cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/56496251

I'd like to add to suggest a couple of things regarding Mastodon and user onboarding/retention.

The Server Selection Problem^TM^

The single biggest problem with Mastodon adoption is the fact people see talk about a server and give up. As such, servers need to be removed from the conversation and onboarding process. A server still needs to be selected for a new user, however, which raises the question: How should we select a server for a new user?

The obvious solution is to simply direct users to mastodon.social, which is actually what Mastodon already does to a certain extent. The issue with this is that the Fediverse is meant to be decentralized. As such, it's counterproductive to funnel people towards a single server. This causes maintenance bottlenecks and privacy/data-protection concerns.

As such, there needs to be some sort of method that ranks servers based on a few factors in order to select the optimal server for any given user, while keeping the decentralized nature of the Fediverse in mind.

Why any server?

First, it's important to answer the question of why would any given user pick any given server.

Generally speaking, the server isn't a big deal, as in, any server allows users to interact with the whole of the network in its full capacity.

All servers are Mastodon, after all.

However, there are differences. The most significant ones are, I'd say: location, uptime, and language.

A user benefits from being registered to a server that's geographically close to them, as that leads to a better connection. Additionally, servers with high uptime and stability are preferred, as users may have different times they use the server and nobody likes to try and access a server and see that it's down for any number of reasons. Finally, users need to be able to understand the language the server is in (obviously).

I believe these three factors should be at the forefront of the decision-making process for deciding what server to be suggested to any given user on sign-up.

Auto-selector

With that, comes the solution: a server auto-selector. A game I play, DCSS, actually does something similar for online play.

(I have my location turned off and there are very few servers, as you can see, so listing them is trivial.)

This isn't exactly a novel scientific breakthrough, but I think it's a significant notion for helping the onboarding process for new Mastodon users.

A server auto-selector should filter servers to suggest by following these steps:

• Detect the user's system language.
• Detect the user's location.
• Calculate the server's uptime score.
• Pseudo-rank user-count.

I believe the first two points are self-explanatory. Being that Mastodon (and the Fediverse, in general) stands firmly against data-harvesting, location data should probably not be mandatorily collected. It should be easy to either ask the user for some vague information or simply allow them to skip this step entirely, even if it might affect the user experience. Additionally, there's the issue that many servers don't make it known where they're hosted. Ideally, this could change to facilitate server selection for the users, but there's always the point that, if a server doesn't say where it's hosted, it gets pulled down by the algorithm, which in turn encourages divulging that kind of information; this might a problem solved by the solution, if you get my meaning.

What I mean by uptime score is simply an evaluation of the server's uptime history. For example, it's not good policy to direct users towards servers that are often unavailable, it might be disadvantageous to direct users to servers with too-frequent downtime for maintenance, and so on. As such, the server auto-selector should calculate a sort of "score" for any server that fits the first two points. I can't say how this should be calculated, exactly, but I'm sure some computer-knowers out there can come up with a less-than-terrible methodology for this.

The last point is something that I think should be taken into account as well, regarding the user-count of the servers. As I mentioned, we can't funnel users towards a single server, but another issue is that we should actually encourage user dispersion over many servers. The outlined method might already do this to a sufficient extent, but I suggest doing some sort of randomization of filtered servers based on user-count. I think it's wrong to simply plug a new user into the least-populated server around, but I do think that over-populated servers, in a relative sense, should be discouraged by the server-selector.

Worst case scenario, a random server that passes the uptime score point can be selected for any new user.

The onboarding experience

Basically, this should be as simple as possible. The more questions need to be answered, the worse.

I think a simple "Join Mastodon" button is the best. Just a big blue button in the middle of the homepage.

Server selection should start as soon as the new user accesses the joinmastodon website, and clicking the button simply redirects the user to the sign-up process for that server.

I believe this approach would increase adoption of Mastodon by streamlining the server selection process, as well as help the continuous decentralization of the Fediverse.

The Feed Problem

Another significant issue with Mastodon is the feed and community/discovery aspects.

Creating a new Mastodon account yields... Nothing. An empty feed!

This is absolutely terrible and ruins user retention. I've had several people tell me that this first-experience emptiness completely turned them off from Mastodon. It's not intuitive, and it needs to be corrected.

