absence due to....

I've had a couple of weeks of concern over a financial matter with LL.

I'm not prepared to say that I think there's anything actually wrong---but also not prepared to say that I know that everything is copacetic.....hence....silence until I know more.

(I suppose that many companies are experiencing changes in their SOP at the moment. Not that I actually can say that there's any change in SOP.)



((dull, eh!?!?)) :-(

Update on 'Weird Week'

In my late-September blog post entitled 'Weird Week', I mentioned an in-world IM from someone requesting me to buy land they didn't own.

(I may not have posted all the details here, though I did in the Forums.)

I had eventually gone over to the land, where I was immediately IMed by an avatar present there, who had the same name as the Owner name that came up on the About Land window. This person said that they knew the person who'd originally IMed me, and that this person was up to no good.

However, I'm still not sure if it was someone genuinely engaged in the business of fraud, or someone just hoping to stir up trouble.

Coulda just been a griefer.

In the Forums, someone made a thread complaining that they were being followed around by people harrassing them.

My own weird experience with that person who may have been a griefer (detailed in the "A Mystery" thread in RA) leads me to think that it's not just you well-known-in-SL folk who attract the occasional 'character'.

I'd suspect that there are some people in SL who spend all or most of their time going around and finding random people to poke with virtual sticks.And if the person yelps and makes a fuss----Funsies! (to the 'character', anyway).

When my own 'character' IMed a week or so after the events described in my thread, saying Stop Showing My Property, Someone Told Me You've Been Showing My Property, Stop Or I'll Report You, I'm sure they were hoping I'd send a reply filled with indignation and counter-threats.

(Of course the fact is that I don't 'show' any property I don't own. I don't even 'show' my own, really, other than answering questions people IM me with.)

But instead I just replied "I see".

And that was no fun, and the person left to find someone who'd be more responsive.

Long-winded way of saying----if the person who wrote that Forums thread about being harrassed is finding that people follow him/her around, then it seems quite possible that the person is doing something to encourage them to do so.

(Never feed a troll.)

Measuring a Land Parcel

People selling land in Second Life tend to try to make the parcels rectangular, because buyers like rectangular parcels. They're easier to understand, and that can make them easier to build on.

But that doesn't always work out. To name just one reason why a parcel may not be perfectly rectangular: it could border on a Linden Road, and thus have one irregular side. To make the number of square meters come out exactly to one of the Tier Limits (512m, 1024m, 1536m, etc.), it might be necessary to have some other non-straight-line sides, too.

To measure, you can right-click the ground and choose Edit Terrain. Clicking the ground again will make a small, 4m by 4m yellow square show up. Technically you could make a lot of these and add up all the 16-square-meters together, but counting individual 4 x 4 (16m) squares can be difficult because each disappears as the next is clicked, and it's easy to lose track.

A fairly quick way to be sure you've got the right length, along one side of a parcel, is to do the right-click and Edit Terrain, then do one click in a corner to be sure you've got the 4m by 4m width selected---but then to extend the rectangle (still 4m wide---be careful, it's easy to accidentally widen it to 8m) from one end of the parcel's side to the other. Then whatever number shows in the Edit Terrrain window---divide it by 4.That will give you the length of that side.

Advice to SL Newbies: Quiet Neighborhoods

Two things that might serve as indicators of a quieter sim:

1) PG, as opposed to Mature, status. (all mainland sims are one or the other--the designation is right next to the name of the sim). This isn't an absolute guarantee, but people who want to run XXX clubs are certainly going to put them on a Mature sim.

2) Lack of green dots (each indicates the presence of either an avatar or a bot). Pull up the Map when your avatar is in the sim of interest. If you see a lot of green dots, there may be a very active club or mall there. (Of course it's ideal to do this check at various points within 24 hours, as a sim that's very quiet for 20 hours out of a day may routinely be maxed out at 50 avatars or more for 4 hours of each day).

