Archive for December, 2004

So now that I have some hours of playing on my back, I suppose I’ll ramble a bit about World of Warcraft.

What I’ve found so far is mostly good news. I can’t help comparing it to the MMORPG that took so much of my time for so long: Dark Age of Camelot. So many things are similar between the two that I picked up on them right off. However there are some differences that force me to fight instincts pretty well ingrained from my zillions of hours of DAoC. First the bad. For one thing, it seems remarkably difficult to select a party member by clicking the party member on screen. By far the easiest way it to use the hotkeys, but I’ve always clicked into the action, or the handy mini group window which doesn’t exist in WOW. That’s the first thing I miss quite a bit. Healing party members quickly is difficult when I can’t select quickly. (it seems I’m not the only one who’s missed this, here’s an add-on that solves this: ) Of course I also have that feeling of being totally overwhelmed that I’m not used to. I knew DAoC to a scary level of detail and I was the one helping others most of the time. It feels weird to be in the position of not knowing what I’m doing and having to ask for help. Also, inventory management and buying/selling is a real chore. First off, buying/selling is very slow. Selling things is a lag fest and it can be very frustrating. Second, you don’t have nearly enough backpack space at the start, and unless I’m missing something, more space is very expensive for a new character. My mage stumbled on a 6 slot pouch from a drop, so he’s a bit better off, but they both run out of space way too soon. Now some good. The world is remarkable. It is huge and beautiful and each area is very different looking from the last and features different music. The music is excellent, although not as good as Lineage 2, which has the best music of any MMORPG, in my opinion. The game is also much much easier than Camelot, particularly the early parts. In the last two days I’ve leveled two characters above level 10, and both of them, a mage and paladin, can easily solo things a couple levels above them. In Camelot, most classes were hard pressed to take monsters one level above them. (there are a few exceptions to this, of course) It might just be that I’ve picked good solo classes so far though. Once I got out of the newbie areas, there is a great deal of role playing to watch and participate in. As I play exclusively on RP servers (I can’t stand the names on “regular” servers, they just rip me out of the world) and love role playing, this is a nice change. Camelot’s RP servers had good role playing if you looked for it, but it wasn’t that often random and abundant. The quests are also interesting and can be found everywhere. This makes for a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be all that much overall that makes WOW “different” from what I tired of in Camelot. It is still early so I might be missing it, but I find myself in the same treadmill that drove me crazy. Fight->level->fight->level. Okay, that’s enough for now.

If you’d like to look me up, I’m currently playing a Pally, Yvrey, on Silver Hand. I might roll a Hunter there next and give it a “shot.” I’m pretty happy with the community on Silver Hand, so I think I’ll be making it my home.

I swear I posted this yesterday. Either I dreamed I did, or I hallucinated it as it isn’t here. Perhaps LJ ate it. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I was only half awake all day because Zidane picked Christmas Eve to decide he wasn’t going to use that old broken RAM anymore. So Brian and I scrambled and fought to get it replaced, and just before midnight we succeeded. And then I slept late, but poorly. Then I woke in a truly foul mood, which I think I successfully hid as nobody mentioned it. Today I’m off to eat with my folks and then I might pick up World of Warcraft. Have a great day!

So we’ve a release date now. But July seems so far away…

So Molly is now a College graduate. WOO HOO!

Wow! I didn’t know that the XMLHttp object I’ve wrote a fairly involved HTML based, data enabled grid with client side data updates and all sorts of nifty things. As the day job is IE specific, I made use of Microsoft’s powerful and well designed XMLHTTP Active X control to make calls to server side code to do the data accesses. (as an aside, I did it in a pretty secure and very generic way, and I’m rather proud of it) Recently I saw Google’s new “beta” feature, Google Suggest and said to myself “Self, how the hell are they doing that. It feels like they are making server side data calls of some kind, and the only way I know to do that is with XMLHTTP. But, self, I’m using Safari right now and it is working fine.” This morning, as I’m trying to wake up and get ready for Molly’s graduation (CONGRATUALTIONS!! WOO!!) I saw an article on Slashdot where some helpful and ingenious soul dissected the Javascript for Google Suggest. I raced to click on the link and read with delight. (yes clever code is delightful to me) At the bottom, I saw a function that brought much intrigue:

function getXMLHTTP(){
  var A=null;
  try{
    A=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP")
  }catch(e){
    try{
      A=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
    } catch(oc){
      A=null
    }
  }
  if(!A && typeof XMLHttpRequest != "undefined") {
    A=new XMLHttpRequest()
  }
  return A
}

So I said to myself “Self, lookie, they are making a call to XMLHttpRequest(). What is THAT? Is that a browser independent XMLHTTP? Could it be?” I opened a new Google window and searched on it. I found this. Thanks Apple for a clean and well written bit of documentation. And for Xcode. And for OS X. Oops, sorry. I guess I lost my train of thought. I’m pleased that the Safari and Mozilla developers opted to duplicate the interface exactly, even though it was Microsoft’s. It is clean and it works. At least I think so anyway. I can’t wait to play with this! It will be fun to tweak my grid to be browser independent.

Well it’s been a while. Sorry about that. Things have been busy. Despite that, little of interest has happened. Yes, I live an exciting life.

Over the weekend we made the first step at migrating one of our in house apps to a customized 3rd party replacement. That 3rd party replacement is soon to be fully developed in house, meaning we’ve migrated from one custom system to another. The system that will slowly be replaced is a cobbled together c++ application that, honestly, I’m surprised has worked as long as it has.

It was developed long before we had database naming and design standards by a group of people who were learning as they went along. Because of this, there are some particularly frightening flaws in the database design. The most annoying is the horrendous naming standards.

For example, a company is a row in the company table, so far so good. Anything that relates to the company is in a comp# table. That is comp1, comp2, comp3 and so on. So contacts are in comp4. Accounts are in comp7. I can’t even imagine what they were thinking.

Anyway, we’ve taken the first step to burying this app, but it is going to be a long process, because it has grown into quite a monster over the years. To make matters worse, there are so many other applications that use data from its database, and they will all need to be modified to use the new program’s data as well. And getting at the data in the new program is difficult because they have taken encapsulation and security to the extreme. But that’s a story for another day.

I hope you all have had a great week so far. Thanks for reading, and be well!

Start the morning off right with some delightful cat haikus. Molly got these from one of her teachers.

Blur of motion, then - Silence, me, a paper bag. What is so funny? You’re always typing. Well, let’s see you ignore my Sitting on your hands. My small cardboard box. You cannot see me if I Can hide my head. Terrible battle. I fought for hours.  Come and see! What’s a “term paper”? Small brave carnivores Kill pine cones and mosquitoes, Fear vacuum cleaner. Want to trim my claws? Don’t even think about it! My cries will wake dead. I want to be close To you. Can I fit my head inside your armpit? Wanna go outside. Oh no! Help! I got outside! Let me back inside! Oh no! Big One has been trapped by newspaper! Cat to the rescue! Humans are so strange. Mine lies still in bed, then screams! My claws aren’t that sharp. . . .

There’s a NEW Michael Crichton book! How did I miss learning this until today? Well, I know what I’ll be doing during every moment of free time today!

Look, I got a new icon. Yay, me.

My boss just told us he’s leaving. This was a shock to all of us. He’s a wonderful boss, the best I’ve ever had in fact.

We’ll have to temporarily report to his boss, who is a very unpleasant person. I hope he is replaced soon, and with someone who is decent.

Wow, is it ever time to scream OFIM.