Showdog

Fixed issue caused by double clicking the decline button for a stud approval request.

Showcattle

Fixed a link to the site rules from the page you get when you try to login from a banned ranch.

Fixed an error that arose when using the bulk send to market page without selecting any cattle.  Also removed a memory leak on that page.

Showcats

Fixed the e-mail author link in the breed forums.

Fixed issue with the reply with quote feature in breed forums.

Every now and then I get asked how I started making sites.  I've never taken the time to write it out so I'm going to do it here in a series of posts.  If this comes off as a bit too self absorbed, let me know.  I figured I'd just put it into writing so I have something to refer people to.

Growing up in the country I had to find things to keep myself occupied with, just as many kids did in the times before the internet.  Being the bored hick that I was, I made little paper cows.  I would draw the cattle with different breeds quickly and then judge them against each other.  Yes, I know, that's about as lame as it can possibly get.  Of course, that's only until you consider it later became the basis of my career.

In high school about the only thing I focused on was the contests and leadership in FFA.  I never had any success showing cattle for numerous reasons, the primary being that the most we ever paid for a market steer was $900.  I finished last in the class over half the time I stepped into the ring.

After high school, in 1997, I went to Texas A&M University where I majored in agricultural engineering and graduated in May 2002.  While there was limited Fortran included in my class work, I received no real training in programming and to this day have not taken a single class in programming (and it shows).  One thing that I think helped was when I was a kid I had an Apple IIC (I think that's what it was); my mom gave me a book with the source code of a bunch of pre-written simple BASIC games.  I made a little text based adventure game in my spare time when I was 13.  It was nothing but a bunch of "if then" statements and questions but it helped in learning real languages later on in life.

During the Summer of 2000, I worked as a dispatcher for Texas A&M Bus Operations from 5 AM to Noon, Monday through Friday.  At that point, I had enough seniority that my primary responsibility was to train new dispatchers so most of the time I sat around on the computer wasting time.  That's when I got really addicted to online games, although I've never been as addicted as some of our top customers on Showdog.  The only thing that irked me sometimes was how easy some of them were.  I wanted something more in depth, targeted at adults, and something that was more challenging. 

Originally I played the horse racing and basketball simulations at Simulatedsports.com.  While they could use some technological upgrades in terms of how users interact with the site, those are some great simulations and if you are looking for something else to get tied up in, I highly suggest them.  It was while I was playing the horse racing simulation on Simulatedsports that I thought it would be really cool to have a similar simulation for cattle.  I also played the no defunct Grandslambaseball.com and their demise taught me some important business lessons such as: never sell lifetime subscriptions.

During college I was also a regular on the third row of the second deck for Texas A&M college baseball games.  If you've ever wondered why I chose Third Row Internet as the name for our LLC, that's why.

While none of the stuff I mentioned in this post has anything to do with the current versions of the sites, all of it was necessary to get us to the point we are at right now.

Coming Next: The start of Simsteer.com

Showcats

Fixed the following links...

• Link from champions bred page to the cat info pages.
• Link from recent transactions to user information pages.
• Link from change password page page to edit account info page.
• Link from stud approval page to cat information pages.
• Link to offspring page from cats that have not yet been named.
• Link to older messages in forum when there are no older messages.

Fixed the "Top New User Entries" page.

The cat search now works but will take a while to fully populate.

Added a landing page that will show up instead of an error when users post bad links to other cattery information pages.

Updated forum to accept objections.

Showdog

Fixed link from breed forums to the new message page.

Fixed a locking problem that would pop up every now and then on the salary calculation page.

Dogs linked to by invalid links no longer bring up an error page.

Update the "Dog Taken Away" information page.

Removed link to non-existent dog books page from the dog show results page.

Fixed issue that prevented notification of site administrators when a standard account was upgraded to family.

Trophyhorse

Fixed data locking issues on the horse information page that prevented the page from loading in a few rare situations.

Added form validation to the horse bidding field.

Fixed error caused by inputting the wrong URL to look up stallion information.

Removed an error caused by objecting to the name of an unnamed horse.

Fixed the stallion register for horses that have not been named.

Showcattle

Fixed issue that arose when trying to buy an embryo that was not listed for sale.

Fixed a problem with the "Reply with Quote" link on the forums.

Fixed a problem with the search form.

