DDO

DDO Datacenter Move

March 31, 2009 DungeonMaster 3 Comments

It’s been 24 hours since Turbine started moving their datacenter that hosts Dungeons & Dragons Online. It isn’t going well. The move was originally planned to last about 14 hours.

Having been through a couple of these with my company, albeit with smaller groups of servers and less complicated server configurations, I know that these never go well. Something unexpected always happens, resulting in one or more key systems being offline. In our industry we can move on the weekend with the least impact to our customers. Not so with DDO; a weekday move is/was their best option. The only truly reliable way for a relatively small company to make a move like this is to clone the datacenter to the new location and flip a switch to change the routing when everything is done and tested.

Hopefully DDO will be back up and running full force by Wednesday … which is when I can play again.

DDO

DDO Character Pictures #2

March 30, 2009 DungeonMaster

I just found another of my favorite pictures. Lorkaa with a Tyji Fireborn growth on her chest.

I was cleaning up some old files and ran across that shot. I recall making it and the effort it took to get Tyji in there just right … what with Lorkaa moving about … I think we were getting ready to go into the Reaver.

Outlook

Wierd Outlook Email Effect

March 24, 2009 DungeonMaster

I was trying to send an email to a new contact today and got the strange message shown below from Microsoft Outlook 2007 as soon as I clicked “Send.”

Searching online for “None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient” wasn’t really helpful. Many of the responses suggested that my email accounts weren’t configured correctly. Others suggested that the problem was with my ISP.

One suggested that the email type of the recipient was “wrong.” I wasn’t really certain how that could be as the email address had been copied exactly from the forwarded email.

With some experimenting, I was able to reproduce the steps that caused the problem.

Step 1 – Copy the address as seen in the forwarded email and paste it into a new email.

Step 2 – Click the “Check Names” button to have Outlook convert it to an email address.

Outlook should have transformed the email address into something like what’s shown next.

After Name is Checked — After Name is "Checked"

Step 3 – Complete the email and click “Send” to send the message. You should immediately receive the message shown at the beginning of this posting.

What Outlook has done is “helpfully” set the email address type. Where’s that? Right click on the address and select “Outlook Properties” to display the properties for the email address.

The “problem” field is “E-mail type.” Outlook has set it to the custom type of “MAILTO” which it pulled from the address when it was pasted into the new email.

Click the “Internet type” button to change it to “SMTP.”

Once that’s done, the email will send normally to the intended recipient.

DDO

Black Company Gathering

March 21, 2009 DungeonMaster 3 Comments

The Black Company from Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) Sarlona gathered for lunch today at Sweet Tomatoes in Tigard, Oregon today. Most of the Black Company is concentrated in the Pacific Northwest ranging from Longview WA, to Albany, OR. We had a couple of visitors from New Jersey, prompting the gathering. Unfortunately, not every one could make the gathering.

Front Row (left to right)

Ratorion (Officer) / Helixx / Nipeny / Jon
Lorkaa (Officer) / Teapot / Sputnik / Swissarmy / Tweezer
Larekke (Officer) / Ivorae / Ebonae / Ruebae
Akastos (Officer) / Nikon
Bhima

Back Row (left to right)

Shintara (Officer) / Gymma
Zenju (Officer) / Beval / Zenola / Misbehavin / Morgandy
Amberyll (Officer) / Jeth (Officer) / Elborn / Oboyihitit / Wogglle / Ohlman
Chandeth (Leader) / Tyji (Officer) / Confused / Prana Bindu / Silinar / Ugen / Warborg / Kerona / Losara
Elizabythe (Officer) / Jybadia

We had loads of fun reminiscing about our adventures over the years. Four hours worth! Can you believe that?

Hopefully, we can do this again sometime with more members.

DDO

DDO Character Pictures

March 15, 2009 DungeonMaster

I’ve been playing DDO for three years now. So, it seemed like a good time to post pictures of some of my favor characters. These characters run in The Black Company on Sarlona. Chandeth is the first character I created and he found the guild.

Tyji Fireborn is a cleric. She’s actually my favorite character to play.

: Tyji Mug Shot

“Dropping” in from the Vault of Night (also know as the Dragon Raid).

My favorite, Tyji and her body guard.

windows

Live Messenger Markets AVG

March 13, 2009 DungeonMaster

Today, while I had a conversation in Windows Live Messenger I noticed a little text advertisement.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Microsoft promoting free products through its products … just interesting.

Uncategorized

Free Browser Toolbars – #3

March 10, 2009 DungeonMaster

Today Windows Live Messenger prompted me for an upgrade. I hadn’t done it in a while, so I thought it might be a good idea. I expected that Microsoft would include some sort of “free toolbar.” I was a little surprised by how they did it this time. You can see from the screenshot that there is this nify “Toolbar” check box.

When you select it right side of the installation dialog changes to provide “details” as to what it is all about.

Really, reasonably innocuous. However, if you notice in the “Installed with this program” list entries for the Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime and the Microsoft Sync Framework Services. What exactly are these things and why does a browser toolbar need them? Checking out Microsoft, doesn’t really reveal much about what these services do and why they need to be associated with a browser toolbar (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sync/bb887625.aspx#).

I think this time I’m going to go ahead and allow the toolbar to be installed.