Take volunteers, and dish out tasks.  This would be

                                best done by having User Interest Groups, and

                                having them work out details then.  (MUF group

                                meets every other wednesday, Building group

                                meet every other monday, etc).

                        3)  Assign 'Group Leaders' to head the groups.  Den & I

                                retain the final say, of course.  The main

                                reason for this option is that I would hate to

                                have to attend a meeting every day of the week.

                        

                                This could work in a way similar to the FDCMuck

                                method of having wizards - certain wizards head

                                certain tasks/duties.



        (f)  On a lighter note, Japhet has mailed me a transparancy of the

                can for the wacko shirt.  It should arrive at my house soon.

                Apparently use some sort of phototransfer to move the image

                from the transparancy to a silkscreen.  Then the screen is used

                to make as many shirts as you want.



                Bubsy is asking his uncle (who owns a shirt shop of some sorts)

                how this works.



                So yes, we might have some wacko shirts someday.  *grin*  I

                hope the can looks pretty good.  We'll see.



        (f)  Oh yeah, one last thing - A common request recently is for some

                sort of registration.  I went back and read the history files -

                It's kinda funny how often I turned on registration, got sick

                of registration, and got rid of it.  So don't expect it anytime

                soon.



 2-05-97 (f)  Whew.  After several hours of work, yet another MUF program.

                New global:  idleboot .  Hopefully

                nobody will start 'cheating' to hog the bot spot.



        (f)  This isn't exactly recent, but last week, divebomb's murderer

                was sentenced to prison for life with no parole.  Justice is

                served.  Divebomb's rooms and objects will be saved in his

                memory.



        (f)  New global:  recent.  Rcently added globals will be listed here.

        

 2-06-97 (f)  Well, that didn't take long.  Artie has a idleboot stopper.

                Basically a program that causes him to unidle every 59 minutes.



                I sent him the following letter:

From: ch'od

To  : Artie

On  : Thu Feb  6  12:25AM  EST

Size: 13

Subj: hrm.



Y'know, there's a reason I set up the idleboot.

It's so players can have the fun of having the bot spot.

Players who earn it.  It's fun.  In the past, I've mucked several hours

more, if only to try to get the botspot.  Many people have.

I'd really appreciate it if you respect that for others.

I'd also appreciate it if you wouldn't give other people ideas to do the same

thing.  I've been pretty tolerant of idlers in the past (and to be honest, I

really get annoyed by it).  But at this point in time, I'm trying to sqeeze

every bit of fun out of wacko as i can.  I'll probably ease up when there

is enough fun things to do elsewhere.  But at this point, there's not much.

This is just a polite request.  There's more to it then 'let's get rid of all

the idlers!'.

     - ch'od



           (f)  lostpup was idlecheating.  I was too nice of a guy to @boot

                him, so helga was kind enough to log in as me and do it.  :P



 2/07/97 - (f)  Revised the Nothingness entry to remove the personal aspects.

                Added an editor's note to the log of 2/4/97.



           (f)  Here's a weird quote, source being anonymous:



        You sense that X finds the worlds with idle booters just kinda get

        forgotten too easy, too ahrd to remember to log in :(



                You know, I -really- don't get this.  Players who get on a

                muck, idle 99% of their time.  Yet they tell me, "Hey, I like

                this muck".  What exactly do they like about it?   This is

                probably a common feeling among monster idlers, tho.



          (f)   ken fixed the scan program so it works on players who made

                their @descriptions with programs.  It used to screw up.

                So playerss can use mdesc on themselves, for example.



          (f)   Spent several hours explaining MUF to P"aul.  He was pretty

                attentive.  I put it on Wacko's web page as a reference doc.

                It's on the muck into page.



                Oh yeah, just noticed Bay's tutorial page which was also linked

                to this page.  It's rather nice.  Might have to make an online

                version on wacko itself.



          (f)   I brought up an old db so I could copy my adventure and other

                cool building.  It's on red-branch.mit.edu 6000.  It'll be up

                there temporarily.  Until I decide I've grabbed all the cool

                stuff.



                It is not permanent.  It will not be saved.  create stuff there

                and it will be gone.



 2/ 8/97 (f)    Started writing a manual on how to make 'good' building.  IMHO.

                It'll be a permanent addition to #2000 for a while.  There are

                some keen ideas in #2000, but some of them aren't very

                'filled', and lack any detail.  I finished the manual - it's

                not bad, imho.  Not always relevant, but has handy suggestions.