GRRRRRRRRR

I'm installing some new error tracking software in our continued efforts to improve the usability of our sites and it messed with some of the web server settings.  Long story short, it stopped all .aspx pages (98% of the pages on our sites) from showing up and created 404 pages instead.  It took me 30 minutes to figure this out because the idea of software such as this prohibiting all CGI was beyond unbelievable. 

Fortunately, we got it up and running and you can see the impact it has had in the post from earlier today.

All Four Sites

Fixed a problem preventing the sending of HTML code in e-mails.  We have found a solution that allows sending HTML code while still ensuring a secure e-mail process.

Trophyhorse

Fixed the hypothetical mating pedigrees.

Added a horse not found page for horses renamed or deleted due to issues with their names.  We do not delete horses on Trophyhorse.com unless it has a famous/obscene name.

Showdog

Fixed numerous issues with the redirection process when you aren't logged in including...

• Creating shows
• Viewing your own show results

Fixed numerous links including...

• Link from dog search tool to kennel information.
• Link from bulk dog feeding tool to dog information pages.
• Removed link from breed information pages to the now non-existent "Top Books" page.
• "Main Breed" link that shows up underneath usernames in the breed forums.

Prevented some errors that would occur on the show entry page out of the blue due to data locking.

Showcats

Fixed numerous links including...

• Link to non-existent group rankings from top cattery rankings.
• Link from top cattery to top cats pages
• Link from cat breed information page to current top cats
• Removed link to the text based scale of points list
• Links to other cat rankings from the all time top cats ranking
• Link to the non existent "Find a Major" page (there are no majors in cat shows)

Fixed problem with top all time cats page and titles for the cats.

You no longer need to use the submit button when changing the call name of your cats.

Fixed the judge information page.  Remember, the judges on Showcats aren't like the judges on Showdog.  They don't weight traits differently, each one looks for a slightly different 'type'.

Fixed the show award page to get ready for added prizes (coming next week).

Fixed error that showed up when a cat couldn't be found in the database.

Fixed numerous issues with the redirection process when you aren't logged in including...

• Breed forum sign in page
• Page describing what the source cats are

Fixed the breed forum search form.

Showcattle

Fixed the issue preventing the proper amount of new shows to be added.

Fixed numerous links including...

• Link to ranch information for users that have been suspended.
• All of the top links on the user posts page

Fixed issue with freshly added embryos that prevented viewing any embryos for sale by a cow or the ranch info pages of the cow owner.

Fixed an unhandled exception that was caused by not entering a price into the price field when selling embryos.

Fixed an issue that popped up when trying to buy more semen than you can afford.

Fixed a problem with some forum posts that only had one reply.

Fixed error that came up when trying to view the judge's comments for a show that has yet to run.

Fixed numerous issues with the redirection process when you aren't logged in including...

• Cattle castration page
• Move cattle page

Due to the Christmas holiday, e-mail response times will be longer than normal.  Almost all non-emergency e-mails such as suggestions, questions already answered in the help section, or non-critical bug reports will not be answered until Monday.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Showcats

We fixed a problem with the titles on some cats who have earned an excessive amount of titles/trophies.

You can now enter altered kittens into shows.

Trophyhorse

In order to help users get rid of horses faster, liquidation sales are now limited to a one day listing.  It didn't make much sense for the liquidation sales to be some of the longest sales in the sim when they are only for dumping horses.

Starting January 1st, mortality will be introduced to studs.  This will be introduced in the form of complications during the breeding process and the likelihood of a horse dieing will depend on its age at the time of the breeding.

Approximate Death Rate Per Breeding

4YO - 1 in 40,000
10YO - 1 in 4,000
15YO - 1 in 350
20YO - 1 in 40
25YO - 1 in 5

There is a thread in the announcements forum detailing this.  As with everything, it is up for change if somebody makes a valid point.  If you have any input, please visit this thread...

Trophyhorse

The horse pool bids have been corrected to make sure they actually go through.  If a horse is placed in a liquidation sale, it now recieves a bid from the horse pool within one hour.

I've added some Top 100 lists for statistics users have requested.  You can find them here...

http://www.trophyhorse.com/Statistics/top100lists.aspx

There will be a permanent link once we figure out the best way to organize all of the rankings.

Showdog

I updated the bulk feeding tool but it looks horrendous.  There is just too much information for one page.  If you have any ideas on how to make the page look better, please feel free send them to me within the game.

Trophyhorse

I've started the process of adding residencies to the simulation.  It's working in a very basic format right now but has a lot of work to go.  You can expect more udpates later this week.