A simple solution

Mastodon does have feeds, but they're all tucked away in the Explore and Live Feeds tabs.

I think the single biggest change that Mastodon can make, as far as this goes, is to shift the Explore->Posts feed to the Home tab. Just do it like Twitter or Bluesky, make the discovery feed the first thing a new user encounters.

That, by itself, should make a difference in terms of user retention.

---

Maybe I'm delusional and severely underestimating how doable this is, but I really believe Mastodon needs to change the way it deals with new users if we want it to actually grow into a strong social media, keyword social (it needs people).

Thoughts?

I'd like to add to suggest a couple of things regarding Mastodon and user onboarding/retention.

The Server Selection Problem^TM^

The single biggest problem with Mastodon adoption is the fact people see talk about a server and give up. As such, servers need to be removed from the conversation and onboarding process. A server still needs to be selected for a new user, however, which raises the question: How should we select a server for a new user?

The obvious solution is to simply direct users to mastodon.social, which is actually what Mastodon already does to a certain extent. The issue with this is that the Fediverse is meant to be decentralized. As such, it's counterproductive to funnel people towards a single server. This causes maintenance bottlenecks and privacy/data-protection concerns.

As such, there needs to be some sort of method that ranks servers based on a few factors in order to select the optimal server for any given user, while keeping the decentralized nature of the Fediverse in mind.

Why any server?

First, it's important to answer the question of why would any given user pick any given server.

Generally speaking, the server isn't a big deal, as in, any server allows users to interact with the whole of the network in its full capacity.

All servers are Mastodon, after all.

However, there are differences. The most significant ones are, I'd say: location, uptime, and language.

A user benefits from being registered to a server that's geographically close to them, as that leads to a better connection. Additionally, servers with high uptime and stability are preferred, as users may have different times they use the server and nobody likes to try and access a server and see that it's down for any number of reasons. Finally, users need to be able to understand the language the server is in (obviously).

I believe these three factors should be at the forefront of the decision-making process for deciding what server to be suggested to any given user on sign-up.

Auto-selector

With that, comes the solution: a server auto-selector. A game I play, DCSS, actually does something similar for online play.

(I have my location turned off and there are very few servers, as you can see, so listing them is trivial.)

This isn't exactly a novel scientific breakthrough, but I think it's a significant notion for helping the onboarding process for new Mastodon users.

A server auto-selector should filter servers to suggest by following these steps:

• Detect the user's system language.
• Detect the user's location.
• Calculate the server's uptime score.
• Pseudo-rank user-count.

I believe the first two points are self-explanatory. Being that Mastodon (and the Fediverse, in general) stands firmly against data-harvesting, location data should probably not be mandatorily collected. It should be easy to either ask the user for some vague information or simply allow them to skip this step entirely, even if it might affect the user experience. Additionally, there's the issue that many servers don't make it known where they're hosted. Ideally, this could change to facilitate server selection for the users, but there's always the point that, if a server doesn't say where it's hosted, it gets pulled down by the algorithm, which in turn encourages divulging that kind of information; this might a problem solved by the solution, if you get my meaning.

What I mean by uptime score is simply an evaluation of the server's uptime history. For example, it's not good policy to direct users towards servers that are often unavailable, it might be disadvantageous to direct users to servers with too-frequent downtime for maintenance, and so on. As such, the server auto-selector should calculate a sort of "score" for any server that fits the first two points. I can't say how this should be calculated, exactly, but I'm sure some computer-knowers out there can come up with a less-than-terrible methodology for this.

The last point is something that I think should be taken into account as well, regarding the user-count of the servers. As I mentioned, we can't funnel users towards a single server, but another issue is that we should actually encourage user dispersion over many servers. The outlined method might already do this to a sufficient extent, but I suggest doing some sort of randomization of filtered servers based on user-count. I think it's wrong to simply plug a new user into the least-populated server around, but I do think that over-populated servers, in a relative sense, should be discouraged by the server-selector.

Worst case scenario, a random server that passes the uptime score point can be selected for any new user.

The onboarding experience

Basically, this should be as simple as possible. The more questions need to be answered, the worse.

I think a simple "Join Mastodon" button is the best. Just a big blue button in the middle of the homepage.

Server selection should start as soon as the new user accesses the joinmastodon website, and clicking the button simply redirects the user to the sign-up process for that server.

