Join the new world

Canadian Conduit - Issue #77

The past two months were quite the ride, and considering my literary affinity I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't record in unrestricted words my endeavors while leading this country. So here it is, the true story of the last two months straight from the source.



The Dade Terms, Part 1: Cola, 1ronman, and Manitoba

Deciding to Run

My first serious consideration to run for CP came around the 20th of May, 2010. Fram sightings had become more and more seldom and Addy Lawrence had already begun his campaigning in earnest. I knew that with over half a term of hard campaigning that Addy would be a shoe-in unless somebody really took the fight to him. The only experience I had had with Addy up to that point was butting heads over import taxes; we weren't enemies by any means but we weren't particularly friends at the time either. I wanted to present eCanada with an alternative; however, I was in a tough situation. To do so I would have to first win over the support of the DAL from the sitting president. I was told several times from several different people that this would be impossible. And frankly, I almost believed them. I campaigned hard and Fram was absent, yet the primary poll for the DAL started off very poorly for me.

The first few hours of the DAL poll had the numbers sitting at around 85%-15% in favour of Fram. I went to bed thinking that I had lost my shot at CP since I promised I would not be running unless I had home support from the DAL. When I woke up, I found that things had miraculously turned around - I had 60% of the vote. Suddenly my campaign had new life. I went double time on posting on other parties forums - I secured the support of the Union Nationale which was one of the keys to my success. I also had the support of the SPeC (then the Communist Party) and the TNS Party.

Cola

Of course the buzzword most people will recognize from my campaign was COLA. Oddly enough, I came up with the acronym in a fairly roundabout way. I knew the four qualities I wanted to push for my campaign: Opportunity, Leadership, Accountability, and Community. Yet I couldn't think of a good acronym for them - LOCA (Ricky Martin anyone?), COAL (not particularly appealing) and even LOAC (just plain stupid) were all possibilities. Then about 15 minutes before I was about to post my platform on the DAL forums it struck me - COLA. I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. From that point on I gave my entire campaign a "Coke" feel to it, from using the famous Coca Cola font to using ads which poked fun at Diet Dade, Classic Dade, and Dade Zero. Dr. Pain also chipped in with a fantastic Dade's Cola logo which I still use as my signature on the forums. With this theme I was able to give my campaign a cohesive feel and one which voters would remember on election day.



Election Day

I'm a bit embarassed to say, I was tremendously nervous at the beginning of the June election. An eRep bug had zapped away all my campaign goals and I wasn't sure how big of an effect that it was going to have on two-click votes. When Addy jumped out to an early lead I felt my heart drop into my shoes. However, my first run at CP was full of comebacks. The DAL primary consisted of a huge come from behind, and the EPIC vote included me racing from behind with only a few hours to go to tie things up with Addy which resulted in no declaration of support from that party. While it would be a huge stretch to say my CP election was a comeback (I led from about the half-hour point on) I felt immensely better once I was out front. Oddly enough it was my very good friend The Venerable Plugson who gave me the vote to put me in the lead (screenshotted and everything). From there I would stay out front.

The Rookie CP

My first day as President was a mentally multifarious experience. After developing what I considered a friendship with Addy Lawrence, I felt somewhat guilty that he had put in 16 days of hard work which didn't result in success on the election day. I, too, had worked incredibly hard for what I earned, and I was in no way propped up by DAL's large membership (go see the voter share in congressional elections - DAL support is by no means an instant win for CP). However, I still felt bad that such a fantastic person with such clairvoiyant visions for the country was not able to be CP. At the same time, I felt extremely vindicated. The one common theme throughout my campaign was that I always had people telling me I couldn't do it - I was too old, I hadn't been involved in politics long enough, I wouldn't make a good president, and various other reasons I'd never make it to the CP chair. While none of these comments were particularly bothersome to me, they did provide another reason to prove that I belonged as Canada's choice for President.


Dade and Fox Blutch on June 6th

The first day of your first election as CP has almost certainly got to be the most exciting thing you can experience in eRepublik. On June 6th I awoke to around 60 PM's, my favourite of which were ones from important players around the world. It's at that moment that I realized just how much responsibility had been placed upon me. Over my two terms as CP my favourite job was certainly foreign affairs - discussions with Ariakis, Chocolate McSkittles, BradleyReala, Ledinho or Avec were constant chances to provide a positive face for eCanada to the world. I truly believe, even despite two failed rentals, that I have improved relations with our most important allies.