Burning Life

I've been enjoying my trips over there---some lag issues, but not too bad. From what I read on the Forums, though, lag has been really awful for many. Of course I haven't tried going to the musical/speechifying events, so that may be why I haven't had as many difficulties.

I'm wondering to what extent the word has gotten out about this to actual Burning Man attendees---is there something at the event itself, in Nevada, that tells people that Second Life has its own version?

I'd think that people who have already been there would have the deepest emotional response to the SL version.(Of course BM attendees are probably split between those who are more prosperous than the average person, and those who decline to participate in Society, and thus are much LESS prosperous than the average person. And that last group wouldn't necessarily be online...)

More on the shamelessness

I got another IM from the person tonight, making a lowball offer for another parcel I own.

I would guess that this person might have seen me lower the prices on the parcels in the first sim the other day, and might have formed the assumption that I might have tier coming due, and thus be desperate for cash.

Probably there are people who do that on a regular basis. The routine would be to notice an owner dropping a price, then IM them offering an even lower price. And probably this does pay off, for some percentage of those IMs---sometimes a lowered price IS a sign of someone desperate for cash.

I don't find such a pursuit exactly admirable, but at least it's not dishonest. It's not what you'd call noble, but on the other hand it's not unethical.

It's the fake 'oh, this would mean so much sentimentally to me, because of my dead acquaintance'----a claim which is proven false by the existence of other parcels for sale in the same location----that I find to be tacky as heck.

Shamelessness

The other day I got an IM, inworld, asking if I'd drop my price for a large parcel (above 18,000m).

I replied that I'd just dropped the price the night before, and would give it a try at that price (or give them a try--it's divided into several smaller parcels) for a few weeks. Which has the virtue of being the literal truth, on all counts.

So in a while the person sent me a second IM, telling me that the reason they wanted my parcel was that the sim just to the north---a Protected ocean sim---had a name that was the same as a deceased person they'd been close to.

...........................Gosh, well, in that case, of course I'll sell it to you below my cost!!!!

...

Of course my response was 'I'm sorry for your loss', but-----no price drop.

Because: THERE ARE SEVERAL PARCELS UP FOR SALE THAT ADJOIN THE PROTECTED SIM IN QUESTION.

So, no: it's not the case that *sob* the only way this person could honor the deceased would be *sob* if they could buy my parcel.

Honestly.

...

I gather, from song and story, that people who do this sort of thing have no qualms of conscience whatsoever---if you can fleece the rubes, you've WON WON WON!!! That's the way they think.

May their karma come upon them!

The Marble Floors of Bay City

Actually I don't know that they have marble floors in Bay City. But the surprise of seeing people bidding L$75/meter and up for a small parcel that's up for auction today, induced me to dream about the place.

In this dream, a woman posting on the Second Life Forums wrote that she was going to 'go for it' by bidding in the auction, because of the fact that Bay City houses have marble floors that are unique in NOT being textures, yet not counting against your prim count. In the post she described how beautiful these floors are, and how they are made up of individual prims that you can copy and use for other things.

In actuality (as opposed to dreams), I doubt that everyone who buys a parcel in Bay City gets a house, let alone a marble floor. I've been over there only once. I guess the appeal is that you're not at the mercy of your neighbor's taste----no giant pink phallasus in your neighbors' yards, etc.

But as far as getting a house---it does make me wonder. If you buy a parcel there, are you then required to either have the building skills to make a house that fits the sims' restrictions, or to have the money to hire someone to build one for you?

Maybe I should go in and check. And look around for marble floors, of course.

Weird Week

Among the things keeping me busy this week were some communications that might have been perfectly legitimate, or might have been 'people making a living' at fraud.

First was a request to hold some land I have up for sale. I've held land for a couple of days (by putting it up for sale to one avatar-name only). Because of a combination of unusual events, I agreed to hold a piece for two weeks. I'll never agree to that again, even if this works out well.

