I’m little late to installing the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.  Part of the problem is that the Microsoft Update process never told me that there was an update available.

But while the update was running I noticed that the progress dialog left a little bit to be desired.

Upgrade Progress

So what’s wrong with the dialog?  The progress dialog was kind enough to tell me how much time was remaining with the download progress.  It wasn’t kind enough to tell me how much time was estimated to remain on the actual installation.  That’s a useful piece of information, particularly when you are in the middle of the workday.

Tags: development

As painful as it is, I’ve decided that it’s time to say “Good-bye” to Dungeons & Dragons Online and to all of my friends and characters in Stormreach – Sarlona.

Now that you’ve pulled your jaws and tongues back up from the floor, I’m sure you are asking “Why?”  My decision doesn’t have anything to do with the game; I love it.  Nor does it have anything to do with the recent extended outage due to the DDO datacenter move.  Creating a believable world, writing the software to bring it to life, and provisioning all of the equipment to support it is challenging.  Turbine has done a decent job.

It’s very simple, really.  I’ve been in a lot of pain for the last six months or so.  My shoulder and arm all the way down through the fingers have been in a dull ache much of the time and very sharp pains frequently as well.  The medical eval rated the pain at a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being no pain and 10 being “OMG!  Can I have a shot of morphine now?”  It’s distracting, difficult to concentrate, and disruptive to sleep paterns.

Wow!  Sleep!  Now that’s something that has been sacrificed a lot for the survival of Stormreach.

But DDO isn’t the sole contributor:  Work certainly (software developer).  Commuting.  Other hobbies.  Everything I like to do contributes in some little way to the problem.

As I’ve worked my way through physical therapy and limited the amount of time I spend in the exciting town of Stormreach, I find that the pain is less … some days even non-existent.

The best solution is to put Chandeth’s swords down, hang up Tyji’s wands, and put Confused’s fingers in his pockets where he can’t reach the bat guano.

So long.  Perhaps we shall meet again someday.

Tags: DDO