Promotion: Operations Manager

It wasn't that long ago that I was expounding right here on this very blog about my excitement regarding being hired as the new Volunteer Coordinator for Conquer Club. Now, I have reason to expound a little more because yesterday I was promoted from Volunteer Coordinator to a new position of Operations Manager.

The Community Manager, Hyasri, who was hired at the same time I was has left for other employment opportunities and so that left the owner of Conquer Club with the predicament of having to fill the role and not really having anyone he wanted to give it to. So, instead he decided to split the two main areas that the Community Manager worked in and give one to me and the other to one of the other admins, AndyDufresne.

So, I have all my job duties from before, and added to that I have all of the projects, activities, and site improvement work that the Community Manager was doing. AndyDufresne is picking up the role of Chief Moderator and dealing directly with the public to ease concerns, put out fires, and be a public face for the site. He'll do a great job at that as he is easily the most level-headed of all the admins. I get a little too fiesty from time to time.

I'm really excited about the opportunity because it fits right into one of my personal skill sets of organization and planning. It also gives me five more hours of work each week which offsets some of my stress over increased expenses with a new baby arriving at the end of the year at least a little bit.

There are some big things planned for Conquer Club in the coming weeks (which I hope I can get the go-ahead on rather quickly), and hopefully they will improve the site for the better.

Post #300

Well, would you look at that, I have reached the 300 post mark in my blogging career. It only took several years and several blogs to get to this point, but I got here nonetheless. In celebration I would like to share some pictures of how I get to work nowadays with my new job. Yes, my new job is that cool.

The Book Project

I suppose it is about time that I post something new so everyone stops thinking I am so depressed all the time.

For my print publishing class I need to do one final project using Adobe InDesign to finish off the work and skills we are learning this semester. The interesting thing about this class is that it is almost identical to the first print publishing class that I took, only each of the projects is a little bit longer or bigger than the last time. It sure makes for an interesting experience.

It's also strange that there are 7 people in the class. 6 girls, and me. Funny, eh?

Anyways, the final project is a book project that has to be at least 70 pages long and have at least 4 chapters when I am done. I've known about this project the entire semester and have been trying to think of something to use for me "content" but had been coming up blank until just a couple days ago. I decided that instead of being like everyone else and making a personal history or some sort of cookbook that I would write my own content that was fresh and new and then put it into a format that was more stylistic than a run of the mill 6in x 9in book.

What I decided on was a 4in tall by 10in wide book utilizing 4 columns (trust me, it looks cool) and that my subject matter would be Conquer Club. Why you ask? Well, on March 12th I had my two year anniversary as a member of Conquer Club and in that two years I climbed from a "newbie" all the way to the top of the ladder as the "admin" that I am now. I thought it might be fun to write a sort of memoir of the experiences I've had on the site and then use that for my content. Obviously it wouldn't be too serious or weighty, but it could be a fun little read if you ask me.

I'm thinking of a title something along the lines of From Newbie to Admin: My Journey Through the World of Conquer Club or something just as entertaining.

Conquer Club Volunteer Coordinator

Well, remember that job I was talking about a week or so ago? It's finally been announced to the public and so now I can inform everyone that I have taken a job with my favorite website (Conquer Club) to be the Volunteer Coordinator.

The position is an "admin" position, which means my name is now red on the forums, and I have to work closely with the other admin, including the website owner, to help Conquer Club improve and grow moving forward.

My specific job responsibilities include the following:

• Conduct moderator team meetings
• Train new moderators
• Develop new policies as needed
• Organize and implement various site projects
• Manage forum permissions and forum settings
• Support site moderators in their work
• Perform quality checks on moderation team

On top of that, I will be working on any other stuff that the owner decides to throw my way. There is a lot of work to do that has been on hold for a long time. I've been working for about a week now and am loving every minute of it. The job allows me to enjoy the site I love while being paid, and it also lets me use my talents for organization and project management.

Also along those lines is that the job is online, which means it is far closer to my career of choice than sitting in a department office on campus answering the phone each day. I don't do any web development with this position, but there is potential for it down the road, and it is the type of job that helps build a lot of contacts for things in the future. Who knows, if the site continues to grow perhaps it could turn into a career all of its own.

Holly just shook her head when she found out I had gotten the job because way back when I first started playing games on CC I told her something along the lines of, "If I ever get the chance to work for this place and actually get paid I'm going to take the job without even asking you first, even if it means we have to move to Canada." She laughed then, but now she enjoys the fact that I can work my shifts from home and help out with Jack if she needs me to out of the blue.

I'm thrilled, and I don't know how many people can truly appreciate that, but I'm thrilled nonetheless.

Funk, I Dislike it Terribly

I'm sure some may have noticed my lack of posting here in February after a somewhat stellar January where I averaged close to a post per day. I think it has something to do with the funk that I'm currently in. School isn't as good as I had hoped it would be this semester as things are not turning out very close at all to my expectations.

