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» Hard Drive Problems «     At 7:42AM Moo time, the hard drive decided it didn't want to be written to anymore. In this read-only state, the game could not checkpoint and our web applications kinda ceased functioning. I attempted to perform disk correction on the machine myself and it completely locked up in an unfun way. After several reboot attempts and further recovery attempts, it became apparent that I wasn't gonna save things on my own remotely. So, I contacted our server people via the trouble ticket system and very patiently waited for them diagnosis and repair the problem. Finally, about an hour ago, they cleaned things up (bad inodes in critical places only fixable via single-user mode locally). The moo is back up and running, but nothing you did after 7:42AM happened. Thankfully, nothing much happens on a Sunday morning, so nothing important was lost. Game on. Sleep for me! Posted on:1:59 am on April 28, 2008 » Johnny Broke The MOO «     So, around 9:00PM moo time, I broke the moo in a horrible horrible way. I basically fucked up a command and changed every exit to point to a recycled object. This meant that no one could walk ... anywhere, at all. Unfortunately, I did not notice this huge, fatal, problem until after I saved my work by checkpointing the game ... and overwriting the more recent copy of the game in a good state. This left us with our twice daily archiving of the MOO, done at 10AM and 10PM moo time, every day. But it was 9PM ... which meant the latest archive I had was from 10AM. So, this means that today, basically didn't go down. All the COOL ASS RP that happened .. DID NOT HAPPEN. Some of you are in the $void cause when we saved last, you were in public. Just xhelp and you'll be put back. We lost some code, but I think I salvaged it and we'll have it back soon. I'm very sorry I fucked up so badly. Hasn't happened in years, though thats not much comfort I know. Again: THE RP THAT HAPPENED TODAY, DID NOT HAPPEN. LEAVE SLEEPERS ALONE FOR THE NEXT 48 HOURS. Posted on:9:38 pm on Feb. 26, 2008 » Sindome MOO Reset, Oct. 10 2007 «     Okay chummers, At around 12:00pm PST (DST) something on the Sindome Server went awry, fooling the MOO into thinking the server was in read-only mode. To solve this problem we have had to do a hard restart on the server. ( Thanks Kevlar! ) The MOO has been reset to aroung 12:00pm Oct. 09, 2007. If you get killed, raped, maimed, robbed, bludgeoned, schooled, tooled, coated in blood, or left for dead by your chummers it is not our fault. You can feel free to blame Kevlar. The MOO should be up and fine now, but as usual, please report any major bugs or problems that you come across. Walk Safe, Iga (on behalf of Kevlar and Johnny) Posted on:2:09 pm on Oct. 10, 2007 » Motherboard Failure «     For the past few weeks, we've suffered from a computer problem that was really hard to pin down. The server would simply 'die', nothing in the logs, no real sign of a problem. We diagnosied things each time, checking the software for faults, looking for intruders, etc. In the past 2 days, this problem got so bad, the server would 'die' 30 minutes after having it brought back up. With or without the MOO running. I had our hardware techs take a look and sure enough, the box we were in had a crap motherboard. One our hosting provider has been experiencing problems with across a lot of customers. So, they replaced our motherboard and say we shouldn't have that problem with this one. No data was lost, though I'm sure some of you might be in places other than where you were when you last disconnected from us having to roll back to the last checkpoint before the server would 'die'. I apologize for any problems this may have caused. Game on! Posted on:10:56 am on May 21, 2007 » Grid Forums & Mail Restored «     Ok, After some late night head scratching, I've managed to restore 2 main parts of the Grid. The Community Forums (and Withmore Globe) and the NLM Mail are functioning as they should. The Grid Node system however remains broken and I've blocked off access to it for the time being until I can re-wrap my head around the parts that originally went missing. It's hard to understand the logic when the logic is completely gone. It can be done, but it will take some more late nights of head scratching. We're on the road to recovery though. ~ J Posted on:9:26 pm on Nov. 1, 2006 » Moving Data Centers ... «     I've received notice from our service provider that they are relocating all customer's servers to a new data center starting Oct 15th. We do not yet know when our server will be moving, but I will be sure to post a notice here before it all happens. Hopefully, a few days notice will be given to us. When this happens, the game, the website and our email will be unavailable for a period of time (I'm assuming 8 to 24 hrs because the IP address where 'sindome.org' points will probably change.) The new data center will be in the Globe Building in St Louis, Missouri. I know a few of you live about there, so go take a picture and share with us where our new home will be. Posted on:3:24 pm on Oct. 13, 2006 » Yesterday's Downtime «     Just a quick note to explain yesterday's downtime. The last MOO checkpoint before the downtime was Monday at 11:30PM PST or so. Not sure when it happened, but sometime overnight, the network adapter in our server gave up the ghost and our site, our moo and several other websites we host here at Sindome all went dark ... as did my damn email, grr. It wasn't until 11:30AM the next morning that I got notice from someone trying to use the site (I slept in, so sue me). I immediately started a support ticket to have our techs look into the matter. Though they took entirely too long to troubleshoot and replace it, they eventually did replace the network card and we were back up and running around 9PM last night. Please let us know about any further problems. Posted on:10:53 am on Sep. 13, 2006 » RP Event Update «     Looks like it may be a