Lanzer's Work Diary

[Lanzer]

For those who wish to keep tabs on what I've been working on, here is a journal thread that logs what I've been working on in the past week.  I'm trying to have something informative yet not a big disruption to my work flow so that I can be consistent with the updates.  Hope you'll find this useful.

• 10/31/2022    In debugging an event issue I found that friendlist was making a ton of calls to the cache server unnecessarily.  Made a quick round of Friendlist optimization which is part of the longer term FL upgrade, as the feature has very old code so it's extremely inefficient.  It now caches better and have better lookup functions that speed things up. 
  
• 11/01/2022    Need to bug fix the ignore list issue.  LK holidays kins how showing up correctly, time to figure out how to get it working.  (pending)  Fixed friendslist "ghost user" issue
  
• 11/02/2022    Runway backend work is done, focusing on frontend related work
  
• 11/03/2022    Got the wireframes and mocks for the new UI done.  Had to fix some remaining bug for the Friendlist backend, but there are a lot more work to do for its overhaul.  Working on admin panel for Runway.
  
• 11/04/2022    Backend for background support, going through image archive for background images.  Found a lot of stuff that will be in Gaia's digital artbook coming soonish
  
• 11/07/2022    Formatted and uploaded backgrounds, working on system to allow for additional background uploads in admin panel
  

[Lanzer]

• 11/07/2022 Formatted and uploaded backgrounds, working on system to allow for additional background uploads in admin panel
  
• 11/08/2022 Was informed about the DST dead hour bug from Runway is still here.  Finally found the underlying problem and fixed it.  I fixed the wrong thing last year. Now back to admin panel.
  
• 11/09/2022 Background management system done, now need to integrate with contest theme editor as selectable item, and integrate into voting screen. No work after dinner time because it's God Of War Ragnarok time!
  
• 11/10/2022 Custom background support for museum, entry page and voting page is complete.  Still waiting on new UI from art team so I'll be refactoring some of the code to make it more managable..
  
• 11/11/2022 Code is a lot cleaner now that different views are in their own files and routines are properly shared in models.  The reporting backend is done and I'm adding a new feature to view all your past runway entries on one page.
  

[Lanzer]

• 11/13/2022 Bluecow asked for some stats reporting stuff so there goes a few hours.
  
• 11/14/2022 Work on the Runway profile page continues.  Wonder if the page should be made accessible publically.  Need to pass the wireframe onto UI team.  Majority of work now is to populate past entries and stats to players.
  
• 11/15/2022 Helping mods in implementing a flood control for new users so that new accounts can't bot spam the forum.  No regular users should be affected.  New users just need to post enough times to rid of the flood control.  Also fixed some small mod notification stuff.  Back to Runway post history, gonna setup another new database for storing player profile besides post history.  If we're collecting all past history might as well collect some stats too.
  
• 11/16/2022 Migration always take a lot of time to do.  Didn't get as much work done as we got two doctor's appointment today.  It looks like Alita's head is too "flat" and will need to wear a helmet to shape her head... yikes
  
• 11/17/2022 Continued work on migration script as well as expanding data structure of the player history table and its corresponding code.
  
• 11/18/2022 Added a class to store and handle statics of past winnings since I'm doing the whole history list.  It would be nice to be able to get a leaderboard of all time or monthly Runway winners.  This should come in handy for calculating reputation scores for reporting.
  
• 11/19/2022 All data migration is done.  Can program the profile/history page now
  

[Lanzer]

Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving weekend

• 11/21/2022 Whoops messed up the migration data so gotta run another update.  Though they run in the background as I finish the work on the profile page.
  
• 11/22/2022 Profile page wireframe haded off to UI, Now applying new UI to existing pages.  Implementing UI to code is the most boring part because there's no problem solving and math.  Hope I can stay awake.
  
• 11/23/2022 Alchemy sometimes do not grant the extra item, turns out there is a bug where 1% of the time the bonus item wouldn't get granted even though the success rate is 100%.  That's finally fixed.  Work continue on Runway UI  changes.  Just the modals took a while to do.
  
• 11/24/2022 Helped out on some adjustmetns on the black friday sale page, and spending the next few days on some side project that Bluecow had requested. 
  