At any rate, the next day I got a very odd unsigned notecard asking me to buy land.

(And this, and all that follows, could be completely unrelated to the first thing. Or, it could be that the first thing told someone 'this is a potential sucker', and all that followed was authored by that same person, or members of that person's group.)

That's all I'll say now, as regardless of how it all turns out (and I have no money at risk, other than the potential represented by the two-week's hold on the sale of that one parcel)---it's got a lot of plot potential!

A nice compliment

Last week I bought a hillside parcel, and decided to make a couple of 1024m's with flat areas at top and bottom--the idea being that buyers could have a house at the top and maybe a pool or garden or what-have-you at the bottom.

So, on the fly, I built a stairway of 'brown concrete' in a bracket shape, so that avatars could walk up and down between the levels. I made a 10m by 10m block at one of the corners, and put a free helicopter there, as I thought it fit in nicely with the 'living on a hilltop' theme.

Well, a few days after it sold, I was flattered to see that the new owner was keeping the stairway construct--though he or she had removed the copter and fenced around edges of the 10 x 10 area to be a sort of patio (which is logical).

Now I kind of wish I'd linked to prims and taken a copy (though of course it would need to be radically adjusted for each particular hilltop situation in each particular sim).

Fun to make something and have someone like it!

Up in Tier, Again

Yes I Did.

(If they [the Linden people] could bottle and broadcast the essence of what makes me do that....well, they'd be richer than they are now.)

^_^

Another Forum Promo

Yes.....my earlier post about having lost Inventory items turned out NOT to be a one-of-a-kind situation---others have posted about it, in the last couple of days, on the Second Life Forum (in the Residents Answers section).

There were some practical suggestions (about which sims in which to open the Inventory that seemed to have lost Objects), as well as a notice that the loss-of-objects experience may change, as the Powers That Be are working on a fix.

So...that was good.

Also: This same folder or section of the Forum message board has, as it often does, a thread for discussing the virtues of the Forum as compared with various Unofficial SL message boards. And that's good, as it gives those unfamiliar with the Unofficial sites some clues as to what they are like.

My main thought about all this is: WHY CAN'T I HAVE 50 HOURS IN EVERY DAY SO I COULD CHECK OUT ALL THIS STUFF!?!?!?!?!??

Kindly message-boarders

A bit over a week ago, I logged in to Second Life to see that the Linden Road that runs through my property had been paved. Now, ultimately this could be good, in a business sense, if I ever get my Shop up and running, as (theoretically) people flying around at random tend to follow the Roads, as a way of avoiding ban lines. So in that sense, I'm grateful.

But more than that, I just get a kick out of the nicely-done detail work on the road---the cracked edges with pink showing, as in real roads in the American South that have been made with red Georgia clay as part of the amalgam.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, I was so pleased and enchanted when I saw it that I decided to make a Forum post----even though I knew that, like most message boarders everywhere, the Forum regulars were prone to being cynical about the company running the board.

Maybe the fact that I said in the opening paragraph that I expected to be flamed for brown-nosing, helped ward off flames. Or maybe it was just the case that some kindly non-cynics happened by. But there were several responses, none of which made aspersions about the color of my nose.

So that was good!

Too busy to read, lately

Now that I've gotten involved in this 'make my tier by land trading' thing, as much fun as it is, I'm spending less time trolling the Internet's most popular Second Life-related sites.

And I'm missing out.

Why, just today, by giving New World Notes a few minutes, I learned that there are TWO 'Sarah Palin''s---at least---walking and flying around SL.

(Yikes!)

Longest Time Without...

Yesterday morning I awoke to no cable TV, no cable Internet. So, no Second Life.

Fixed now.

But I'm pretty sure that this is the longest I've gone, since registering, without Going In.....I'm amazed at how upsetting it was.

Yet I don't seem to fit the 'addiction' profile, as the most I've ever been in within a day is about 4 hours, I think. And I do still go to my job and attend to family needs...