bigger event than we first thought. Things should start to kick off around 7-8 PM Dome Time. (Pacific Time). Thats roughly 9-10 Central, 10-11 Eastern for all you non-math people. Hope everyone can make it, sorry we didn't have a time posted previously. As for when and what stuff is going down... just log in and you'll know. Posted on:11:02 am on Aug. 17, 2006 » RP Event «     Not a major event, but there is some deliciousness planned for the night of August 17th, a Thursday. If you are able, come and take part. It should be fairly interesting. Posted on:9:13 pm on Aug. 11, 2006 » Major Roleplaying Event! «     Greetings all, I know we haven't posted an RP schedule for ages, but here is a general heads up: Sunday July 2nd, 2006 ( 2091 for you hard core players ) between 6:00 PM DST and 8:00 PM DST will be a MAJOR RP EVENT That is all. Your's truely, All the staff but Iga. :P Posted on:5:37 pm on June 27, 2006 » Resignations «     I regret to announce that certain long-time members of the Sindome crew will be parting ways with our group, including myself. Kevlar, Bixby, and myself, after a long discussion, are leaving Sindome to start a gaming company that focuses on massive multiplayer online gaming. This was not an easy descision to come too, and we agonized over it for many weeks. In the end we sat down with the rest of the staff and laid out why we had to leave. In a nut shell, for us to build the games we wish to build we have to dedicate more time than we have while working on Sindome. Our time here has been fantastic, and we will miss you all. Anyone who wants to stay in contact with us, please feel free to send us messages via instant messanger or email. Thank you all for some of the best and most entertaining years of our lives. Posted on:8:18 am on April 1, 2006 » OOC Behaviour «     I logged in today to catch up on the game notes and happenings and was greeted with a most disappointing series of notes. In response to that I am posting the following re-iteration of our game rules. OOC Harassment is not tolerated here, either via in game channels or external channels. Harassment of this nature is grounds for permanent banning from Sindome. Discussion of IC matters on in-game OOC channels is also not tolerated, and is grounds for permanent banning from Sindome. Any sorts of Out Of Character threats given to a player from any other player, be it text post, email, verbal, or physical is grounds for permanent banning from Sindome as well as any legal actions any parties wish to take. Any player who wishes to file a complain about harassment, OOC misconduct, or OOC threats can send an email, in confidence, to any of the senior staff. Each case will be considered in a one on one situation and fully examined. iga@sindome.org johnny@sindome.org firestorm@sindome.org kevlar@sindome.org I am just going to say one personal note on this, if I was online at the time this event occurred, the offender would no longer be a part of our community. You were given a second chance, and we will be watching you from now on. Iga Posted on:11:59 am on Mar. 13, 2006 » NLM Grid mostly restored «     NLM Mail is once again functioning, though all mail from before the HD failure is gone. I'll continue to hunt for a decent backup of this data, but it seems to have slipped through my hands. Grid Nodes are back up in mostly read only fashion. There is a problem with getting edit scores (how you edit nodes you don't own and recording the score when you do edit), as well as the 'browse graphic nodes' button. Please report any problems not listed here on the Websites Problems forum of the board. Thank you for your patience as we recover from this problem. ~ J Posted on:10:48 am on Jan. 13, 2006 » NLM Gridmail Problems «     Dearest Players, There seems to be an issue with the NLM Gridmail system at this time. It is most definately related to the server crash of late 2005. Johnny is looking into the problem and we hope Gridmail will return shortly. Sadly, players may have lost all gridmail account records, old gridmails, and the like. User accounts will be fine. We think. In the mean time, please use other ingame methods of communication. Corpies, hire couriors to send hardcopy memos to each other or something. Or, use Private Sic. Mixers, just do whatever it was you filthy buggers did before. Sorry for the trouble this causes, and please treat this as an Out Of Character issue. Yours truely, Iga Posted on:10:21 am on Jan. 11, 2006 » Another Hard Drive Failure! «     Monday morning I woke up and went to the SD homepage. I noticed the dynamic portions of the page weren't working and thought it was lovely that Apache needed a restart. When I logged into the box to do my thing, I attempted to copy some files around for my daily backup and noticed I wasn't able to copy things into my home directory. This got me worried, so I went digging further and discovered that around 4:32AM Monday morning, the server decided it'd had too many hard drive errors and it disabled our ability to write files. This meant that since that time, lots of stuff didn't work ... including checkpointing the game. After a long day of downloading backups (peicemeal with no compression because I couldn't write to the disk!), I got our techies to start the process for replacing our hard drive. After they forgot about me (!) for 8 hrs while I was sleeping, I prodded them into actually doing the frigging work and we're back up to some degree now. I've set the game to shutdown so that you all get a notice when you connect. As of right now, we're in Rampage MOO. Nothing will be saved from what you do right now. Everything will be restored to how it was at 4:32AM Monday morning. I'll do this later tonight when I'm comfy with how the server is doing. As of right now, a lot isn't working and/or is untested: The Grid (not setup at all) Mail Accounts (those of you with @sindome.org mail) Weapon Editor Lots of other shit. Donations of beer and young (but legal!) pussy can be sent to my house. Yes, young pussy