• 11/25/2022 Quick fix on the admin unban tool.  Friend is hosting a Thanksgiving gettogether so not much done today
  

[Lanzer]

• 11/28/2022 Thanksgiving weekend also means shopping weekend.  Usually there's nothing to buy but this year we gotta shop for car seat and other baby stuff.  It's also our family tradition to setup the Christmas tree today beause Laine loves looking at it.  We had our tree up for 3 months last year.  Not sure if we'll beat that record, but I'm sure if we put our minds to it, anything is possible.
  
• 11/29/2022 Our second scheduled server (running CRON jobs) is finally upgraded.  Time for some house cleaning to remove tasks that were outdated or broken.  Now that all the major backend servers are upgraded, I can upgrade the search engine code.  Though need to find time to do all that between projects.  Added "rival" to wedding tags, and added higher perpage numbers to wishlist.
  
• 11/30/2022 Baby woke up 8 times throughout the night.  I definitely need to debug this so I can get a few hours sleep.  The rest of the Runway UI haven't arrived yet so the focus is on some of the background validation and reputation system checks.  Also getting reports on Marketplace issues again.  Will need to spend a few hours on this gift that keeps on giving.
  
• 12/01/2022 Turns out Alita is not feeling well, which explains the bad sleeps and my panda eyes.  Unfortunately Runway UI is delayed until the Christmas event items are done.  Still troubleshooting marketplace issue.
  
• 12/02/2022 Brought Alita to the doctor in the morning.  Hopefully with some tynenol she will be able to sleep well tonight.  Runway UI won't be complete until the Christmas event items are done, so Runway work will have to wait. 
  

[Lanzer]

• 12/05/2022 Doing some testing on the new Rally/Town game server, hope to do some larger scale testing tomorrow.  Got some of the Runway scheduler script done for statistics gathering.
  
• 12/06/2022 Fixed bug with quote noficiation finally, it was only happening when people post with the new text editor, so the inconsistent result made it hard to debug.  Also fixed the 300 items limit per page bug in Wishlist, and added links to clear only temp storage or only locker in inventory system.  Starting work on the friend/ignore list rewrite.  WIll definitely back up data first so I don't end up with the wishlist disaster.
  
• 12/07/2022 Faunzy's Flute issue should be fixed, but need to verify. Continued working on the friends/ignore list.  Also need to fix the formatting error for any reports generated by Rally 3D.
  
• 12/08/2022 Worked on the new game server, had to make some cofig changes to keep the log files from eating up all of the hard drive space.  Looks like it's working better than the old one.  We had a discussion on forum upgrade, ended up being much more in depth on what we can do overall.  Taking some time off to write a PRD on what this system would look like. 
  
• 12/09/2022 Work continue on the friendslist rewrite.  Should had worked on the migration script first, switching focus on that now.
  

[Lanzer]

• 12/13/2022 Fixed MP relisting items on page 2, will return to correct page and won't break next page button.  Fixed Aquarium panel not being able to be removed in profiles. Profile video autoplay will only work when mute is enabled as it is a Google enforced rule, while autoplay with sound has a weird rule where you must be linked from within Gaia.  Looked into a report of missing items from cancelling outfits, an hour later found that the outfit shop entry haven't yet been cancelled.  Not all reports lead to bug fixes.
  
• 12/14/2022 Fishing Trophy testing logic had been adjusted and no more false positives.  Hope that the mod team can use it to grant the trophies ASAP.  Also found some weird bug where certain URL on the user dropdown menu will make the Marketplace outfit store shown as empty.  Weird bug.  I'm looping Kick Back (Chainsawman OP) for hours now, still not tired of the song.
  
• 12/15/2022 Got word that the tool is working right and fishing trophy granting will start again this week.  Actual automation should start when things are fine tuned.  Looked into a Switchem issue where games would abruptly fail to go to the next level.  Ended up spending too much time on it and re-wrote how session data is saved.  Fingers crossed that this will get rid of the issue for good. More work on the friendslist backend, migration should start tomorrow.  First I need to make sure data is populated to the new database on the live site before migration takes place though.  A few more hours of work.
  