The Canadian National Defense Theft

Unsurprisingly, the CND Theft was the low point of my time as President - almost immediately I had everyone and their dog letting me know why I was the worst CP in history and how my administration had zero transparency (despite the fact that I personally announced the exact details of the theft). I immediately began working on finding out who exactly Robotic Constructions (the org of the thief) was, yet my pleas to the admins were in vain. Chucky Norris, too, was unable to get an answer. I even had EDEN Supreme Military Commander Avec aiding my quest for ip confirmation, but nothing came of it.


1ronman at work

So, I instead turned my attention to how we might have lost the password - Chucky had sent it via the forums. It was the only one sent on the forums and Canadian National Defense was the only organization compromised (except for the "hey look at me" org-steal by Jbdivinus just before I took office). As such I decided I'd investigate whether or not it would be possible for admins to look at forum PM's. Honestly, I was pretty skeptical, and at this point I had almost resigned that this theft would go down like almost every other theft from the government: unsolved.

The Investigation

I knew Jacobi had mentioned at one point that his brother-in-law ran the .ws server server, so I sent him an irc PM telling him I was hoping to talk to him about "1ronman and the forums". I've been in eCanada quite some time, and as such I was quite familiar with 1ronman's character; additionally, I knew that if anyone were to have access to forum PM's it would be him. Jacobi didn't respond, so I left it.


Dade on the case

I was falling asleep in bed late that night when I heard my computer ping with an irc PM. Jacobi had replied. I asked if it was possible for a forum admin to view forum PM's. He wasn't sure but he asked NeoIce and got me talking to him. To my surprise, there was not only a way for 1ronman to view PM's, but there was a server log which would show if he did or not. Literally within minutes of me speaking to Neo he had pulled up records of a certain IP looking at some of my PM's. One of those was the PM from Chucky, and it was viewed from 1ronman's IP just hours before the organization was compromised. Of course, Neo didn't know any of the details of when the theft occured, he was simply giving me the raw data from the logs. It was at this point that my speculation turned into a solid lead, and we realized that 1ronman was almost certainly the CND thief.

The Sting Operation

Over the next week Neo worked dilligently to compile the server logs in a way that could be read by somebody who isn't familiar with that type of code. In the meantime, I decided I wanted more evidence against 1ronman. As such, I set up the famous "sting" operation. At this point I felt the biggest reason he was stealing was to remove me from the running for the first V2 President in July. Keeping this in mind, I told him "in confidence" that I was extremely frustrated with all the flak I had received for the theft and that if any sort of security breach happened again I would NOT be running for CP in July. I also let him know that I was having my ministers change the passwords to all organizations and that from now on passwords would only be sent via forum PM because that was the only medium I trusted. Since 1ronman would have access to all passwords sent via the forums, he of course had no objections to this. I also let it slip that I had received only Revenue Canada's password. This organization typically holds tens of thousands of CAD, and is by far the most valuable org the government owns. I knew that Rev Can was the perfect bait, and I was right. Within an hour of this conversation, 1ronman logged into the server and viewed the sting PM with a fake Revenue Canada password in it. 1ronman had taken the bait and the evidence against him was now damning.


Well 1ronman...this is awkward

Purging 1ronman From eCanada

It was absolute torture for the next few days to have people riding me saying I was "doing nothing", "incompetent", etc... It was extremely difficult to refrain from letting everyone know we had caught the thief and were in the process of planning the massive switch. I had to remain patient, however, while the evidence was compiled. We had to release it in conjunction with a complete switchover of the forums. If we didn't do this with precise timing, the risk of 1ronmanhave rage quitting and causing irreperable damage to our out-of-game infrastructure would be much higher.

We set D-Day as 6:00pm on Friday June 11th. The plan was for me to release an article with all the evidence explaining the reasoning for switching the forums from .ws to .cc. Literally within seconds of the article being released NeoIce had begun the process of switching the forums over to their new destination. The first couple hours were a bit buggy, but soon we had a full transfer of our out-of-game infrastructure and the 1ronthief had been fully purged from the system. The participation of NeoIce was extremely key in this. I am so glad I chose to PM Jacobi - it would prove to be the only fruitful endeavor of the investigation. While I deserve credit for approaching him and for orchestrating the sting operation, it was NeoIce who gathered and compiled the evidence in such a way that anybody could understand the code. Without Neo I would have had no way of reading, or even accessing, the logs. I owe that man an ice cream cone.

