Saturday, October 11, 2014

Linden Lab Corrects Mistake with Apologies

The following has been cross posted at Virtual World Sailing.

Good News! We have heard back from Patch and Dee Linden (who head up the land team for LL).

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Here is the body of a ticket filed October 9 refering to an original ticket filed on October 5:

From MTW to Patch/Dee:

Hi the following inquiry was appended to a thank you
response from me (October 5) in regards to the adding of BS Crow's Nest to the
additional Friday reboot schedule. Perhaps I should not have mixed to issues
under one ticket number. I now supmit the inquiry as a new ticket.

New Ticket contents:
Perhaps you can help clarify something
else about the Blake Sea regions. The plan always has been to try to keep
them and the surrounging sims of the USS touching the Blake Sea on the same
server type (SL Server). We have been getting so many complains about the
Blake Sea in the past week or so that we started looking around and see
that nearly all of the Blake Sea regions are on a new Beta server type,
Snack. I feel pretty confident that this might be related to the many
complaints we have been receiving. Can you help us understand what is going
on and why? Is there any chance we could get the Blake Sea on the SL
Server? Lots of folks are curious and concerned.
There has been some useful discussions on the Virtual World Sailing Forum that was recently started.
However here is a typical complaint we are hearing these
days about the Blake Sea. I do not believe the following [thoughts about LL intent] is true but it
would be very helpful if you could provide us with some input to share with
the sailors.
"Just to give you an idea of the problems in Blake, I was RD over 2 sets of
races today one for Nacra and one for Tako, The nacra races only half the
racers finished 2 races and NONE the third, In the Tako races not a single
person finished any race all 8 crashed every time, people were crashing
before the race it was nothing short of a disgrace, my personal opinion on
this matter is simple, LL has lost interest in SL despite its loyal and
caring CUSTOMERS. They have switched their focus on their new game, moved
resources and personel to that platform and SL can go hang...
[remainer of message truncated by the buffer limit of ticket filing system]

=======================

We received the following two responses this AM while I was at work and am
only now getting to post here on VWS

=====================
Oct. 10, 2014, 5:17 a.m.
Dee Linden
Hello MarkTwain,
I am so sorry I have not been able to respond before today -- Patch and I
are on this!
Dee
=======================
Oct. 10, 2014, 7:39 a.m.
Dee Linden
Hello MarkTwain,
All Blake Sea regions have been moved back to main Second Life Server (SLS)
code.
Patch and I want to extend our apologies for any performance issues suffered
due to border crossing into non-SLS code regions.
We have alerted our Operations team that these regions need to remain on
SLS, and additionally I have added a recurring event to my personal calendar
to check to ensure that should one slip through the cracks and land on an RC
again, that it will be caught quickly.
Best wishes,
Dee
========================

So it appears that the problem should be solved. Please post your Blake Sea sailing experiences here of the next few days and see if the issue has been solved.

Gemma has shared what was certainly a frustrating experience she had with Reed Linden that occured in a close time frame to Patch/Dee's responses above. About the only thing i can figure out from the exchange with Reed is that "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing" in some fashion.

Bottom line is what I said a couple days ago... "the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Thank Patch and Dee for your responses and thank you Gemma for your involvement is helping to get the issues resolved.

On top of the fact that the Blake Sea is back on the main servers where appaently they should have been all the time, we also have a commitment that Crow's  Nest will get two reboots a week just as Blake Sea - China does (China's strategic position makes it arguably the most heavily traffic region in SL).



Monday, October 6, 2014

Blake Sea's Current Woes Due to LL Change?


A lot of you, myself included, have noticed how bad the Blake Sea regions have been performing recently, especially in the last week or so. Rich Reynaud (Hollywood Airport Manager) and I were kicking around in the Blake Sea testing a few things when it quickly became apparent that LL has made a major change in the Blake Sea this week.  Nearly every region in the Blake Sea is presently (or at least at the time of his writing) running on a new Beta server called SNACK.  

You can read all about SNACK on the SL wiki here:


As you will read there SNACK is supposed to be used only in sandbox applications and in Beta testing situations. At least that is how I am reading it. I have put a request into LL to give us an explanation why the major of the Blake Sea regions are now on this "server release candidate."

I am not a code type person, perhaps there is a good reason LL is doing this and I will pass along any answer the provide as soon as I receive it. 

In the mean time you all, as residents and customers of LL, are free to files tickets and bug reports as outlined in the wiki.

One thing that the Blake Sea needs is for all the regions to be on the same server type. Back in the old days this was done more consistently than it seems to be being done now. Perhaps this "test" is related to solve some of the issues that comes with less manpower to monitor the particulars of whatever structure exists between the servers that produce the Blake Sea and the larger infrastructure of LL's server farms. Hopefully we will get updated.  

I have been told by a high level Linden that the old adage "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" lives in LL. While we await for some insight I think maybe it is time to do some squeaking.