        (f)     Spent all weekend digitizing my pictures with a 'Snappy' and

                made a web page of my foxes, on my personal home page.  I

                could link it closer to wacko's page, but I think it'll just

                stay on ~ooba/foxpage.html



 2/9/97 (f)     Started to hack on a look notifier writetn by Maxaxam, but

                ken informed me that  @adesc me=w ch'od=%n looked at you

                works just fine.



        (f)     You know, it's rather annoying to be online for 5 hours, and

                get zero done.  Especially with F-day in less than 3 weeks.



 2/10/97 (f)    Created a new 'suggestions' room.  It has two kiosks - one for

                players to make suggesions on, one for me to respond to those

                suggestions regarding how hard/feasable/good it would be to

                do those things.  It's located in the left eye of the happy

                face of Core wacko.   (in #2000)



                Basically, to keep track of all tasks that need to be done, I

                am not going to implement any suggestions unless they are

                logged in this room.  Not that that guarantees that all

                suggestions will be implemented, of course.  But I'm certainly

                open to debate.



         (f     Bubsy added a monster menu that basically points the web page

                to 1 of 4 pages, text, text+pics, text+pics+kmusic, and all

                frames.  I guess he gets various complaints about various

                things.  Well, you can't please everyone, unfortunately.

                (not if you want to stay sane)



 02-11-97 (f)   Well, Den knows how to spell 'timerbot'.  IN three letters,

                too:  L-Y-N.



          (f)   Permanent Wacko clock is a piece of cake now:

                @force *lyn=startchime.  Now startchime is locked to

                ch'od|den|lyn.  Probably should be locked to just lyn.



                Minor problems with this:  disconnecting does an automatic

                @halt as per #0.  Lyn's aconnect is now startchime.



          (f)   Stuck my notes I take while coding MUF onto the wacko page -

                I guess they might do someone some good.  *grin*



 02-12-97 (f)   Well, that's no good.  The database crashed.  Wacko, for

                whatever reason, was not doing its hourly database saves.

                Result:  The database was restored to an old version, 1/28/97.



                I've recreated most programs/globals, but unfortunately, the

                buildings and mail and whatnot are gone, permamently.  There

                was some rather nice stuff in #2000, too.  I hope this doesn't

                discourage people from continuing to build.



                byte got on - apparently some yoohoo at the computer store

                where red-branch lives turned off the computer.  Normally not

                a big deal, but since auto-hourlly dumps stopped.....



                byte said that it's possible that if one of the dumps doesn't

                finish (full hard disk, for example), then wacko will -never-

                dump until its restarted.  I'll have to monitor the out

                file every now and then to make sure it is dumping.



02-13-97 (f)    Made a character called 'lyn-wannabe' to maintain the clock

                till den gets lyn up.



02/14/97 (f)    Well, if you make it, they will idleboot.  Someone idlebooted

                lyn2.  (was lyn-wannabe).  Had to change idleboot to disallow

                booting of either lyn or lyn2.  The cute part is that you

                also have to make sure that "idleboot   lyn" and

                "idleboot lyn    "   don't work also.



        (f)     Didn't get much done tonight because I logged 180 mails, aigh.



 2/15/97 (f)    Nothingness finished his knapsack program, which was made into

                a global.  It basically lets you create a knapsack 'object'

                which youcan put objects into/ take objects out of.  Sortof

                like an object based drop-to.   Relevant globals:  '@knapsack',

                takeout, and put.



 2/16/97 (f)    Finished the age program.  Computes total/idle age of a

                character on wacko.  New global 'showage', to show you the age

                of any player.



          (f)   You know, I noticed something rather interesting.  Originially

                idleboot was made so people could get to the botspot.  I.e.

                geez, I've been on 8 hours, schmoe has been on 10 hours, but

                has been sleeping for 10.......



                But, it's quite common for people to idleboot people, and then

                immediately disconnect.  'One for the road' or something.

                Pretty goofy.



 2/17/97 (f)    Ahhhh.  Finished my room duplicator in record time.  It

                basically copies a room, all messages.  Copies all exits,

                and contents of the room that are objects.  It handles mdesc

                descriptions, and actions on objects in the room too.



                I think.  *grin*



                The db#s need to be replaced of course.  But that's a simple

                search and replace.  It is my hope that I can extract rooms

                galore out of the old dbs with this.



        (f)     All of divebomb's stuff has been saved.  He was an excellent

                builder and is no longer around to save them.  Very thoughtful

                idea suggested independantly by Mikelaga and Selma.  (both of

                whom also poked me independantly for forgetting.  :P)



 2/18/97 (f)    Fixed up the age program since it didn't take into account

                that @boots and disconnects return different things to MUF in

                their aconnect.  (specifically, awake?).  It works better now,

                and all ages have been reset.  Prior to this, it didn't

                record any info for anyone booted and/or dropped connection.