So, I'm not going to worry about it.

(but it certainly was upsetting to be without!)

How Embarrassing!

Normally, when bidding in an Auction on the SL website, I make sure I refresh the screen past the end time, so that if I think I've won the auction, I confirm that's the case.

The system accepts bids up to some point that I haven't yet determined. The exact 'last second' that a person can click the Submit button, and expect it to register, is basically a trade secret among those who buy land on the Auctions. (What may complicate the situation is that that exact second may differ according to where you are....this information would be very difficult to ascertain with any certainty.)

At any rate, today I was bidding on four properties. For one of them, I got the 'you've been outbid' message about 30 seconds before the close of the auction, and decided not to try to re-bid. Of the remaining three, I seemed to win all three.

But in all the excitement, I must have neglected to click Refresh on one of them, post-expiration time....because I was certain I'd won it.

(And as I found out later, the winner must have made his or her winning bid within the last 3 or 4 seconds of the Auction.)

Sadly, being certain that I HAD checked all three post-auction, I proceeded to set one of the parcels up for sale. By the time I was finished, there was no way of finding out, online, what the Bidding History had been---from what I could see, the fact that someone else was in possession of the second parcel (the second one I'd intended to set up, if that's clearer) was some kind of glitch.

((After this experience---I wouldn't have had to call the LL Concierge line [first time I've done that] if there WERE some way for me to see the Bidding History. I wonder how expensive a change it would be to keep this Bidding History viewable to all those who had actually bid, for (say) 3 hours or so? Well, just a suggestion...))

Since I couldn't find out what had happened any other way, I did end up phoning, and speaking to a courteous person using the phone name of "Molly". I was very embarrassed to learn that the fault had been mine---that apparently I'd neglected to Refresh the 'confirmation of winning' page. I'd apparently gone by the 2-or-3 seconds-from-expiration screen.

At least I won't make that mistake again!

Underpriced?

Last night someone from a group with Realty in the name bought a bunch of land from me, in a sim I'd bought five days before. Which might be an indication that I'd underpriced the land, or on the other hand might be an indication that the buyer either had inside knowledge that someone in the sim would pay well for the land, OR that the buyer is simply more optimistic about the attractiveness of the land, than I was.

The same buyer---perhaps having formed the judgment that I'm in the habit of underpricing land---bought some more parcels from me in another sim. Those parcels had sat un-bought for a full month. I dropped the prices, again, five days before this buyer paid for them.

So from that evidence alone, the conclusion that I'd over priced them five weeks ago, then underpriced them six days ago, might seem reasonable. But the price drop wasn't all that dramatic--a matter of less than L$1.50 per meter.

Difficult to draw firm conclusions---just as in real-world real estate wheeling-and-dealing, no doubt.

In general, I do tend to price things on the low side. Mainly this is to compensate for the fact that I don't have a marketing system in place, and can't afford to charge as much as those that do.

Well, it's all interesting.

(What a wealth of data there is, in Second Life, for the economics researcher!)

Inventory Still Lost....

Last night I spent nearly an hour organizing my Inventory (something that had needed doing for quite a while---when I fix up a water parcel, for instance, it's SO nice to have all the items I like to use in one folder, instead of scattered in different folders).

I was also hoping to see something that would help me figure out what had happened to those 1,000 or so items that disappeared on Sunday.

But....no. I'd thought that maybe it was All Duplicates that had vanished---that Linden Lab had just pruned everyone's Inventory.

If so, there was nothing about it in the first couple of pages of Resident Answers--and surely people would have been buzzing about it, even if the official word was that discussion of the phenomenon belonged in some other part of the Forum..

Also, there are still some duplicates in that Inventory. So that's not the answer.

???

Undersea House

Last night I indulged myself in the fun of building, and made a two-room house for underwater use.

