Post

Been thinking about doing this thread for a long while since it comes up a lot: "Hey, Logan. What is it that you actually do?" Bear with me. This is a long one. I might add more later and this thread won't have a message counter. Bookmark this post if you want something to go back and reference.

First and foremost: I'm a Senior System Administrator for an electric utility/fiber ISP. Day-to-day I manage, maintain, and fix the infrastructure for ~130 employees. We have roughly 30,000 electric meters in our territory and also serve internet to that whole area.

It's a very easy job for me, pays the bills, provides benefits like insurance and retirement. It's pretty nice. Not my dream job, though.

Hobby work I do on the side is what I'm passionate about. I started moderating Twitch chats in 2012/2013 or so in the StarCraft community. Migrated to moderating and then administrating Discord servers for a few folks. Turns out I was really good at it.

I met a lot more creators/commentators in StarCraft through the people I worked with. Met a bunch at BlizzCons and such. Became friends and started to help more folks out. This was 2018/2019-ish.

I had only started getting into the Magic online community around 2015/2016, mostly following cosplayers because that shit rocks. Started following more creators and pro players in the space. Interacting with people online but still a nobody.

2019 is when I started watching Olivia stream her metalwork. When she started streaming Commander, I offered to help fix it up. After showing off some examples of what I could do, she gave me a shot and it really worked out lol.

Through her, I was introduced to the Commander RC, Prof, and just a swath of awesome people. They all saw potential and let me run with it. The following posts will describe those things I do.

Firstly, and most obviously, I community admin Discord servers. I've learned a lot about handling this stuff over the past decade and it's suited me well for handling problematic people and designing safe and inclusive community spaces for folks to collaborate.

Each space has to grow and adapt to the members and leaders that live there. Every place is different, but the underlying tools, integrations, and structure are pretty similar. By doing all this, I've been pulled into extremely large community servers to assist in improving their setup.

In total, I have done past or present admin work on close to a hundred servers or more. Actively, I have an admin or mod role on ~60 at the moment. I'm not hands-on on most of the day-to-day but set up notifications to let me know when I need to give something attention.

I currently own @thecommanderstaple.com, the former Commander RC server, and we're about to hit 16,000 members. This means that we're still seeing growth even as an independent fan community after the format was handed over. Very proud of this!

I admin Prof's server along with three other mods. Nearing in on 36,000 members, there's not a lot of hands-on required and the membership generally knows to ping a mod or open a modmail ticket to grab our attention.

I collaborate with other server owners/admins to help keep the community safe. We don't just cross-ban people willy-nilly, but share concerns about problematic users and cross-ban the worst offenders. Slurs, hate speech, intentional harm, etc. Those have no place on any community server.

Outside of Discord, I also offer tech support/consulting kind of work. This could be troubleshooting computers, streaming setups, hardware issues, website stuff. Like.. literally anything. I just want to help and fix and if I don't have the answer, I try to find one or find someone that can help.

Parallel to that, I also build PCs. I've been doing that since 2004 or so, but just since 2020 those services have been in high demand. It was Sheldon Menery who was the first in the Magic space to commission me in Jan/Feb 2020. Since then, I've built around 55 PCs for people.

Building is a passion for me! It's like an expression/art. I put a lot of care into it and making sure people get what they need. I don't charge a specific labor rate unless asked for one. Otherwise I generally ask for parts + tax + shipping and leave it up to the client to pay whatever for labor.

I do give them a general idea what most folks pay me, but I have gotten $100/hr, $200/hr, $300/hr, paid in store credit, paid nothing, paid with a steak cookout with friends, paid in beer. Just all sorts of stuff. It's all gravy to me.

Money made from side gigs either pays for cloud services for some of the things I do or goes toward paying for my hobbies. Cards, hotels, flights, food, alters, commissioning art. I try not to dip into my career income and try to only pay for hobby with hobby work income. Tax deductibles are nice.

I assist Scryfall with a lot of things now, too. It used to be just me as a user helping find rare card scans or reporting data issues. But then turned into me helping fix the data or enter new cards. And now has evolved into using my network to make connections, planning projects, etc.

Through my Scryfall work, I also collaborate with Moxfield and Space Cow (EDHREC/Archidekt) to ensure they're getting the information they need when we implement new things or upload new stuff that may affect their sites.

Speaking of Moxfield, I mostly relay data and community issues anymore.. but back in 2022 I assisted in uploading something like 750 of the preconstructed deck lists on the site. That was a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of fun! They sometimes hit me up for opinions on new features.

I often spread myself too thin when doing all this stuff and need people to ground me. My closest friends are really good at doing this and I am grateful to have them in my life. Doing all this stuff has rewarded me with an Unknown Event card, which is still mind-boggling.