        (f)     YAHOO.  I got Japhet's letter containing a diagram of the

                Wacko can!  Almost exactly to specs, with only a few minor

                changes:

                        a) It says 'Tie Fighter God Thingy", not Tie Fighter

                           God Thing.  (Sacrilege!  =)  Trivial fix.

                        b) It says, 'Nutrition Facts' instead of 'Nutrition

                           facts'

                        c) WACKO is written in Bold face, rather than in

                                Cokeish script.  Actually, it looks pretty

                                good.  I am going to play with stretching

                                cursive fonts to see if I can change it.



                Anyway, for all good citizens, the can is at:

                        http://red-branch.mit.edu/~gamesmgr/wwww/pics/can.jpg



                The can was drawn by Japhet's Uncle.  Yay!



                It's up to Bubsy's uncle now, hopefully.  He's the #1 prospect

                for shirts now.



        (f)     Let the countdown begin!  Luckily, I have a program to make

                numbers for me.  It won't be quite as cool as those HUGE

                numbers I made last time for Wackfest, but ah well.



                Anyway, every day until F-Day will have a numeric countdown

                of days until Boom.  (in the login screen)



2/23/97 (f)     Well, helga discovered yet another bug in the timer.  It didn't

                reset your 'total' time connected when you disconnect with a

                multiple connected character.  Timer's fixed, times reset.



        (f)     ken wrote a nifty little program that counds the rooms in a

                room, including parent/children.  I'm using this to count the

                rooms in 'core wacko' final version.  Currently 17 rooms.



        (f)     Haven't done much this weekend, was on beeper duty.  Some folk

                (japhet, beldin) have been helping me log some rooms.  Time

                is short, though.



        (f)     Now that I think about it, time is very short.  There is a

                deep need for people to help with the following:



                a)  Log rooms from old wackos.  There are a couple of people

                        helping me do this.  Grabbing old rooms from old dbs

                        is a heck of a lot quicker then making new ones.  Not

                        as original, but hey.  Time is short.



                b)  Putting rooms together is more than just grabbing rooms.

                        There are at least two more things that need to be

                        built:



                        1)  Links between logged rooms.  They need to be

                                created, and messaged.  At the very least,

                                @desc, @succ, @osucc, and @odrop.



                        2)  New rooms.  The need for this is not so great.

                                however, it is still necesary to make

                                transition rooms.



                I'm going to be uploading a rough map to ~gamesmgr/wwww/Map.txt

                every day.  () will indicate an unbuilt transition room.



                Pretty much the best deal I can reasonably offer is that if

                anyone helps me out linking up stuff, then I'll also them a

                fair amount of say so as regards to where and how things are

                linked.



 2-24-97 (f)    Well, 100 rooms probably isn't going to happen.  Japhet is

                helping me quite a bit, and we got maybe 30+ rooms.  Still

                need to QA the rooms that are there.  Core wacko will be beta

                for quite a while.



                I @chowned all of 'my' rooms to a character called Captain_core

                so I can do an '@owned ch'od=R' to see what rooms are potential

                linkees.



                The building script works pretty well - Tho it leaves a lot of

                1 way exits at the 'borders' of the copied area.  These exits

                are now linked to rooms called:  TEMP ROOM, for easy location.



        (f)     Wacko stopped dumping again due to hard disk getting full.

                I've now put an automatic date checker whenever I log into

                red-branch, so the potential risk is minimized.



 3- 1-97 (f)    Current login screen:



        Okay, folks - this is it.  Here it comes.





        If you make your 'home' room a room that is safe, you

        can have quite a bit of fun trying to get into rooms before

        I recycle them.  If you still have rooms that you wish to save,

        right now is a pretty good time to save them.



        At Midnight tonight, Wacko becomes a living junkpile.

        (Although the rest of it should be pretty cool.  ;)



                        - The Management.





        (f)     Well, wasn't that the biggest pain in the rear ever.

                It was mostly automated.  ken wrote me a program that

                pretty much generated the scripts.  However, due to the way

                Tinymuck is implemented, I have to run it in 100 line chunks,

                disconnecting and reconnecting after each.



        I had to edit ken's program, to handle @toading correctly.  Since you

        can't toad via dbref.



        Due to the following problems, I had to restart a few times:

                a)  I was in #100 when I ran the program of course.  The

                        program happily included me in the list of people to

                        get purged and toaded.  oops.

                b)  Captain_core, who owns most of core wacko, was also in

                        #100.  He was @purged.