Showdog

I've setup a beta bulk dog feeding page...

www.showdog.com/Users/Feeding/bulk_feeding_tool.aspx

USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK

Please report any problems you have with it in this thread.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to setup that page considering some people have as many as 20 rations. Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Showcats

I made some significant upgrades to the title system.  The only thing that doesn't show up at this time is the GP title and that's just because there are no Grand Premiers yet.  Here's a list of the titles that we have right now...

• CH: Champion, the title given to an adult cat which has received 6 winners ribbons
• PR: Premier, an altered (neutered or spayed) adult cat which received 6 winners ribbons. Equivalent to the title of Champion.
• GC: Grand Champion, the title awarded to an adult cat which has received 200 points in its competition category.
• GP: Grand Premier, the same thing as GC but for altered cats
• NW: National Winner, the top award any cat can achieve.  This is only given to the top cat, kitten, and premier each month.
• BW: Breed Winner, similar to the title of National Winner, but for an adult cat that has won it's breed (only 1^st).

Showcats

The shows are now scheduled to run at midnight.  If they don't finish at that time, they will run at 4 AM and then 8 AM as a final safe guard.

The top cats ranking is now working properly.

If you’ve been with our sites for longer than a few months, you know that keeping our servers up has been an issue.  It's obviously not something I'm proud.  I think that if I actually had a single day of the proper training, managing three servers that put out 20 million page views per month of highly dynamic content wouldn't be an issue.

I realize that every time I explain what’s going on it sounds like a broken record so I figured I would give details on some of the biggest outages we have had in addition to recent issues.

February 2005 – Showdog.com

This was the crash that had me thinking I might have to take advantage of our insurance policy.  This problem started showing signs in early January and got worse and worse until February 2^nd when the site went down completely.  If it weren’t for a last minute backup done to an external hard drive ‘just in case’, Showdog.com would have started over from scratch.

The problem was caused by a hard drive that went bad and had to be replaced.  It got so bad that it wouldn’t even boot up.  Luckily, we had the backup mentioned above to restore the site from but even that backup had extensive corruption issues.  It had to be gone through row by row with a program I wrote to determine what data was corrupted and what wasn’t.  The site went down at about 5 PM on Wednesday and I didn’t go to bed until 7 PM Friday.

September 2005 – Showdog.com

This one came without warning and was the result of a well intentioned RAM upgrade.  The RAM we got was part of a bad batch from the processor.  One customer of my web host who got an upgrade at the same time and from the same batch was completely wiped out.  Fortunately, I’ve been a backup hound since the fiasco in February.

Early November – Showdog.com

This was an issue with Network Solutions and their DNS services.  The sites were actually up but nobody could get to them.  I use Network Solutions because they are the most expensive registrar out there and I assumed that meant better quality.  Evidently you don’t always get what you pay for.

Yesterday – All Sites

I was notified by pager about 12 times that the website was down but the database was up.  I kept restarting the website server and searching for information on why it was occurring.  After wasting all that time, all it took was restarting the DB server at the same time and the problem was resolved.

Today – Showcattle.com

The transaction log got full and I had changed a parameter about a month ago to prevent it from automatically expanding.  I changed that parameter due to an issue with the external hard drive.  We have updated the transaction log backups and properties to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

I'm aware of the site issues this morning.  Every time the sites go down, I have to bring them back up manually.

I'm investigating the cause at this time but have no time frame regarding when the situation will be resolved.

Trophyhorse

We have added non-winner of 2 in past 2-weeks (NW2-2W) and past month (NW2-1M) to the future race creation algorithm. 10% of the allowance races will be NW2-2W and 5% of the allowance races will be NW2-1M. Non winner of 5 races have been added as well.

This will give horses with 4 wins or more additional options in future races above the claiming level but below stakes level.

More information on this can be found in the announcements forum.

Showcats

The all time top cats ranking is now correct.

The impact of coat condition and training will be slowly increased over the month of December until it becomes a much more important part of the sim than it is right now.

In an attempt to expedite fixing problems on Showcats, I've started a thread seeking input on what our users feel are the most important issues that need to be addressed.  Please list any many issues as you can think of and the importance of them to you, your input will be used to determine what gets fixed first.  To find the thread go to...

http://www.showcats.com/login/philboard_read.aspx?id=1915

Showdog

I have started working on a bulk feed page where you can update the rations for all of your dogs.