is tax deductable. Posted on:10:54 pm on Jan. 4, 2006 » Cost Of Living Re-Evaluation «     So the GMs took a look at the current economic situation for Corporate Charaters and have found that the cost of living outstrips the earnings Corporate Characters make. To solve this we are correcting the wage scale for Corporate Characters. If you have a Corporate Character, and do not notice a substantial increase in your salary next time you collect your pay, please notify a GM promptly, and we will correct the situation. As to all the Mixers: you get nothing directly. The hope is that the money will begin to 'trickle down' in the form of more runs/intrigue/ect. We will see how things are going in 3-6 months and alter the situation as needed. If you have questions, please xhelp an admin. Posted on:5:38 pm on Oct. 2, 2005 » Roleplay Programming Schedule : Reposted «     October 2005 (Game Year - 2090) One Media Event Three Global Events All times posted are Dome Standard Time (US Pacific) All right, another month, another 31 days of mayhem and madness! And remember kids, just because we don't plan something for a given evening doesn't mean we won't cause madness to happen! At any given moment a global event can spring into being! Spontaniously! Like combustion! Here are the planned events for the month of October. See also this discussion. Enjoy. October 02 - 09 (week one) Thursday October 06, evening - Global Event. October 10 - 16 (week two) Nothing Major Planned. October 17 - 23 (week three) Monday October 17, evening - Global Event. October 24 - 30 (week four) Nothing Major Planned. October 26 - 30 (week five) Saturday October 29, 6:00 PM - SNFF Battle Royale. October 31 (week five) Nothing Major Planned. Go trick or tricking. ~ Sindome GM Staff. Posted on:10:15 pm on Oct. 1, 2005 » Roleplay Programming Schedule (September) «     September 2005 (Game Year - 2090) One Media Event Two Global Events All times posted are Dome Standard Time (US Pacific) Sorry for the delays and missed months. A lot of the GM staff ended up moving at the end of July and start of August. Bixby and Iga are now both moved in so things should level out again. Also, the number of events in the past was pretty agressive, so we are toning things down a bit for September. Back to school time, so we figured the breathing room would be nice for you players. Hopefully October is a bit more active! Also, a huge apology, Iga lost both logs for the first two SNFF events. He sucks, bitch at him. See also this discussion. Enjoy. September 01 - 04 (week one) Nothing Major Planned. September 05 - 11 (week two) Saturday September 10, 7:00 PM - SNFF. September 12 - 18 (week three) Wednesday September 14, evening - Global Event. September 19 - 25 (week four) Thursday September 22, evening - Global Event September 26 - 31 (week five) Nothing Major Planned. ~ Sindome GM Staff. Posted on:8:51 pm on Aug. 30, 2005 » Roleplay Programming Schedule (June) «     June 2005 (Game Year - 2090) Six Media Events Two Global Events All times posted are Dome Standard Time (US Pacific) All right, this is the first Roleplay Programming Schedule (or RP Schedule). It is pretty sparse, we are still getting into the groove with future planned events. So for now it is mostly 'TV and Media' like events, with a smattering of other things. As we develop this it will get bigger and more indepth, much like everything else MOO wise. You might find more information about some of these things on the grid. If any corrections are made, a global post and notification will be done. See also this discussion. Enjoy. June 01 - 05 (week one) Saturday June 04, 3:00 PM - First running of the Saturday Night Fire Fight. June 06 - 12 (week two) Wednesday June 08, 8:00 - First running of NLM's Entertainment LIVE! Wednesday June 08, evening - Global Event June 13 - 19 (week three) Wednesday June 15, 8:00 PM - NLM's Entertainment LIVE! Saturday June 18, 7:00 PM - SNFF. June 20 - 26 (week four) Tuesday June 21, evening - Global Event Wednesday June 22, 8:00 PM - NLM's Entertainment LIVE! June 27 - 30 (week five) Wednesday June 29, 8:00 PM - NLM's Entertainment LIVE! More to come if this is welcomed! ~ Iga Posted on:10:11 pm on May 31, 2005 » Recovering from Hard Drive Failure «     So, a little under 24 hours ago, we discovered the hard drive was failing in a major major way. The MOO had paniced while checkpointing at 4:10 in the morning. Unable to write to the disk, it got a funky error back from the attempt to do so and promptly accessed memory it shouldn't have and paniced, shutting down. Due to life and such, I didn't notice until lunchtime when I decided to see what was going down on the MOO - when I found out nothing at all was going down on the MOO. In investigating the MOO panicing after almost 7 months of uptime, Kevlar and I discovered that the hard drive was failing on 2/3rds of its attempts to save data. My home directory as well as lots of email following through the box were all corrupted and unsavable. Fortunuately, I was able to get copies of the game off, basically resetting the game to 1:10AM, exactly 3 hours prior to the panic in the middle of the night. I gathered copies of the grid and the website backed up Sunday at 10PM and copied them all down to my personal computer. Kevlar tried to fix the disk, but we quickly learned the damage was unrecoverable. At this point, I sent in a trouble ticket request and waited several hours for our hosting provider to replace the hard drive and install all new software. At this point, the website is up for the most part, the BgBB is functioning and the game itself is up and live. The grid is still offline and will remain so for the rest of the day and maybe the week as we sort things out. The BgBB isn't connected the game and lots of other integration things are offline right now. They will be fixed as we encounter them. I apoligize for the downtime and I thank you for your patience in letting us fix this problem. A big thank you goes out to Kevlar and our hosting