Underwater...mainly because it has circular rooms, which I guess I identify with sci-fi depictions (such as SeaLab 2020 and even other less-cheesy shows), and because the roofs over the rooms glow a bit (I didn't use Glow, which I know can be hard on people with older graphics cards---but the texture-and-color IS very visible through a few feet of Linden water).

I DO need to finally learn something I've been meaning to learn for weeks--how to make sliding doors. I'm sure that anyone living in an undersea house is going to want to be able to shut out any passing sharks and whatnot.... (^_^)

Anyway, I have quite a few water parcels up for sale. Potential buyers may not have thought of the possibility of having a pad-and-tiki-hut-and-palm-trees above, AND a house underneath, lodged in the 'oceanfloor'. But having a few up, as examples, might generate some ideas in those who come to see the parcels....

Parcel-Making, and Lost Inventory

Yesterday I moved ahead in tier again.

Now, before a certain development today, I'd have said this was a gamble worth taking. After all, if I'm willing to work hard at carving up large parcels into saleable sizes (meaning, generally, sizes that are right at the Tier-Limit amounts), and am willing to make less than one Linden Dollar of profit per square meter---then, if I put enough time in, then in any given month I'd make up for the extra tier I'm paying, as well as, possibly, make a smallish profit.

But of course this depends on a steady supply of land that I can buy for at least fifty Linden cents-per-square-meter LESS than I can sell it for.

There was a bit of an orgy of US Dollar parcels up for sale in the past few days. I will admit that this influenced me. Today--none in the offing.

More disturbingly: to buy a parcel today, yet stay under my new, larger tier limit, I needed to sell a bit under 2000 square meters quickly.

Always before, when I dropped the price of land below a certain per-square-meter figure, it would sell instantly (to bots, of course).

But the bots have apparently been reprogrammed. Supply is too large and demand too small for their old 'buy anything at this price' figure. The new figure will be a smaller number.

So...anyway. Since I did take the plunge, and have to cover that tier, I'll have to buy anything and everything that might make me as little as a quarter of a Linden Dollar per square meter.

Luckily I enjoy the process of carving up a big piece of land into saleable chunks. Doing it on dry land has become fast and routine. Doing it in deep water is somewhat more challenging, as I can't see what I'm doing as a whole---just the bit that Camera can show me.

The worst is shallow water, though. Then, I'm always fighting the Camera.

Still, it's interesting. And it's work that I have to commit to until my next tier payment, at least (when I could go down in tier if the market keeps going downhill)..

With all this flurry of activity, I haven't gotten around to working on my Inventory....but it would appear that either a Glitch or some other agency has gotten around to it for me---when I looked today, it was over one thousand items down!

I didn't even have time to see what was missing....hope it's something I can easily replace.

Classified Conumdrum

I've bought, if I remember correctly, two Classified ads prior to the one I bought today.

One was for parcels in a sim, all of which sold out over about 4 weeks.

The other was for parcels in a sim, NONE of which have sold---or had any traffic to speak of---in the period dating from the purchase of the ad.

Which may very well go to show that I need to improve my Classified-writing skills (KEYWORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) or that I paid too little for the ad or that it just happened to be a week, this summer, in which not a lot of folks were looking over the Classifieds.

Anyways, today I invested L$1200 (!!!!.....in the neighborhood of five bucks, US$) in an ad for the parcels I bought day before yesterday. These would be the ones for which I paid L$10.70/m or so. (Yikes!)

But these parcels are somewhat rare: at the edge of a continent. So that the buyer would NOT be dependent on the kindness of strangers, but could reasonably expect clear, unobstructed vistas, for as long as SL may endure. Which is surely a few months longer ((KIDDING, I kid! Could be MANY months longer!...........................of course I, and many others, ardently hope that it will be for Years longer.)

So, hence, therefore: the expenditure of around five bucks, US, to advertise said parcels, in all their rarity.

We shall see if that was a smart or foolish purchase......

Up to the Limit

Today I finally came within a few hundred square meters of my Tier limit. And if one is paying that much tier, of course it makes sense to keep the property running through, at as near to that limit as possible.

