DoctorDitko

Inspired by the chat (special thanks to @Luminara,) I wrote this humble effort: You never know you'll get for tech support: Good morning, this is Ash, how may I help you today? I'm sorry to hear that, ma'am. Have you tried turning it off and back on? Uh-huh. And you're sure it's plugged in? Really sure? We'll know if you're lying! All right, calm down, these are just the questions I'm supposed to ask you. No, I don't think that at all, but you'd be surprised how often... OK, I understand. That's fine. All right, let's try a few things: I'd like you to get your chainsaw, and let me know when it's nice and warmed up. Yes, ma'am. Chainsaw. Are you sure? Did you check the shed? OK, we can do this the old-fashioned way. Get your Remington 12-gauge and load that puppy up. Yes, ma'am, that is indeed a shotgun. Flint, Michigan's finest. You could try a Winchester, but that line's a bit flakey if you ask me... Are you sure? Not even a 20-gauge? Did you check under the bed? Well, ma'am, I don't see how I can help you if you don't have the basic diagnostic tools. I can schedule a visit from one of our service engineers, but there will be a surcharge if it turns out the system is not at fault. And you'll need to cover gas and ammunition... I don't know the rates, ma'am, they were in the agreement you clicked through when you... It is? That's great! Oh, I'm sure the cat didn't mean to. Thank you for calling. And a nice day to you, too.

To misquote Tony Stark from Marvel's Ultimates: "You think I'd get in this thing sober?"

I always call it a limo. As in, "Hey, boss, let me call a limo next time. That guy's getting paid for hanging out, might as well use him!"

Oh, I thought you got the message: "DoctorDitko is not allowed..." My bad! BTW, in on Torch, looks great!

Same message? Really? It's starting to seem like a personal beef with DoctorDitko!

Hell, the last downtime was 61,320 hours! That turkey was very cold.

We tend to call it "air in the wires." PS: The "traditional" approach: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ballard/bofh/bofhserver.pl

I don't know. Doesn't look entirely trustworthy.

And to be honest, OVH's average downtime is something like 2 hours a year for most clients. It is entirely possible that the initial support ticket was not escalated because the servers were all online as far as yon internet was concerned, and the intra-server connections were not understood to be critical.

Welcome home, Mondo! Sorry the place is a mess. It's the French Maid's day off.

Percussive maintenance, my old friend!

The first and still the best! (Unfortunately, it is still not opened to players. "DoctorDitko is not allowed to access this server. Reason: Stability testing before we open it for general use.")

It seems to be the internal networking between servers that is causing the issues. These can be tricky to track down. We had an entire cluster offlined because one node's InfiniBand card went bad, and it was spewing so much garbage to the IB switch that no real traffic could get through. That said, OVH have a rep for good hardware, good connectivity, good value... And crappy customer service. Think snooty French waiter (it's a French company).

It occurs to me we have a few servers worth of GMs with not much to do. (Excluding the engineers battling the problem, of course.) This inspires two thoughts: It might not be the best time to start a flamewar on the forums. Someone will probably notice. We should have enough people to run an old-fashioned RPG. Tabletop Champions, anyone?

The number 2600 also has other resonances for older folks, with certain hobbies...

I have searched the spreadsheets and this forum, and have had plenty of luck, all bad. Can anyone help me find the sound for the controller /Rad heal Radiant Aura?

Never rains but it pours. The building housing the clusters I shovel coal into for my day job had a pipe break and the basement flood yesterday. My paranoid boss designed our server room, though, so we're the only thing in the building still in business... As others have said, "IT happens."

I dunno, she doesn't look entirely trustworthy.

They really have had a stellar uptime history, especially for a volunteer-run cluster. That said, emergency reboots typically involve some diagnostics or repairs. Good luck to them, says I! I think the message broadcast was: "All servers going down for emergency reboot."

I've said it before, Yomo, you embody what makes this game's population such cool froods! Bless you for your (now doubled) generosity, and all the fun!

Nice guide, thanks! Incidentally, when playing the Grifter I choose "Crime and Punishment Monthly" and it works just fine to click through. Happy heisting! (And if you are ever on Torch and see me there, usually as "Real Doctor Ditko," hit me up. I'm always up for a nice SBB!)

Second Red Dragon, I think they are also sold as Piktek. Cheap as dirt and twice as hard to destroy!

Thanks! I can't believe I missed that thread. IIRC, CoH used OpenGL for graphics and DirectX for input. WINE would cover the DirectX part. Some of the issues they raise are solved problems, though: SDL 2+ has several OpenGL translation options, so that may not be a problem. I know OpenMW uses SDL to run Morrowind -- and pretty well on Android -- though Android 11 broke their touch controls, it's not bad with a Bluetooth controller. (Get it from FDroid if you are interested. You'll need an actual copy of Morrowind.) And the whole point of WINE on Android is to run generic ARM[32,64] binaries on Android, so if someone could make a compiled one public, I'd love to play around with it.* (See WineHQ for that one.) Lutris on Linux uses Vulkan stuff to run CoH now, so that part's not as silly as it sounds. Screen size... That one's a puzzler, I bet that would take some actual coding to do one of the auto-zoom features some games have. (One of these might help!) Anyway, it would be fun to try, however many black boxes need connecting. * Probably during lunch or bathroom breaks at work, but I do some of my best mad science then!

Short answer: Yes Long Answer: Yes, but... (This is all IMHO) Autohit powers are rare and precious, take them whenever one is offered. It's a one-slot wonder, drop a Range, Recharge, or (my fave) Perfect Zinger in and you are golden. (PVPers should start with Accuracy.) If you do slot it, it can mule some nice bonuses. It IS the Tank signature power, do you want some Brute or Blaster getting all the bad guys' attention? Check the power customizations, depending on powerset you may have some fairly humorous options. Every time a Tank skips Taunt, the archetypal Tank sheds a tear...

Hadn't seen this term, so I looked it up. First two entries on DDG: Welcome to BLUF https://www.bluf.com BLUF is a club for men who enjoy wearing breeches and leather uniforms. Founded in 1997, there are now over 4,000 members worldwide, and many of them meet in person at BLUF events. BLUF (communication) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) A BLUF (bottom line up front) is acronym for a standard military communication that is precise and powerful. Precision is attained by beginning a message with the bottom line so the reader immediately gets the most important information first. This differs from an older, more-traditional style in which conclusions and recommendations are included at the end, following the arguments and ... Thanks for that. The second one jibes with the journalistic practice of inverse pyramid, aka "Don't bury the lede!" The first one... Sounds like 90% of the playerbase!