http://www.flickr.com/photos/ava_glasgow/

I’m all about the pics lately, so most of the new content will be over there for a while.

I’ve been trying to land a glider inside the Cartel hangout. I’m close, but not quite there yet.

More pics on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ava_glasgow/sets/72157623333247353/

See more pics on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ava_glasgow/sets/72157623305102857/

My tour started in the forested park that separates the fantasy area from the other neighborhoods. I wandered over to the residential area where I visited each of the four house types available, after which I paid an extended visit to the Elderglen infohub. I finished off my trip by checking out an extension of the neighborhood on the western side of the river, followed by a quick dive into the river itself to check out the murky deep.

See the full tour over at Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ava_glasgow/sets/72157623212982348/

I won’t be as deeply involved this time around, and I certainly won’t be spending the kind of money I did before. It’s mainly just casual fun now… at least I hope it will be.

I don’t want to spend as much time maintaining my various Second Life web sites, so I’ve taken them all down and put the content on Flickr. Not that other people were ever that interested in my sites, but I still like to browse pics of my avs, stuff, and favorite places while away from SL.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ava_glasgow/

I will be leaving this blog up — the software behind it is much easier to maintain than what I used on the other sites — but I don’t know if I’ll be adding new posts very often. We’ll just have to see on that one.

After doing a lot of shopping, I settled on a nice cuddly winter sweater set with several colors for mixing and matching. And if I wanted to go to the snow, obviously I would have to break down and get some footwear, in this case a cute pair of Ugg-like boots.

Before selling off all my land, I let the winter weather settle in up on my work platform and added a few trees to complete the scene. I took some pictures during the day, but the pale violet glow of snow in the dark makes nighttime my favorite.

Why? The simple fact is that Linden Lab (SL’s owner) has a few wonderful and helpful people working for them, but as a whole the company is a mess:

• Unstable system: LL can’t maintain even basic system stability. Total service outages are common, clients and servers crash frequently, resident-to-resident transactions (like delivery of a purchased item) fail to go through, and inventory items that cost real money simply disappear into thin air.
• Bad development priorities: Instead of focusing on improving system stability, LL introduces new features which are mostly cosmetic. Rather than providing a good experience for users, these enhancements seem primarily designed to get media attention.
• Poor quality of work: Most fixes and upgrades are themselves buggy, and further degrade system stability.
• Better work done by volunteers: A single person (Nicholaz Beresford) doing volunteer work does a better job patching the open source client than all of LL with dozens of programmers and millions of dollars. This means something is seriously wrong with LL’s approach to software development.
• Not enforcing TOS: LL doesn’t usually enforce their own terms of service, meaning various assholes are free to harass, libel, and steal from other users.
• Failed account creations: Account creation fails frequently, permanently blocking the chosen name.
• Billing problems: Basic billing activities fail frequently, putting a resident’s land risk because LL can’t figure out how to accept a payment.
• Poor customer service: Support services are inconsistent. The Support web portal and phone lines often go down for several hours at a time. The Support portal is designed specifically to hide “live” help links, instead directing users to file support tickets that normally don’t get a response for several days or even weeks (and often get no response at all). Worst of all, it is obvious that the Support staff is not well trained or informed about recent policy or system changes; different staffers provide different answers, many of which are incomplete or just plain wrong.
• Broken web site: LL can’t even keep their web site in working order. Various problems have popped up that stall page loads and return “503 service unavailable” errors. This has happened multiple times in the past year, each time lasting for a week or more.
• Abandoned forums: LL won’t maintain their own forums. They refuse to provide proper moderation, and they closed down many useful sections as a result. They don’t participate in or even read the forums because seeing what residents say about them “makes them sad”. They disabled simple post formatting (like bold, italic, bullet lists, and hyperlinks) due to a security flaw in their old software, and eight months later still haven’t updated the software (which is free).

I started Second Life during an exponential population boom, which meant LL as a company had to grow quickly too. I know how difficult it can be to maintain good operations during rapid growth, so I gave LL the benefit of the doubt. I honestly believed that they would eventually get their act together.

But the population growth stopped. The size of the user base and the hours logged on to the system have been fairly stagnant for 6-7 months now. That is more than enough time for LL to catch up, and to be prepared to provide adequate service to its users now. But while some things have improved a little, overall things are still bad.

What does all this mean to me? It means that I don’t want to rely on a company that has proven themselves to be unreliable. I don’t want to stay invested financially and emotionally in a system that I know will let me down. And I sure as hell don’t want to continue rewarding an incompetent and uncaring company with hundreds of dollars a month in business.

So I made the decision: sell up, cash out, and don’t give another penny to Linden Lab.

It’s something easier said than done. The SL world has a sense of reality to it, and for someone like me it is very easy to become emotionally attached to parts of it. I loved my home in Gyeongju, a rare beauty of a mainland region with nice natural features and no adfarms or ugly builds. But owning part of it means paying LL for the privilege, so I had to give it up. I kept a last little 512 for a while since my premium was paid for the year, but I decided it was holding me back so I dumped it too.

I am now completely landless. I have downgraded my accounts to the free basic membership and cashed out all funds except for about $20. I set new home locations for me and my alts at various infohubs around the grid and bookmarked all the best sandboxes so I can look at my stuff and do a little building. I’ve also started experimenting with some of the new open source SL-type grids… they are definitely rudimentary, but it’s exciting to see how quickly they are moving forward.

I don’t plan to leave Second Life completely, but it will definitely be a much smaller part of my life from now on. I’m a little sad because I had such great hopes and plans, but at the same time I’m relieved to not be completely dependent on Linden Lab anymore. And I’m definitely glad to have more time to devote to real life, something I’m sure my family will be happy to hear!

One of my new neighbors bought the waterfall left behind by a previous landowner, and within a few hours has built a gorgeous custom house right into the falls themselves. He graciously allowed me to tour it, and I must say I am very impressed. It looks great from the outside, but it’s even better from the inside with glass floors looking down into the rushing water and a wall of windows looking out across the lake. I can’t wait for him to finish it so I can take lots of pretty pictures.

And it looks like the beauty has overflowed down to my place, which was showing a fine view of its own today.

I’ve had a vision of what’s to come. A world made bright and new for the greater good, but with little room for one like me.

How long do I have? A few months? Maybe less. All I know is the end will come, and with little warning.

Building, planning for the future, it seems futile now. When the world is finally torn from my grasp, the memories will be all I can keep. It’s time to breathe in the life I have left, to enjoy the simple pleasures that soon will be gone.

Tonight is spent sitting by the lake that is my beloved home. The waves lap gently against the shore as I watch the smoke rise from the embers of the dying fire.

Tonight I discovered that this person has put our conversation in his Second Life profile, but he edited it to make me say I banned him because he is gay. I also discovered that this information is not only available inside Second Life, but also on the web where anyone can see it. This false transcript comes up when people search for me in the new SL online search, so I feel the need to address it.