• 12/16/2022 Work on Friend/Ignore list continued.  Almost ready for migration.  Got a bit distracted with some new feature write up and also some documentation for automating some event stuff moving forward.
  
• 12/17/2022 Fix the bug that stopped some trades from being able to cancel.  One day I'll find out which feature is pulling items from trade boxes back to the main inventory.
  

[Lanzer]

• 12/19/2022 Fixed bug with tree decorating not working with new editor.  Events have template overrides that happen to be missing some config.  Current friendslist code now populate the new database, time to migrate old data over.
  
• 12/20/2022 Fixed marketplace renew returning to the wrong page.  Fixed dailychance achievement that broke after the recent dailychance update.  Took a long time to fix that one as the original code was poorly written.  Unfortunately this only fixed one of the two reported achievement bugs.  The other one was caused by a bug fix on October 9th where I fixed an infinite loop bug, but also caused the achievement system to not check and grant achievements caused by the completion of other achievements.  Achievement bugs take so long to fix as it's hard to trigger the error causing conditions.  Spent the whole night on these issues but they're finally fixed.  The day isn't over.  Found some awful bug with fishing where baits stored in temp storage would be counted as bait available.  Wonder how many had been having fun with this little exploit throughout the years. smile   DIdn't get to work on friendlist, as most Tuesdays are spent doing bug fixes.
  
• 12/21/2022 Fixed the dressup bug where undo count sometimes go up by 2.  Bug took a long time to fix before I realized I was trying to fix some development code that leaked to the site by mistake. :O  Now I can get back to work.  Just found out that I set the sharding (data splitting) wrong on the new friendslist database, need to wipe all the new data and migrate all over again. :-b  Meanwhile, work on friendslist continues.
  
• 12/22/2022 All the coding for Friendslist and ignore list is done.  Need to do a whole bunch of testing then the whole system can go live.  It's an important feature so we'll need to put some extra time into testing.  Fishing reports had been verified and looks like we're finally able to keep up with trophy granting without having to spend a ton of time verifying fishers.
  
• 12/23/2022 The friendslist code blew up during testing.  Sometimes it's easier to write something new than to retrofiit  an older system while maintaining its old caching structure and what not.  After some debugging the core friendslist code is done testing.  I can now go into parts of the code that load the friendslist and make sure they're running the optimized features so it takes less memory and runs faster.  Perks of having a normalized database.  Not much work on this part.  We should have the code pushed to production by Monday.
  
• 12/24/2022 There are about 130 places that loads the friendslist.  Going through many of them to make sure that it utilize the optimized data calls.  The old call simply load the entire list and see if it matches a number, but the new calls will only pull what's necessary, as the nature of having a normalized database.
  
• 12/25/2022 The updated database code broke the friends list system as some adjustments needed to be made.  During testing I ran into a bunch of other unrelated bugs so that shaved a few more hours off my day, though the core friendslist code is much more solid now.
  

[Lanzer]

• 12/26/2022 Some nasty bugs forced me to quickly debug the new backend code and bring that to production, which means the 500 user limit is now lifted.  Still more work to do in optimizing the system. 
  
• 12/27/2022 Many places uses the friendslist, but they all share the same set of class functions, so I don't need to change all 130 places, just the dozen of class function calls.  In some cases I do need to change the feature to call the friendslist function once instead of making numerous calls on one page load.  The old way of managing friends data was very inefficient, so much changes are needed.
  
• 12/28/2022 All optimizations for friendslist and ignore list are complete.  Too many changes made so I'll probably wait till morning to release the changes live.
  
• 12/29/2022 The absolute worst thing happened today.  Alita decided to wake up super early in the morning so I didn't get to sleep.    When I finally had time on the computer I ended up falling asleep shortly after pushing the update to the live site.  The last optimization code ended up seeing everyone's cache value as empty when it should had been first populated.  Baby schedule is driving me crazy.  As usual there were still a good number of bugs that I overlooked during my testing.  Hopefully the reports had covered all the major ones.
  
