Dear Urist McEveryone,
While I know my fellow Avatars of Armok usually take the piss out of you in this thread, I'd just like to thank all of you for working the past four months of my startup fort, and doing your absolute damnedest to keep up with my unreasonable demands and undwarvenly strict work schedule, putting up with long hours and low rations so that Helmsbridge could be set up as a nice, cozy, well-defended outpost. Especially you, Chief Miner Adil Swordsoars, you're a trooper. Four months and you've not once yet laid your head down to rest and you've only had time for one meal. You single-handedly excavated the entire Dormitories level and all the farm grid on your own while your assistant took a four-week nap.
Oh, and on examining the new migrant wave in Dwarf Therapist, I find that one of them has a decent skill rank of 3 in Appraisal, so there's a Broker for us and better prices when the caravan rolls 'round come winter.
However, I do have a few words of rebuke.
Masons. Yes, you guys. All SIX of you. I ask 100 squares of floor tile laid to form the better part of the ceiling for our entryway/trash heap. I ask this of you on Hematite 17, and it's now past Malachite and you're barely halfway done. Granted, four of you arrived a week after the assignment, and those same four needed to be told which way of a slab was 'down' by reason of having no Masonry experience, but that's still a month with six of you working on it, and there's still almost forty squares left to lay. What, you want I should just cancel the overlapping squares so it's supported by flimsy edge-on connections? Ruin the neatness of it? Actually, that sounds rather pragmatic. Saves stone, and just as secure. Thanks for the idea, guys.
Yours,
Almost-pissed-but-now-quite-pleased Overseer
In all seriousness, my dwarves are geniuses. In my past five forts I've never had one bit of Dwarven Ingenuity, not even someone walling themselves in on accident. I've never had a cave-in, never had someone starve or dry out in a fort with adequate supplies, never had a death from infection in a soap-water-and-bucket-ed fort, nothing. Either I'm lucky or I haven't made a fort scaled up enough to invite the really bad shit yet.