I banned this person because he was a jerk. I did not know he is gay, nor did I make any comment about sexual preference. I consider sexual preference totally irrelevant when judging a person, and would never discriminate against someone because of it.

Okay, I guess that’s it. Back to building the garden that never gets built.

It’s not much so far, but as time goes by and I make more stuff, I’ll have a place to share it with people.

I’ve been using my Gyeongju Gardens land as a sandbox and photo backdrop, but I can’t keep doing that if I want to start actual work creating the gardens themselves someday. I’ve decided to stay on the parcel, but to do my building and inventory photography on a sky platform 500 meters up. Doing so significantly improves the performance of my client (from 2-4 fps on the ground to 20-30 fps at altitude), plus it gives me much better control over the background in my pictures.

Being the picky person that I am, of course I want my work platform to be just right. I want nice rounded corners, some kind of border, with the textures all lined up just perfectly AND easily changeable. So I made what I want, looked around, and realized it’s pretty nice and maybe others might like it too.

So of course that means I must make multiple versions to suit a variety of needs, because it just seems a nice thing to do. I’ve got bordered and no-border versions in 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 meter squares (well, the 10 meter one is a circle), plus a kit of the parts so people can easily build them in custom-sized rectangles. I’m going to make an inside rounded corner to allow more elaborate shapes, and then I have to write up instructions to help people fit them all together (it’s set up to assemble quite easily for people with building skills, but I like to include help for the less experienced folks).

Then I’ll package them up and my new freebie will be available for distribution. And of course I’ll put nice pictures of it over on my Creations site.

What happened with the flipping? Eventually I found the real estate game more stressful than enjoyable. Most of my parcels were bought by other flippers who just put them right back up for sale at a much higher price. And after a while, I started seeing all my work torn down. Basically all the fun was gone, and no one was benefitting from my work.

I realized that I was very attached to my home region Gyeongju (where I have my place on the lake). At some point I saw that a landbaron was selling off chunks of it for cheap, so I bought a 512 for my alt Gaia. Then much of the land around her was being sold for cheap, so I decided to take the plunge and start owning more land again. I ended up with a large gently sloping field and a total of 8196 square meters. And as it was all in the same region, I could use prims from the big field over in my place on the lake.

I feel very inspired by my big field, and have definite plans to turn it into a nice lush green Japanese tea garden. For now I’m still shopping around for buildings and other decorations, and in the meantime I’ve planted the field with trees and grasses. I’ve also laid out a few purchases I’ve already made, a rock garden and some meditation cushions around it. I am getting some good feedback from my neighbors, who are enjoying the view very much.

Oh, I forgot to mention that it is a free public facility, something everyone can enjoy. I call it Gyeongju Gardens and it will have its own web site once I really start construction.

This left me with another 1024 of free tier, so I tried flipping again for a week, but it’s just not fun or interesting anymore. I want everything to sell within hours, and when it doesn’t, I just slash the price to make it go away. Once again I was spending all my time on an activity I wasn’t enjoying and that wasn’t resulting in any lasting contribution to the community.

So to break myself of the habit, I decided I had to purchase a 1024 that I would want to hold. Remembering my sadness in Samjogo when I got cut off from the open Linden oceans, I decided to find the cheapest protected waterfront there was. I ended up getting a corner plot bordering two Linden oceans that connected to 12-15 more… none marked as protected, but definitely looking like they will stay open (for some reason Linden Lab has stopped marking permanently open ocean as protected, which is very annoying). This is the parcel that is now the previously mentioned Nautilus Harbor.

Once the harbor was done, I finally got around to rebuilding Ava’s place. I put back the underwater landscaping and set up my beloved cabin again, this time fully decorated.

As time goes by, I start thinking about purchasing more land in Gyeongju. I do like my neighbors, so I’m not looking to buy anyone out, but I do keep an eye open for anything that might come up for sale — a very rare event in Gyeongju these days, as there hasn’t been anything for sale for 2-3 months.

And just this week, my next door neighbor on the lake suddenly decided to sell her 2048! She accepted my offer and set it for sale just for me, giving me time to get all my land deeded to my personal group so I can take advantage of the 10% group land tier bonus (saving me about $12/month on tier).

This new land is called Lakeside Retreat, and like Ava’s place next door it is both water and a steep hill. The underwater bit will be the new alt’s home, and I’ve put a couple of terraces on the cliff where I will put seating for people to gather and chat or just relax. I didn’t even have to consider the future design much… I just saw a decking ad in Sunset magazine with a beautiful design incorporating both decking and little ponds with water plants, built into a cliff overlooking the sea. It’s perfect!

So that’s the state of my land. I’m up to 11,264 square meters of land, all in Gyeongju except for the harbor. The tier is grouped together from my three premium memberships, 8192 tier for Ava, and 512 tier for the new alt, for a grand total of $63/month. Not exactly cheap, but I love having it.

The future? I’m not sure yet if I want to take on any more land, but if I do I’m only interested in Gyeongju. It would have to be reasonably priced though… all these land purchases are starting to add up! Hopefully my current sim neighbors will stay for a while. They all seem very nice, and though the builds are all very different, I don’t consider any of them unattractive. And I like that it’s so stable. All in all, it just really feels like home.

It is possible to check names on the web site, but you must enter each one individually and you just get a yes or no answer back. If you search inside the game, though, you can enter partial names and see all the currently used variations in a single search (for example: ocean, oceana, oceania, oceanea, oceanus, oceanis, oceanid).

Now while I’m focused on the Search window, and flipping back and forth to google and wikipedia, my av is just standing there getting fidgety. So I sat her down on one of the meditation cushions, and then to reduce the processing load on my little computer, I hid most everything in the background… including the cushion she was sitting on. The end result was her achieving levitating meditation, and looking right pretty in the process.

I decided to take advantage of this mystical state, and tasked Ava with the deific act of bringing into being the new character (who will be a goddess herself) through the act of meditation. In other words, reveal the perfect name to me.

The funny part: it worked! :-O

Within a few minutes, I found an obscure goddess with an attractive name, and whose mythology perfectly fits the character I’m creating. And the name is obscure enough that it was available with my choice of last name. In fact, it’s unique. Out of almost 8 million avatars, not ONE has this name. Good work Ava!

I’m now in the process of outfitting the new character, who I expect will have her own web site much like Gaia’s. And I’ll be sure to announce her here when she’s ready for her debut.

Tonight I attended my first get together, and I really had a great time. At first we just sat around shooting the breeze, and then a few people went to the dance floor in the next room. I’ve never understood the whole clubbing/dancing thing in SL, so I just sat out like the old spoilsport that I am. But toward the end of the party I thought I’d give it a try. Being my first time, it took me about five minutes just to figure out how to get hooked up to the dance animations, but I finally did it and had a blast. I have to say, hanging out with people whose company I enjoy was great fun, but for some reason letting my av go crazy at the same time made it even better. I can’t wait for our next meeting!