I believe this approach would increase adoption of Mastodon by streamlining the server selection process, as well as help the continuous decentralization of the Fediverse.

The Feed Problem

Another significant issue with Mastodon is the feed and community/discovery aspects.

Creating a new Mastodon account yields... Nothing. An empty feed!

This is absolutely terrible and ruins user retention. I've had several people tell me that this first-experience emptiness completely turned them off from Mastodon. It's not intuitive, and it needs to be corrected.

A simple solution

Mastodon does have feeds, but they're all tucked away in the Explore and Live Feeds tabs.

I think the single biggest change that Mastodon can make, as far as this goes, is to shift the Explore->Posts feed to the Home tab. Just do it like Twitter or Bluesky, make the discovery feed the first thing a new user encounters.

That, by itself, should make a difference in terms of user retention.

---

Maybe I'm delusional and severely underestimating how doable this is, but I really believe Mastodon needs to change the way it deals with new users if we want it to actually grow into a strong social media, keyword social (it needs people).

Thoughts?

I've been thinking about this a little bit lately, on account of the recent push on Reddit to ditch American companies and services in favour of European ones. Not that the Fediverse is European... I digress.

It seems that the single biggest hang-up people have with adopting Fediverse social media is the servers.

Lemmy's onboarding experience, for one, is absolutely terrible.

What's a server? Why do I need to join? What's the difference between the different servers?

All of these are reasonable questions, and they're not answered in a clear way at any point. This turns people away; they get confused and then give up on joining.

Mastodon is a little better, but not by a lot.

At least they highlight a server for people to join, making things a little more intuitive. Mastodon actually has a whole other issue regarding the way feeds are organized on the app, but I'll leave that for another post.

The problem with the Mastodon approach is, of course, that it heavily funnels people towards a single server. The whole point of the Fediverse is to be decentralized, so that's a rather counterproductive approach.

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to suggest (heavily suggest) a server based on the user's location or something, maybe weighted by how many active users there are or something.

Basically, a balance needs to be struck between pushing people towards a server and not pushing everyone towards the same few servers.

Of course, many Lemmy servers don't actually disclose where they're hosted, so that could be a problem... Or not, I guess if there was a push for this system then servers might feel that it benefits them to disclose that information. Or maybe not, and that could be good too, I don't know.

The thing is that there's a problem. People see this whole "server" talk and turn tail.

Also, Lemmy looks ugly AF! There's plenty of alternative front-ends, of course,---I use Alexandrite---but it's really frustrating that the default look sucks so bad.

Sigh!

---

Mostly unrelated, but I'd like to talk about some stuff I'll be using going forward. Well, I hope to, anyway.

Email: Tuta
Drive: Filen.io
Map: HERE WeGo
Office: LibreOffice

The rest I haven't changed like Firefox and AntennaPod. I did also switch to the Fossify suite for my phone app, file manager, and gallery.

WhatsApp is a tough one... It's basically a must-have here. It's so engrained in day-to-day communication that not having the app is the equivalent of being a 70-year-old grandma or something. Nothing against grandmas of course, but they're not working or texting a bunch of young people everyday.

I thought that maybe Element could replace it? I think Element is more of a Discord type of thing... Some people mentioned Threema online, but that's a paid product. Signal is virtually the same as WhatsApp, but open-source and by a non-profit. Maybe it's a better option? It's not European, though. Well, a hard problem to solve, I guess.

Recently, there's been a push online for buying European and boycotting the US, on account of Trump's policies and stances on certain international issues.

I don't think that's a bad thing, but I do have some concerns. For one, let me set the record straight: if I can buy second-hand, I will buy second-hand. I've made this decision. By second-hand, I do also mean refurbished and whatnot. Basically, I'd like to give products a second life, is possible. I think that should take precedence over any political affiliation.

For example, I saw someone suggest, online, that we should buy Jack & Jones instead of Levi's jeans. OK, fine! Levi's are overhyped anyway, and Jack & Jones are way cheaper. However, I do think that buying second-hand Levi's is way better than buying new from J&J.

I do think I'll try to buy more European, though. Not like I have a lot of money to spend, but I like the idea of supporting European, and specifically national brands.