provider. Kevlar got the server setup to be friendly for hosting a MOO is near record time and the hosting provider didn't screw up the setup And for the record, I blame Jinkorei, the server was fine until he came into town. ~ J Posted on:9:58 am on Nov. 16, 2004 » Clone Records Upgraded «     Clones now record the following additional information: description nakeds tattoos memories UE languages weight height addictions This information was not being recorded until yesterday. All existing records were updated for all players. Because this affects life/death, it warrants an announcement. Any questions should be submitted in the usual ways. Game on Posted on:12:05 am on July 27, 2004 » Website Outage «     So ... boy ... Kev -really- fucked shit up this time. Web servers don't run so well when you GLOBALLY CHANGE ALL THE FRIGGIN PERMISSIONS! He's lucky I have an outlet. I'll be picking up the peices for a few days, let me know if you find stuff that's suddenly broken. Posted on:12:32 am on Feb. 4, 2004 » Server Reboot - MOO lost less than 2 hours «     We went from rough 10:35 to 9:00 this evening when the server rebooted on it's own. We're investigating the cause. Sorry to roll back the RP by 2 hours. No compensation will be given, please be respectful of sleepers who may have been on the street when the game was saved. Posted on:10:59 pm on Nov. 19, 2003 » Rampage MOO is over due to server problem «     Due to a problem were addressing, Rampage MOO ended around 8:30 last night abruptly. It highlighted some bad code in shotguns (which none of you saw, but I spent Sunday morning overhauling), exit speeds (which prompted Kev to take us closer to a fatigue system by slowing down the injuried!), as well as the countless bugs you submitted! The MOO didn't crash, the machine didn't crash, it all ran like a champ ... until the provider screwed up a router and pointed our IP at the wrong machine. We're working on it. The real MOO won't move until we get this sorted out and I feel comfortable with moving it. Maybe sometime this week, but I'm not going to rush it if the situation doesn't look stable for you guys. I hope everyone got to have some fun. Share your thoughts and feelings about the whole event on the discussion thread we've already got going for it. Posted on:9:47 am on Sep. 29, 2003 » RAMPAGE MOO LIVE ON moo.sindome.org 5555 «     Come help us test out Rampage MOO, a copy of Sindome that has been modified to make it more chaotic, deadly and flat out CRAZY! Weapons are littering the road, vehicles are usable by anyone, and death is short! It's NOT IC! It's NOT IC! It's NOT IC! It's NOT IC! By all means, throw some RP in, but it DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS REAL SINDOME! Spread the word! Posted on:6:35 pm on Sep. 26, 2003 » Website is Moved «     The website has been moved (with some minor bumps) to the new web server. Please report any problems to the Website Problems & Announcements forum. Posted on:11:18 am on Sep. 26, 2003 » Upcoming Server Moves «     The Sindome website has for a long time, been hosted by a great provider in the Seattle area, Seagull Networks. They've provided great service for a low price that has served us well. However, because we'd like to do more web integration and we'd like to speed things up when we do so, it's now time to move on. On Friday, I will make the last few changes that need to be made in order to move the Sindome website from it's present host to it's new host. Some of you have already seen where the new server will be because you seem to go to sindome.com instead of sindome.org. I've pointed the .com domain there for now so when we move, you won't encounter a time where there is no SD website. The worst that should happen for a brief time (as short as an hour for some and days for others) is that you'll get redirected from sindome.org to sindome.com. The important thing will be that everyone gets to the new server when we move. Shortly (days probably) after the website moves, the MOO itself will be move to a new address and all the pages that point to the old address will be updated. The old MOO will be left up in some stripped down form in order to inform everyone that the server has moved. Once everyone is on the new server, the site hosted on Seagull Networks will become something else (it was originally my personal site and it shall return to such) and eventually the old MOO will be shutoff. If all goes well, the worst anyone should experience is connecting to a MOO that tells you to connect to another MOO ~ J Posted on:6:57 pm on Sep. 23, 2003 » Action Unification Underway «     We've begun work on a very large project that will take us several weeks and will be developed in parts over several weeks if not months. What were implementing is a common part that will link together all the 'actions' that characters do. These include: grapple, sitting, attacking, walking, sleeping, going ooc, being unconscious, and many many other minor actions that we won't get to work on for a while. We'll probably have to change the logic of some 1200 verbs across the entire set of commands you use everyday. As we do this, bugs will occur. Its absolutely critical that you let us know when these bugs happen. If you see one of these, report it over xhelp if you see an active admin (they might tell you to @bug it) and if you don't see someone to report it to, @bug it yourself. Please remember that taking advantage of a bug to 'gain something' in the game is against the rules. Thank you. ~ Johnny Posted on:7:46 pm on Feb. 28, 2003 » Why We Lag «     As some of you know, Sindome is hosted by a friend of the MOO named Jim. The machine we currently live on is primarily used as an archiving machine. Its most important job is to backup the files from several machines that serve important roles for the business. Sindome is less important to the machine then the backup process is. Because of this, whenever the machine backups, if the amount of data that needs to move from the other machines is