mslaw

I am an attorney, before that I was a real estate agent, a restaurant manager, bookkeeper, and healthcare worker . . . . but what I really wanted to do, was be a geologist!!!  I simply LOVE rocks, all rocks, mountain rocks, beach rocks, river rocks, they just speak to me  . . . . I wonder what their stories are and where they have been and what they have been through.  I lived in Arkansas for a while and the most wonder thing was the rocks!  Any other rock lovers out there?

Rock lovers unite!

mslaw

I'm not ashamed of the rocks . . . .

Thanks HybridGenetiX,  it must be our professions that make us that way or we were that way and therefore were drawn to our professions.  In court you have only a very limited amount of time to impress the judge with you, your client, and the facts of the case.  Being direct and to the point is essential.  When I listen to people on the radio or TV who are asked a question and instead of answering the question they just start verbally wandering around, either because they do not know, do not understand, or because they are avoiding/lying, I just go crazy!  Sometimes being 'straight forward' can come off as insensitive, but that is not my intent, I have just trained myself to get to the point, quickly, honestly, and with passion. 

So tell me, what is your opinion of our legal system.  I do not use the word JUSTICE to describe it because I have not seen much justice in the system.  What I have seen locally, and what I believe is taking place throughout all levels of government, is that it has finally started to collapse under its own weight.  We can no longer afford to keep our local court system open in the smaller courts in the surrounding towns, we can no longer afford to have court reporters in the court room other than in criminal cases.  Staff is being cut, filing fees are being raised, and god help you if you are unrepresented by a blood sucking attorney, because you are really screwed then.  Everything is so complicated, expensive, and time consuming that even with an attorney the process becomes a joke.  Justice delayed is Justice denied.  And what is see is a system that is denying justice to anyone who is not wealthy enough to survive the process.  And that is why, in my own small way, I have tried to step in and help people who are too poor to survive the system without help. 

Sorry for the soapbox, but I truly believe that when a government cannot deliver justice to its people its just a matter of time . . . .

mslaw

I love hexxit.  The animals, the NPC that actually attack you, all the different buildings, it was great.  But, it was scary playing it alone.  I don't understand how people can play on a server and then go back to single player minecraft!  Its so lonely being the only living person in the world.  Unfortunately, all the hexxit servers are full on PvP, and I am more of a Towny person.  So I played on one hexxit server, and found an island, planted a few trees, had a nice little place, and left for five minutes and some jerk griefed me.  Needless to say i quit the server.  There is just no point to playing on a Factions server IMHO.  The other thing about Hexxit is that after you raid all the server generated builds and ships it would be kind of sad.  But if anyone knows of a nice Hexxit server I would appreciate the server address, I would like to play a bit once in a while.

Well, this is an interesting topic.  On my server, I have noticed that new player may grief because they don't realize they are not allowed to harvest materials from someone elses build.  They think the build is abandoned or whatever and just take what they need.  Some players do minor griefing to 'tweak' their friends.  I have seen players that move in groups from server to server, game to game, and within their own community they grief each other but its acceptable within their sub-community.  Then you have the lava/water griefers.  Those players are just jerks.  The probably feel inferior.  What I really do not understand is we tell everyone on the server that the server is protected by core protect so we will know who did the griefing and they grief anyway.  Are they stupid? Or do they just not care if they get caught? I don't know.  Most of those griefers never file a ban appeal so I am assuming that they think its fun to cause 'grief' for another player/server.  They must just move from server to server repeating the pattern.  That is why mcbans is so wonderful, when we see a player with even a lot of local bans for griefing, spam bots, hacking, then we do not make them members even if their reputation is still high enough to get on the server. 

I have noticed that you can sometimes tell a lot about a player by their name.  We do not promote players with any type of rude/suggestive name. Period.  They are just advertising the fact that they are jerks and want to 'shock' other players.  Others have names that suggest that they are a griefer/hacker etc., and we watch them very carefully.  After two years I can smell a troll, and i am hardly ever wrong.  But I love the 'I am from Planetmincraft' trolls, I play along and act like I am buying their story and occasionally we give them an 'admin' prefix just to troll them back.  Used to get one of those a week but not so much anymore.

