Aaurrghh!!!! Computers are such a time suck! I sit down to check my mail and the website isn't loading. Spend the next 4 hours trying to figure out what I last did to fix it and then just wipe the server and start over. I am getting pretty good at reinstalling but I should make notes to myself of all the steps I have to do. I need to improve my backup script to remove some files I don't need and add some files I do need. Or then I try to write a simple script and it takes a day to get something working only it's not quite what I had in mind. If I had more time I could get it but before you know it, your whole weekend is gone. I should just wipe the whole website and start from scratch.
Ah that sense of relief when you find out those two missed calls were not a live site issue from work but actually a wrong number.
DOH! I just picked up a sweet sniper rifle in my current favorite game AMC's The Walking Dead Social Game but they took out the way to get free ammo. Up until yesterday you could get free ammo by watching 60 second commercials. That has now been replaced with you get 1 energy. To get ammo you have to pay real money and some missions are for guns only. I haven't tried to do a gun level yet with just striking zombies but sometimes you don't want to get in that close to one zombie because there are several others hanging around that will bite you before you can take them all down. There are missions where ammo can be found but those are pretty rare. Hopefully they will increase now that the free ammo for watching commercials isn't available.
Note to self: Don't turn off the switch on the powerstrip that has the switch that the server and router are using to share the modem connection or the website will go down.
Other note to self: Add the php module file to the server backup list. How is it the latest version of Slackware and all patches can still be pointing to the wrong location for the required files to make php work?
The good thing about running the server on a laptop is that it is really quiet in the office when it is the only computer running.
The DOH! Network server crashed with no indictation of what the issue is. Everything is running but there are no beeps or video and no connection from other machines so we are running on the backup server until the problem can be resolved. Some subpages may not be working.
UPDATE: I tried disconnecting the hard drives, removing the videocard and ram and changing the videocard and power supply but no luck. Looks like the server is dead. The laptop will have to be the server until I can get around to upgrading the server. I would use the old gaming machine but it takes forever to boot up and that's not cool.
That's cool that Valve has made it so that the achievements from more than just Steam games spit out xmls that I can use to show recent achievements on my website. Rage and Dead Island have both been added. I wrote the php code to only show achievements over the last week so it doesn't get flooded with achievements for all my games. My Dead Island achievements just expired so I will have to play that some more to get something showing. I did play it a little last night and while I didn't get any achievements I found it is much easier to kill zombies when you have a car to hit them with.
I think I will shut down the official DOH! Network TrackMania server. Nobody plays it anymore including me. I can keep it around for LANs but it's just sucking up resources that could be used by the Unreal Tournament 2004 server.
So I picked up Dead Island and Rage during the Steam Summer Sale and wouldn't you know the game play is pretty similar. Go complete objectives in which ever order you want, follow the dots to your objective, keep an eye on your weapons because you don't just pick up ammo as you go. I started playing Dead Island and while hanging out on a tropical island is cool, there is a lot of gore and foul language making it hard to play while the kids are around. I switched to Rage and while it has gore and language, there is not as much as Dead Island but I still have to be careful when kids are around. It would be nice if both games could include a kid friendly version that tones it down a little. Rage has been taking more of my attention even though I think a zombie apocalypse would be a good way to get out of work for while although I don't like that some of the zombies can run. I prefer Romero class zombies that all shamble around at a walking pace. Both games are first person shooters that let you drive vehicles and complete missions in any order. I have been mainly playing Rage the last couple of days and while the graphics are amazing with the new Tech 5 Engine, it takes my nVidia 460 SE videocard a bit to load up all the textures so the first 15 seconds of starting a new mission or leaving the home base is tough. I was thinking I might need to double up my videocard or upgrade to a newer one but Crypt and Racebelly were in agreement that my videocard should be fine and the issue has to do with bad drivers. The game runs fine afterthat initial 15 second load time though. I haven't lost a race yet. The graphics are amazing with the up close dust swirls and water drops and the faraway vast desert landscapes. I don't understand how I am supposed to be sneaking through enemy bases or sewers to sneak up on bad guys when I have to collect empty bottles all the time. If this were real I would be making so much noise, they would hear me coming every time.