       SO, YOU WANT TO BE A SYSOP...
       Episode Two: The Sysop Who Shot Liberty Valence
       Written and directed by Leonard Richardson
       Sysop, Da Warren BBS & Grill (805) 854-2478
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
       DISCLAIMER:
       Put down this article at once! It is nothing but lies!
  
            Hello again, and welcome to the world of sysoping. For 
            those who are new, in this column I'll be showing you 
            the ins and outs of being a real sysop-- including all 
            the stuff the books don't tell you <ominous laugh>, and
            be socially offensive at the same time. If you've got 
            something to add, I can be contacted through Wildnet
            (leave me a message in the General Chat conference), 
            NutNet (ditto, What's Up conference), or (theoretically)
            through Internet. My adress is leonard.richardson@the-
            edge.com. Alternatively, you can call Da Warren and leave
            me a comment, or page me.  So, kids, gather once again 
            around your uncle Leonard's knee and listen to him as he
            spins another tale of sysopery...
                When I started being a sysop, we had it tough.  I 
            had to walk ten miles in the snow to get to the micro-
            wave, and it was uphill both ways! We had to carve our
            modems out of wood! And if we wanted to do ANSIs, we 
            had to use COPY CON with the screen off!
                Actually, that's not strictly true.  I first started
            wanting to be a sysop in January 1993, about a week after
            I first started calling BBSes. Note that I was no 
            stranger to telecommunications; I'd been on Prodigy for 
            almost a year at that point.  But BBSing was new to me.

                 Anyway, I was calling BBSes, and after I'd given 
            all the ones in my area a try, a thought occured to me.
            I recognized it as a "form thought" that I often have. 
            It was: "Gee, a lot of these x are really cool, but none
            of them posesses the insanity and complete silliness that
            has the capacity to make me truly happy. I know! I'll my
            own!" In this case, x=BBSes and y=run. So, I started my
            BBS. It took me 6 months, but only because I was too lazy
            to go out and get a 14.4k modem. On June 23, 1993, Da 
            Warren BBS took its first call. It's not really that hard
            to make your board good. Just make it your vision of the
            ideal board. It's no use in anticipating what other 
            people want because you're usually wrong. Give them what
            you want, and if their tastes are at all similar to yours
            (my board appeals to the mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-
            take-it-anymore crowd, who are looking for a board that's
            not afraid to break the rules), you'll have a hit.

                But what should I have on my BBS? you say. Should I 
            have a lot of files? Doors? What? Well, too many message 
            bases aren't a good idea. Most people who call your BBS 
            want one thing and one thing only, and that's files. A
            good analogy is a singles bar. So, message-wise, you 
            should start out small. I started with three 
            conferences (Private Mail, The All-Purpose Conference, 
            and The Silly Conference) and added more as the need 
            arose. Should you join nets? Maybe. I'm not the person 
            to ask on these matters. I didn't want to pay a fortune
            in long-distance bills so I started NutNet so that other
            people could pay a fortune in long-distance bills. What 
            about doors?  Well, again, I started small, but that 
            wasn't intentional. I couldn't figure out how to set 'em 
            up. Now I have almost 60, even though only a few of them 
            are played on a regular basis. Oh well. As to files, I 
            have a large files base (Well, fairly large) because 
            that's what most people call for.
 
            (Note: If you'd like to tell you how to set up doors, 
            sorry, I can't. There  are too many ways and I only 
            know one of them. I might share that in a later column, 
            since I don't see how the others could be that 
            different.)
  
                Should you have upload/download ratios? (Sysops, who
            have their own colorful jargon, call them u/l/d/l ratios
            or just ratios) Well, I don't, but that's because I 
            don't put any limitations on my users except for time 
            online. Plus, a lot of people would upload junk to beat
            the ratio and think they were clever for it. A lot of 
            people do. If you're gonna run a pay BBS, I dunno. I have
            no experience  with that sort of thing, but it sounds 
            like a good idea if you want to get money out of people.
            I don't know if they'll pay, thought. I sure wouldn't.
                The most important modification I've made to my board
            is the keyboard extension that allows me to type from bed.
            This brings me to my next topic of discussion:

