Ask The Admin: Rooks Edition

1) Who is your favorite Batman villain?

2) What is your favorite book? (Or, what is one book from among your favorites?)

3) A wizard has turned you into a whale. Is this awesome? (Y/N)

4) What is your philosophy of leadership?

5) Got any fun plans lined up for the weekend?

You could probably maximize their loss by choosing Chick-Fil-A, and then bashing their food (and eating it in the dark in shame).


Is there any meal that you ate that you look back and cringe now? It could be a drunken bout of bachelor cheffing in college, or you just adamantly could not give up that burned protein that cost a Vietnamese's kid's worth of labor, or a vegan meal that your friend made and you ate it cause she thinks you're the only decent CIS male she knows, etc.

I never really liked Batman's Rogues Gallery. If I have to pick, probably Scarecrow as he's the most interesting in the bunch.


Good Omens, by Gaiman and Pratchett.


It's interesting for a day or so. After that it gets pretty boring, so no, not awesome.


Loyalty up requires loyalty down. Take care of your people and they will take care of you, and most of the rest works itself out.


All of the water parks are finally open, so I intend to spoil the hell out of the sprout.

Daigo or Justin?

Still can't eat the Chick-Fil-A, out of principle. No amount of free Chick-Fil-A I eat is going to hurt them finanically. Principles suck.

I once ate some really, really atrocious potato salad that my girlfriend at the time made. I don't like the stuff to begin with, but this was bad even by the standards of the genre. She had this whole image of a picnic in the park in mind though, and was really invested in it, and I just didn't have the heart to say anything.

I can still taste it, in my nightmares.

Daigo, purely based on the fact that he plays Ken. The fact that he wins isn't even relevant.

Alright, sprout tending time. More answers later, in case your thirst for suburban white boy answers hasn't been slaked.

JLT or BLT?

JLT forever.

Belated congrats, also, Rooks! Thanks for taking on the extra duties here.

As the forum-vet-civic-duty-volunteer-mod, I suppose I should try for more serious questions this time. Hm, let's see...

1. As the dev-back-end-support-aspected-mod, what is your view on banned end-users skirting bans by returning on newly-created accounts/IP masks? Intolerable situation (given their previously-banned status?) or acceptable, so long as their new incarnations behave properly according to the forum rules?

2. Are there separate Dev/Testing/Production versions/co-locations/whatever for this site? I once teased Scragg about him always fiddling with code here in Production--with sometimes catastrophic results--but honestly I always did wonder if there wasn't ever a Test environment also, to explain why he doesn't use it. :p

3. What would be your top three (arbitrary number!) priority changes you'd like to make for this site's operations/processes, if you're able to get at the back-end code (and assuming whatever necessary dev UI structure is in place for categorising changes/fixes?)

...ok, I ran out of serious questions. ;_; *hems* *haws*

4. Amazo or Super-Adaptoid?

5. Who is your secret-forum-crush? (Someone will answer this, eventually!) :p

Thanks! I've benefited tremendously from the site and its community for a long time; it's good to be able to give back.


I'd like to say that I'm a fan of second chances, that I believe in forgiveness, and the notion that people can change.

Sadly, the types of people who flount the rules badly enough to earn a ban in the first place, are also the types to engage in recidivism, especially given that they didn't really feel any bite in the first place (given that they could circumvent the ban). If I thought a banned user could behave, I'd just cancel the ban on their existing account and let them try with a clean slate. The nature of the internet in general and forums in specific make it pretty hard to keep an especially determined user out, and ones who break the rules a second time to come back don't really seem like sympathetic cases for amnesty.

Who knows, though. Someone might make a good case to me as to why they should be allowed back, and I'd say yes. Rules are black and white, people aren't.


Honestly? I don't really know. I haven't been given the reins to anything yet; I'm still just a totally normal moderator (and one on trial, at that). Scragg has talked to me about an AH VM instance that I'll use for development, so I'll be able to test without touching prod, but for a site as data driven as this one is, there are bound to be corner cases that don't show up til you're in the field. I'll do my best to keep the explosions to a minimum.