Here’s a pic of most of tonight’s participants. I’m at the bottom right, and the others (from left to right) are Brenda, Colette, Mily, Chris, and Deanne.

SL residents can visit Nautilus Harbor in the southwest corner of Salerio. Happy sailing to all!

There’s fire coming out of his head and hand, and his wings flap and everything. Seriously, how could I not fall in love!

After I bought the parcel next to mine, I tore down the original cabin and put up a larger house. I used the BSD Archer House, a freebie, but very nicely designed. Sadly though, it just never felt like mine. I eventually tore that down about 6-8 weeks ago with the intention of putting something else in its place, but I just never got around to it.

I didn’t think it was a big deal, since I don’t really do much with a house, but I realized this week that I was feeling a bit disconnected. Like my home land was just a stopping point, not a real home like it used to be. So late Thursday night I decided to go back to what made me happy and put my original rustic little cabin back up. I got it all placed, and then filled it with the furniture I used to have.

Of course that was back in the day when I only had a small parcel that couldn’t hold many prims (individual item pieces), so the decor was ridiculously spartan — just a bed, a dresser, and a houseplant. Now my home parcel is twice the size, plus I have another much larger one in another part of the same region. This means I have plenty of prims to play with, and could make it look much more like a real home. I also have a lot more experience in the game, and a better idea of what I want to use the home for. I decided that I want the ability to entertain small groups, so seating is more important now than having a bed or dresser that go unused.

So with more prims, more money, and a clearer vision, I headed out shopping to fix up my place. I settled on furniture from Ramos Designs, and bought a nice living room set and a few other items to give it a little variety. I’ve set it all up now, and I have to say I am really happy with it!

Here are some pictures of the interior, facing east, south, west, and then north.

Never one to miss out on an amusing fashion craze, Gaia joins in the fun of this weeks bug: cross-eyed avatars!

Even my pricey skin upgrade doesn’t totally fix the problem. Below you can see the difference between noon (ugh!) and sunrise (me so pretty!).

The reason I bring up this perpetual problem now is that I am wondering if a coming-soon feature called WindLight will help. WindLight is known to make pretty and very natural looking skies and clouds, but they also describe it as giving the general atmosphere a more realistic appearance. I’ve only seen pictures of landscapes, suggesting the atmospheric effect is only on the large scale (essentially creating haze). Still, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it somehow also eases up the severity of body shadows. I vote for looking sunrise pretty all day long!

I seem to be coming through mostly okay so far. On my main computer I get some funky flashing areas, but it’s still usable. My laptop works perfectly… unless I do something crazy like switch from a window to full screen (something that’s never worked well on most macs, but was previously okay on my laptop). By doing this, I induce something other Mac-people are seeing regularly: the texture tango. Textures are the images pasted on shapes to make them actually look like bricks, tie-dye, grass, or whatever. Some objects suddenly go black, while others take on some other random texture.

Doing my window/full-screen switch made half the world turn black, and Ava suddenly looked like a metal kabuki android. I wish I got a picture of it, but the proper textures came back before I caught it. I did get a pic while my hair and eyes were still missing though. Ava had become…

ZombAva!!!

Well, I’m off to go hunt down the living for a midnight snack!

Update: After reading up on the subject, it turns out I was confused about the problems with playing in a window vs. full screen. I’ve been using a window for months, and remembered that it was the less problematic way. It turns out that full-screen is the better way to go, at least in general. Now of course I remember I was just using the window so I could switch back and forth between SL and other programs. I guess I’m just lucky that it has worked so well this far.

I’m a Mac girl, and for once in my life I have enough free money to buy top of the line. I steered away from the Mac Pros just because they would take up too much room and I fear they may be sort of loud. I was going to get another Mac Mini, but then I saw that the iMacs had graphics cards that were more powerful and more likely to be compatible with SL. I decided to go for it, maxxing out every option:

• 2.33 GHz Intel Core Duo processor
• 3 GB RAM
• 750 GB hard drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM graphics card

It arrived last Tuesday, and I set it up that night. The first thing that struck me is that it was monstrously huge. It stood very tall, so that my eyes were even with the bottom third of it (they should be even with the top of the display). The screen itself was so big that I could see fading at the edges… meaning the viewing angle was too high, and that it really shouldn’t be viewed from up so close. But it’s my desktop! How far away could I get from it and still use the keyboard and mouse?!

Even worse, it is also very bright, so bright that I had to use sunglasses even on the lowest available setting. I have no idea why the current Macs can’t adjust the brightness all the way down to dark, but Apple seems pretty set on keeping it that way. Unfortunately even my third-party dimming software didn’t work well… mostly because the viewing-angle fading started to look weird and glowy. All in all it was eye strain city.

But then I got the really bad news. I went into SL. Textures loaded like lightning… I had always thought the slow texture loading was a server or network issue, but apparently not. I could see really far and in very high detail. Sounds good, right? Well, I started moving around, and that’s when it got weird. For some reason it was responding incorrectly to some types of mouse clicks, one of which was the camera controls. Every time I tried moving the camera around it did something I did not intend, plus it zoomed around much faster than it should have been… the end result being me getting quite sea-sick! The mouse thing also extended to inventory functions, in particular not actually selecting the thing I clicked on, but something else. So the camera motion is violent and unpredictable, and I can’t safely manipulate my inventory. Then I noticed the animations: everything was FAST!!! Not nice fast, mind you. Freaky fast. The one thing that just put the nail in the coffin was the trees… they’re supposed to sway gently in the wind, and mine were jiggling like jello!

So after some hard thinking, I decided that I just couldn’t live with this computer for the next several years. I can’t return it because it’s custom built, so I have to sell it, and with a thousand dollar loss. I’m pretty bummed because I was so excited about the new computer, and it was blazingly fast. And this is the first time ever I’ve gotten a Mac and not fallen madly in love with it.

Anyways, for now I’m sticking with my old-ish (16 month-old) Mac Mini, as it gets the job done without violently assailing me in any way. I’m not sure what I’ll do for the next one though… either a newer Mini, or I might try something new and get a Linux laptop. I’ve heard talk that the Linux version of SL is the best, but it’s still in alpha so I’m not sure how true that could be. Still, it would be fun to have something sort of different.

I’m not the first to get steamed over the 4×4 ad plots, and I certainly won’t be the last. Most people agree they are a blight, but the lack of zoning laws on the mainland means they’re not going anywhere. Unless you can pony up the thousands of dollars (in real money) Mr. Lee’s is charging for their purchase, all just to save yourself from staring at ads stuck in the middle of an otherwise pleasant view.