Prior to the press release, I also approached Avec (Supreme Military Commander of EDEN) with my concerns about 1ronman. I showed him the evidence, and after some discussion he agreed that 1ron should be removed from any position of power in EDEN - this too would be done after the release of my article. Soon after, though I did not have any correspondence with Aiden, 1ronman was removed from his administrator position in ERX.

Hero To Zero

In a matter of an hour or two, the press release had turned a national hero, Military Commander of EDEN, eCanadian Presidential Candidate, eCanada Forums Admin, and ERX Admin into one of the most universally hated eCanadians of all time. Without a doubt, his fall was the most precipitous in eCanadian history. In any other circumstances, I would have felt bad.



However, 1ronman has nobody to blame but himself. The reason he's in Serbia having TemujinBC pound his face into the dirt is because he was stupid enough to steal our money under the gaze of the all-seeing-eye.

The consequent reversal of public opinion regarding my presidentship was a truly bizarre thing to experience - I had gone from being the national scapegoat for the CND Theft to becoming some sort of overblown hero. Suddenly I had legends such as Alucard Reborn (Alucard Bloodlust) praising my success in catching 1ronman, and overnight I found almost all my detractors satisfyingly quiet. Even 1ronman said "kudos, by the way" in an irc PM. Rumours were that I had cemented myself a second term - I knew enough about being CP to know that this wasn't even close to the case. The euphoria would die down, and it did. Within a few weeks the trollers had reenergized their efforts, and life as President had returned to normal.

DadeRage #1 - Jbdivinus and 1ronman Tag Team to No Avail

Jbdivinus and 1ronman are not connected, except insofar as Jbdiv was going to bend CPF rules to get 1ronman as the CP candidate for V2. However, their Daderage efforts were conducted during almost the exact same time period. 1ronman was pissed that I had exposed him and ruined his elife, while Jbdiv claimed that as leader of the opposition it was his duty to lambast the current CP to the point of stretching the truth. Neither of them were particularly successful; for Jbdiv this may have been partially because 1ronman had delegitmized any sort of Daderage propaganda for a while - nonetheless it was a nice introduction to the sort of anti-CP sentiment which any President will inevitably find himself immersed in.


Don't worry, they got help

The Manitoba Rental

Promising to honor congress regarding the Manitoba Rental is what I consider my biggest failure as President. Granted, had we rented to Poland they would have had to renegotiate the price just like they did with the USA. Yet the fact remains that we could have been receiving at least 1.5k gold per month for a region that had an extremely low population and no unique raw materials. My greatest wish was to bring the issue to the people, but my negotiations with Polish CP Ariakis gave me the impression that the offer would be pulled if we "let the cat out of the bag" (since it would have exponentially raised the cost required to gain Scotland and a path to North America).

As such, I presented the problem to congress and promised to follow their wishes. Only a few congressmen actually spoke out against it, and a some of them like AR1ARX convinced their friends to drive the proposal into the ground and insult the Executive in the process. Congressmen who opposed the proposal for valid reasons were outshoutted by the pettiness of the congressmen who chose to criticize anything to do with the proposal. Some congressmen, such as Citizen B, genuinely opposed the rental for valid reasons, yet their efforts were overshadowed by those who wanted to oppose the Executive just because I had given them the opportunity to do so. They cited ridiculous reasons to oppose the rental such as "Scotland is impossible to take" (Scotland was taken with a -2 million wall). Of course, I still could have chosen to go against my word and gone through with the rental. As such, I had a choice to make - go back on my word and infuriate congress, or allow congress to represent the people. I chose the latter, and it's clear that the lowbrow tactics of AR1 and his crew did the eCanadian people a disservice. And, as a cute sidenote, some congressmen like Muglack took part in shoutting down the proposal and voted no, then turned around the next term to criticize me for not going through with the rental. Gotta love the life of a CP : )

That being said, I'm not trying to weasle my way out of taking responsibility for the decision. Just because a few congressmen turned the issue into a Congress vs. Executive battle doesn't mean I'm exonerated from having to make the choice. I was the country's leader, and it was my decision to follow the wishes of congress and not go through with the rental. From that point on in my career, I learned that important decisions should either by made directly by me or relegated to the people to decide.



TL😉R
I was CP in June

Granted, I left a whole lot out, but frankly it's too long as it is and this is just the first half. My second term campaigning and all the joyousness that is V2 will be included in the second installment. Thanks for reading/skimming/ignoring.

Sincerely,