                

At Midnight:

18286 objects  =   2800 rooms, 7541 exits, 5428 things, 436 programs,

        2081 players, 0 garbage.



At 3:39 am:

18286 objects  =   596 rooms, 2669 exits, 1794 things, 249 programs,

        315 players, 12663 garbage.



Database Size droped form 6.5 Meg to 2.5 meg.



        Anyway, lots of things are busted now.  Bummer.



It was of interest to a few people so:  the people surviving the flood were:



.(#357PWG)

Abu(#15206PB)

Acerb(#17817PBM)

Akane(#15271PB)

Aldous(#17275PB)

Allacazam(#16661PB)

Amy(#7926PB)

Apollo(#9292PBJ)

Arcadia(#795PB)

Aria(#558PB)

Arrys(#9096PBJ)

Ash-hole(#17478PB)

Auradon(#11268PBM)

Barak(#10891PB)

Barker(#25PB)

Batman(#6508PB)

Bay(#12594PBJM)

Beldin(#161PBM)

Belgarath(#6960PBJ)

Belgarion(#4343PBM)

Belkira(#7426PB)

Belle(#8353PB)

Beltira(#7170PB)

Bertie(#1401PB)

BigCountry(#12717PB)

BigSimba(#5742PB)

Billie(#10323PBJ)

Billybob(#3224PBJ)

BlackAdder(#13280PB)

Blackbird(#13978PB)

Boa(#16907PB)

Bobs(#5824PBJVA)

Boobear(#164PB)

Bookwyrm(#1464PB)

Brain(#10722PB)

Brin(#16974PB)

Bubsy(#3759PBM)

Bucketeer(#12895PB)

Buddy(#2680PB)

Buttle(#12976PB)

Buzz(#10718PB)

Cadel(#8962PB)

Capitalist_Pig(#15426PB)

Captain_Core(#18118PB)

Carrie(#2637PBM)

Cathbad(#9713PLBJV)

Chameleon(#11366PB)

Chantal(#327PB)

Charis(#8228PBJ)

ChristineDaae(#10084PBJ)

Cinders(#6312PB)

Cinnamon(#12231PBJ)

Clopin(#15600PB)

Crow(#16071PB)

Cubbi(#2149PBHM)

Cyradis(#10213PB)

Daisy(#3428PB)

Dakkon(#7155PB)

Dekotah(#13373PB)

Den(#5PWJ)

Denver(#3549PBJ)

Dinah(#6825PBJ)

Dingle(#2708PBH)

Djali(#9765PB)

Doc(#3890PB)

Doikk(#6790PB)

Dolores(#9497PB)

Dragon(#14569PB)

DragonWhelp(#10244PB)

Draupadi(#16094PB)

Dulsinea(#10400PB)

Durnik(#7533PB)

EasterBunny(#13916PB)

Eddie(#9436PBM)

Eggplant(#1234PBJ)

Eilonwy(#8481PBJ)

Esmeralda(#16515PB)

Eton(#15617PBH)

FG(#13232PB)

Figgyplant(#16147PB)

Figment(#6632PBJ)

Floyd(#16536PB)

Flufffox(#9678PB)

Fluffy(#13519PB)

Ford(#10659PB)

Forkment(#10986PB)

Fox(#163PBJ)

Gabrielle(#12083PB)

Galadriel(#13766PB)

Garion(#10221PB)

Ged(#7664PBJ)

Genevieve(#7013PB)

Gomez(#8525PB)

Gonomon(#4610PBJVAM)

Gossamer(#159PBJM)

Grrrr(#17156PB)

Gwen(#14583PB)

Gwyneth(#17941PB)

Gwynyth(#6792PB)

Harlequin(#7609PBJ)

Hellcat(#8164PB)

HelloNurse(#270PB)

Hercules(#11170PB)

Hettar(#17689PB)

HugSymbol(#12208PBJ)

Humphrey(#14891PB)

Hypolita(#3918PB)

Indy(#13158PB)

Iphicles(#11824PB)

Japhet(#5865PBM)

Jeeves(#9380PB)

Jharvre(#17070PB)

Jinx(#13115PB)

Jon(#16205PB)

JonTalbain(#4751PB)

Josef(#16598PB)

Jumbly(#2704PB)

Jynx(#158PBJM)

Kestra(#11808PBJ)

Kevv(#17445PB)

Kh'thass(#10260PB)

Kheldar(#10216PB)

Kiara(#16599PB)

Kiwi(#250PB)

Lance(#16139PB)

Lancelot(#11077PB)

Laurana(#2978PB)