Then there are cheaters who use mods to xray etc.  Again, between FoundDiamonds and Core Protect is easy to find someone using xray so they are just stupid to cheat but they can't help themselves, they just have to do it.  IMHO these people will probably cheat in other aspects of their life, probably because they are lazy.  They are the same people who try to cheat on tests at school. Some players cheat because they want to level up faster with mcmmo, usually once they are caught they realize how stupid it was and they don't do it again.  Sometimes they are just immature kids who need somone to explain to them that its unacceptable to cheat.  We are not born with a perfect sense of right and wrong, we need someone to teach us and unfortunately I have seen a lot of kids on my server that have not really be properly instructed by their parents when it comes to being honest. 

Then there are the hackers [insert shudder].  They just flat out scare the crap out of me.  Its got to be a power trip for them and sometimes its because they think they are getting even with rude players on a server. . . . whatever we have strict policy of treating people we suspect of being hackers very carefully.  We are polite and friendly.  Once someone from a griefing team showed up and told us that they had been sent to our server by a former player.  Well we just treated them with respect, explained our position, and were friendly [which is our standard policy with everyone].  They decided there was no reason to do anything to our server and they just left.  So far other than a few Ddos attackes we have excaped any serious problems with true hackers by following this policy.  Actually, this works pretty well on all player related issues.  Its never a good idea to engage in a name calling brawl with an unhappy player because you never know who there friends are!

Just my two cents worth.

mslaw

As for building styles, I look for something interesting, my latest build was a contempory two story house, before that i had that style that uses white wool and logs? I don't even know what its called.  I have a courthouse that I like to copy to each of my new towns too.  I enjoy laying out a town, with towny plots, making the roads, street lights, parks, ponds, docks if its near water, and once i built a rail road half way across the map.  I once saw a gigantic water slide on a youtube video and I have always wanted to attempt that as well.  I also love building creepy mob arenas with lots of mob spawners.  I love to farm and keep animals.  And I love to mine and once I built a multi-story underground garden.  So much of my time is taken up in 'management' so I don't get to build as much as I used to.

I only stated my political/religious views because I never considered it important until recently it came up on my current server and much to my dismay there were people who did not even want to talk to me again just because I watched Fox News? I thought it was strange because i don't care what side anyone stands on and as an attorney I can argue both sides anyway!

As for why I became an attorney, well it was a mid life crises.  I did not start law school until I was 40 and finished in three years and passed the California bar exam on my first time, and a couple of hours early.    I wanted to do civil litigation in contract and business law but ended up doing a variety of cases.  I dabbled in criminal law but I could not get over the feeling that I was supposed to get all my clients 'off' which was totally unrealistic.  When I discovered I could not stand to have my clients end up in jail, I had a moment of panic and went back to civil law.  I ended up doing family law cases, mostly for people who can't pay, because I wanted to protect children from abusive parents.  So now the only cases I do are custody and visitation cases.  Sometimes when I am sitting in court and I see someone who is unrepresented and who clearly needs help, I offer to represent them 'pro bono'.  These parents are forced to try and represent themselves on matters related to the welfare of their children because they can't afford some blood sucking attorney? That is not fair, so I try to help were I can.  And I love attorney jokes, mostly because they are all true!  Do you know what you call an attorney with the IQ of 40?     "Your Honor!"

I have wondered why I like Minecraft so much, and I think its because it allows us to build a world the way WE want it.  We get to make the rules, we have so much freedom, and we are only limited by how hard we are willing to work.  That is the way the real world should work.  

I have been around on the internet since Windows 3.1, what I like most about the internet is the ability it give us to communicate with people from all around the world and from all different walks of life.  I believe that it will be the internet that will finally make us free because the government can't stop the free flow of information.  I can see that this server is one of those places where this is happening. 

Feel free to ask me anything, as an attorney I am neither shy or short on words.