significant, the game will pause as we wait for our MOO to get some time on the CPU. Backups happen every 4 hours at midnight, 4AM, 8AM, noon, 4PM and 8PM MOO Time. Disconnecting and reconnecting during server lag is the WORST THING YOU COULD DO. I repeat, WORST THING YOU COULD DO. You only compound the problem by adding more stuff the server must do when it again gets time by the machine. These periods of lag have been known to last between 5 and 10 minutes on really bad days, but most of the time, the backup runs and there is only brief lag on the game. Please remember, we are a free game hosted freely, so we can't complain when things lag a little bit. ~ J ... Oh yeah, and Rampage MOO will be happening before the MOO is moved! Posted on:6:58 pm on Sep. 23, 2003 » 30 Minutes Lost «     The MOO was checkpointed at 11:30 AM, approximately 30 minutes later it crashed due to a task I called running out of control. Hey, it happens. No code was lost during this time. However, if you conducted a transaction ICly during that time, you know why it doesn't seem to have gone down. No reimbursements will be made. Game on. Posted on:12:00 pm on Dec. 8, 2002 » Server Move Complete «     The server has been moved to the new machine. By 2PM, we were moved to the new machine. By 3PM, I had everything compiled with all its dependancies. It quickly became apparently when we started up and crashed about 30 seconds later that there was a problem.  I know, Sherlock can't hold a fucking candle, eh?  It turns out, at least, to me, that the file system were on is incompatible with one of the methods we use to read files from the system.  We used this method extensively to both read and write files (gotta read to confirm it wrote) for your history, notes, logs, scripts and various other bits of data.  Another words, we had a fatal problem with a very important part of the game. I managed to code around the function that was causing the crashes, but the system is still potentially giving me cause for worry and I'm not confident in our stability. I'm keeping a very close eye on things. ~ J Posted on:8:24 pm on Oct. 19, 2002 » Server Move Delayed to Saturday «     The downtime this morning was not related to the server move unfortunately. Its just a reminder of why were moving to a new machine The move has been ... moved to saturday morning/afternoon, PACIFIC TIME. I know all you east coasters won't understand why the MOO is down at dinnertime. Bleh. I've got notice that I should expect it to be offline between 10:30 AM and 2:30 PM PDT. After the machine comes back up, I'll then have to recompile the kernel and start her up. This could take me between 30 minutes and one hour. And yes, the MOO is female for all of you hormone filled males pretending to be females and MHLs alike ~ J Posted on:3:22 pm on Oct. 17, 2002 » Server Move Scheduled for Thursday «     Thursday evening, sometime betweeen 7 and 8 (depending on traffic) the MOO server will be shutdown and everything will be migrated to a linux server. Once we migrate, we will have to recompile the MOO kernel before we can restart. Were not sure how long we will be done, but thursday night is a PLANNED downtime. Weeeeeee! ~ J Posted on:9:30 am on Oct. 15, 2002 » Server Move this Week «     Sometime this week, Jim will be moving us from the machine were on to another one. We'll probably be down for a few hours while we make the move. There might be an IP address change, but I don't know about that yet. Keep reading the forums for more information. Posted on:2:29 pm on Oct. 7, 2002 » I hate having to say its still down :( «     The game has been down since about 12:30 AM PDT. One of two things is wrong. It could be that there is no route to the machine (some network problem maybe) or the machine crashed again. Since I'm not physically near the box, theres not much I can do except wait for someone to answer their voicemail (they can't get their email cause the box is down, hehe). I'll continue to keep tabs on it throughout the day and it will be up as soon as I can get it up. If you've noticed, this has begun happening more and more lately. It's because of this problem that Jim (our hostmassah) has been considering moving us to another box at the location since the original boxes purpose has grown in the time we've been there. This isn't whats happening right now, I'm just letting you know that we're not sitting on are ass while the box goes down on a weekly basis. When you connect, killing -anyone- sleeping on the streets for the first 8 hours of us being up is offlimits. Especially if there aren't any staff on because the MOO may come up without us knowing for a little bit (in a meeting or at lunch or something). So please, don't go killing and robbing those who got caught with their pants down when the MOO went offline. Here is the discussion thread ~ J Posted on:9:21 am on Oct. 2, 2002 » Where is the F***ing MOO?! «     Ok, the machine was down for some reason and we've gone back to a checkpoint from 1AM this morning. I apoligize for any lose your character may have incurred but there will be no reimbursements as per the standard policy. I've moved everyone who was in the street back to the coffins along with the help of a player who wandered around and found most of you ~ J Posted on:12:48 pm on Sep. 15, 2002 » Server Reboot, reverted to 1:30 PM «     There was apparently a server reboot about 8 minutes ago. I do not yet know if it was automated or if Jim (our host) is doing maintenance of some kind. As usual, no refunds for anything lost, standard RP rules apply. Posted on:6:31 pm on Aug. 10, 2002 » Server Panic @ 3:20AM «     I apparently caused the server to panic last night and amazingly enough, I also killed my net connection at the same time. Because I killed my net connection and it wouldn't come back up immediately, I thought the problem was just me, I didn't realize that the game was done. As this happens once or twice a week, I went to bed, it being after 3 and all. It wasn't until about 15 minutes ago