Maybe this will all work out with me paying back the credit card charges as well as tier.

Or maybe not.

Of course I get enough pleasure out of this to make some shortfall---otherwise known as 'average I pay each day for the enjoyment I get'---reasonable and acceptable.

But I'd rather make a profit.

(surprise!!)

Embarrassed Correction

I keep meaning to mention this:

Some time back, I was complaining about how some new innovation of LL resulted in the loss of the function: click 'f' to fly, and how annoying that was.

Of course that turned out not to be true. What had happened was, somehow (I'm not sure how--accidentally clicking 'c' and 'alt' or some other combination of keys, no doubt) I'd activated Chat.
And with Chat activated, clicking 'f' means........you've typed an 'f' in Chat.

So in that state----arrived at accidentally----I also needed to accidentally get OUT of Chat, and then I could, again, click 'f' to Fly.

Me be dumb.

*sigh*

More Inventory Guilt

I need more time in Second Life.

I enjoy everything I do there---main categories being the land-sale-work (including flying around looking at land, preparing it for sale, and goosing it up when it doesn't sell right away...^_^); the building of things (houses, waterfalls, streams, fountains, basic low-prim furniture, and sculpture, so far); sightseeing; and basic playing-around (driving vehicles on to-be-auctioned sims, for instance).

And I do try to find time, in all that, to winnow my Inventory down.

Over the weeks I HAVE deleted many things (and moved some things to storage prims). I've probably removed four or five thousand items.

But....THAT'S NOT ENOUGH!!!!!

So I need to stop doing something else I enjoy, and instead work on that there Inventory, which just topped 8,000 items (yes, I do know that many people carry around more than that......but.)

That, or win the lottery, so I have more time to spend inside SL.....

Not very observant...

Three days ago I finally noticed something that had probably been there since...well, possibly a week earlier.

And this something should have been obvious: a fair portion of the as-yet-unbuild Linden Road had been 'flooded', effectively joining my land on both sides of the road. The west side has my ocean access, and I had (when I first acquired it) made channels of that lovely Real Water come up around the buildings I have there. The east side has the waterfall-with-stream I made from prims; it ends up in a pond that is mostly prims, but that has the trickle of Real Water at the bottom, that I was able to get by lowering the land as far as it would go.

I'd lavished a certain amount of care on all this (and had gotten a compliment from another sim resident, which was very nice to receive).

So I'd kind of like to believe this scenario: when a Linden responded to my August 20 Abuse Report about the ad-farm-extorter (which is detailed in another entry of this blog), that person saw the water-on-both-sides-of-the-road set-up, noted that these installations were owned by one Resident, and so decided to put a sort of stamp of approval on the whole thing by extending the Real Water across the Road. (By lowering that bit of land, of course.)

Of course this might not be what happened. Or it might have happened, but not for the reason I'm imagining.

It might be some....I don't know, random act of kindness?

In any case, I was quite happy when I saw it. I mean, I know I can't count on it staying that way---when they finally get around to building the Linden Road in that sim, they certainly won't leave the road flooded that way.

But for now it looks cool---the people who designed the water in Second Life have a lot to be proud of, as it is gorgeous---and I really enjoy it. (Plus, surprises are fun!)

Promote?

By coincidence, the well-known Second Life blog New World Notes was soliciting people's news about their own blogs, about a month after I started this one.

So I went ahead and submitted the information.

But other than that, I haven't promoted this. I believe that there's a place to do it on the SL Forum, and maybe elsewhere on the official SL site.

I don't know---when I got into SL and realized I really wanted to commit to it, I thought I'd be getting a shop up and running as soon as I could---and that when that day arrived, would be the time to promote the blog, which would, in turn, promote the shop.

But I got distracted by other interests---the trading in land, the creation of graphics, the Forums themselves.....