It’s been a couple of months now since my first exposure to these and the rest of the pervasive advertising. I’ve learned how to fix up a property to hide any ugly ads, and I’ve also learned to just tune them out. In the end they are a minor annoyance. I wish they weren’t there, but they are and life (second and otherwise) goes on.

Being a generally curious person, I naturally went online to dig up some background on Mr. Lee. It turns out I am woefully ignorant of virtual-world science fiction… hell, I can’t even remember the name of the guy who coined the term “cyberspace”. Anyway, “Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong” is one of a few large business franchises dominating the world in a novel called “Snow Crash”, which includes a virtual world like Second Life as part of the story.

Frankly I can kind of appreciate the humor of bringing Mr. Lee’s to SL. And as you can see, the ads are comedic and entertaining in their own way. They’re definitely better than the horribly explicit porn ads. And after a while, Mr. Lee’s familiar “I’m a stock photo” face kind of grows on you.

In the end, I feel ambivalent about Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong and its owner, Chrischun Fassbinder. I like the Freebie Warehouse, but I’m annoyed by the ads, and I know many of his neighbors are incensed about him using up all a region’s processing power with his camping chairs (more on “camping” later). There is just no easy answer on this one.

Anyway, as long as I’m giving him all this free ad space, I might as well give you the big welcome sign from the Freebie Warehouse. The text is good for some entertainment.

The Freebie Warehouse is a large mostly-open building with large crates lining the walls. Each crate can be “bought” for L$0 and is filled with ten, twenty, fifty, or even hundreds of individual items. Different crates contain different types of items, pretty much anything you could want in Second Life.

• avatars (body modifications)
• clothes, jewelry, wings, and other body attachments
• poses, animations, dances, and gestures
• food and drinks
• animals
• vehicles
• weapons
• buildings and building parts (doors, windows, etc.)
• lamps
• furniture
• plants and landscaping
• decorations
• gadgets and HUDs
• sounds and music
• vending machines
• textures

I’m not one to turn down a bunch of free stuff, so naturally I loaded up. But I have to admit there is one thing that makes it feel kind of wrong to me. It is provided by the company that has angered me from the day I first searched for land to purchase.

Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong!

Yep, the same company that sullies otherwise attractive land by sticking giant floating advertisements on tiny carved-out 4×4 plots. More in the next post…

But there is that alt avatar I created a while back. Suddenly I felt inspired, and now she is a fully-developed character of her own. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

Gaia Matova
Punk Couture Supermodel

Gaia started out modeled on Ava’s appearance, but then morphed into more supermodel type features: very tall, very thin, larger lips and eyes, broader shoulders, longer neck, and so on. She also has a less welcoming facial expression. Something a little more… well, bitchy looking. And her head is shaved, both for a dramatic everyday appearance and to make it easier to model different hairstyles.

Not surprisingly, Gaia has different needs than Ava. In her pursuit of supermodel status, Gaia needs:

• hair, skins, and makeup
• clothes, shoes, and accessories
• poses and animations
• photographic equipment (lights, backdrops, and special cameras)
• fashion magazines

Gaia will soon have her own web site to serve as her online portfolio. I will also be learning to use posing software so I can create custom poses to help distinguish Gaia from other models in Second Life. At least that’s the plan… not sure how well I will do at it!

Now I’m on the new host and have a whopping 200 GB of storage. I’m also running the standard version of WordPress, so I’ll be able to customize the appearance and some functions now. Altogether I’m very happy with the move. Now that it’s done.

I found a great store called Wave Labs in the Bora Bora Isles where they sell all sorts of recreational watercraft, waves, Hawaiian style huts, and basically all things aquatic. Among the things I picked up was an “old school” surfboard that includes some great surfing action and animations. Then some guy had to tease me about surfing in my clothes, so of course I had to go shopping for a cute swimsuit.

For the record, swimsuit shopping in Second Life? WAY more fun than in real life!

Not that it was that easy, though. The thing is most women’s swimwear that I found was just ridiculously porn-star in nature. Not that I object to being sexy in a virtual world, but I prefer it be in a more casual understated sort of way. In the end I found a fairly decent bikini at WiNK Go Hawaiian, and bought a matching outfit that adds more options like a tankini and bike shorts.

Here I am on my dock with my awesome new board. It’s nicely scripted so that I hold the board when I’m on land…

… then when I go in the water, it pops off and floats next to me. At the tip of the surfboard you can see the low-intensity “washing” waves I also picked up at Wave Labs. They really fit in nicely in the lake setting, and make soft surf noise as they wash up on the shore.

Once the board is floating, I can get up on it and surf away to my heart’s content. Like my swimsuit? That tiny little bikini bottom is seriously the most modest I could find! (By the way, you might notice the nice abs and glutes… those are from the Hybrid II skin I bought last week.)

I had such a great time that I kept surfing well after sunset.

• http://www.slexchange.com/

I first learned about it when looking for information about underwater living… it’s where I found the description and pictures of my aquarium house. Since then I have found it useful in a variety of ways.

(1) Shopping
As I’ve said before, the search capabilities in SL leave something to be desired. And browsing a category of products available from different vendors is just right out. This is where SL Exchange shines. A wide variety of SL vendors have listed their products here where I can browse categories, keyword search, or just let the featured products scroll by. I can see more information about each product, and skip between different products much faster than I could in-world. Products can be purchased here on the site, or you can visit the vendor in-world to see an item more closely. I definitely do WAY more business with vendors listed here.

(2) Currency exchange
I usually buy my Linden dollars through the official Linden exchange, but SL Exchange is also a good alternative. It does involve a couple extra steps (depositing money in accounts and then manually retrieving it in-world), but the exchange rate is usually a little different from the Lindex and so may be more advantageous for either buyers or sellers.

(3) Forums
Although there are forums on the main SL site, I often find the posts on SL Exchange more useful. There is also a nice feature on the home page where the last 10 posts scroll by so you can see what the current discussions are.

—

I use SL Exchange enough that I have added it to the links on the side. My only problem is that if someone sees my browser history, I worry they’ll miss the “L” in “slexchange” and think I’m exploring gender reassignment surgery!

Update (July 1, 2007): I’ve moved the Serenity pictures over to my new SL sightseeing web site Second Sights.

I had notified the casino guy about the sale just in case he was interested, and it turns out he was. He saved me a $35 land use payment due tomorrow, which I passed on to him for buying so quickly. And I am officially out of the big land owning business.

The skin includes better face makeup, shading, and eyebrows, so my face doesn’t get such a weird simian look in harsh lighting. It also has nice fingernails and toenails… check the french mani!

Although I won’t be including pictures of it, I now have an anatomically correct body. Not that I’m planning to show it to anyone, but it’s nice not being stuck with a featureless barbie-doll body anymore.