Leia(#16244PB)

Lilandra(#4701PB)

Lion(#1736PB)

Lioncub(#13792PB)

Loon(#253PB)

LordShiva(#9159PB)

Lupa(#11906PB)

Lynx(#17814PB)

MC(#299PBM)

MadHack(#17356PBM)

Madusa(#15767PB)

Maley(#15826PB)

Malkalai(#4310PB)

Mandorallen(#8937PB)

Marianne(#5624PB)

Marie(#3581PB)

Marilyn(#14757PB)

Matty(#5366PB)

Max(#6236PB)

Meeces(#3267PB)

Melesgalien(#9161PB)

Melian(#3701PBJ)

Mickey(#4796PB)

MikeLaga(#28PBJQM)

Mikey(#3958PB)

Minnie(#8466PB)

Minya(#15775PB)

Mira(#8053PB)

Miranda(#10336PB)

MirrorMan(#12624PB)

Morticia(#8529PB)

MrSquiggle(#4150PBM)

Munro(#867PBJM)

Neko(#12285PBV)

Nemain(#2870PBM)

Nildro-hain(#6809PB)

Nobody(#15309PB)

Novinha(#1545PBJ)

Numb(#1762PBM)

Odin(#10341PB)

Onthejourney(#463PLB)

P"aul(#16863PB)

Paddy(#10466PB)

Papa(#587PB)

Patch(#17401PB)

Pepper(#1964PB)

Phaedra(#15560PB)

Phantom(#12920PB)

Pinky(#10723PB)

Pluto(#5802PB)

Pocahontas(#10746PB)

Polaris(#16046PB)

Poledra(#7940PB)

Polgara(#6702PBJ)

Puck(#12817PB)

RBPMeeko(#3066PB)

Rand(#10387PB)

Ranma(#532PB)

Rapier(#9264PB)

Rastaban(#9848PB)

Ravyn(#16985PBM)

Ray(#10116PB)

Rosette(#15475PB)

RumTumTugger(#1462PB)

Ryouga(#16327PB)

Sabra(#15487PB)

Sadi(#5898PB)

Sassy(#4718PB)

Scooby(#1914PSB)

Seafie(#2873PB)

SeiSei(#15809PB)

Selma(#4PBM)

Sephrenia(#2621PB)

SgtPepper(#5914PB)

Shadow(#13690PB)

Shadow.(#1980PBJ)

Silence(#9181PB)

Silk(#8347PB)

Sky(#9263PB)

Sparhawk(#7754PB)

Spice(#16137PB)

Spiderflash(#5762PB)

St.Ariel(#14455PB)

Starman(#11760PBH)

Stella(#16212PB)

Sugar(#17851PB)

SumYin(#18062PB)

Susanna(#1906PB)

Sylvia(#16572PB)

T'Char(#13414PB)

T.Wolf(#5581PB)

TacoBunn(#10731PB)

Tails(#1594PB)

Talos(#13281PB)

Tanis(#7299PB)

Tas(#1475PB)

Teardrop(#16626PB)

TeePeeBee(#12890PB)

Tendari(#9326PB)

Tess(#3914PB)

Thalia(#8958PB)

Thlayli(#9172PB)

Thud(#5372PB)

Timacus(#16816PB)

Tink(#298PB)

Toaster(#2447PBJ)

Tomas(#4776PB)

Tony(#17799PB)

Tortilla(#6260PB)

Toy(#13192PB)

Trev(#14428PB)

Tuttle(#12727PBJ)

TwinKles(#3023PB)

Twinsen(#17957PB)

UL(#3036PBH)

Ungug(#16347PB)

Unicorn(#10310PB)

VaderKosh(#16872PB)

Velvet(#7944PBM)

VelvetJones(#17707PB)

Viejo(#10784PB)

Vince(#16305PB)

Vixie(#6725PBJ)

Walter(#6394PBJ)

WalterWolf(#11334PB)

Whiskers(#8255PB)

Wildside(#6270PBM)

Winona(#9075PB)

Wizardess(#13671PB)

Xena(#8084PBJ)

Yeenaghu(#7137PB)

YenSid(#11078PBJM)

Yoke(#8068PB)

Yucky(#6659PBM)

Zakath(#10219PB)

Zandramas(#10480PB)

Zanzibar(#7797PBJ)

Zapf(#3105PBJM)

Zebulon(#3374PB)

Zeeboy(#13835PB)

Zodiac(#6496PBH)

