I'm actually surprised that I don't remember any turn-based elements from any of the many, many M*'s I played given the strong relation to traditional RPGs - the only big time-based event was when servers reset.
Archmage (magewars.com, probably the first really big browser game) was the first game I remember waiting for my next turn to be available on. Apparently there's a "reincarnation" of it running today. https://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/Archmage
As one of the most annoying kids in the CD/LPMud scene I am likely still responsible for more MUDs being banned from InterMud than anyone else - I would wiz just about anywhere I could to stalk and occasionally harass friends and enemies alike. (The name Moles has been banned on most remaining CD muds since 1994.)
The one place they could never ban was the TMI/MudOS development MUD - I don't even remember what it was called, but looking at what the folks from there are doing today... boy, I should've spent a lot more time actually trying to get to know them instead of bugging the people I played with elsewhere.
I think Andy (dros) is a Linux filesystem contributor working at NetApp. Definitely interesting stuff from many of the monkey.org users all over the interwebs!
I don't know anything specifically about monkey.org but I went to high school with the user "dros" in the late 90's when local BBS's (Grex and M-Net) were still kind of cool and it was even cooler to have your own.
"Some services, such as IAM, do not support Regions; therefore, their endpoints do not include a Region."
There was a partial outage maybe a month and a half ago where our typical AWS Console links didn't work but another region did. My understanding is that if that outage were in us-east-1 then making changes to IAM roles wouldn't have worked.
Most jurisdictions (US and otherwise) have moved to Electronic Death Registration Systems. There was a fun Defcon talk about "killing" people with them a few years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs
You'll note that at the end he kind of says "but everything got better and we're all driven solely by the capital markets and they know best - don't worry be happy! Pay no attention to the g-men behind the cur.."
Central's a good school. Good enough at least. Get any job you can in Ellensburg and find roommates. Apply, do things around campus, do anything you can to meet people and get out there. It does not matter if you actually get in or take classes, but it'll help to try.
Seriously you're less then 40 miles away from tons of people going through the same thing trying to get themselves together. Even if you end up doing something completely different, it's a place to start and it's just a hitchhike with a bunch of people you'll probably want to meet anyways away.
oDesk, Elance and probably many others allow you to actually watch your developer as they work. It isn't for everyone, but it's pretty powerful when you're getting over initial trust issues.
The FBI wants to catch "criminals", and they like easy backdoors. The NSA is the one interested in mass-surveilance and they usually are very good at collecting information with little to no help from corporations, seeking more direct interaction only when the scale of a particular target (say Facebook) becomes so large that they need to move their filters closer to the real data to keep up.
Usually these things start pretty innocently - you'll be approached by a local police department who has a real murderer they're trying to catch, who happens to be stalking people on your service. I've been through and heard of that kind of approach happening several times. Everyone knows the big NSA/MegaFed style visits happen as well, usually not before your CEO is hobnobbing with Senators anyways, giving keynote speeches to large globalist audiences, etc. (IE by the time they let you know, you're already part of the system anyways.) That's theory, I've only experienced the former not the latter.
Some day hopefully!
(edit: I've witnessed the FBI backdoor, not the NSA. :P)
Lots of great responses here but I wanted to add mine since this is something all of us non-degree'ers reflect on a lot. There's the first insight - it comes up a lot over the years.
I didn't exactly drop out but I got a summer job between high school and my first semester and by the first day of classes I'd agreed to move across the country with the company that'd hired me. That was about fifteen years ago. I've accumulated a few college credits here and there since then and even took a full course load of (online, community college) classes for a semester, definitely nowhere near a degree though.
I've been everything from a low-level developer to an upper middle manager (as well as a co-founder) at small startups, mid-range enterprises and one Fortune 50 and what I've figured out at this point is that my lack of a degree can and will hold me back at times, but it frames my experience and motivations in ways that help me explain and even justify who I am in the world. (Nobody special - but it's my choice!)
The biggest negative impact, as many people have mentioned here, is the HR/Bschool-driven hiring process that virtually any established company has. Your resume will be algorithmically removed from generic candidate-pool searches. Your salary range will be capped lower than other people's. You may be offered a position, you may even work at a position for a goodly amount of time, and at some point your lack of "credentials" may cost you salary or even your position, either by way of an acquirer opting not to hire you on, or your position being eliminated and the only remaining positions requiring credentials you do not have.
So you're working harder to find jobs, getting paid less once you find them, you have no alumni network to milk, and if you know how to market these facts (to yourself as well as others) you've got a pretty good story about your dedication to your career, or your family, or whatever it was and is that keeps you from pursuing a degree. That's how I comfort myself at least.
My story is a pretty easy sell generally as far as interview discussions go - I ran a consulting company in high school that was by no means wildly successful but kept me busy when I wanted to be, the startup I took that summer job with seemed like a fun laid back place to get a little more experience before school started, and things just naturally took off for the company... that eventually was acquired, its acquirer went bankrupt, got bought a few more times, and its husk is still around somewhere. I was one of the first people laid off when the bankruptcy was announced. I was one of the youngest employees, I didn't contribute as much as my (slightly) older, (slightly) more experienced, (slightly) more tenured teammates. It was a good decision, whether that's what lead to it or not - both for me and for the company. The people I worked with there are amazing, they've gone on to do amazing things since then, and not a day goes by I'm not grateful for having gotten to work with them. Mad props to jeffiel, thuddwhir, beans and that whole crew for being my "college" experience.
The good news? I feel that way about every single team I've worked with since then. I've worked with amazing people, all of whom I chose to work for because I liked them and what they were doing, not because I felt like I needed the job or that it was the right career move. At some level they all took a chance on me no matter whether I came to them as an a bright-eyed kid or a battle-hardened street fighter. I'm always conscious of that, and I feel it serves me well in making the kind of connections that suit me personally.
The really good news though? No matter what you tell yourself it's never too late to go back and get a degree. The value may diminish over the years but at any point along the road, even if you have to go completely bankrupt and shed a lot of the responsibility you become used to, you can go back to school and leap back into the workforce if you choose.
Or better yet.. Not jump back into the workforce! There's really nothing better in life than making your own success without a care in the world for what other people think of you, your credentials, your history, whatever. Your success is ultimately your own to make. If a degree gives you the kick-start you need, great. If not - school will be there if you ever want it.