• 12/30/2022 Additional friendslist bugs trickled in, fixed a bug where ignored users would always display as "mutually ignored".  There was also a bug in displaying mutual friends that ended up displaying the entire friend list instead.  In fixing that bug I ended up further optimizing the friend of friend search, and also added metadata to make pulling up recently active friends much faster.  I think that's all the optimizations left.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/02/2023 Fixed caroling shop progress, the database switchover was based on year, so the system treated 2023 as next year's event.  Also fixed a nasty bug where igoring someone will remove the other person's ignore list entry on you when it's only supposed to remove friend list entry.  Mod utility lookup tool fix. Fixed Gaia Arenas contest reward and roll over script to ensure it doesn't get stuck.  Fixed forum pulse and other forum fatures showing ignored user posts.
  
• 01/03/2023 Fixed missing username when quoting someone in forums.  More mod utility tools added.  Had to bow out earlier as I got a raging headache.  Alita is teething and refused to sleep, I ended up sleeping on the couch using a cushion as a pillow and woke up with a sore neck plus a headache.  What a stupid mistake.
  
• 01/04/2023 Today is house cleaning day, more like marketplace cleaning.  The graph library that we are using was from 2001 and desperately needed an upgrade or it will stop working with the next PHP upgrade.  With this upgrade we should be good for another 10+ years.  Wrote a library for marketplace to handle graphing data so we can show graphs on the fly if necessary, will use it later.
  
• 01/05/2023 House cleaning part 2.  All the graphs you see on the Marketplace are pre-generated by a scheduler service that runs all day.  This used to be feasible when we had 50,000 items on the site, but now with 400,000 items (yes we have that many) each graph update takes almost a full day to update all items.  If we get enough items and each round takes more than 24 hours to run, then things will get seriously lagged behind, not to mention that it is extremely inefficient when most items aren't accessed on a daily basis.  Since our servers are fast enough, I've changed things so that graphs are now dynamically generated, then cached on our image server until the end of day.  Gaians shouldn't see any difference in using the marketplace, but maybe a second delay on getting graphs on some items.  These are one of many updates we do that is invisible to most Gaians.  If you're wondering why your favorite features aren't being worked on, it's usually because we found yet another important thing we need to update or fix.
  
• 01/06/2023 Found a leak in our master bedroom so I'm taking some time off to fix the leak.  Had to open up the drywall to find the leak.  Turns out it was a cross beam in our atrium that was rotting.  Had to patch up the beam and any entry points for the rain, and still need to patch up the dry wall after things dry up.  What a nightmare.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/09/2023 Fixed marriage system's friend validation code. Made some big changes in the mod tool support utility.  The bedroom is still seeing some small leak so looks like the cross beam wasn't completely sealed.  Will do another round of patching, fingers crossed!
  
• 01/10/2023 Of course the mod tools need another round of bug fixing.  There were also some small issues with Fishing stats admin page but that's more of removing some old function.  The "go to marketplace" links in dress up page now opens new tab.  When shopping at an NPC store, clicking anywhere on the speech bubble will close it.  Fixed marketplace graphs broken with game items.  Fixed friendslist count not updating.
  
• 01/11/2023 Found the other instance where marketplace graphs would break.  It happens when there are too few data to graph, and the default "not enough data" graph ended up taking over even the yearly results.
  
• 01/12/2023 Got report of the myGaia data feed isn't working right.  After hours of troubleshooting turns out the newly upgraded servers isn't syncing up with new code.  Yikes.  We need to troubeshoot that part of the servers and hopefully thigns will start working again after that.
  
• 01/13/2023 Turns out the backend server's error was more involved.  Got the code to sync up but problem still persist.  It's very hard to troubeshoot these servers because they're only accessible from the internal network.  Already spent a few hours troubleshooting this, but hopefully we can get this sorted out before Monday.
  
• 01/14/2023 The whole MyGaia feed issue actually relates to some of the Marketplace item expire issue where the new background server was failing the security checks on incoming requests.  The problem is finally fixed.  Spent too many hours debugging this.  Fixed avatar export error.  Also helped art team work on a script to refresh store inventory properly during times when limited or event items are added or removed from stores.  There was an issue with the Marketplace store having someone else's store description, added some security check to make sure that we don't accidentally load a different store ID when viewing your own store.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/16/2023 Taking day off to spend more time with Alita.  Just worked on some fixing an issue with email validation for users that haven't logged in for more than a year to prevent older accounts from being hacked.
  