Showcats

• The all time regional points now show up on the cat info pages.
• The November trophies finally went out.

Showdog

We added a new breed drawing for Polish Lowland Sheepdogs and Beaucerons.  The drawing will be conducted in the same way the previous drawing was held for the most recent five breeds that were added.  I'm not sure how many dogs will be given out, that will be determined by how many people request them by the day of the drawing.

This brings our total breed count to 165 and means that we now have all 165 AKC dog breeds in the simulation.

I've gotten some complaints that we actually have future plans when none of the sites are perfect.  Some of the complaints have referenced Showdog (where the biggest issue in my inbox is that we don't have two of the AKC breeds) and Showcattle (where the biggest issue in my inbox is somebody who is typing their password into the chat room incorrectly).  I should have known that would happen, it happens every time I try to share future plans.  It's also why I tended to refrain from doing so until I started this blog. 

If we were to wait until a site was perfect before starting another one, we would still be running the original Simsteer and would have never even considered starting a dog game.  Showcats and Trophyhorse?  They would be at least a decade off. 

The bottom line is none of the sites will ever be perfect and I've never claimed they will be.  We also have tons of plans for the future, most of them we've never shared because of people who don't realize we can plan for the future while addressing current issues at the same time.

If you have an issue you want addressed please do not hijack the purpose of this blog to do so.  Please use the "Contact Us" link or the forums on the relevant sites.  We eventually get to everything that is reported to us.  Yes, it does take longer sometimes than others.  However, I'm more than willing to compare the amount of improvements/fixes we make to all four sites to the amount of improvements/fixes people make to similar sites any day of the week.

I didn't announce it but we finished the purchase of the domain name Showhorse.com earlier this week.  It will be a few months before I even start to develop a site around it but it will be a horse showing simulation in the style of Showdog, Showcats, and Showcattle.  It's not meant to replace Trophyhorse.com, that's the only one of my games I actually play. 

I doubt it will have a very large user base to draw from but I'm going to get bored in a few  months if I don't start another site.  Horses just made a bit more sense than pigs (we own the domain "showhog.com") and the owners of Showlamb.com wanted a bit too much for the domain.  I'd like to get a baseball simulation going some day but I'm just not smart enough to design a game engine of any quality.

Showcats.com

The all time cat rankings update will require me to lock up the database for about 30-minutes so I'm going to put it off until early tomorrow morning.

Showcattle.com

The issue preventing the show entry button from showing up on the cattle info pages has been fixed.

Showdog and Showcattle

We fixed more minor site issues as listed in the original welcome message of this blog.  None of these fixes are ground breaking but they do take care of some of the occasional error pages that come out of the blue.

Trophyhorse

I added game bred restrictions to future races.  This will benefit the game bred horses with more races to enter than source horses.  Slowly, the site will move to a structure where game bred horses have more value than source horses.

I know there have been extensive issues with Showcats.com since it was brought online.  Other than a batch of updates mid-October the site hasn't been updated nearly as much as it should.  There's really no excuse for the lack of updates and I'm sorry about that. 

Today I fixed the bulk session page (something Showdog didn't have for an entire 1.5 years) and started the process of fixing an issue with the all time top cats rankings.  The all time time cats doesn't bring up an error page any longer but the listings are not correct.  That will be fixed either late Friday or early Saturday. 

We also made a very quick update to allow 10 shows per day.  This will make the show sizes a bit more realistic.  On Showcats, shows should really be called rings if we used the right terminology for the way the site is setup.  Also, from what I understand 600+ entries in one ring is very unrealistic.

On the bright side, in terms of active users, Showcats has grown by 41% in the past 30-days which was a bit unexpected and is much faster growth than any of the other three sites at similar points in their existence.

Hi, I finally got a blog setup.  I've wanted to do this for quite a while to update users on various things going on with the sites.  This will be a great spot to find updated info on all four sites and some insight into how we run them.

Over the past few days I've been focussing on fixing some of the errors that pop up on a continual basis.  ASP.NET 2.0 provides me with better error logging we've slowly extended some of those abilities to all four sites this week.  We started with Showdog, went to Showcattle, then Trophyhorse, and tonight I added Showcats. 

Here's a graph that shows the impact this had on Showdog...

That sudden drop off at the end shows how much of an impact in errors these changes have made.  (the drop just a few days earlier was due to the site being down for an entire day).