How it works:
I hide old months. I don't list the years, only the months and date of review. You can still figure out which years are which by going backward. On the 8th of the month I post the first quarter of the report for the month covering days 1-7. The 15th covers days 8-14. The 22nd covers days 15-21. The 29th covers days 22-27 and 28-31. On the first of the next month I review days 28-31. For the last quarter (marked 29 of the current month) I mark if a city goes below 7/7 and I mark the column with the new number but I do not document whether the drop occurred on day 22-27 or on day 28-31, since the point of my list was not to keep a daily log but a monthly list of who was perfect. It wasn't until much later I realized that people were very concerned to know the exact day they missed. It was never my intention to keep a metro log, which is why I don't include comments or a daily break down.
Color:
Blue means perfect for the month
Red means pops under 50% of the time for the month and has left no reason as to why or the mayor has specifically indicated they are about to retire.
Green means I have excused them for whatever reason from being deleted. Reasons for green could be vacation, illness or personal whim.
Was the Dean's list always perfect?
Hell no! The first few years I was making a mistake in how I calculated out perfection and also I would give leniency on the last few days of the month. Also Metro did not calculate the report properly until a couple of years ago. As many of the old timers know you used to be able to achieve 8/7 and I even saw 13/7 once. When that bad calculation was going on the following week the city might be 7/7 but would be posted for less than that because the previous week was over-calculated. I also will occasionally make clerical errors, although I pride myself on being meticulous about accurately recording what I am seeing on the connection report. If there is a known server problem with Metro I give credit for that day whether you popped or not. Also, if you are not going to make the Dean's List for that month and there are minor differences between your total from the 28th-31st of the month I won't necessarily mark that on my spreadsheet since you were not eligible for the award and the difference would not matter as far as us staying connected.
What can go wrong?
1. Your autopop didn't go through. You hit the button, but for whatever reason the autopop process didn't actually run the macro that populates your connections. Always check the Game Information Feed off of your Metro Home Page for your city to make sure your pop went through.
2. You thought you popped every night but forgot.
3. I made an error and somehow listed you as less or more than you deserved.
4. There was a glitch in the Metro server due to daylight savings, an error caused by one of the numerous facebook updates or some other technical glitch beyond our control as players of the game.
5. You did pop, but missed the 12 Midnight sever update by nano-seconds and turned into a pumpkin!
The point of the Dean's List?
The Dean's list has always been my way of showing my appreciation to you, my connections. Sometimes it seems to have a life of its own and has more importance attached to it than it should. I have had some people so angry at me that I had to have them banned as a facebook contact due to verbal abuse and some have deleted me as a connection over a perceived slight. It has never been my intention for this award to be anything more than my way of showing love to you, gentle metro player. If you feel anything negative about it, I am truly sorry.
The most commonly missed days are the 1st and last day of the month. Don't ask me why! I hope you enjoy the spreadsheet. I probably will not provide an updated version very often. Hopefully it will be useful for those of you who are considering making your own list to keep track of connections. Happy Metro-ing!
-Dean
metro_connection_report2.xls |