Just a few housekeeping matters to take care of...

1) As the topic of 'where does the XO sit' has come up a few times OOC and our counselor has convinced me that letting her onto the bridge occasionally might be worthwhile, I've taken a few minutes to alter the bridge layout so that they've got their own chairs. I realized that while having them sit at normal station works for the Defiant, shouting across a bigger bridge at the XO would not be conducive to conversation. Where were the chairs earlier, you ask? They, uh... pop of the deck? No, clearly they just hadn't been installed. A wizard did it.

2) Speaking of the website, I've made a few minor changes recently, mostly clearing up some typos and silliness on the Deck Listing page that were leftover from copying from the original HF database listing. I've also added an MSD, a description and plan of Auxiliary Control, and a bunch of uniform images courtesy of our own Ameen.

3) Does anyone know whether Starfleet follows the current naval tradition of referring to Marine captains aboard a ship as 'major', since there can be only one captain per ship? How do other ships in the fleet handle that?

4) Speaking of Marines, please welcome our new grunt commander, Paran th'Daras. This means that we're now officially operational, so...

5) Sometime Saturday or Sunday at the latest, I'm going to post the opening to our first official mission, along with some OOC information. If anyone needs to finish up posts for the arrival prelude, I'll be leaving the current thread open for at least a week. I want to thank everyone for being so active even without an actual plot going.

6) Finally, Ameen suggested that it might be worthwhile to have a forum for creating JPs, as opposed to just using messages. Does anyone else think they'd find this useful? I know that there can be trouble with the board software when dealing with large groups, so this might be a way around it for large meetings and so forth until I can beat the software into behaving.

I like the additions to the website, very helpful. I notice that we have a flight officer who is not an NPC? But she doesn't have a profile or bio or anything, and she doesn't seem to be on the forum. Who is this mystery soul?

Well first off, huge congratulations to us all for securing a 6th player for our RPG (but most especially to any and all who were so kind as to recruit for our simm). A warm and hearty welcome to all those who will be joining us on our journey of exploration into deep space!

I know that in times past, the term "Captain" has been used when referring to the Marine Captain; Clay is quite correct in his assertion that there can be only one "Captain"; however, due to the rank's nature, I don't believe it is improper to refer to the Marine Commanding Officer as the MCO or perhaps even "Captain"; after all, truth be told, situational, the differentiation between the ships Commanding Officer and the Marine Commanding Officer should be easily understood. So, in short, I believe it to be proper to use the term "Captain" when referencing the Marine Commanding Officer.

The updates to the website look superb and all of Clay's hard work and dedication are quite apparent in the IC and OOC universe he's setting up for all of us.

I'm still working on a JP with Clayton and Anderson ... I've been a bit delayed due to real life as well as a side-project I've been working on, but I'll responses out ASAP here this afternoon.

Take care, Ameen