Another year has passed and another round of speeches has come. Soon the round of speeches has also passed and you will all be very happy again. So. Now it is up to me to decide whether or not I wish to write a long speech or a very short one. Well. Since I am such a nice guy, I will take your wishes into consideration and write a very long speech.

What a year 2002 has been. So much has happened that I can't even remember it all. What it all comes down to is OTF v2, I suppose. The InDev crew has been moving mountains to get all this done. We have rewritten most of our scripts to move away from the old systems that used data files. Now it all works on a MySQL database. This gave us a lot more opportunities, as data modeling in a 3GL database is SO much easier than data modeling using text files.

Anyway. I'd better stop talking technical stuff, as I might get over-enthusiastic and ramble on for hours. Yes yes, I know that you guys love to hear me speak and stuff (hankies are available at the bar, BTW), but that Harry dude told me I only have 5 minutes. So. Let's just say that we have much neater tools at our disposal. :)

Now, tools alone don't make a kick-ass system. That takes a bunch of geniuses to make use of these tools. Which us InDevians are, of course. Andrew, Jon, Mathew and I did our very best when we did all the scripting. Fortunately it all worked out in the end and now we have a whole bunch of new systems that make the daily life of us all so much easier. The profile system, the promotion system, the departmental system, the new armory, the new spycam, the improved chat scripts, and so on and so on. Yay us! We rule! We rock!

But then again, what would kick-butt scripts be without a spanking hot page layout? Fortunately, Linda and Andrew have been doing wonders with our current homepage layout and the template for all our pages. This new look makes all peeps drool and dribble, including yours truly. I will deny this when asked formally, of course. Drooling does not fit with my image of being Mr. Perfect.

All these systems and pages are running on our own server that we purchased a year and a half ago. Andrew has been going through great effort in keeping this server working properly and has been installing virus scanners, spam filters and whatnot. It is the most invisible work there is, but still it needs to be done. And it has been done well too.

Yet another wonderful thing that came out of InDev this year were the Forums. Sonata and Andrew did an amazing job reconfiguring the Ikonboard system to look as spiffy as it can possibly look and to work together with the rest of our systems. Great kudos to the two of you!

And last, but definitely not least. Alder Hill! :) Well. It's not an official InDev project, but the technical side of it all was done by our wonderful team. Main bit was done by this wonderful scripter that you know by the name of Henri. Great guy, that. I wish I'd be more like him. Oh wait, I'm just like him. Hmmm. Yay me! :)

Finally, I'd like to thank Lzrman, Al and Jor and all the other peeps that helped for being of great assistance in finding bugs, security holes and other unwanted stuffs. You gave me a lot of work and I didn't always love you for it, but it was definitely a necessary thing and thanks to you, our systems are almost fool proof now. ;)

*gets poked real hard by Harry and sees a great big hook appearing from the side of the stage* Hmmm. I think my time is up now. Bummer! Anyway, thanks for listening and stuff. Can I please get a round of applause for all the great peeps in InDev? *claps insanely to try and get the crowd going*

There... That wasn't so bad, was it? It wasn't for me anyways, although I do fear that my beer has gone a bit warm by now. Sela, sweetie, can I have a new beer please? Thanks... *steps down after waiting politely for the wild round of applause to die down a little*