I think job one is to get the site to reflect the current state of FFXI. There's a lot of stuff that needs to either be added, massively updated, or wildly overhauled, to make it a more useful modern tool. It's already pretty indispensable, but there's so much more it could do.

Job two probably means doing some research and seeing if I can find a way to get FFXIV MB information. XIV Pro doesn't really offer anything compelling; other sites do all it does and more. I think if we could get MB information, and add in some useful user tools, XIV Pro could be as indispensable as XIAH has been. There's already name recognition and a built in user base; those are huge advantages and it would be nice to capitalize on them.

Thirdly, there's a lot of requests for social features, and while those don't weigh particularly heavily on my mind, users are what make the site go and they want them, so that's got to factor in.


Amazo's got Superman parts. I think he's got to be the favorite, doesn't he? I mean, Superman is a character who's difficult to write because there's so little that can actually challenge him physically without throwing Ye Olde Kryptonite at him for the eleventy trillionth time. I just don't see how he loses without Kryptonite being involved.


I'm way, way, way, too old for that sort of thing. But in the spirit of giving you an answer, I'm going to go with Kalila, because who doesn't like Kalila? I assume everyone's crush is Kalila.

The contrived nature of that scenario illustrates pretty perfectly why Amazo's the favorite; Superman is actually sort of boring in the sense that he has so few weaknesses and flaws; there's no struggle, and it's kind of a theme with DC characters in general. Marvel does 'flawed hero' to the point where they forget the 'hero' part occasionally, but at least that's got potential to be interesting.

That's not to say that you can't write Superman in an interesting way; I just don't think you can do it with combat. Superman always seemed like a ripe candidate for a truly philosophical series; how do you deal with immortality?

1. If you could be any type of Muppet character, which one would you be?

2. How many gas stations are in the USA?

3. Where do you see yourself in five years?

4. Why are manhole covers round?

5. Is It Possible to Walk Without Spilling Your Coffee?

Rolf seems like he's got a good life.


Too many? That's the answer, right? Too many?


That's entirely too open-ended. The summary is that some of my life will be very different (having a second grader instead of a toddler) and some isn't likely to change much at all (professionally, I'll keep advancing through the ranks, but it's not like I'm going to join the circus).


So they don't fall in. This is pretty standard geometry knowledge.


Is this a thing people struggle with? Maybe don't fill it to the brim.

Are you into shooting or hunting?

Not really. I mostly grew up in Ohio so I've spent my share of time around guns and learned how to shoot and handle them properly, but they've never held any particular appeal for me. We have one in the house, but it's an heirloomy rifle that belongs to the wife, and it's kept under lock and key.

never grow up the rest of the way!

also ohio!

PARKER!

oh. hi. yo.

A-HI-A, in my particular hometown.

I know a guy that is from Missouri, pronounced Missouruh. Every time he says it, I find myself repeating that under my breath.

Why doesn't organizer do everything I can dream of perfectly yet?

It should just put away what I want it to out away and get what I want it to get and clean my inventory and store things on the porter moogle for me. Also, I only want to give it a single argument command.


Thx, Byrf

Architectural issue, I think.

If you could take your family on a vacation anywhere in the world, where would it be?


If you could go on a vacation by yourself anywhere in the world, where would it be?

What would you do on vacation?

Do we need to give you the nickname "Castle mod"? (even though your name comes from something entirely different)

What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

His name is Based Mod, he represents the best girl trope in the FFXIAH anime harem.

Big Island of Hawaii. So nice, so many things to do. The wife and I always went for our anniversary, and we'll start going again once the sprout is old enough to either enjoy it or spend two weeks with a rotating cast of grandparents.


Likely wouldn't. I basically never take vacations; it was actually a criticism in my last performance review (bosses are both worried about burnout, and legitimately want me to enjoy myself).


Depends on where, but a lot of reading on a beach is likely to be involved.


I don't really need a nickname, do I?


It varies depending on mood, but the current king of the hill is Publix's organic chocolate. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams makes a fantastic Root Beer ice cream, as well.

Yes, and it's Based Mod.

How many times can you get through the tongue twister "She sells seashells by the seashore," before getting tongue tied?

I just managed to do it twice. Third time was "She shells hells by the sheeshore".