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January Office Hour Highlights

Posted by Kim on January 20, 2024, 3:00pm

I managed to make it throiugh both office hours without a power outage! Incredible! :D

Hey Kim, how are the piggies? Were you snowed in like I was?
The piggies are okay. They've been having to be stuffed into my shirt periodically when the power goes out and it's 17F outside and I don't want them freezing. We are STILL "snowed in" though more accurately iced in. You can't even just stand still outside without falling over. Our power has been flickering on and off A LOT this week and it has me pretty gosh darn frazzled. I'm going pretty stir crazy. I think it will be at LEAST one more day before we can venture out to replenish food, but probably more like two.

One of the power outages actually fried our thermostat. It didn't die, it went crazy and turned on the AC. While it was 17F out.

I think this is a great illustration, this was all on one day in my area https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRcWkayF/

Next week I'm arranging for some babysitting help with the puppy to try and catch up on RPR projects after this hell week.


don't worry Kim we won't rush you!
You're all VERY sweet about that. <3 I am really trying to stick to a pretty intense development schedule just for me, to try and make sure that even if I fall short of all the big goals, I will still have something real and substantial to give the community this year. I did great for like the first 16ish days of this year and then the weather said "You're taking a break." But I'm trying not to let it throw me entirely off schedule this early on in the year.


Hey.... any plans for Epic week yet?
HAHA there it is XD I'm trying to think what I can tell you about EW at this stage. One thing I can reveal is that this may be the first year we try starting EW not on April 24th (RPR's actual birthday) but on a Friday or Saturday in close proximity to it, just to see if it allows more people to get involved on day 1 and therefore encourages participation -- I think a lot of people on years where the 24th is mid-week hold off on getting involved until the weekend, but then on the weekend go "Well I'm probably too late"


Does it have to do with cleaning up outer space? There is an awful lot of space junk out there XD (Someone else: YES, WE MUST CLEANSE THE SPACE JUNK.)
I guess I can say -- Space junk is one of about four concepts being considered. We'll probably know which is going forward in the next couple of weeks, as of course there are A LOT of production things that have to roll forward by February for EW to go off in April.


So I was doing a weird thing for a while ... I would quietly slip a cloak into the treasury of the junkyard or armory just to see how long it would last XD.
I remember seeing that! You weren't the only one doing it either. I was always baffled by the ones in the junkyard, so few people even know it exists.

You know what else I saw happen more than once? Someone would fish out the cloak or other valuable from the group treasury and send it to me with a note that the person was worried it was a mistake and could I please look up who it belonged to and return it. Just... so sweet and selfless and mindful on both sides. People can be so gosh darn nice.

The very fact that people have been so interested in cleaning up the EW space junk, for so many years, is a real indicator of how sweet people are. Thinking about the impact of their adventures on the fictional environment and wanting to spend time and energy greening it. <3


Does the Alien Honor Blade still sometimes do extra dishonor damage? Or has that not been a thing for awhile?
It's a bit hard to give a hard yes or no on that.. I've been known to turn on and off additional special effects for some things based on the theme of the year. Space themes are more likely to uh... "charge up" space themed items in ways like that, if you know what I mean.


Where did the walruses from last EW go? Vacationing in the Arctic?
I believe the majority of them were brought back to the natural habitat they were recruited from and allowed to retire, although a few decided to retire as family pets in Repository City.


Semi RPR related, I saw our RPR Bluesky account followed me today! How are you liking that app/site from a social media perspective?
I find it about as useful as I used to find Twitter back when it WAS Twitter and wasn't crashing every few hours... Which is to say I am happy to publish stuff to it but don't spend a lot of time on it chatting. I do check it every few days, but up until recently I wasn't following enough people/didn't have enough followers to really get a sense of it. I *CAN* say the API is really annoying to program with so far, whereas programming with Mastodon was simple and fast. But I don't think that is the question XD

I did just start a Bluesky invite code exchange topic in the hopes of getting more RPR peeps over there, which would probably make it more interesting to me personally ;)

I built myself a little tool that lets me post to Facebook, Bluesky and Mastodon all at the same time, so except for replies to people talking to me on one of those platforms, it mostly won't matter which platform people choose to follow the RPR on. They'll still have access to the same announcements at roughly the same times. So, y'know -- use whichever one you personally prefer, you will still have RPR news :)


Oh, Kim, I know we’re only in January, but how do you feel about your roadmap for RPR stuff in 2024? (If you have a roadmap planned out)
*laughs in massive bullet journal blocking out projects for every quarter of the year* ;) I have some really ambitious goals related to smashing out a minimum viable product that the userbase can start to immediately enjoy ASAP when it comes to maps and avatars... I made big progress on the avatar stuff at the end of last year, after the Lemonade Stand, and have now moved on to working on the map editor so those avvies will have a place to hang out. It was going really strong for the first couple of weeks of the years. But the ice storm making power so unreliable this week has really thrown me for a loop. It is so hard to think creatively when so much of your brain is just anxiously anticipating the lights going out again and things keep flickering >.> I think this is a really temporary setback, though. I'm very hopeful I can get back on track next week. It shouldn't mess up the entire quarter.

I guess to answer your question more directly -- I feel really optimistic and energized. I think this will be a good year for the RPR!

Comments

Shinyrainbowlithogra

January 20, 2024
7:25pm

Yay! Stay warm!!
I also only knew about the Treasury 👀