[*](#1PW)

advice(#16756PBH)

being(#261PBJM)

betty(#14142PBJ)

byte(#157PBJM)

ch'od(#2PWBJAM)

chepe(#472PBM)

chomp(#14595PWB)

circe(#1642PB)

clara(#17569PB)

curls(#14156PB)

deadhead(#3180PBM)

divebomb(#392PLBJV)

doomsey(#5608PBA)

dots(#16416PB)

helga(#13481PBJM)

herb(#16533PB)

if(#13617PB)

kafka(#220PBM)

ken(#830PLBCJVQAM)

laporello(#13079PB)

lar3ry(#2698PBJM)

lemur(#8919PB)

locachica(#209PB)

lostwolf(#7806PB)

lyn(#1794P)

lyn2(#12043PB)

mandy(#16430PB)

mongoose(#6859PB)

monster(#6000PW)

name(#1769P)

nephets(#13165PLBCJVQA)

omin(#14944PB)

pensqualie(#17711PB)

portia(#18038PB)

raybro(#5579PB)

sandmaster(#3319PW)

sbelle(#3710PB)

scratchy(#16688PB)

shaner(#17884PB)

sif(#1984PBM)

speedy(#6678PB)

spider(#130PBM)

thumper(#13705PB)

tickleme(#16937PB)

tweety(#6447PB)

what(#7841PB)



3.1.96 - (p) lots of things are busted now. yay.



        (f) As of 4 pm, I fixed everything.  Only took me a few hours.

                Main problems:  . and Maxaxam and Nothingness were all in

                        unsafe rooms, and were hence purged and toaded. That

                        screwed up some globals.



                        Luckily, nobody owning macros got their macros deleted.

                        I hope.





 3/02/97 - (f)  Got a few questions about how to use the copy command on port

                6000, so I went and made the global there.  Oops.



          (f)   Bubsy put the can.jpg and Map.txt on links from the wacko

                page.



        (f)     I'm trying to decide how this whole Map thing is going to work.

                Ideally, people see the map, want their place linked in there

                somewhere, and I link it in, and update the map.



                There are MANY more rooms than I expected would be retained.

                600!  not sure if I am going to try to link them all in.



                I probably won't.  Unless they ask, of course.  If there are

                ending up with tons and tons of unlinked rooms, then maybe

                we'll have to have another flood.  *GRIN*



 3/5/97 - (f)  Check this out:

Tue Mar  4 11:52: CREATED: guest(#17575PB) from host-00.colby.edu on fd 13.



                Looks like I accidentally flooded the guest character, and

                someone kindly created a new one for me.  *grin*





03.10.97 - (p) Hey, I was thinking.. I thought there was some strange command

                in the server.. @trace.. duno what it does, but then anyway

                I got to thinking, that we should be able to come up with to

                some sort of muf program to run a room-depth trace analysis

                of the db, that would return the names of rooms that are

                in "free space"  Why? well, I don't know.  Maybe we could uhh

                describe them all as "ORANGE" or something.



03.13.96 - (f) Hmm, something odd happened today.  I was responding to

                Nothingness's letter to me.  It was just a 1 line letter.

                (my response, I mean).  Anyway, when I went to save it, I got

                some odd errors like 'No more room'.



                Anyway, I mailed the letter off anyway.  Noth then paged

                me later with:  'Do you know what you mailed me?'  I ended

                up mailing him 300 lines of nonsense.  It might have

                included random mail.  I don't know.



           (f) Took down 6000.  Put up the last db again.  Had to RECREATE

                the copy program again, aigh.  And replace WIZARD with WACKO.

                I retarred and zipped the db after I was done this time.



                One of the funner things was that since I loaded the db before

                checking, I didn't realize that there were no 'WIZARD's to

                shut down the muck!  I had to kill a random netmuck process.

                Luckily, I picked the right one.  I did inform everyone that

                there was a 50% chance I was going to crash wacko.  *grin*



 3/14/97 (f)    Well, who says you can't teach a  wizard new tricks.

                omin was on today, and I was trying to explain the concept

                of @toad to him - not very well.  So finally, I said "Okay,

                look, just disconnect, and create a new character and come

                here."  So, this guy I've never comes in the room before, and

                I @toad him.  Turned out to be a real character, oops.

                Actually, omin logged on a friend's character and teleported

                over.  *grin*  No real harm done.



 3/15/97 (f)    While I was in another window, wacko shut down.  Bam,

                someone hit the off switch.  Not quite sure what happened

                there.  I remember a year ago where wacko did this all the

                time.  It'd just act as if I shut it down.  Pretty odd.



 3/16/97 (f)    Well, enough is enough - I have sitebanned Raven.  He's just

                harrasing way too many people - anyone who even blinks at

                Cinders is subject to his wrath.  Not to mention anyone who

                he suspects is someone he doesn't like.



