Personal

I've been racking my brain to get Exits to be more programmer friendly. The answer just hit me, and I wanted do a brain dump, so that I don't lose this idea while it is still fresh in my mind.

Here are the two main memes that I had:

• Instead of ExitA and ExitB, rename them to ExitTo and ExitFrom
• Use something like the mediator pattern to deal with things like doors

The first one is so obvious that it gives me physical pain. I have no idea why something so simple didn't surface before. Must be that I was tired every time I looked at this issue. I still think that Foxedup original idea is pretty good, and these semantic changes will make it much easier to deal with.

The second meme is not so easy to explain. I've been studying design patterns in C# for some obstacles and research that I've been doing for the last 3 weeks. The mediator pattern jumped at me, because it could help decouple the doors (and other mud objects) from the exits. I would like to include this logic into the ExitBehavior class in the future.

I think I'm finally getting used to my new work schedule. I hope that I can return to finish coding WheelMUD's 0.5 milestone soon!

I finally feel recovered enough, from the surgery in December, to get back to coding on WheelMUD. I'm currently working on the remote admistration stuff right now. I moved all of that to use Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

As some of you know, I was laid off my daytime job, so that was a source of distraction. I just accepted a job offer last week. I'm supposed to start this week. The new job will involve Visual Studio 2010, C#, Linq2Sql, WPF, and a lot of SQL Server stuff.

Let's just say that I'm massively relieved!

Anyways, You'll see me churning code again. It feels good to be back.

After much struggle with getting the remote admin stuff to work with Json-RPC, I threw up my hands and decided to move in a different direction. I wanted to be able to have a remote admin client that would work in cross platform environments, but this is a case of "You Are Not Going to Need It" (YAGNI). Just about everybody that will be using WheelMUD is going to be a Windows user, so I don't see the point in creating stuff for other OS at this point.

I did a quick test with a WCF tutorial, and the sample worked the first time. Holy Cow on a Pogo Stick! I was able to self host the service, because I don't want us having to rely on IIS for simple stuff like this.

Also, the stupid inversion went away yesterday, so I'm already feeling much better. What's an inversion, you say? Well, the geography where I live, traps the smog against the mountains, when really big cold fronts come from west to east. That causes warm air to be trapped below a layer of cold air. As you can imagine, this turns into a nasty soup, and many people can't go outside without some serious breathing problems. It usually takes a couple of really good winter stoms to get rid of an inversion. Anyways, I hope to be a bit more active now, and I hope that there is not another inversion this winter.

I've been working on the remote admin stuff. It's a good thing that I broke this task into several steps. This system is going to need to include encryption and other security features. I didn't want to mess with code at that low level, and I didn't want to mess with the BaseServer.cs class, as it is working rather well. So, I looked around and found a nice async socket library with security and encryption. It is called ALAZ Library, and it is hosted in CodeProject. I had said CodePlex in the checkin comment, but that is wrong. The link is http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/AsyncSocketServerandClien.aspx The server part is working fine, but I will need to migrate it to this new library to support encryption and security. I will be coding and testing the client bit without encryption, until I get a handle on the library.

I'm working on about 4 projects at the same time. The recent surgery appears to be a success, and I'm starting to feel much better. The sinuses are still sore, but I'm not getting headaches and/or migraines everyday, like I did for the past 7 months. I've been able to sleep better, consequently, I have more energy during the daytime. My recovery is a long term one. It will take between 3 to 4 months to be fully recovered. I can't do any excercise due to the stiches in the sinus cavity. Last thing I want is those things ripping appart.

This is my new dual 28" monitor setup. Notice that I have WheelMUD open on the left monitor. I'll try to add more pictures ASAP. Basically, as soon as I'm not doing this anymore:

I've been working on finishing the next version of my commercial software, PainlessSVN. I'm really close to getting it pushed out. I'm hoping to get it out the door before my surgery, so that I can use my recovery time to work on WheelMUD. Here's one screenshot:

Click the image to see more screenshots. As you can see, I'm getting quite proficient at programming MMC 3.0 SnapIns.