The lack of sunshine is also difficult for me as I've mentioned before. I don't do well with "gloomy" types of days and the incessant cloudiness and half-hearted snowfall just gets on my nerves. Either snow and be done with it, or go the hell away so I can ride my scooter again. Stop with the "maybe I'll snow, maybe I'll not snow" shenanigans. It just pisses me off.

In other news I have a cold, a bad one, and I'm tired of dealing with it.

In even more news, I finally got my bronze medal for speed games on Conquer Club.

It's Official Now

My gold color is gone, my tag is gone, and my forum powers are gone. I am a free citizen on Conquer Club once more. It's a bittersweet day, as I really loved my job there, but at the same time I'm really going to love doing what I do best: tournaments.

Tournament Director No More

Yep, the time has finally come where real life has gotten to the point that I am going to have to officially cut back on how I spend my time with Conquer Club. After thinking about it for a couple weeks, I approached Twill earlier this week to let him know I needed to cut back, and we discussed some possible options.

I've spent the past 12 months working as a Tournament Director and during that time I worked as hard as I could to make the tournament on Conquer Club more enjoyable for all. I helped with clarifying rules, answering questions on how to make a successful tournament, built the Tournament Hall of Fame, and many more things. Working with the other members of Team CC was quite enjoyable and I think I managed to make a couple of really good friends along the way.

The past couple of months I've also been working as a Global Moderator, and that is an entirely thankless job. I think that the combination of the two finally overpowered me and turned CC into a place that was no longer all that much fun. Luckily for me, I noticed the change was happening and decided to do something about it as soon as possible.

Twill didn't want to let me go completely as apparently my experience with tournaments is valuable to him in the future, so I'll be sticking around with Team CC as a simple player/advisor for whenever Twill or Lack need some opinions on the directions that tournaments are taking for CC in the days to come.

Gone are my Tournament Director powers, and gone are all the other powers that I had all across the forums. Well, at least they will be gone when Twill gets around to remembering that he needs to remove them from me.

It will be a definite change of pace to not have PMs flooding into my inbox with a constant flow, to be able to take my time enjoying the forums once again, and to get back to what I really love to do on Conquer Club, run tournaments. I'm excited to have fewer distractions on the site so I can get back to having all the fun I used to have before I let things become nothing but work. Being able to help out in small ways without having any sense of "obligation" that I need to spend hours at a time working on things will be a burden lifted from my shoulders that has been weighing heavy for a while now.

Not to mention, the time that I will now have free should allow me to focus a little more on consistently preparing otissito.com to launch sometime this semester, as well as work on a few things around the house that I want to get done before Jack arrives. Perhaps you could argue that I should have made this decision a little bit sooner, but over the past day I've decided that making the decision now is just right. I gave it my all for a full year, and I would like to think that I left CC a little bit better of a place now that I've handed the reigns over to someone else.

Now, if only I can get my score up to 2,000 points.

Time for a Big Post

Well, I'll be honest and say that I had no clue it had been so long since my last post, although I did realize I had been away for a little bit, so perhaps I just didn't think about it much. However, I've got plenty to talk about, so this one should be nice and long for everyone.

First and foremost, school is now in session. Tuition has been paid for both Holly and I, same with books purchased, health insurance paid, and school supplies bought. As was the case last semester Holly is excited to be using her "war backpack" as she calls it, and seems to be enjoying her classes so far. She is in Book of Mormon, French, Early British Literature, and American Novel.

After the first week of school, I feel a little better about my classes, although the reading load is going to be pretty high here at the beginning while we tackle Moby Dick in one of my classes. I've never read it before, so I guess I'll have to pay attention. I'm enrolled in Web Databases (with Russell as the teacher), Late British Literature, American Novel, Career Strategies, and German. I'm not that excited about the German class, but it is turning out better than the previous two classes, so that is promising.

I'm a little worried as to whether or not I'll be able to keep up in my Web Databases class due to my weak, actually incredibly weak, skills in Javascript, but I've been hunting for some online tutorials to get me up to speed on the basics as fast as I can. We also have a reading project for that class where we have to read a book on some aspect of web design, so I figure I'll read one on Javascript to make up for my deficiencies. I will say that class yesterday was promising for me as I was able to understand what was going on and not get confused or frustrated.

My American Novel class is with the same teacher that Holly and Roxy have it with, but not at the same time, so Holly and I saved a few bucks on textbooks because we can share them. I think I'll enjoy that class much more than I usually do a literature class due to the teacher. He has a very exciting persona as far as teaching is concerned. Not to mention we get to read actual fiction and not personal narratives or love sonnets.

Work was an absolute nightmare for the entire week of the training seminar right before school started, but there wasn't much I could do about that. Not to mention that once school started it was discovered that the BYU Bookstore botched about 15 book orders, including one order for over 600 textbooks for the English 316 class. Not good, not cool, and not something that made me very happy. It took 3 days to sort that mess out. Perhaps it is just me, but it seems that both the bookstore and the part-time/full-time faculty are getting progressively worse and worse to deal with this semester.