                I put out a public notice address, asking how many people

                have no had problems with him.  we'll see.



For the record, this is the lockout.sites list:

*.tcsn.net              !creation

*.rutgers.edu           !creation       ;  Nails

bj.palmer.edu           !connection  ;  Tails

198.102.161.8           !connection

sbpub6.cs.sunysb.edu    !creation       ; me, test

128.6.7.208             !creation

130.119.13.1            !#340   ; CA's machine, test

198.51.130.*            !#340

198.51.130.*            !creation   ;carthage

; *.westford.ma.pub-ip.psi.net  !connection   ;host of maxaxam

129.108.42.32           !creation

rgfn.epcc.edu           !creation

VAX1.KCPL.LIB.MO.US     !connection  ; host of blutvergiftung

SPOCK.YORK.TEC.SC.US    !connection  ; host of blutvergiftung

192.135.229.1           !connection  ; host of blutvergiftung

*.tcsn.net              !creation   ; host of leviathan/leviathon

hawk.phantasy.com       !connection ; host of raven



                (f)     Well, that didn't last very long, did it.

                        Raven logged on from bbs.phantasy.com.

                        I don't feel like shutting down wacko again to

                        lockout *.phantasy.com, since restarting is a REAL

                        PAIN.  I have to clear out the start times from the

                        stopwatch (aging) object, remove old backups and

                        move around the current dumps of the database,

                        start up, and restart lyn.



                        It's not actually that hard, but it's a hassle.

                        Depends on how my conscious is being - I could check

                        the status log to see if anyone from phantasy.com

                        besides raven logs on, etc.



03/23/97        (F)  Well, here is a very disturbing discovery.  I guess it

                        shouldn't have been entirely unexpected - lack of

                        foresight, I guess.  Since in unix files are read

                        able by world, it is possible for people to read

                        files in gamesmgr.  Unfortunately, that includes

                        the status.  And, that includes the command logs.

                        Luckily, I don't think that said player who was

                        doing this has known how to do this for very long.

                        Which is good, because I haven't command logged in

                        ages.



                        All files are now non readable by others.  The

                        exception is the main directory of wacko, which I

                        need to have access to in order to make sure wacko

                        is still dumping.



                (f)     On a sub-note, since I'm in a lousy mood anyway,

                        I went ahead and locked out Raven via *.phantasy.com

                        until I feel like dealing with him again.



 3-25-97        (f)     Well, this is going to suck.  Raven logged on from

                        ods.ods.net.  So I locked out *.ods.net.  This could

                        go on for a while.



                        I also made both sites !create, rather than !connect

                        so hetfield can log in again.  Unfortuantely, I had

                        to @newpassword the guest now.



04.15.97        (p) -   Ok, I'm cleaning everything up in the gamesmgr acct.

                        in order to make the transition to someplace else?

                        Anyway, with red-branch going byebye in a few weeks

                        I'm clearing out all our archive stuff and the source

                        code for the server, and hopefully I'll get to the

                        WWWW stuff as well.  There's a lot of junk in the

                        gamesmgr account, and not all of it is fitting really

                        well into any of my accounts, so I'm moving it to my

                        computer instead, which is taking a while.  So if

                        things in the account aren't working right anymore or

                        if there are things missing, then it's because I've

                        copied/archived them and then removed them, so I don't

                        getr confused with what I have and have not done.



07.25.97        (f) -   Well, long time no see!  Lots of things have happened,

                        the most dramatic of which are the destruction of red-

                        branch, and relocating to constellation.universe.ml.org

                        6003.  It's a pretty decent machine for the most part,

                        although the nameserver tends to go down (use the ip

                        address:  199.107.201.99).    Besides that, it's a

                        very quick machine, since it's a dedicated machine.



                        This entry was made to note that I finally got the web

                        page up somewhere.  Decided to go through Geocities,

                        since it's free, kind of.  I ended up paying for 

GeoPlus,

                        because without that, the web page can't have any

                        subdirectories, which means page reconstruction out the

                        wazoo.  Forget that.  There are a few hassles - the

                        larger one being that since Geocitie's edit can't seem

                        to handle large files, the happylog must be downloaded,

                        edited, and reloaded in order to change it.  FUN.  

(not).



                        Lots of people have come and gone.  Half the links on 

the

                        'people' page don't work.  Pretty low crowd on wacko for

                        the most part, maybe 10 people at tops.  Pretty much

                        regulars, though.