Just wanted to update everybody on some personal stuff that affects my work with WheelMUD...

For the past 6 months, I've had severe sinus headaches every day. Some days the swelling is so bad that my sinuses bleeds. The only thing that seems to work is Excedrin Migraine. Today was one of those days. The migraine stuff just kicked in (about 20 minutes ago). The Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctor gave me a sinus rinse that has helped, but not entirely gotten rid of the pain.

I am having Endoscopic Sinus surgery on December 10th. I was told that it takes about a week to recover from this surgery. This is the first half of my taking care of my sinus problems. The surgery will remove a deviated septum, and remove swollen sinus that is blocking the natural flow in the sinuses. The hope is that this will prevent sinus secretions from accumulating, thus preventing it from irritating the membranes. This should give the sinus membranes time to heal and make the constant swelling go down eventually.

The other half is to deal with allergies. I need to take care of the swelling first, before the specialists can tell for sure what is an actual allergy and what is just a reaction from the swollen sinus tissue.

I have been a virtual prisoner for the last few years, since cologne, perfume, nail polish, hand lotions, and other similar smells make me violently sick. I have missed a bunch of time at work, missed my kids' concerts and games, and can't go to see movies on the opening night. Even though the surgery is scary, I'm looking forward to finally being able to leave the house without the fear of getting violently sick and having to stay in bed for days at a time.

I'll work as I hard as I can to move WheelMUD forward. So if I'm not around for a few days, it's probably that I'm recovering from some sort of sinus pain or allergy attack. Never fear, as I check this place at least once a day.

I was finally able to put together my new system. Gotta love quad-core with 12gigs of RAM! I need a third hard drive to put all of my dev projects, but I ran out of money. Fortunately, there is an IDE 500gig drive that I can plug in, until I get a new SATA drive sometime in the next couple months. I will be installing this drive tonight.

I upgraded my CMUD to CMUD Pro last night, and wanted to give it a spin. Went and tried it on StarMUD, my favorite MUD. It is sweet on my 28" monitors! I got a couple of them. It really help my old eyes. I'll see if I can get screenshots and pictures in the next few days.

I downloaded Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and installed it into a new Windows 7 virtual image. WheelMUD compiled without errors right away. I had the zero size database issue, but a quick file copy fixed that. It just amazes me that we got WheelMUD to work this well out of the box.

My health is a bag of mixed news. On one hand my headaches are getting worse, and have them every day. The Tinnitus keeps getting louder and louder. Fortunately, I found an Ear, Nose, Throat clinic that I feel comfortable with. I've scheduled an Endoscopic Sinus surgery for the 10th of December. I will be out aproximately one week. I'm hoping that this will deal with my isolation. Any strong smell makes me very sick, so I'm basically confined to my house and work. I can't go to malls, movies, and some restaurants, because I usually end up sick for a couple days afterward. I do know that my sinuses are swollen, and have been for several years. It just gotten much, much worse. I've eliminated a lot of posibilties, so that surgery is the last resort. The good news about this is that I'm both a good candidate, and that this endoscopic sinus surgery has had a LOT of sucess since it was implemented. I avoided getting the previous type of surgery, because it was basically just a roto-tiller up the sinuses.

Anyways, I will be ramping up my activity over here soon.

We finally got the keys for the new house today. We will be moving this Friday. I will be ordering a new workstation within the next couple weeks. Here is what I'm planning on getting:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?SRCCODE=WEBLET12&EdpNo=4601609&csid=_21

I may opt for a higher voltage power supply, but that's basically what I want. That will allow me to have a LOT of virtual images and be able to run several of them at the same time. I already got my new monitors. I ordered 2 of these:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3326540&Sku=H94-2801

I unpacked and hooked one up. The thing is HUGE! Unfortuantely, this one has a couple of stuck pixels that I haven't been able to fix. I'm hoping that with this new rig and the private office, that I can enormously productive, once everything gets setup. I'm hoping to be completely back to speed around the second week of October.