                                   COMFORT
  
                Why comfort?  Why not contort, carport, or pillow 
                fort? These are questions people don't ask me, but 
                I wish they would because then I could laugh in 
                their face and say "You pathetic little swine! Why 
                do you people place so much emphasis on elegance 
                when comfort is so much more important! You stuck-up
                scum sicken me!"  And maybe belch in their face for 
                emphasis.  Not that I'd ever do that, of course.  I'm
                much too polite.  But it's true, too much of life is
                making sure things look good.  The people who call 
                your BBS can't see your computer room.  If you 
                function best in a mess like I do, fine. You don't 
                have to clean up just for the sake of cleaning up. 
                You're a sysop. You do't have to look good. You just
                have to BE good.

                    If you're like me and you have your computer in 
                your bedroom, rig up some way for you to type from 
                bed (like I have).  Half of all work-related stress
                could be eliminated if a cot or small bed were put 
                in every worker's cubicle, where they could relax 
                as they computed.  It also brings the worker one step
                closer to sleep, thus stimulating creativity.   So.  
                Make your sysoping experience as comforting as 
                possible.  Making your computer room comfortable 
                (and, consequently, more efficient) is part of it. 
                But what should you wear during your sysoping 
                excursions? This is actually a very serious question,
                so I have put together...

                        THE SYSOP'S FASHION GUIDE
                (With thanks to Zeigler and Grossberger's "The Non-
                Runner's Book". Sysops are  some of the world's 
                greatest non-runners, by the way. You run a BBS, you
                don't have time to run anywhere else.)
  
                     What should you wear?  Well, that depends.  A 
                good rule of thumb is your oldest set of clothes 
                that won't get you arrested for indecent exposure. I
                have seperate clothes for my sysoping activities.  I 
                call them my "Holy Robes of the Sysop."  They 
                consist of a pair of blue sweatpants and a ripped, 
                stretched out, baggy light green T-shirt.  I wash 
                them about once every three weeks.  You may want to 
                wear something different.  Shorts, mumus, loincloths,
                anything.  Some people sysop totally nude! (Or at 
                least they act like it.) Whatever makes you most 
                comfortable.  Should a sysop wear a bra? We'll ignore
                that question, clearly designed only to spark reader
                interest. Heavens knows we don't want that. What 
                about watches?  Get one with a lot of seemingly 
                useless functions, like phone+ book.  You can think 
                up a million uses for them. How about hats?  I 
                personally shun all clothes more complicated than a
                T-shirt, shorts, and shoes, but my co-sysop likes 
                beanies.  Some sysops go for a bowler for that 
                classical touch. Cowboy hats are popular among some
                sysops because of their ability to hold ten gallons 
                of coffee. It all boils down to personal taste.

                     So, you've got your clothes and you're ready 
                to sysop. Wait! Eat a healthy meal first! You're 
                gonna be in the computer room for quite a while, and
                you're going to need extra energy. But what should 
                you eat? Well, the staple of the sysop diet is 
                coffee (I don't drink coffee myself; I prefer cocoa). 
                Some people go for the gourmet varieties, others just 
                guzzle it. What else should you eat? Well, sandwiches
                are good. My favorite is hot roast beef and Swiss on
                a deli roll. Other good things are: instant noodle 
                lunches, microwave ravioli, breakfast cereal. Things 
                that don't require too much preperation.  Vegetarian
                sysops eat stuff raw, straight from the garden.
  
                     The one exception to the Sysop Diet is dinner. 
                You should always have a healthy dinner. Low in fat,
                high in complex carbohydrates. And great tasting too. 
                If you subscribe to Boardwatch, you can learn a new
                reciepe every month in John Dvorak's column. He does 
                this as a public service for sysops. Along those 
                lines, have you ever noticed how much alike Dvorak 
                and Jack Rickard look? I suspect a conspiracy. 
                Either way, Boardwatch is a great magazine to
                subscribe to. I especially enjoy Harley Hahn/
                Wendy Murdocks' column. There's some way you can get
                it online your board too, much like this magazine.