From the edge of the caldera. You can kind of see the steam on the water. In addition to the pine trees (couldn’t find actual sequoias), I’ve dotted some ferns around the property and put a few bunches of eelgrass in the pools.

The falls, which actually show a downward motion. I’ve also put a bit of steam at the bottom where the hot spring water runs into the cold ocean. For scale, you can see me standing in the falls about halfway up, next to a fern.

At night, when you can see the steam glow.

That’s me lounging on the rocks between the two pools.

I’m also finding that I’m not really interested in having some big permanent installation. I like having my little home on (and in) the lake, which is a good place for both privacy and entertaining company. Aside from that, I really like the flipping thing… buying a little place, fixing it up, snapping a few pictures, and selling it off. I’m just more into the creating part than actually living with it once its done.

So I’ve put the rest of Sequoia up for sale. I’m a little bummed to give up totally on my big dream, but as perfect as the property seemed, it just never worked out quite right.

It turns out my neighbor to the south has purchased it, and he’s already building something big. I think it might be a casino… either way, it looks really nice. And I feel totally relieved! Now I can spend time and effort doing the stuff I really enjoy.

That tiny little parcel I fixed up last night? I just sold it!

So I think I may stick with the whole flipping thing. It’s nice small-scale projects that I can complete in a reasonable time, and I really enjoy doing it. If I get one of my alts the $6/month account, that will give me an extra 512 m2 to hold one small property at a time for flipping. Since I’ve already made $3 (L$800) in two days, it seems it will both pay for itself and provide me with some inworld spending money. And with only one property at a time, it will never take up an inordinate amount of time. I will always be free to just sit back and do nothing, which sounds really nice right now.

Speaking of which, I really need to get to sleep!

So this is where I am:

• I have paid in about $3000 real money.
• I must pay $200/month, or lose the whole initial investment when my land is repossessed.
• I am considering an outright business, with all the trouble that goes along with that, for perhaps a whopping $60/month gross.
• I still have to actually do whatever it is I bought the massive property for in the first place.

I am totally stressed out, and I have to keep telling myself that it’s not necessary to try and make the money back in SL. In fact it’s a crappy way to make money. I don’t know why I keep obsessing on the idea.

And frankly, I started Second Life with the specific intention of NOT trying to earn money! I wanted to have fun. And here I finally got my dream of owning a huge plot of perfect land and ocean, and I’m completely miserable.

I keep toying with the idea of just selling the damn thing, probably taking a nasty loss. But it’s so hard to part with it. I spent hours this evening terraforming the land, getting it just right. I even made a volcano-ish mountain, although I filled it with water (maybe lava for halloween)!

So it’s been another late night, but before I signed out, I put up my super awesome aquarium house. I went in it and looked around, and thought “Yeah, so?”. The thrill is gone.

Feeling sad, I turned out the lights and went to bed.

And then got back up. I can’t even sleep because of this. It’s time to say goodbye to my big beautiful land. I went back inworld, did some calculations, picked out the parts I really wanted to keep, and subdivided that sucker. I cut out about 1/5 of it for me, with both the water volcano and a good chunk of ocean. It’s big enough for me to practice my building, and I can have a home somewhere on there too (and of course lots and lots of redwoods!).

So the new, streamlined Sequoia will cost me only $45/month. I have put the remaining 32,224 m2 on the market as a single parcel. With prices as they are now, I might very well sell it for a little more than I paid for that part of it. I will be sad to let go of it, but I’m also very excited about being carefree in the SL world again. And although I originally bought so much to protect myself from nasty ugly development all around me, the whole property-flipping thing has shown me that I can make anywhere in SL a nice place to live.

Last night I found a smaller than normal parcel (20×20 m) that was being sold at a low per-area rate. I checked it out and it was in a HORRIBLE neighborhood. Surrounded on all sides by massive advertising, mostly for porn and gambling. Oh, it wasn’t pretty.

But it was all I could afford, so I went ahead and started my little experiment. I wanted to start with just a small price increase: I bought it for L$4950 (about US $20) and priced it at $5450. If it sells, I will make a profit of US $2.

Now the thing is, I don’t like my name attached to crap. And I want my property to stand out, and be something someone would actually want to own. So I fixed it up! (It didn’t occur to me until this morning that this was a standard get-rich-with-real-estate ploy called “flipping”, but that is in fact exactly what I’m doing.)

I spent about an hour doing it, so that’s a lot of work for just $2. But it’s doing something I enjoy, and it’s good practice building and designing. I also enjoy the challenge of (a) using only free stuff to keep my costs down, and (b) making a nice home with such a small object limit (the smaller the land, the less objects you can have on it).

I put up the little 10×10 cabin and decorated it much like I had my original home. Outside I was able to fit a nice stone hot tub (with steam and bubble action that can turn on and off!), and a couple of nice wrought iron tiki torches at its front corners. I surrounded the open edges of the parcel with trees to hide the ugly neighborhood, and suddenly it was a really nice little property!

I had one potential buyer stop by just as I was finishing, then a neighbor wandered over and we all chatted for 30 minutes or so. The were both very nice guys, and well-spoken, which can be hard to find in Second Life. One even apologized on behalf of the men in SL for all the porn ads! They both also complimented me on the nice job I had done fixing up the place… feeding my ego, always a good plan.

The buyer was new to SL and wasn’t prepared for the high cost of real estate, so he wasn’t buying last night. I was a little bummed that he wasn’t biting, but only because I was so excited to make my first sale. It didn’t matter in the end though, because I enjoyed chatting so much with both of them. I offered them friendship and a landmark to my home, which they both accepted, so hopefully I’ll get to talk to them again sometime.

And the super cool part of this story… when I got home tonight, I checked and my property had sold! The funny part is that it got bought by someone who turned around and put it on the market for L$8000. At first I though they were crazy, but I saw that prices had jumped up a bit overnight, so maybe they know what they’re doing.

As for me, I’m a little uncomfortable buying when prices are so high (they’re 2-3 times what they were only three months ago), so I went small with my next property. It’s just 256 m2, and I kept the markup low so that it shows up near the top when people sort by price or price-per-area. The outfitting took about 30-40 minutes this time, and I think with some prep I can get it even lower. Even with only 58 objects to work with, I made a nice little place. I took the extra step of adding a picture to the listing this time, which I think will help draw potential buyers.

If this turns out to be successful, I think I’ll call it “Ava’s Pleasant Properties”. Sounds a little cheesy, but I think it might be the kind of thing that would make potential buyers come and look. Damn, I am so enterprising!

Because I’m still 25,000 m2 under the tier limit, this means I can own that much more before topping out. I am thinking of trying my hand at buying cheap land and selling it for a little more. Obviously it’s a gamble, but a mere L$20,000 profit would cover the US$70 tier difference. We’ll see how it works out. It does mean that’s one more thing I have to learn in Second Life… how to make a profit as a minor real estate investor in a world of giant land barons.