Something I want to sink some money into is a new e-book reader. I read a lot, mostly Re:Zero but I do also read a bunch of other things, as it goes. Currently, I have a Kindle 10th Gen. Not a paperwhite, just a regular Kindle. It's a little old, at this point, has quite a bit of bloat---I don't use the shop at all, I don't use the Wi-Fi or the Bluetooth either---, but worst of all, the battery drains like crazy.

Now, again, I do read a lot, maybe I'm a so-called poweruser, but this is not enough battery!

As such, I've been looking around. My dad is a fan of Kobo, it turns out, but I've also been looking at Vivlio, Pocketbook, and some other brands. My biggest issue, other than price (these things are more expensive than I expected...), is the features. I don't need, or want, these features.

I want something as simple as possible! DAMN IT!

I've still got a lot of other brands to look at, of course, but I'm really hoping I can find something worth buying.

I've been eating relatively well. Feeling good about that.

I cut down on snacks significantly this week. I did eat some chips, but it was OK.

I hope I'm losing weight, a little bit... My weight is OK, mind you, but it's a little higher than my goal, so I'll be working hard to reach it.

I finished Volume 15 of Re:Zero.

It was great! However, I feel a little... Taken for a spin. It wasn't very distressing at all! I was expecting my heart to be ripped out of my chest and stomped on, but instead it was gently caressed and snuggled up to.

I can't say I'm upset---I'm not---but it was certainly unexpected.

I'm afraid war is coming.

The US's decline into fascism is... Regrettable. War is so senseless... But I can't help but think that what's going on will inevitably lead to that. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I'm wrong.

Truly, I know nothing. Still, it seems unwise to ignore the signs. Trump and the US as a whole are basically saying that they want war. They are masking it behind a veneer of peace-talks, but really they're just saying they want the war to go a certain way: the way of the aggressors, the way of the warmongers. They want war, it seems.

Very, very upsetting.

I follow a few people that go by they/them or that simply don't subscribe to that whole spiel. Personally, I don't care about gender at all; I think that's either an extremely agender or an extremely cis thing to say. In my case, I think I'm just cis.

Still, it's not like other genders bother me. Not even a little. It's simply something that, to me, holds absolutely no weight whatsoever. I've realized, over the years, that that's a somewhat controversial position.

Most---if not all---men I've ever spoken to about this have made it clear that women and men are, as far as they're concerned, different. I mean, on the surface, I agree; men and women are different because men are men and women are women, but that's like saying the rising sun is different from the setting soon. I think that's a perfect analogy, actually. Why would I care if someone is the sun at noon or the sun at night? It's still the sun; I don't care.

Now, of course, there's the issue of living. Different people, because of the way they identify themselves---their identity---do live differently. I'm not trying to deny that fact.

However, I think that misses the issue entirely. In my view, the whole question is wrong.

To me, gender is irrelevant because a person isn't a gender. Are women different from men? That's such a stupid question. Everyone is different from everyone else, no?! I've never met someone like me. I've met people that are similar to me---most of them have been women, by the way---and I've certainly met people that share some things in common with me, but I've never met someone entirely like me.

Are men and women different?

Can someone be something other than a man or a woman?

Why would I care? Those questions are laid upon a terrible premise. As such, they simply don't matter.

I realize that lived experiences aren't quite as detached from reality as I'm framing this issue, mind you, and I do realize that trans people do suffer quite intensely. I don't mean to sound... Dismissive of their strife. All I'm trying to say is that, fundamentally, I find the whole concept of gender to be rather empty.

Throughout my life, I've felt that women tend to take a liking to me. Women and children, actually, but children isn't a gender so I'll gloss past that one.

I wonder if my view of gender has anything to do with that. I've thought that, maybe, women go their whole life being treated as different by the men in their life and they like it when they get treated as fundamentally equal. Or maybe it's just a different feeling, not a strictly good one, and their curiosity is being misinterpreted by yours truly as affection. Children like me too, after all, maybe I'm just kinda weird... I'm not sure.

Being raised differently, with different expectations and different experiences... Of course men and women are different. Then again, everyone is raised differently, so everyone is different.

It'd be silly to make a gender for everyone, of course. I suppose that's a name, actually. A name is like a gender that refers to only one person? I think that makes perfect sense.