                So, let's review. You've got your food, you've got 
                your wardrobe, you've got your cusine, you've got 
                your official journal of sysoping, you're ready to
                proceed to the next step:
                        
                             SETTING UP YOUR BOARD

                     I can't help you much on the technical stuff, 
                because every BBS software is different. You should 
                be able to muddle through it, the toughest part will
                probably be the modem junk. I can't figure out modems, 
                so don't look at me. If you're buying a new modem, 
                you should get it at a smallish local place, so that 
                you can call them and have them walk you through setting 
                it up.  However, I can give you some general tips.
  
                     GET A CO-SYSOP. Running a BBS solo is heck. It's 
                not much better with a co-sysop, but at least you have 
                someone to plot strategy with. My co-sysop also hunts 
                around for files ad uploads them, and that's a nice 
                bonus.
                     Who should you pick? I dunno. I suggest you cut
                them in from the very beginning, whoever it is. Make
                sure it's someone you can trust. Screw the equal 
                opportunity laws. It might be a good idea, if you're 
                both single and you've both got apartments, to ditch 
                one and move in as roomates. You'd both be able to 
                see the whole picture, and you wouldn't have to keep 
                explaining technical things to your co-sysop over the 
                phone. I hate that.

                MODIFY YOUR DISPLAY SCREENS. Default menus and display
                screens mark your BBS of an out-of-the-box sysyem.  
                You want to make your users remember your board as 
                something special. Make some original menus and display 
                screens. I can't stress this enough, mainly because 
                I lack the ability. Get THEDRAW and modify them 
                screens! I myself spent 6 months modifying my display 
                screens (because, as mentioned above, I was too lazy 
                to get a modem. Sometimes laziness can be a good 
                thing. Just goes to show you.)
  
                CHOOSE A SPIFFY BOARD NAME. I can't stress this enough 
                either. Don't pick something like "The Dark Castle BBS." 
                There must have been 300 Dark Castles in the 15-year 
                history of BBSing.  Or "The End of the Rope BBS". 
                Any cliche for that matter. It probably hasn't been 
                used that many times, but all cliche BBS names sound 
                the same. You want something that'll stand out in 
                the crowd. Or maybe you don't. I'm not one to judge.
  
                Anyway, you should pick something that reflects the 
                theme of your BBS.  If you're running a game-related 
                BBS, a name like The Monopoly Board would be cool. 
                For general-purpose BBSes, anything goes. Somethig 
                about you would be good. If you're left-handed you 
                could call it "The Left-Hander's BBS," and if 
                you're not you could call it that anyway and make 
                people think you were. Some other names that I've 
                thought up (every sysop has, just ask any other sysop
                and you'll get two or three potetial board names) 
                are: Zany-du, <Sysop>'s and <Co-sysop>'s Excellent 
                BBS, or The Comfy Chair BBS.

                                   ADVERTISE!  
                Make a spiffy ASCII or ANSI ad and upload it to all
                the local boards AFTER your board is ready to run. 
                This'll mean a pause of about 18 hours before anyone 
                calls, but it'll stop people from calling before 
                you're ready.

                So, are you ready to start up your board? Or should 
                you wait another month for my next column? 

                AN IDEA
                "You've got your BBS," said Stephen Leary, who works 
                at a local computer store, "now what do you do?"
                "Run it," I said.

                Next Month: Dealing with problem users. Many users 
                are annoying, but only a few are serioius problems. 
                I'll be telling you what to do about them, or, if
                you're a problem user, how to avoid detection.

                THIS MONTH'S USELESS FACT: IS SYSOPING MORAL?
                It's a scenario I've seen time and time again. 
                You want to start a BBS, but you're not sure 
                your religion says it's OK. After all, there's 
                not one word about sysoping in any scripture, right?
                Actually, the Bible does mention sysops. The problem
                is that in the old days, they shortened "sysop" to 
                "sop." Without that little-known fact, sysoping 
                will naturally be condemned by televangelists, 
                censors, and other professional moralists. 
                So: John 13:26. "Jesus answered, He it is, to 
                whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it.
                And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas
                Iscariot, the son of Simon."
                
                If this fails to convince you, simply take a look 
                at the tremendous number of BBSes with Christian 
                themes. On the other hand, take a look at what those
                Christians up in Ireland are doing to each other. 
                And with that I am forcibly dragged away by the editor.