Groups:

• serenity vampires
• Serenity’s Kajira
• Club Serenity
• Resort Serenity Group
• Serenity Retreat
• Sweetest Serenity
• CLUB SERENITY—VIP’s
• Serenity Built Properties
• Serenity’s Vampire Clan
• Remembering Serenity Valley
• Serenity Labs
• Bartenders of Serenity Valley

Parcels for sale:

• Serenity Park
• Serenity Garden
• Sexual Serenity
• Serenity Islands
• Serenity Woods
• Serenity Plaza
• Serenity Park (another one)

And this doesn’t take into account all the land that isn’t for sale, like Serenity Falls (home of Creative Fantasy). Nope, it’s just too common, and I want something unique. Brainstorming starts now!

It looks so small from up so high, but it’s about 10 acres.

One sort of sad part of this is that the neighbors to the south (left side of the picture) have all banned visitors, meaning I can no longer sail a boat into the wide open ocean region to the south. Not a major loss… I tried it yesterday, and that sim is much slower than mine. (I believe mostly empty spaces run four regions on a server, as opposed to a dedicated server per region seen in most places.) Still, it seems just a bit unfriendly. I even talked to one guy yesterday who was very friendly, but today, not so much.

Map showing the region. Serenity is in green and pink, and other parcels for sale are in yellow. I’m probably going to sell off the pink parcel because it just pushes me over the limit for land use fees. Without it, tier fee is $125/month, and with it it’s $195/month. With all that I’ve got, that little extra isn’t worth the extra $70/month.

Serenity from the east, with borders outlined in green. You might notice a little person over the end of the dock in the middle… that’s me, floating about 300 feet above the water (just to give you a sense of scale).

From the west, borders outlined in green

Looking across Serenity toward the south. The ocean to the south can be entered (it’s not a void), but it appears to be protected land that will always remain open. Looks like an excellent place to go boating, if the parcels between Serenity and the ocean allow boat traffic across them. (I just saw a casino owner spending a very long time on them… I hope they don’t buy it, because the traffic will slow down our sim.)

Another shot looking east, this time showing the endless ocean view. The waters after the end of Serenity are actually a void… they look like ocean, but you can’t go there.

Looking across Serenity toward the north. Check out the nifty tree house!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Serenity!

Serenity is over half a sim of land and water, with 35,424 m2 and a whopping 8107 prim allowance. I am cringing over the money spent on it, which could have bought me a very nice new computer (which I still need anyway). But my god, it’s gorgeous and huge and absolutely perfect.

Well, almost perfect. One of the parcels was already sold, so the greater Serenity actually surrounds another parcel named “Ruby and Sally’s fuckin house”. They’ve even put up a ban so I see lovely red warning lines every time I get too close. No worries though, I’ll find some way of working around it. I don’t think they’ll be bad neighbors, I’m just annoyed by the red ban lines.

One especially nice thing about Serenity is that it’s built on the edge of the world. You can’t cross into the void, but the view will remain an endless expanse of ocean.

(Hmmm, I wonder if I can get an animation of my avatar rolling on a bed of cash…)

Anyway, I’ve written a month’s worth of experiences in only five days, and now I’m all caught up to the present. Post dates from here on should better reflect when the topic of discussion actually occurred.

Of course there is still that little problem of money. I have one more day of probation, but the land could be sold by tomorrow. Then it occurs to me that maybe the new alt account gets her own fund allowance… and yep, she does! Because she’s just a day old, she’s limited to spending US$50, but that’s enough for me to get the land. I got the money, transfered it back to myself, bought the parcel, and joined it to my first parcel.

Now Ava’s place is a nice square 1024 (32 m on a side) with a whopping 234 prims allowed! Okay that’s still not huge, but it will do for now.

For now I’ve joined two Mac groups, who I expect will be very helpful in dealing with SL software issues. I’ve also joined a pagan group. We’ll have to see how that one turns out… there’s a lot of variation in the pagan community, and I can easily imagine a group dominated by a few people who think their idea of paganism is the only right one.

Once I have funds I will talk to the current owner to see if I can get that strip added into the main parcels. The strip isn’t for sale at the moment, so I can’t do it myself unfortunately. Of course, they could already be sold by the time I get money… I checked back a day later, and one parcel is already gone.

One really nice thing is that I can zoom in close and see what sort of development already exists in the area. That saves me the trouble of teleporting to a place that totally isn’t worth it. The map also lets me see and avoid most of those nasty 4×4 advertising plots, because most of them are for sale too.

Searching in this way, I’m having a much higher success rate at finding decent land. Unfortunately, I’m still held back by my inability to purchase more Linden Dollars. I am counting the days until my probationary period is over!

Private estates (aka private islands) are regions that are wholly owned and operated by a private party (the estate owner), as opposed to the mainland which is operated by the Lindens (Linden Lab, the operator of Second Life). It’s very tempting to purchase land on a private estate, but there is a reason why it looks so nice: the covenant. Much like a CC&R in real-world real estate, a covenant provides rules for what you can and cannot do with your property. And just like in real life, this can be very nice… as long as the rules fit what you want to do with your land. The covenant can even bar you from re-selling your land, meaning all you can do is return it to the estate owner.

So it’s really a trade-off. You can be sure that the land around yours will always be attractive, but your own land use must fit in with someone else’s aesthetic as well. I’m not too worried about my future compound being considered ugly, but I have seen at least one private estate that bans underwater buildings (I can’t imagine why, but that’s the rule).

Another difference with private estates is that the land purchaser pays the ongoing land tier fee (often called “rent” in this case) to the estate owner rather than to the Lindens. That’s not a huge deal, but it does mean doing business with an unknown entity who may or may not be entirely ethical.

For now I’ve decided to stick to one of the mainland continents, mainly because I’m concerned with having the freedom to use my land as I want.

The only problem is that some of the people aren’t so nice. I greeted a guy who was checking out my house, and he just cursed at me and flew away. I’m not sure why, but I saw him later playing with a copy of one of the aquarium windows from my house. That’s very strange, because the house didn’t come with transfer permissions… meaning it is impossible for someone else to take or copy it. Impossible, unless they were using an illegal script for stealing things without paying for them. It would seem that in my effort to be friendly, I caught him in the act of stealing a copy of my house!

Finding the right place is hard, though, because SL doesn’t have very good search tools. When searching land sales, you can specify an upper limit for price and a lower limit for size. You can also select rating (PG or Mature), and the type of land (first land, auction, mainland, or private estate). That is all you have to narrow down a search. Not even keywords, at least in the land-only search.

The search results give a little info, like the location and description, but I’ve found the descriptions are often unhelpful and sometimes outright false. Some have pictures, but not all.

There is nothing like the information I want to see, like what the terrain is and how much of it is water. You can sort of see that by clicking on each listing individually and looking at it on the map, but that is a slow way to go when you want to see several parcels.