that Kevlar came pounding at my door to wake me up to restart the game. I investigated the problem and apparently, some code I wrote to clean up the 'examine me' spam somehow paniced the server and does so everytime. So I removed the offending code and we are up with 0 lost game time and 8hrs+ of lost uptime. I apoligize for not realizing what I did and assure you that this is a rare occurance, as this has never happened before. All players have been moved to coffins for safety reasons, so logon at your leisure. Here's the forum thread for this announcement. Posted on:12:18 pm on July 21, 2002 » Technical Difficulties during Restart «     While doing a standard restart we had some technical problems, we're trying to fix them, more to come. Click here for the forum thread covering this. Posted on:3:08 am on June 5, 2002 » Amnesty on Client-Side Macros «     We have recently added some new code to catch the use of macros and will be using it to enforce the @rule against client-side macros. To be fair, we are announcing that we will begin cracking down so to speak on those of you who are using client-side macros. @rule 4.C "(Mis)use of triggers and macros" reads:     Client side triggers or macros are not permitted for any purpose of automating character activities or to provide rapid responses to MOO output. Client side triggers and macros may not be used to allow your character to perform activities in your absence, wether you be AFK or just off window. In-MOO support for both is available (type @macros) and can be used to your benefit while you are present and actively playing the game. Single action 'hotkeys' are permitted. If you are unclear if you are violating this rule, please ask, we'll discuss it with you. Now, some of you ask, why are these bad? If everyone had the same client then client-side macros wouldn't be bad. That is not the case however, each one of us connecting is often using a different client or a different version of one and some of those connecting do not have support for macros. This means that those that do have macro support have an unfair advantage in the game over those that don't. If you aren't aware of it, the game provides in-game macros completely controllable via the command @macros. In game macros support triggers and short aliases AND they have the added benefit of preventing feedback loops. Type @macros-help for more information on our macros support in general. The amnesty period will end next Friday, May 3rd, after that time, we will start cracking down on macro use. - J Posted on:4:58 pm on April 26, 2002 » Warning about NPC reactions «     As some of you know, our NPCs aren't the brightest bunch. Yeah well, what are ya gonna do, right? Wrong, I've done some of the ground work toward making them a little less of  pushovers. Doing certain ... offensive actions will now result in them being much more in-your-face then they used to be. Heed this warning, the NPCs are not going to stand there while you frisk them for loot. they aren't going to let you pickpocket them all day either. A bunch of other things ... you're not going to get away with those either. I'm not going to tell you the full details, but please remember that they are the same as PCs ICly. Also, it's late and we've been up for a while, I'm going to take the moo down for a minute to do maintenance, she'll be right back up. Posted on:1:54 am on April 21, 2002 » Warning about Lockers «     I have long overlooked the problems with our in-game locker system and I will be overhauling the locker code in the next week or two. This is a warning. If you rented the locker as someone else, the locker will cease to work as a new character. I suggest vacanting the locker and renting another as your current character. Additionally, lockers will be made to expire, ejecting your l00t into the room the locker is in when you don't pay. I'm not protecting your locker for ever anymore. And, ofcourse, judging by the numbers of players who forget to pay their rent, I'll be seeing a lot of ejected crap for the taking in the locker rooms. There will also be a size limit imposed on the lockers, yet to be determined, but if you got more crap then the size limit, you'll be able to take it out, but not put it back. You have been warned, quit abusing the system. Play fair. - J Posted on:1:13 pm on April 20, 2002 » Sindome acquired by EA Interactive. «     Ladies and germs,   I know some of you have been following the rumor mill since the incident a week or so ago and are aware of the underlying reasons for it. Today, I signed a contract with Electronic Arts to move Sindome under the EA "Umbrella" of online games. We will continue to be free for the forseeable future and all players are encouraged to signup with EA in order to make sure your players aren't deleted when/if they decide to make it 'members only'. Some of you were aware of the discussions we were having with Activision and Sony Interactive and I'm sorry to say that those just didn't work out in the end. For those of you with investment stake in SD, please contact me via email for more information on the acquistion. - Johnny (April Fools) Posted on:5:05 pm on April 26, 2002 » Project List is live «     As you requested, we've made a system for keeping track of the status of projects and organizing your discussions on them. If you login on the homepage, NOT on the BgBB, you'll get a little menu with a bunch of options (most of which don't work). One of the options for you will be 'View Projects'. Click it to view the big ass project list. You can filter by various states so you don't have to be spammed so much. Please check that list before you submit an idea, as it might already be there. Additionally, please use the discussion forum threads linked from the projects themselves under the link 'Discuss It!'