See, I'm not opposed to putting people in buckets for convenience. I just think that the particular buckets we put people into suck. I feel like gender should convey meaningful information. I guess that's why some transphobes are so upset, actually, as they relied on gender to figure out people's genitalia? Trans people throw a wrench in that so they get mad? Maybe my rather uninterested take on interpersonal relationships makes that particular bit of information seem disproportionally irrelevant, and in turn, I devalue gender.

Maybe that's why I've obsessed with personality-type quizzes... Maybe not, lots of people like those. I do think stuff like that is a better gender, though, even if it's not very good either.

Well, that's just what I think, anyway.

I follow this recovering alcoholic on TikTok.

Addiction seems so... Intense...

It's so scary.

I've also gotten a few videos of losing gamble compilations. It's so scary. Scary. Terrifying.

I wonder if I have an addictive personality. I just avoid this kind of stuff like the plague... Drugs, alcohol, gambling... Well.

I want to play cards so bad!

I played a lot with my little brother the past couple of days, but I really want to play team games... Sueca or Bridge, Oh man! I really feel it! Or Poker... I play Poker online, sometimes, but I'm no good and I don't like putting in real money... I'd really love to have a group of people I can play for beans with IRL.

I've loved card games for as long as I can remember. Lately, I've been more or less obsessed with poker. The bluffing aspect of the game, specifically, is something that I find really appealing. As such, yesterday evening, I decided to come up with a card game that incorporates bluffing.

There were a few elements that I wanted to include in the game, based on some other cards games that I absolutely love, namely: Sueca and Blackjack.

The game I came up with---which I'm calling "Lie 21"---is a bluffing trick-taking game where the goal of each hand is to make 21; the unholy child of Sueca, Poker, and Blackjack, if you will. I summarized the rules here.

Lie 21 is played between 2 players using a French deck with 2 Jokers (42 cards; the same as a standard 52-card deck, but with the 8s, 9s, and 10s removed and the 2 Jokers added). At the start of the game, 6 cards are dealt to each player and the last card of the deck is flipped up; the suit of this last card is the trump for the duration of the game. The player that makes the first move is decided randomly, with a coin-flip, for example.

Each hand, the starting player selects three cards from the 6 in their hand, and places them on the table with 1 face-up and 2 face-down. The other player must then select three cards from their own hand and place them on the table, all of them either face-up or face-down.

If the second player's cards are placed face-down, the trick is awarded to the first player. The face-down cards cannot be revealed to either player, and the 6 cards on the table are collected by the player that won the trick.

If the second player's cards are placed face-up, then the first player must flip of all their own cards face-up as well. At this point, the game basically turns into a wacko Blackjack.

Cards are valued at their face value, except for the following, which are valued as indicated here:

• A: 1 or 11
• 7: 10
• K: 9
• J: 8
• Q: 7
• Joker: 0

I'm Portuguese, which is why the Jack is valued higher than the Queen, but this is obviously irrelevant. Feel free to switch them, if you prefer. The scoring system is based on Sueca, which is why the 7 is worth 10... If this is confusing, feel free to score the cards as you see fit, as long as you retain the descending scoring pattern for all cards (11/1, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...).

If a player busts (goes over 21) and the other doesn't, then the player that didn't bust wins the trick. Otherwise, the player closest to 21 wins the trick. In case of a tie (both players busting is considered a tie), the winning hand is the one with the most trump cards. If the hands have the same number of trumps, then the hand with the highest value trump card wins (if the Ace is valued at 1 in the hand, then it is the lowest trump card, if it is valued at 11, it is the highest trump). If no trumps were player by either player and their hand is a tie, then the player that started the hand wins. Neither Joker is ever a trump card.

It's important to note that, as there are no 2-card hands possible, two Aces is not "Blackjack"; it's impossible to play just two Aces. Two Aces and a Joker, for example, is scored as 12. Two 7s and an Ace is scored as 21; An Ace, a 7, and Joker is also scored as 21.

After each hand, the player that won the previous trick draws 3 cards (so they have 6 cards in hand once again), followed by the losing player drawing 3 cards. Then, the player that won the last trick starts the next one.

For the last 2 hands, when the deck is empty, no cards are drawn after the winner is decided.

After the game is done, the players calculate their final score with the Sueca scoring system (120 total), wherein all cards are worth 0, except for the following, which are worth as indicated:

• A: 11
• 7: 10
• K: 4
• J: 3
• Q: 2

The player with the most points wins (61+).

