It looks like my loving ISP has added another RBL to our mail servers. Huge chunks of the internet, mostly consisting of active spamhaus establishments and compromised systems (got broadband but no firewall? shame on you!) are having their traffic to mx.sonic.net dropped without comment. Recent stats show that we’re down from roughly 400-500 spams per minute to roughly 200. Thank you, spamhaus.org, your hard work is greatly appreciated.

See the stats for yourself

In the game FFXI, cooperative play with other characters is vital to being a successful adventurer. By successful, of course, I mean efficiently slaying many, many beastmen and such. Cooperative play is mostly accomplished by means of the “party” system, in which up to six characters can participate in hunting the same prey. It is also possible to link up to three full parties (for 18 characters cooperating), but this isn’t done without having a special reason to do so: a six-character party tends to work best for gaining experience points and advancing in your job.

A party needs to be able to do three things: find prey that is worth fighting, bring that prey down, and survive the encounter. The more effectively these tasks can be accomplished, the better. Each of these tasks can be handled with various techniques and degrees of competancy depending on your character’s job. A mix of jobs is vital, making sure all the bases are covered.
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