Get to Know Your Neighbors!

We think it would be great if everyone got a chance to get to know some of the volunteers in the community and to find out why they love AW so much.

This month we meet zer0 also known as PK25.

Courtesy of the Peacekeepers

PK Safety Tip: If you own a world or have an event and want Peacekeepers it is possible. Send your request to the Peacekeeper Email address peacekeeper@activeworlds.com . For events provide all the details (time coordinates etc.) and info will be passed to the PKs... Then they will be aware should you need to call them. If you want your world covered you need request it from the PKs and grant the PK account, Public Speaker, Eject and Bot rights as well a placing a call box on your GZ.

This month the Peacekeeper profile is all about PK25, zer0 .

He discovered AW sometime in 1995. He was using another VR chat called Worlds Chat (WC) which happened to be the proto-type for AW. Both VR chat systems were being developed by a company named Worlds. In one of the main chat areas there was an advertisement for "Alpha World" on a wall. He asked around and found out how to get there and has been there ever since.

Zer0 says that his browser shows that he immigrated on Nov. 20th 1995 at 6:34am. "I believe the first build of the AW browser I ran was .65 (point 65). I was running it in Windows for Workgroups version 3.1."

When asked when he joined the Peacekeepers he answered, "Now that's a hard one. I don't have copies of the original emails that would give me the date. I can tell you that Razzle was head of Core. I can tell you I tried to get in and was not accepted two years before I actually got in. Non Reality (PK 2) found out after the fact that I had not been accepted and talked me into trying to get in again or I never would have become a PK. I think I have been PK for about 5 years, but you better confirm that somewhere else. One of the main reasons I joined the PK was I though if I was in the PK I might have more influence on AW in general. I had always been a beta tester for the browser. I use to pester Protag, Roland and Dataman with ideas about new features and such. I monitored the wish list newsgroup. I really got into the PKs because I though they might listen to me better if I was a greater part of the community. Of course what happened was I got so busy being a PK I forgot about everything else. Becoming a PK changed AW dramatically for me. I think anyone that is a PK for a few months will always look at AW through the eyes of a PK from then on.

zer0 likes to help. "Sometimes…it (being a PK) is almost like being Superman or something. Someone shows up asking for a PK… I am the only one around… I take off my black horn-rimmed glasses and reporters shirt and "POOF' I am a mighty PK capable of putting a poor tourist at ease. Making AW more comfortable and secure is a big part of really helping someone. Some never forget what you do for them. It is satisfying."

His scheduled duty is Monday mornings from 0:00 to 2:00 am VRT, which is really Sunday nights for him.

When asked what he does for the Peacekeepers besides patrolling he said, "Except for trying to be a good representative of what a PK is when I am a normal cit. All I do specifically now is patrol. Before the PK teams went away I was TL for the Black team. That is the only other PK responsibility outside of being a regular patrolling PK I have ever done for the PK. It was a hard job is some ways. I always felt responsible for anything that went wrong with my team. I have great respect for any PK doing any administration job in the PK. If you have never tried it you would be surprised at how much is involved and how much more of you time in AW turns into work instead of play."

He described his AW activities besides being a PK as: "Well, outside of being a PK I am just me in AW really. Unless you want to count being one of the lucky ones that got to beta test NewAW. I could talk a lot about NewAW and what I think it will do for AW. Of course it all depends on AWI ACTUALLY OPENING IT FOR THE USERS! So I guess I won't go there."

Zer0 says that he was never a prolific builder. Like many of us, he went through phases where he would build until burned out on it. Zer0 points out, "In the early days it was a big event when a new public world would open for building. There were so few worlds you could build on. So when that happened back then I would go and build what I call Gates. Sort of like an entrance from the no-mans land into the build part of the world right at the build limit on one of the four main directions (North, South, East or West). So in COFMeta I built a tower at the North Gate(1000n 0e), in Mars I built a mountain range at the East Gate(0n 1000e). I built a small place on Colony Alpha (47n 1w), and of course I built in AW Prime. In AW I only have two personal builds. One that was my very first build in AW that dates back to early 96, and one I like to call "Big Falls" (1395n 32405w 300). I don't want to advertise the location of my first build because I never bothered to cover all the ground. Amazingly even though it is a large area it has never been vandalized. I also have a silly little P10 world named AVzer0 that is just a GZ with a Space theme. :)

Outside of AW zer0 is all wrapped up in work. He is a programmer for a small company in Austin Texas and has a lot of influence on what direction products take. He does most of the design work. Unfortunately, it does not pay quite as much as the bigger companies but he calls the work very fulfilling. When he is not working for them he works hard on some land he and his wife owns and they are getting ready to build. He has two daughters close to finishing college s well as getting married. "I guess", he says, " I am maybe 4 or 5 years away from becoming a grandfather. So outside of AW I am trying to bend RL to my will so that I can sit under a pine tree and drink cold beer and watch the birds. I have two great danes. I am a freak for U2. :)

When asked what message do you want to send to all tourists and citizens of AW? He said,"AW is what you make it. AW is not about the quality of the graphics or your frame rate. AW is all about people."