• 01/17/2023 Forum post styles and post actions are now sorted alphabetically.  Inventory search will now search and update temp storage also.
  
• 01/18/2023 Today is spent working on the anniversary event.  All prep work
  
• 01/19/2023 Added more moderation tool support for the inactive user verification system.  The initial round of UI design for Runway just came in today.  They needed some changes (mainly because of my lack of detailed descriptions) and we should have the final versions very soon.  More prep work for the anniversary event, as the art team will be helping me out a lot on this one.
  
• 01/20/2023 Work continued on the anniversary event.  Might end up adding some nice forum features along the way.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/23/2023 Attempted to load Ruffle sitewide to get animated avatars working again, though Ruffle still isn't ready with its support for Flash AS3.  Hopefully we can get it back soon.
  
• 01/24/2023 Didn't feel well today.  Not sure if it's the weird sleep schedule from sleep training Alita or just slept wrong.  Had an awful headache that just wouldn't go away.  Didn't get much done today.
  
• 01/25/2023 One of the zOMG servers needed to be replaced, a simple task of just copying the deployed script files now days. Some of the Runway UI is here so work on Runway starts now.  Most of the initial work is just laying out the CSS to getting the sizing and colors right.
  
• 01/26/2023 More work on Runway UI.  Half of the front page is implemented.  Decided to not load the header so that we can have a responsive page that works well on mobile.  A little bit more work but well worth the effort.  Re-worked the mobile friendly nav bar so it implements easily across all features moving forward.
  
• 01/27/2023 Fixed small bug with your own name appearing in friendlist search as a non mutual friend.  Work on Runway continues, main page is almost done and hope to get more assets on Monday to work on other pages.
  

[Lanzer]

• 01/30/2023 Fixed bug that allows you to marry yourself.  Wrapping up the Runway landing page and streamlined some of the backend functions.
  
• 01/31/2023 Polished the rest of the UI on the landing page.  Unforunately the rest of the UI is running late.  Gonna spend time looking into the search engine upgrade now.
  
• 02/01/2023 Fixed bug where gifting items that are on sale would fail.  Continued work on the search engine system.  This is going to be a lengthy project as I have a lot to learn about the new systems.
  
• 02/02/2023 Start work on voting page.  Not very exciting, just lots of adjustments in layout.
  
• 02/03/2023 Uh oh, the modals in Runway were not responsive, gotta fix those too.  Should had just re-wrote the modal from scratch as converting them into responsive mode took just as long.
  

[Lanzer]

• 02/06/2023 Attempt to fix the wishlist bug where deleted items kept re-appearing.  Should not had tried to make the new system backwards compatible with old code.  Hopefully this will fix the issue.  Still troubleshooting the Towns2 server, hope to get it back up on Tuesday. 
  
• 02/07/2023 Tried to get Towns2 back up and running.  There was an IP address change but updating the database last week did not work.  We haven't needed to do this for a long time so I didn't know where to look.  Was completely stuck after scanning network traffic trying to find out where the IP address was handed off to the game client.  After hours and hours I pinged Codemoney for help, and turns out it's an XML file in the graphics server, which explains why all the scanning didn't turn up any results.  The silver lining is that I only need to do this once, now that we're using the domain name instead of the IP address, we just need to update the DNS and things will work again.  Well, hopefully the new server won't die anytime soon.  Also fixed some minor issue with the avatar page's marketplace link not opening up new tab.
  
• 02/08/2023 Big Runway admin update, added support for the new Runway features so mods can update contests accordingly
  
• 02/09/2023 Fixed friendslist bug where first time sorting a migrated friendslist would mess up the sorting order.  Fixed missing title when adding new wedding titles last time, formatted things better so this problem wouldn't happen again.  Work continued on the voting page UI
  
• 02/10/2023 Both the Towns2 and zOMG Alarmskeeter servers went down last week, and in both cases we needed to do a whole bunch of stuff to get them back up.  Unfortunately Alarmskeeter still wasn't working, and then I found out that our admin server for handling database config just went down.  What a day.  Gotta get back to working on the Runway UI.