World server is down

I guess when a patch of this magnitude gets released for any hosted product, regardless of whether it's a game or business application, you should really expect disruption. Sadly most users won't really "get" that. As much planning can go ahead, but with a fundamental change and introduction of new features you can't really predict just how many of your user base will try to logon at once, and perhaps the financial backing isn't there to prepare for the worst case scenario.

If you're confused as to what I'm rambling on about, then I can safely assume you don't play World of Warcraft. Or if you do then you've not tried logging in today.

If you have, then undoubtedly you've managed to get the final major patch before Lich King drops on your front door mat, and you've also undoubtedly been receiving the "World server is down". If you managed to get into Stormwind, which is relatively busy at the best of times, then you'll probably know one of the few reasons why this is occuring. If you weren't lucky enough, then the following screenshot might help out a bit.

When you do manage to login you'll probably be a bit confused, especially if you've not read the patch notes. You really should skim the patch notes.

Anyway -

  • Mounts no longer take up space in your bags, you "use" them, and they get applied to a new area in your character screen
  • Your talent points have been reset, the reason being that there are fundamental changes to all classes
  • Inscriptions have been introduced, and you can buy the low level stuff from vendors, and higher level stuff from the AH
  • Don't like your character's appearance? Goto the Barber. As long as you don't want a new beard (ffs), you should be a-ok! Just try and avoid the mohawk. There are a lot of them about
  • Yes, the graphics have been overhauled a tad
  • BM hunters can get exotic pets. Two headed hellhounds? Awesome

I'm know there are loads of other things that I've missed, but these are the major things people are whining and asking about in general and trade as of now (only a few hours after the patch was released), and whilst I get few readers who are into WoW, you never know - google might throw them this way.

From a sysadmin point of view I'd absolutely love to see what's behind the World of Warcraft system, and understand just how it's architectured. It's undoubtedly a massive system and on that front I envy the techies behind it. However, I think if I saw the amount of moaning on the forums, my optimism and love for the job would probably be in jeopardy. I certainly know it is when I've been working for hours on a customer's system and they don't feel like things are being worked at fast enough, and my user base at work is tiny in comparison.

Relying on Bloglines much?

This lunch time I've had a bit of a thought about just how much I use Bloglines (beta). In the mornings it's one of the first tabs opened, and it's almost always loaded when I close the browser. For that I can thank chip in particular. And it's a good thing. I think. It's certainly made my life easier and better.

However, if I went back just 2 years ago the whole concept of a feed reader sort of repulsed me - I liked the idea of visiting a site to get the news and bits and bobs that I want, and I almost felt like I should go to the site so that the various writers and owners got a meagre bit of cash from advertising. Whilst I still do that for a small number of sites, in particular Penny Arcade, XKCD and Questionable Content, digg and BBC News, for everything else I now rely on Bloglines.

Not only do I use it to read and keep up to date on what's going on, but also as a way of making and taking mental notes without having to write anything. It's like a wiki, but better, and because of this I rarely update my own personal techy wiki with anything at all. More often than not someone will write about something that I find interesting or want to do, or will be doing shortly. It's brilliant and also somewhat scary sometimes just how many people are on the same sort of page as me in terms of work and personal stuff - which for me very much overlap.

However, the bit that scares me the most is I think that I'm now at the point where if Bloglines goes away that I'll have problems. Ok, I could export all of my feeds out and into whatever I want using the various OPML ex/importers. But these don't export the stuff that I've got pinned or saved, and these are the bits that now make my own little world go around.

Windows DFS shares, junctions and permissions

Here's another one that caught me out today, but I've never come across before.

Under a DFS share, any linked shares are created as junctions. It appears that the permissions on these junctions do affect the permissions of the data within the linked share. Whilst this is logical, given how junction points work, what really threw me was that the wonderful, wonderful GUI didn't reflect this and the permissions on the junction point had been inadvertently changed.

It's not like you ever need another reason to chalk one up for the command line, but there we go!

Specifying a driver, for redirected printers

I guess I've not come across this before as most of the printers we deploy use the same driver name for client side and server side drivers, but it appears that you can force a Terminal Server to use a certain driver, in place of what the client is telling the server.

KB239088 details the process. I found that the wizard wasn't much use at all - but it's not like the process is particularly complicated. Doing it manually also demonstrates that deploying the "fix" over multiple servers is childs play.

As 64 bit Terminal Servers become more common, and clients with printers stay at 32 bit (i.e. home or remote workers) I can see this becoming more relevant over the next few years.

Never trust a computer scientist

This popped up on the Bath and Bristol LUG mailing list a few days ago, from Shevek, and I thought it was pretty "cute" -

Scientific method is the process of experimentation and observation. Computer science is therefore defined as "Let's try it and see if it works." Computing, on the other hand, is doing it, knowing that it will work. Never trust a computer scientist.