                        Things have been pretty idle for a while.  Now that the

                        web page is up, I might be motivated to start doing

                        things.  Den has been making various changes to Wacko in

                        the prior weeks, but I'll leave him to document / take

                        credit for those changes.



                        Oh yeah, Den & I are sort of in a minor contest to see

                        what becomes of idleboot - currently it's disabled, but

                        wacko is becoming quite cavemuck-like, which is what

                        idleboot was intended to stop.  Den's leaning toward the

                        'no idleboot' side of things, I don't mind that much as

                        long as it's the same set of rules for everyone (i.e.

                        no can idleboot everyone except x,y,z).  But we both

                        really don't want wacko to become another cavemuck.  So

                        we'll see how that goes.



10-07-97 (f)	Well, it's been forever, hasn't it?



		After a long haitus off the net, I've decided to return to

		see what exciting trouble I can cause.



	(f)	In honor of Sam and Max having their own TV show (10:30 am ,

		Saturdays, EST on the Fox Kid's network!), I've decided to

		return to Wacko, having been re-filled with the essense of

		bizarre and wacky.



		I'm going to spend somewhere between and hour to and hour

		and a half/day on Wacko, every day, until I am happy enough

		to let the wild run rampant again.  Which'll be a while,

		since there's still quite a bit of mess left over from the

		flood.



	(f)	Here's the main goal as I see it,

		1) Get Wacko back in shape

			a) Reorg, reorg, reorg.

		2) Very subtle advertising like the last few times

		3) Probably get pounded on again by goofuses



	(f)	While I'm remembering junk, We agreed upon a very simple

		idleboot method:  After 1 day, you can be idlebooted if

		you are idle > 1 hour.  

			Simple, so it doesn't confuse the confused

			Keeps the poeple connected > 1 day to a minimum,

				so I don't pound my head through walls

			Keeps people from getting idlebooted while they

				are at lunch or whatever.



(f)	Oh yeah, the web page is going to remain at Geocities,

		to maintain some separation of the main machine and

		the web page.  Hopefully that won't cause such

		extreme chaos when the machine gets changed.



		the exception to the rule will be current happy.log,

		since it is a PAIN to edit this file directly on

		Geocities.



10-10-97 (f)	Okay, the slow reforming of core wacko begins.

		I'm going to be manually drawing maps on paper, but a

		list of rooms 'attached' will constantly be availiable

		on the web page, 'MU* info'.  That'll give a rough idea

		of how much and where things are.  Any rooms listed

		on the room list should be pretty safe to show to anyone

		I guess.  *grin*



		Anyone who wants to attach rooms to a part of Core wacko 

 		is more than welcome to do so, although Den & I will

		retain control over certain areas.  I'll have to be

		notified, of course, in order for the map and room lists

		to be updated.



10-16-97 (f)	I've hand-drawn out about 16 rooms so far.  That's almost

		2% of wacko!  Whee!  (whatever.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------



10-16-97 (p)	Whee, I was having problems with the password to the 

		gamesmgr account since I confused some numbers with letters

		or something.. anyway.  Yesterday the time on the machine

		was serioyusly wrong.  The 'Time' command would return

		Wed Feb 15 23:34 PDT 2036.

		Anyway, this had a profound impact on making things not happy

		times in the WHO were seriously messed up, as were things 

		that worked with idle times.  It is unknown what was causing

		the problems, except that it was the SYSTEM time that was

		messed up, and wacko draws it's time from the system 

		(constellation).

		As a result of the time crisis, 

			1) showage is really messed up.

				try it on Den or ken or eggplant, it's really 

				bonkers.

		this seems to be the only lasting effect.



		Question: how do you download stuff from geocities?



		Idleboot:  In an effort to quell the uprising of "I hate

			the idleboot person" comments, idleboot has been

			changed so that in order to idleboot someone, you

			have to be connected to the muck for at least 15 

			minutes.  The policy on times is still the same.

			After a day, you get 1 hr of idle time, then BLAMMO.



			Apparently, some unnamed people would just pop on,

			idleboot everyone, and pop off.  to which, I heard

			cries of "dammit, blahblabhalh is just an idleboot 

			freak" (substitute nasty bad words for spaces)

		

			Anyway, 15 mins seemed reasonable.  I've been 

			enjoying getting idlebooted every day, it's sort of

			fun.  Anyway, that's that.



		There have been minor changes to the server in the last

		few months. 



		Changed: various messages were changed.  Nothing major, still

			working on a 'nice' way to do multiple owners for

			objects, perhaps I'll wait to do this in 2.4



		Added: code to have 'hidden' properties, mainly to clean things

			up for the players, so if 



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