FYI, I haven't given up on doing Merc work. I am just taking a bit of a break before working on more of it. I started reading this "Thinking in C++" book to give me a better understanding of coding before picking back up on it. About halfway done with the book so far. It is a good learning experience and is filling in details for stuff I am familiar with from reading the source, but never really fully understood in depth. Up to this point, almost everything I have learned about coding has been from examples in the EQEmu source. So, it will be nice to understand everything a bit better before picking up on more coding (about time, right?)
Hopefully I can finish the book up this week and start back into working on more stuff. The winter is normally a good time for coding anyway, since there are less things to do outside and around the house so there is more free-time for dev work.