Celebrate!

When was the last time you actually enjoyed Magic?

It’s not a factious question.  We’ve had plenty of heavy and deep subjects with topics of VMware, hardware configuration, how to maximize your bots business and even how to maintain your bots while on vacation.  There are times I wonder if all of time and effort placed into botting is worth it.  After all, we are humans.  Yes, botting is our business but most of us got into botting because we first started playing Magic.

So, I ask again, when was the last time you actually enjoyed Magic?

If it has been too long, let me make a suggestion: the folks over at Wizards of the Coast, in celebration of 14 years of Magic the Gathering, is giving everyone a free tournament on September 7th.

In short, you go to your local brick-and-mortar store and register.  In return, you will get a 2014 booster pack.  You open that up and choose a color.  You will then get a core pack that relates to that color.  You then make a deck.  You then play your tournament and once you’ve completed that, you will receive another 2014 booster pack, just for participating!

So, you’ll get 2 boosters and some core cards in the 2014 base set.  Not a bad little heist for an afternoon of playing the game we all love anyway?  What’s not to like?

Official announcement: 
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/events.aspx?x=mtg/event/mcelebration-facts

Hurricanes on Vacation

I have a copy of my bots on my laptop. Purely as a backup. However, I never realized how important that little investment would turn out to be. You see, my company paid for me and the family to take a vacation and we decided to visit the In-laws. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Before we left on vacation, I shut the power to everything but the bots. I fully expected the bots to remain in operation while we were enjoying mandatory family time.

However, after we left a hurricane decided to visit. Since I went through hurricanes Andrew, Katrina, and Wilma, I know what can happen and what needs to be done.

The hurricanes were on a direct path for my house. What's a bot owner to do? Simple, I simply started the laptop and started to run the bots, and I remotely shut down the computer running my bot.

But how did you do that 2,000 miles away?

Easy. I opened a trade with the bots and entered the command to shut down the bot using the shut command. You see, if you have set up an account as administrator, you have access to some commands that can be used for a variety of things. In this case, I could use the kill or shut commands to terminate the bots and run the bots off the laptop.

Next time we'll look at more administrator commands. Oh, and how did this episode end? We lost power for a couple of weeks, so I had my family stay with her parents and I came back as scheduled to deal with the cleanup and post-hurricane chaos that exists. When power was restored, my wife shut down the bots on the laptop, and I started up the bots as normal on the bot machine. Downtime throughout this entire ordeal, just minutes.

Vacation Features

In our continuing series on little-known bot features that can be used on vacation, let's take a look at a scenario:

You're on Christmas vacation, visiting relatives for the obligatory vacation. Since you deck the special events on MTGO, you see that there is a constructed event you wish to partake in.

However, you know that you also need four (4) copies of Garruk Relentless or your deck simply will not be competitive.

You also know that this card is pretty tough to find and you simply do not have the opportunity to spend a couple of hours seeking Garruk Relentless and comparing prices for it. So what is a bot owner to do?

Why not advertise that you are buying it?

But I'm on vacation having one of those obligatory meals with relatives, remember?

So? Are you going to let the fact that you can not access the bot without using some VPN software stop you? Just log into your MTGO Library Control Panel and change your advertising message. (Found here: http://www.mtgolibrary.com/control-panel.php?w=admessages )

This feature gets lost in the plethora of options listed on Control Panel page but nonetheless, still is quite useful. You simply change your classified message that you are seeking Garruk Relentless and then when a trade comes in, you'll receive notification on your smartphone. (Assuming you've set up the appropriate email filters.) Then you excuse yourself from dinner for a few minutes, pick up Garruk Relentless and return to dinner; satisfied that your bot is working for you while you are enjoying a family meal with your relatives, and ready to kick some arse in that tournament shortly.

There is a caveat though: the advertising messages get updated once an hour so it will take a little time for the message to actually be posted. So while this method won't get you cards in under two (2) hours, it could if you gave it a day or so.

Join us next time when we continue our trip through little known bot features.

Vacations

One of the things that is mentioned whenever a person is seriously considering starting a business is that the person should not expect to take a vacation for at least the first three (3) years and most likely first five (5) years in operation. This is because you are so involved in its day to day operation and many startups can not afford the reliable help needed so that a business can actually operate reliably while the owner is sitting on a beach cut off from the outside world.

Fortunately for us, we do not have to worry about the bot running reliably. In the unlikely event of a problem, we can reboot the bot or the machine running the bot. If there is a tweak that needs to be made, we simply do it.

However, how do you run a bot while you are on vacation?

Sure you can run some VNC clone and remotely administer your bot that way. I did that when I was running YATbot. But I've found running VNC a little cumbersome, slow (this was years ago so the speed was an issue then, not so much now), and I just had an irksome feeling that some random probe could send a command and take over my bot machine as I had to leave an open port, a back door if you will, on my bot machine. It simply never felt right and it was always a conflict in my mind: Leave an open port but but be able to remotely administer the bot; or close the port, be secure but also be out of luck should something happen.

Fortunately for us, yet again, is that MTGO Library has several features that can be used for remote administration and this going to be the focus for the next few entries, as we wrap up the bigger topic of little known bot features. For readers in the United States, have a Happy Thanksgiving.