Archive for September, 2008

Server Manager

I’ve been working on an application called the “Server Manager” that I can run on my desktop to view output from all of the servers used to run my game. This tool can be used to bring all of the game servers online with one simple click. It can even be used to remotely configure the gatekeeper server. It also connects to the database servers to provide some basic database management funtionality.

Hopefully this won’t take very long to complete. I do, however, have to update all of the server code to make it utilize this new client application. It looks like I’m going to be busy!

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Synthesizer Finally Repaired!

After over 9 weeks waiting for warranty repair, a ridiculously long time, I finally got my Roland Fantom G6 back! I sure hope I don’t ever have to return it for repair any time soon.

Let me tell you, it’s a good thing it was finally fixed. I was starting to get very pissed off over the whole matter. After all the times I bugged Roland on the phone, I never got one straight answer. It was always, “let me check on that and call you back”. But in reality, that translated into “we will probably be too busy to call you back, but let me tell you that we will call anyway”. It appears they were hoping that it would buy them another week or two. I was about to contact the Attorney General in California where Roland is located. Maybe the Better Business Bureau could have helped. There is no reason why any warranty repair should take this long. People shouldn’t have to put up with this crap when something is so new. I don’t care if the part is coming from Japan.  I’ve shipped things there, and it sure didn’t take anywhere near that long. But what I’m being told is that most companies are too big anymore to take care of their customers. It’s simply not physically possible anymore, I guess. Companies should not be allowed to grow this large. This is simply absurd. If they are that busy, then they should have plenty of money to treat a customer right. It’s not like they couldn’t afford to repair my unit. They could have exchanged it for a whole new synthesizer. They have been in stock nationwide this whole time, I’ve been checking. Also, they could have paid for shipping the replacement part by air, instead of a slow boat from Japan. Heck, they could have even offered to extend my warranty for the length of time it was in repair. My warranty shouldn’t slowly tick away while I’m not able to use it. Instead, they chose to not offer me anything; not even a courtesy call to ease my mind.

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The 2008 Ohio Blackout

Millions of people lost power in my area. Since I didn’t have a power generator, this slowed down my game development for a bit. The power was out at my house for at least 4 days! I had to throw away everything in the refrigerator. There was no gasoline, since there was no electric to pump it. Only a couple of restaurants had power, and the waiting lines were extremely long! I waited for an hour to get a meal from McDonalds. We had one or two grocery stores open, because they had huge generators keeping everything running. It was crazy, let me tell you. You couldn’t buy batteries or ice, and the shelves were starting to become really empty. All of this was due to an 80+ mph wind storm left over from IKE that the local media neglected to warn us about. There were a LOT of trees that came down on houses and power lines around here, it was like a war zone!

I managed to do OK at least. I got some much needed reading done. I charged my PSP at a friend’s house that had a generator, so I was able to play some games. I had plenty of candles and good flashlight batteries. I was able to get some cold beer at the store. I made a 100 foot cable with a cigarette lighter attachment on one end, and a power connection on the other end that would fit my little portable TV. People walking down my street all had to ask what the heck the wire was doing hanging out of my car, and coming into the house. A good car battery will run a radio and a small TV for quite a long time! Even if I would have drained the car battery and needed a jump start, it was still worth it.

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Roland Keyboard Warranty

My loyalty to Roland keyboards since the early 80’s is starting to quickly fade. In fact, my next keyboard probably won’t even be a Roland at all; I’ll probably look at the new Korg workstations instead. I took a huge risk buying my new Roland the day it was released, without even reading any reviews first. That is how much I used to trust them.

It’s been over 7 weeks since I took my brand spankin’ new Roland Fantom G6 in for repair. I talked to someone about this at Roland once again on Friday. The guy seemed somewhat more helpful than the first guy I spoke with a while back. He promised to have a supervisor call me back on Monday. Well it’s Tuesday now, and I’ve not heard back from Roland yet. I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve felt more comfortable dealing with total strangers on eBay!

According to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, the company “must, as a minimum, remedy the consumer product within a reasonable time”. I don’t think I would have a hard time proving in court that this has not been a reasonable amount of time. If Roland can’t get a replacement part for my defective keyboard, then it’s time to step up to the plate and send me a new keyboard, immediately!

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Playing The Game

The network tests with my online game are going pretty well. The patch system seems to be working great. All of the clients are staying up to date. I’ve made some changes to the launcher, to make it more obvious that updated files are currently being downloaded. I think I have all of the bugs fixed that we found the other day during testing. I’ve also addressed all of the issues that were found while running the game engine on Windows Vista. Now it’s time to move forward!

I received my new book on computer animation algorithms today. I’ll probably spend a little time reading it before I get back to the code.

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