This deficiency in search abilities extends to other search types too. The options are too limited, and searches always bring up too little or way too much. As a person accustomed to highly-flexible database tools, this just drives me crazy. I’ve heard others complain about it too, so perhaps Linden Labs will give better search tools in future software versions.

The second difference is that the jetpack is visible to other residents. Do I look sharp or what?

My underwater house, looking at the front doorway. I didn’t bother to put a door there, as I’m not worried about keeping people out. You can see a batch of my fish on the left.

My bed and dresser. You can see me leaning against a pillow, reading in bed. That’s one of the poses from Pillow Talk, and it even includes the book.

Using another Pillow Talk pose. This one includes three different variations of lying on your stomach. I should mention that they (like most poses I’ve seen) are actually animations… the avatar makes little, natural motions rather than sitting there frozen.

A view of my underwater house from above. It’s the barely visible structure in the center of the picture.

My beach and dock. You can see my tie-dye deck chair out on the dock, with a nice pose pillow on it. The campfire under the trees burns, makes noise, and billows smoke. Both the log in front of it and the blanket next to it contain Pillow Talk poses, so there are lots of places to relax by the fire. There is even a pose on the end of the dock that lets you sit and play with the water (it’s invisible, so you have to figure out where it is to use it).

The green trees show the limits of my property… the short end of a long rectangle, most of which is extended out into the water. Christine’s place is on the left, with the palm trees and the cantilevered house.

Since I don’t have anything really private in my place, I’ve indicated that visitors are welcome. Privacy is really a myth anyway. Although there are security devices to keep avatars out of places, it seems the camera can go pretty much anywhere. I’m only a few weeks old, and I’ve already figured out how to peer inside buildings from quite a ways away. (There may be ways to block that, but I haven’t seen them yet.)

You might notice that the land on the right is quite empty. That’s another 512 plot that was sold just before I got mine. It’s possible that someone is just using it for its prim allocation, which can be contributed to other land owned by the same owner in the same region. Still, I should keep my eye on it… if it comes up for sale again, it would make a nice addition to my parcel.

I decided to hover for a little while below the clouds while I figured out what to do (short of heading somewhere else and teleporting back). That’s when someone named Krysss up in the clouds greeted me and gave me a “flight feather”. Still being new, I wasn’t able to chat and try a new thing at the same time, so I left it for later. That left me free to talk to him (I think it was a him), although I was still below the clouds and facing the wrong way to see him.

He explained that the feather would help me fly. I had heard of such objects before, ones that let you go to any height and hover there as long as you want. It certainly seems useful, and I thanked him for the gift. He then offered me friendship, which I accepted, so now I have two friends!

While chatting I indicated that I couldn’t see him (I could have if I tried, but it’s hard to manipulate the camera while typing out a chat at the same time). He said that if I saw him, I would be very surprised. I checked his profile to see his picture and just saw something like a giant sparkle, so I asked if he was a snowflake (he got a laugh out of that). If only I had bothered reading below his picture, I would have seen that what he is is an angel! And when I did finally get back on the clouds and saw him, I was indeed surprised… he was a pure white glowing body with giant wings about 30 feet across!

Once I got home, I gave the flight feather a try and found it wonderfully easy to use. It’s in what is called an HUD (heads up display), so when I wear it, I see a little feather in the corner of my screen with flight stats like altitude. Now I can fly all the way up into outer space, and hover there too if I want. This is a wonderfully cool little gadget, and I use it all the time. Looks like it doesn’t hurt to have an angel for a friend!

One of the things I noticed at Creative Fantasy was that some of the structures included poses not as hovering balls, but in pillows strewn about in a decorative and natural looking way. I checked the info about them and saw they were from a seller called Pillow Talk, so I made them my next destination.

This is so cool! The store is built on clouds way up in the sky, so it has a lovely heaven-y feeling. I had a great time trying out all the poses, and ending up buying around 20 of them plus a few furnishings. I even got sleeping bags to go with the campfire I bought at Creative Fantasy! Now I have what I need to actually relax at home.

For some reason, most designers put the poses in visible spheres, or “pose balls”. I understand that they are visible so people can see where available poses are located, but I find it very odd to see little balls hovering over every piece of sit-able furniture. (Some pose balls have a program that allows you to make them invisible, but they always seem to come back in a few minutes.)

Now I’m a peace-loving hippie chick, so that does not work for me. Although I enjoy Jay’s company, I obviously don’t belong in the group, so I have now left it. Jay and I are still friends, but essentially I am all on my own again. (Cue cheesy Eric Carmen song now…)

Now this is a store!

Creative Fantasy Home & Garden, in Serenity Falls

Creative Fantasy is a full two regions of beautiful homes and landscaping, all in a dream world created by one of SL’s top builders. It is spectacular and inspiring, and I ended up spending days there shopping up a storm.

And of course I am now the proud new owner of a giant aquarium house!

I started by digging some trees and plants out of my inventory. I’m still new at the whole building thing, so it took me a while to get stuff placed and sized to my liking. I put some trees back up against the cliff to hide it, and some clumps of beach grass around the property lines (not as a fence, but so I could easily see the borders of my place). I made a little dock and set my tie-dye deck chair out there, so I can sit and gaze out across the lake. Or, more accurately, at the house floating on the water immediately at the edge of my property! Oh well, it’s attractive, so it’s not really a bother. Besides, my computer isn’t very fast, so I can’t really see very far anyway.

Then I went down below to make my first underwater house. It wouldn’t be as fancy as the big aquarium house, but for now I just wanted something simple to start with. I found a nice little cabin in the batch of free stuff I’d received, and I put down a carpet, a bed, a little plant, and a doormat. It’s not the Ritz, but it’s home.

The texture on all my land appears to be plain rock, or perhaps sand. I don’t think I can change that, at least not here on the mainland (private island have different rules, and they can do it there).

After searching for several days, I finally settled on a nice little 512 on the southern continent. It’s on a lake, and while it is mostly underwater, there is a small beach too. It was selling for $15,000, a little high, but it really suited me. With a couple of clicks, it was mine. Finally, I’m a land owner!

Unless… Hmmm, maybe I could convince the owner to take it off the market until I can pay. From his profile I see that he’s into SL for fun, not profit, so it’s worth asking him. I put together a polite message explaining the situation and send it off to him. He’s offline, so I’ll have to wait for a reply.

Not for long, though. A reply was waiting for me the next day, and it was definitely promising. It turns out he sold his other property before he expected to, so he needs to keep this one for a while. He thinks he will sell it eventually, though, so tells me to check back with him when I do have the money. In the meantime, the property is off the market.

He is in fact a very nice guy. I wrote him a thank you note, and mentioned that I loved the tie-dye deck chairs on his beach. And you know what? He gave me a copy! Very sweet.