. The GMs will be whacking rogue discussions more now since this tool provides a means to know what were doing. Posted on:2:02 pm on Feb. 23, 2002 » Your character's history «     This is a reminder that unless you choose so when setting up your @profile, your history is NOT viewable by any player and staff are forbidden from revealing it to other players. Please make sure your history stays accurate. We realize that as you play the game, you may decide to change your history slightly. We ask that you resubmit your history for approval. The GMs use your history to effectly setup plots incorporating your character and their 'past'. If we don't know about your past, we can't do anything for you. Please do not assume that we are always watching your roleplaying and can figure out your past. You have a history, please use it correctly. Posted on:2:11 pm on Feb. 10, 2002 » Server issues and a reboot... «     Some time overnight (Fri 18th, pm to Sat am) a problem arose that caused the MOO's automatic checkpointing proceedures to fail. Whatever the problem was it also caused a number of other issues until, at roughly noon Sat 19th the MOO (and possibly server) was shut down and rebooted to a checkpoint taken 18 hours previous. Hopefully Johnny will be able to give us better details of what exactly happened when he checks in, until then all I can tell you is that we've lost 18 hours and as per usual downtime rules, no reimbursments will be given for any lost characters, equipment or cash. Use your common sense to decide if RP'd events actually happened. If any deaths/valuables have been lost/gained assume the missing events did not happen. Game on. Posted on:12:58 pm on Jan. 19, 2002 » New Policy in Effect «     Recently, we've had a rash of abusive players signing up / logging in as guests / killing anything in sight / etc. They've been dealt with (warnings / newting / 1 toading). The toading was the first in a new policy I am setting forth from here on out. If when your newted/celled/warned you make it clear that you plan on violating the rules again, you will be immediately eligible for toading since you obviously have no intention of being a productive member of the sindome society. Disagreeing with the staff is perfectly fine, as is debating if what you did was wrong or not. We will not toad you for simply stating your view or opinion. Blatantly telling us you'll circumvent sindome systems will get you immediately removed from the game forever. - J Posted on:5:39 pm on Jan. 6, 2002 » Sindome is up ... expect downtime again during the week to fix the remaining problems. «     The game is up as of 10:33AM PST running on a checkpoint from 9:42AM on Saturday. Expect downtime later this week, as Jim needs to finish repairing the OS. Posted on:10:45 am on Dec. 17, 2001 » Sindome is down ... power outage caused OS damage. «     There was some sort of power failure at the data center due to a storm on saturday. This power failure damaged the OS (free BSD) enough that it needs to be replaced. The files that comprise Sindome are fine though and once the OS is replaced, we should be back up and running soon. Unfortunately, getting the OS back together is a painful process (which Jim is working on) and it will take a couple of hours. Once were back up, on what will probably be an early saturday or mid saturday checkpoint, we may go down periodically for the next week or so as Jim reconfigures the system for security once again. I apoligize for the problem and will work to get you this info sooner next time it happens (hey, I'm not going to bother saying 'if', we all know it will happen again). -- J Posted on:6:13 pm on Dec. 16, 2001 » Connection Troubles / Checkpoint fell back on «     Due to the fact that most of the players were not able to connect to the game, we had to fall back to a previous checkpoint. We're not sure why this happened but we are looking into it. Posted on:4:03 pm on Nov. 29, 2001 » Sindome is up ... in the data center. «     If your current connection settings are working, maybe your local DNS didn't pick up the change yet. If so, here's the IP address you can use for the next few days. NOTE: Do NOT keep using this for a long time, IP addresses can change. host: 64.242.38.83 port: 5555 Posted on:6:30 pm on Oct. 25, 2001 » Moving on up ...  to a Data Center! «     I'll be taking my server down on Wednesday night and moving it from my friend's living room in San Jose to a real data center down here. (yeah -- finally found one reasonably priced.) So the machine will be down from some time in the evening on Wednesday until sometime in the morning on Thursday. At that time it'll have a new IP address (I'll let you know what), and it'll be much better connected. jim "Jim", as some of you might recall, is the guy who hosts Sindome. He's been looking for a better place for the box were on (gigsville.org) for a long time now and it seems it's finally coming true. So, if you try to connect any time after noon on wednesday to noon on thursday and it don't work, you know why. The website should still work (including the board). The only thing you'll notice on the board is that you'll get an error when you post a message (cause it's trying to connect to the MOO ofcourse). Your message has still posted, you just got an error. Additionally, note the line about an IP change. This means that for several days after the move, you may not be able to get to the MOO by 'sindome.gigsville.org'. You might have to look in this announcement for the IP address of the box. I will post the IP address as soon as I know it. Posted on:10:51 am on Oct. 22, 2001 » Sindome welcomes three new Game Masters «     I take great pleasure in introducing you to our three new game masters who will be a big asset to the entire MOO. Angst, Legba and Grim are the three new game masters who will be guiding your misguided characters' lives. Initially I ask that you bug them minimally as it's quite an adjust to see the dome from the other side of the curtain. They will make themselves available when they are comfortable enough to assist you all in the best manner. So, congradulate them, fuck with them like you do any other staff member and generally make them feel loved! .oO(they