I recommend playing best-of-7 (first-to-4). Scoring over 90 is worth 2 for the winning player, and scoring 120 is an immediate sweep.

While testing the game, I also tried scoring the K, J, and Q as 9, 8 and 7, respectively, but ended up deciding against it because it led to play being very tight, with the face cards rarely being sacrificed willingly. I felt like lowering the points of the face cards to the traditional Sueca point system made the game more nuanced.

My brother and I absolutely LOVED playing this!

The bluffing element worked really well. More often than not, it's pretty easy to get 21 on any given hand, but the trump card aspect of the game makes it much more complex to figure out who actually has a winning hand. We often bluffed each other with lower-scoring hands, to one another's chagrin. The fact there's plenty of cards with no points also makes this rather interesting. We often played our cards face-down, as the second player, effectively forfeiting the round and losing information, to avoid going first in the next hand. This was particularly nice when trying to get the trump card at the bottom of the deck, of course, a very common pattern in games like Briscola and such. Playing the cards face-down, as the second player, also has the benefit of withdrawing information from the other player, like the number of remaining Jokers in the deck.

At first, I was a little sceptical that the forfeiting mechanic would actually be useful, but it turned out to add another dimension to the game.

The Jokers aren't very useful, but they do provide some value occasionally, as they add an interesting dynamic when they're the revealed card at the start of a hand, wherein the implication is that the player has 21 with Ace-7, but the Joker itself doesn't score any points if won in the trick.

Overall, it's been lots of fun! Let me know if you try it out.

---

I also tried a couple of different versions of the game, without the Jokers.

The first was played exactly the same, except for the last hand, which was only 2 cards. The issue with this version was that it led to Aces being hoarded rather intensely until the end, as the best hand was unequivocally the Ace-Ace of trump. Additionally, this setup means the last draw is actually only 2 cards for each player. That isn't a big deal, per se, but it's a little annoying.

The second was played the same, but with 5 cards in hand instead of 6. This solved the last-draw problem, but the issue of hoarding Aces for the last hand remained. Additionally, having only 5 cards in-hand, as opposed to 6, means it's harder to get 21, which resulted in a lot of dead hands, which was rather unsatisfying. I felt like 6 cards in hand really is the sweet-spot for the game. Having 5 cards in hand did mean that there was no way to "save a hand," as in, save 3 cards for a next round, as you'd always be left with only 2 cards in hand after playing. I felt that it was impossible to square this circle, so I went with the option I had the most fun with, which was the 6-card version.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the Jokers are, themselves, basically bricks. They're not useless, but they aren't very useful. However, they managed to strike a bit of a three-quarters point between the 5-card and 6-card versions of the game, in a manner of speaking. Having a Joker in your hand is painful, until it's not. It's great for bluffing too, and it resolved the issues with the 2-card hand at the end of the other two versions.

Overall, I think it's a very fun game!

I do wonder if something similar already exists, but I couldn't find anything.

I watched a TikTok, just a few minutes ago, about a role-reversal in the American dynamic of women insulting women based on their political affiliations and physical appearances.

Specifically, it was about how American conservative women now find themselves taken aback by the onslaught of insults coming from liberal American women, who have themselves been the target of insults from the other camp for quite some time.

However, this is seemingly not a fight on equal footing because of the very basis of the dogfight. See, conservative ideology bases itself on a strict adherence to gender roles, which includes the idea that women should be beautiful, generally speaking. On the other hand, American liberal ideology bases itself on a rejection of gender roles, including the rejection of beauty standards altogether.

Of course, nobody likes to be demeaned or insulted; when their appearance is dragged through the mud, even liberal women feel hurt. However, it's deeper than that for the other side.

For conservative women, to have their appearance insulted, to have their beauty---as in, their adherence to the beauty standards---be criticized, is to have their very nature be put into question. If they aren't beautiful, they are failing at being women, and that is the biggest sin an American conservative women can commit. When they're called ugly, they feel that it is their womanhood being attacked, and as that is what they cling to, it hurts much more than a simple insult.

Personally, I find it in rather poor taste to reduce oneself to dick-measuring contests (or mascara-application competitions, I guess), but I do see the humour in the dynamic.

I felt somewhat fancy, tonight; hope it came through in the text.