All posts by DungeonMaster

DDO – End of an Era

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.

DDO Datacenter Move

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.

Outage Update
Outage Update

 

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 Character Pictures #2

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

Lorkaa w/Tyji Growth
Lorkaa w/Tyji Growth

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.

Wierd Outlook Email Effect

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.”

Rejected Email
Rejected Email
 
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.
Pasted Address
Pasted Address

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

Check Names
Check Names

 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.

Email Address Properties (Wrong)
Email Address Properties (Wrong)

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.”

Email Address Type (Correct)
Email Address Type (Correct)

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

Black Company Gathering

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.

Black Company - Sarlona
Black Company - Sarlona

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 Character Pictures

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

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

Chandeth Dropping In
Chandeth Dropping In
Tyji Dropping In
Tyji Dropping In

My favorite, Tyji and her body guard.

Tyji and Her Bodyguard
Tyji and Her Bodyguard

Free Browser Toolbars – #3

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.

 

Live Messenger Upgrade
Live Messenger Upgrade

 

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

 

Toolbar Details
Toolbar Details

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.

Lego – Taj Mahal – #11

The tenth step is now complete.  This step built the roof, installed the dome, and placed the building on the base.  This step took about an two hours and 30 minutes to complete.

Taj Mahal -041
Taj Mahal -041
Taj Mahal - 042
Taj Mahal - 042
Taj Mahal - 043
Taj Mahal - 043
Taj Mahal - 044
Taj Mahal - 044
Taj Mahal - 045
Taj Mahal - 045
Taj Mahal - 046
Taj Mahal - 046
Taj Mahal - 047
Taj Mahal - 047
Taj Mahal - 048
Taj Mahal - 048
Taj Mahal - 049
Taj Mahal - 049
Taj Mahal - 050
Taj Mahal - 050
Taj Mahal - 051
Taj Mahal - 051
Taj Mahal - 052
Taj Mahal - 052
Taj Mahal - 053
Taj Mahal - 053
Taj Mahal - 054
Taj Mahal - 054
Taj Mahal - 055
Taj Mahal - 055
Taj Mahal - 056
Taj Mahal - 056
Taj Mahal - 057
Taj Mahal - 057

This has been a fun project.  Thank you Darcie, Michaelyn, and Kearby for getting it.  Now, I need to get another one for parts for other projects …

Fox News Funnies – #5

Fox News had this little gem regarding VP Joe Biden.

No Numeric Addresses?
No Numeric Addresses?

The headline and teaser text imply that the Vice-President is stupid for refering to the “number” of a web site.

Web sites really are numbers behind the scenes.  www.foxnews.com reports several differnt numeric IP addresses (64.209.118.32 and 209.2.148.104 for example).  The dotted notation also actually translates to a 32-bit number … but virtually no one actually uses them.  The Domain Name System (DNS) translates strings like recovery.gov to the appropriate number for actually moving the traffic to the web site.

To be fair to Fox News, the article behind the headline and teaser does mention that web sites do actually have numeric addresses.