do love ME, right?) -- Johnny Posted on:1:36 am on July 20, 2001 » Donations now accepted thru Paypal. «     For a long time myself and others have footed the bills for Sindome. The bills are not costly, but donations have always been welcome. Now, they are easier to make should you so desire. Simply go to any page on the site that isn't the Bitch Board and on the right-hand side, under the poll will be a link marked 'Make a Donation', follow it to Paypal to do such if you so choose. Currently, your money will go towards some more RAM for the machine were on as we soak up 90% of the RAM it has and it isn't fair to the machine owner Thanks in advance. -- Johnny Posted on:9:23 pm on July 17, 2001 » downtime / GM selection process (final round) «     First, let me apoligize for the downtime today, I suspect it was a blackout as it was quite warm today and we had several around the city. Second, I'd like to announce that GM voting is now closed. I have sent out emails to those that move to the next round as well as those that haven't. Once again, if you haven't moved to the final round, don't sweat it, all 6 submissions were excellent, but we only have room for 2 GMs at this time. Now we begin the process of carefully screening those you voted for to determine who's a pyscho and- err, I mean, who'll make a good GM. I will never announce who won, as the persons we pick have the right to keep their staff membership a private matter. Enjoy the dome citizens! Posted on:9:02 pm on July 2, 2001 » We've crashed and lost a whole week. «     *Sighs* At 9:40 PST today, the server went down. When it came back up, we had lost a little more than a week's worth of code, changes, new players, new characters, etc. The fault you ask? Me. See, at 9:30 this morning, our host sysadmin, Jim, noticed that our MOO was consuming 99% of the CPU that was available. He tracked this for more than 5 minutes. He assumed at that point, that the MOO was a runaway task (akin to Damon or I getting us stuck in a loop that never ends) so he restarted the MOO with the command he saw in the process list. This was very bad. See, the MOO is started from a script that calls the command he saw. The script is responsible for taking the last checkpoint of the moo, overwriting the primary file and started the moo with that primary file. Since Jim didn't call the script, the OLD primary file was used, the one from the last time we restarted, more than a week ago. This wouldn't of been bad in and of itself. Unfortunately, our MOO (quite responsibly) checkpoints itself immediately on startup to start the process of repeated checkpoints every X number of hours. When a checkpoint happens, the MOO is copied and that copy is written to disk, overwriting the last checkpoint. Because we started with a week-old core and than immediately checkpointed that old core over our most recent checkpoint (last night, late), we lost everything. I know, many of you are thinking what an ass Jim is and why I say it's my fault. We'll, I should of informed Jim as to the unique method required to restart Sindome properly. If Jim had known this and executed this, we would of only been dropped back to last night, which isn't a problem and hardly anyone would of noticed. As it is, I'm sure I can speak for the staff when we say that we are the hardest hit. All the Pueblo enhancements Damon and I were working on all week - gone. The stat recalibration - gone. Fixes to grapple, sneak, etc - gone. Rest assured, we will get them coded back, but a weeks worth of work down the drain really knocks the wind out of your sails. As for the players, you've no doubt lost a great deal, stuff we can't just put back. Hell ... some of you reading this are wondering why you can't log in. Well, it's because you don't exist to the MOO, you've never been there. Kinda fucked up, I know. What am I going to do about this? Well, after I beat myself about the head and genitilia, I will take steps to prevent this. I'm going to put in code to backup the checkpoint file to a dated copy, that way, we'll have a backup of our backup. I might even make it copy the backup off the box. Who knows, I have to work things out with Jim. As for Jim ... he's very sorry this happened. Jim's a cool guy and wouldn't want this to happen to us. In the end, stick with us, we won't give up if you don't. johnny@sindome.org Posted on:11:52 am on June 18, 2001 » GMs need not apply ... wait, yes they do! «     Since our player base is growing and Rastus has recently moved to a full programming position we have a few open positions to fill in our game master (GM) ranks. If you think you'd do the dome proud, I offer these guidelines for submitting your application: 1.) In a Word DOC or ASCII TXT file, prepare a small plot that shows your creativity. Try to cover as many angles as you can, making sure to list the resources needed, approx. number of players involved, possible branches and potential problems/issues that could raise their ugly heads. 2.) Send me an email (johnny@sindome.org) in which you attach your plot file and answer the following questions: List any other MOOs you have admin rights of any kind on List any prior GM experience including online/email RPGs and table top games How old are you? How long have you played REAL roleplaying games (Final Fantasy-like games do not count) Have you read any cyberpunk novels, if so, which 3.) Plots will be posted by me to a topic on the bitch board. Plots posted will not reference the person who wrote them in any way (so keep that in mind when you're writing your plot). Applicants have 5 days from this posting (June 14th) to submit applications. 4.) Players will be free to make comments for each plot submitted. 5.) After a period of 5 days, a post will be made to each with a link to a web poll where the players will vote for their favorite plot. 6.) Players will have 5 days to submit their votes. 7.) We will then take the player feedback and our own admin feedback and choose the new GM. As you can see, player fee