That’s when I found out about trading limits. Damn damn DAMN!!!

Turns out there is a fraud prevention measure, meaning new residents can only spend US$150 on buying SL money in their first 30 days. At this point I was just two weeks old, so the most I could get was about L$45,000. And another 16 days before I could get more. (It turns out there are other exchanges I could go to, but I wasn’t totally comfortable giving them my real life credit card number.)

So I don’t have enough money to get the land I want, and it’s likely to be long gone by the time I get more.

This is where I learned a sad lesson. Second Life is an imaginary world, but most of it is not a fantasy world. I found a few plots that looked okay on a map, but when I visited them, they were completely surrounded by horrible garish developments. And advertising everywhere! Tiny 4×4 plots had been cut out all over the place just for the sake of putting up a columnar billboard. They are ugly as hell, and I’m not going to shell out money to stare at them all day. Most are for sale, but for ridiculous prices (like $50,000 real money).

The more I look at the “land for sale” map, the more I see those nasty little ad plots, most of them owned by “Dr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong” (more on that later). It’s obvious I will have to put in serious effort and time to find something suitable.

And then boom, there it was. A lovely little 4096 plot, half of it in a deep river. A rare volcano on one side, and in a lovely neighborhood. I check it from every angle, and I’m in love. At L$130,000 (US$500) it’s a little more than I planned for my first purchase, but this is the one I want.

I need to get me some Second Life money.

Premium account (aka Membership)
$10/month or $72/year. You must be a paid member to own land. With membership you get L$1000 signing bonus plus a L$300/week stipend, and the right to own up to 512 square meters (m2) of land. That’s about enough to put a single-wide mobile home and a little landscaping.

Purchasing land
Just like in real life, land prices vary depending on various factors. Land that interests me tends to run around L$10,000 to L$15,000 per 512 m2 (that’s about $35-$55 at the current exchange rate). I could easily spend $500-$1500 (real money!) on a medium-large lot. This seems like a lot, but I can sell the land when I’m done with it, so at least some of it should be recouped (if I ever sell).

Land use fee (or Tier)
For any land you own in excess of 512 m2, you must pay a monthly land use fee. This ranges from $5/month for an additional 512 m2 to $195/month for a whole region (65,536 m2). For what I’m thinking of, I would probably be looking at $40-$75 per month.

… Nope, it ain’t cheap. But I really do want this, so I dive in and get myself the $72/year premium membership. Now I’m off to search for my first homestead.

An underwater paradise is possible, but I need a place to put it. Although Second Life is free to join, owning land means shelling out some cash. Substantial cash, if you want anything more than a teensy little plot.

So the question is, do I want it that bad?

I thought about it for a few days, and eventually decided that yes, I really did want it that bad. Time to pull out the credit card.

And I think I need to find a local chapter of Geeks Anonymous.

But I kept perusing the Google results just to see if I could find any more examples, and that’s when I found my ultimate dream house:

• Neptune’s Retreat

Oh my god yes, I WANT TO LIVE IN A GIANT AQUARIUM!!!

Here are more pictures.

L$4500, though… and I’ve only got L$250. Gotta do something about that.

How cruel could that be? I can breathe underwater, but I can’t put a home, plants, fish down there?! I simply don’t accept this. Please please please, all I want out of Second Life is an underwater lifestyle. Is that asking so much?

The walls were covered with pictures of clothing for sale, but none of it looked like my style. They are nearly all streetwalker clothes (sadly, just like the clothes being sold for young girls at a real-life Toys ‘R’ Us!). Since I’m really only interested in something casual and not grotesquely sexual, I just pass on these.

Other things for sale included pose-balls (more on those later), home furnishings, and tattoos (which can be removed in SL). But in the end nothing interested me, so I left empty-handed. I’m really hoping other stores are better than this one!

Linden dollars can be traded for real-life currency on an open market, with the exchange rate currently hovering around 270 Linden dollars for each U.S. dollar. Because of this, many people see Second Life as a potential source of real profits. As a result, many parts of the world are very commercial… everyone is selling something!

I received L$250 upon signing up, so I wasn’t completely broke. Just close.

Belonging to the group let’s you IM (instant message) the entire group, share resources, and other stuff. The very first thing I noticed is that I’m getting several IMs that I totally don’t understand! We’ll see how this goes…

Jay later teleported me to our local sandbox so we could chat a little more. He seems very interested in building things (at the time, a club for friends to hang out in), and he seems pretty good at it.

By the way, he had quite a laugh when I referred to him as goth. It turns out he was just trying out an avatar… most of the times I’ve seen him since then, he’s actually an animal of some kind. It’s a good thing people’s names are hovering over their heads, because I would never recognize anyone without them!

The land is open to visitors, so I explored a bit, and even lived under the waves for a while. Being new and unfamiliar with social customs, I wasn’t sure if it was really okay for me to spend so much time in the home of someone I didn’t know (totally not okay in real life, you know). I wanted to ask Obscuro, but he’s a very popular old-timer and I didn’t know if an impertinent request from a newbie would just annoy him and result in my being banned.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, thankfully. When I finally did get up the courage to ask him, he invited me to come by and hang out any time I want.

Since I wasn’t in the mood to engage in teenage chat, I just explored the Welcome Area. There were a few interesting things to look at, but mainly it’s just a place to dump the new residents. One nice thing is that it is next to a large sandbox, an area where anyone can “build”… create new objects, or drag existing objects out of their inventory and into the world. It’s a perfect place to check out some of the cool free stuff I got back on Help Island.

One of the very first things I learned, and quite by accident: I can breathe underwater! A dream come true for a water-loving Pisces girl, I instantly fell in love with Second Life and started fantasizing about the lovely underwater home I would eventually own. Flying is also part of the in-world physics, so I’m just all kinds of happy.

Before starting the tutorials, I flew off somewhere remote to edit my appearance. Remote because it involves being naked for all to see. Not remote enough, though… within five minutes some dimwit was ignoring my “busy” sign and repeatedly colliding with me in mid-air to get my attention. I tried flying away, but he kept following me. Since I didn’t know yet how to file a complaint against a misbehaving resident, I just had to log off and come back later. After that I made sure to do all my appearance editing underwater where the other newbies were unaware of my presence.

After establishing my “look” and going through the basic tutorials, I teleported to a help island to learn more before entering the full Second Life world. I spent several days there, gained some useful knowledge and experience, and got a bunch of free stuff! Once I felt sufficiently comfortable, I braced myself and teleported to mainland.

I’ve kept my avatar pretty but fairly low-key. She has relatively normal body proportions… not my body proportions, but not cartoonish with freakishly large breasts. The hair and makeup are simple and unobtrusive, and the clothes casual and modest (by Second Life standards). My everyday outfit is a tie-dye halter top with long loose-fitting jeans, and I pretty much always go barefoot.