A great tragedy struck at home this week. Thankfully no people were involved. Wednesday I had to run an emergency errand for my in-laws, which thankfully didn't go badly—until I tried to come home and realized my power steering wasn't working. Yesterday I got the news that fixing the leak would be a waste of time: the whole steering column is rotted and so is the frame that would need to hold a new rack and pinion. I've had my car in my life longer than BYOND, and in turn longer than my wife. 21 years was a good run.

I met my Civic in 2000, after the crappy beat-up Oldsmobile I was driving got sideswiped by a truck that had no business driving up Harrison Street, and because I had a good job at that time I bought my first new car. I chose the Civic because I knew it would be reliable. They had it in green, and they had the model I wanted with a CD player option as a display model, so I got it with 4,000 miles and a moderate discount. Although no car is without its share of problems, it was a good vehicle and treated me well for many years. It survived a broken exhaust pipe, two muffler replacements, two alternator and battery replacements, two windshield replacements (and a small window pane on the rear driver's-side door that some dickweed busted out), multiple tire changes, several O2 sensors, many brake components, a worn-out catalytic converter (boy did that run into money), and two minor accidents (neither was my fault). Also the wipers had gotten very erratic, but there was no point replacing the motor for them because I knew the fateful day was coming. Someone once told me the car would run until the body rusted out; they were right. The engine is still going strong and the transmission never needed to be replaced, but time has claimed the body at long last.

This week I did more work on the display code, and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what I need to do to update from DirectX 9 to 11. Suffice it to say that isn't happening soon, but I think I know some steps to move in the right direction. I still need to make some changes to reorder the way rendering is done, that will hopefully be beneficial all on their own, but that should also help move things in a direction where upgrading to a newer DirectX is more natural.

Although progress is being made on the map editor and I've fixed a few more issues that were bugging me, boy was that a time suck too. The updated mouse hit code wasn't quite right so I had to deal with that, and I really need to change the way selections work because they suck.

514 bug fixes are still underway. I made a special point of doing a bunch of those yesterday, but I still have a few little things to look at before I do another maintenance release. There's no immediate hurry on that, thankfully.

Beyond the map editor project I really want to get back to feature work. I have some thoughts on how to proceed, one of which is a related task of finally having a way to turn an appearance into a flat image. The rendering features I want to do soonest will really have to wait until things get a little less chaotic, but they remain high-priority.

Many thanks to all the BYOND Members, Patrons, and other donors who've supported BYOND recently. This is my full-time job and I'm grateful to have it. And now, well, it matters all the more.

Life goes on. Not for my car, which isn't safe to drive and I don't expect to leave my driveway again until it's towed away. But while I'm housebound by day for a few weeks, I'll keep working on the code and making a better BYOND for you beautiful folks.