I'm back at Conquer Club now, but in a much more controlled manner. I spend about 60-90 minutes online each day rather than 4-5 hours, and it is working out for the best. That break was something that I desperately needed I think.

In scooter news I changed the oil for the first time and it was a success. Now, perhaps tonight I can get the gear oil changed out as I still need to do that. It is running great and working perfectly for transporting me to and from school. Holly also really likes not having to drive back and forth from Orem to get me each day after she gets home at lunchtime. The days that I have late evening classes it works perfectly for me to get home without making her put down her homework or work projects and spend 45 minutes getting me home from school.

New Header

Well, at least the sabbatical from Conquer Club is starting to slowly translate into productivity in other skill sets I have. Today, I started with a small project: learn a new photoshop skill. The result... a new header for the blog here.

I think it's pretty snappy if I do say so myself.

First Time in 515 Days Without Logging on to Conquer Club

Yep, it's true. I've finally made the decision to lock myself out of Conquer Club for a few weeks, possibly even a couple of months. Over the past few weeks the stuff that I've been doing for Conquer Club has become much more like work and very little like casual fun, which it is supposed to be. That meant it was time for me to walk away for a little bit.

I need a breather, a break, a freshening of the mind if you want to call it that.

So, last night after taking care of a bunch of things in the Conquer Club forums, I had Holly change my password to something I couldn't guess, so that I wouldn't even be tempted to log on. I'm hoping to spend the free time between now and the middle of September getting caught up on a bunch of random things I have wanted to do lately.

My Goals for Conquer Club

Of course there is no secret about how much I enjoy my time working for and playing on Conquer Club, but while at work one day a week or two ago I was thinking about what I might want to accomplish before I call it quits with the site sometime in the future. So, after a little bit of thinking, here are some of my goals. The list isn't very long, but it is meaningful, at least to me.

1. Achieve one of the officer ranks (Lieutenant, Captain, Major, etc).

I've never topped 1500 points as far as my score is concerned, but I think that someday I will catch on to my own personal little niche and things will really take off for me. Perhaps it will be the day I give up all extra-curricular CC activities and go back to simply playing the game, or perhaps it will be some future kind of game type, who knows.

2. Get to 500 wins.

I'm a little over halfway there, as I got to 300 a couple of weeks ago, but I think getting all the way to 500 is really going to take some doing for me. My wins tend to come in small spurts of 2 or 3, and then go away for a couple weeks at a time.

3. Head up a project in some area other than Tournaments.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be involved as something more than a Tournament Director, but each time I pull back a little bit because I think it will ruin the site for me. However, I think there may be some projects in the future that will allow me to slide over into another area at some point and flex some other creative muscles.

4. Get at least every bronze achievement medal.

I don't ever play speed games, and haven't ever played in an assassin game, so this one might be tough to achieve. I also have played only 1 triples and quads game in my 1000+ games on CC, so that one may take a little while as well. I think I can do it though, it is just going to take me a little bit of time.

5. Play on every single map.

I can't possibly believe that I would ever actually get a win on every map, but I think it would really stretch my horizons to make sure I actually played a game on each map at some point. I've only played on about 50%, and that leaves me with a lot of maps still to go.

Conquer Club Trivia Project

By now many of you already know that Twill is the guy in charge of all the moderators and staff at Conquer Club and it is up to him to make sure that we stay in line with the rules, enforce the rules properly, and work on projects in the right order.

Well, a few days ago I happened to be feeling really down on CC, but not in the traditional sense. It was a very clear overabundance of negativity that was starting to really pull the site community down and make it a very intimidating place for anyone to try and become a part of. It had been bothering me for a couple of months, and because it keeps getting worse I decided to say something about it in the moderator forums the other day. As part of that discussion I mentioned a few small thoughts I have had previously on how we could possibly brighten things up without putting an increased workload square across the shoulders of Lack because he already has enough to worry about, and to do for that matter.

The result was apparently a big long meeting between Twill, Lack, and Andy (the three admins) and they discussed all sorts of changes and things that could help. I hadn't intended to cause that much of a stir, but I guess I did.

In the end, they made a few decisions, and a couple of my ideas (in some form or another) will be getting implemented in the coming weeks and months, so that made me feel pretty good about myself. More to the point, I have been put in charge of developing, implementing, and carrying out an official Conquer Club Trivia program. I'm pretty excited to dig through all the CC history to come up with facts, details, names, dates, etc that will let me do a good job at it, but more I am excited to branch out a little bit from tournaments without having to take on too many extra responsibilities. This is something I can work on at my own pace and go from there.

Twill already gave me a good pile of information that the admins had already collected for a failed attempt a long time ago, so I have a good starter pile and just need to sort through it and separate things into categories so that I can be nice and organized. I've already requested a personal usergroup to use as my staging grounds.

Now, I just need to talk to Russell about some possible help with some javascript functions to really make it work.