I do still plan to open a shop----as the weeks go by I do end up creating more Objects that would be suitable for sale. I'm just not creating them quickly enough to fill a shop, since the time I have to devote to SL is limited, and I do have all these other interests.

Also, when I get around to promoting the blog, I'd like it to be a little more systematically filled with information useful to newbies (a major impetus for my doing the blogging, at all).

Well, time will keep on slipping past---so I'd better prioritize this.....

As Good As Their Word

The Linden Lab people, of course: They responded to complaints about falling land prices by saying they'd restrict the supply, and so they have.

It's interesting to watch auction parcels that were selling for around L$5/m---water ones---now going for twice that. (There are still a number of landlocked parcels-surrounded-by-floating-ads that are receiving no bids at all. That won't change unless that's ALL that's on offer, probably....)

It's interesting to watch. Especially for economics students, one would think: if professors aren't adding Second Life to their syllabi, they are missing a great teaching tool.

Skybox Spy

...I don't set out to be a Skybox Spy.

But as I've posted here, I'm very irritated with the all-too-frequent experience of calling up a sim's name on the Map, then using the Teleport button--and ending up trapped inside a shop.

And the shop isn't always in the center of the sim, either, which has raised my suspicions that the Fix is In in some way (either the shop owner has paid a fee to have their shop be the default teleport spot for the sim, or the shop owner is a friend of a Linden).

I could very well be wrong about that---but it happens so often that I can't help wondering.

I should say that the reason I might be typing a sim's name into the World Map and teleporting, is the very minor trading in land that I've been using to pay my tier. I'm not just spying around for the sake of it....

...But I end UP spying when I do what I've been doing, so as to avoid the Trapped Inside Shop factor: I double-click at random at some other place (other than the center) of the sim. If there's water in the sim, generally I choose that to double-click on.

And a surprising percentage of the time, I've been landing in skyboxes.

I don't look around, even if there's no one there. Am I too much of a Goody Two-Shoes for words? Very possibly. But the fact is, I don't feel comfortable looking around, so I don't.

But in spite of the good karma this disinclination to snoop should be buying me, frequently I have just as much trouble getting out of the skybox as I'd have getting out of a shop.

(Okay, it IS funny......)

Too Much Message-Boarding

I guess I should think about why I've wanted to be on the Forums a lot in the past few days, and deal with it. I mean, I was brought there by my search for information on various practical topics. (And I'm grateful for the help I've gotten.)

But yesterday I got into a thread about depictions of 'sexual age-play'---the OP was in favor. And several others (well, ostensibly they are several others---they could all be the same person, using alt accounts!) have chimed in to support this position.

Personally I think LL did the only right thing, in banning it. It was bad for business, as well as being ethically very, very icky (yes, even if everyone involved is an adult).

So the thread's point is actually moot. The OP is just scolding LL for having taken the action they did.

Anyway, the better path would probably have been to just read and not post, since getting into a position of disagreement with some posters was inevitable.

But, what the heck. I do hold the opinion that this practice is morally unattractive, and might as well say so. (Those who support the practice would hardly be shocked at learning that some people disagree with them!)

Another Danger of Being Away

I wasn't away all that long--about 2 1/2 days, this last time. But someone had bought one of my parcels (Great!) but had had trouble with an object left on it, and had IMed me, and didn't get a response for over 2 days (NOT Great).

I'm still somewhat mystified about that, as in the past, when people have bought parcels from me---even parcels in which I've clicked the Include Objects in Sale option---all the objects have come back to my Inventory. (I need to find out: what's the point of that option, if the objects just come back automatically anyway?)

Anyway, in this one particular case---one of the VERY few periods since I registered with Second Life that I've gone more than 24 hours without logging in---the person was plagued with a wave that they couldn't edit (to make Phantom) or remove. So they'd both IM'ed me and sent me a notecard, frustrated, no doubt, with my non-response.

I'm embarrassed about that, but, luckily, the person was nice about it when I explained (and of course, removed the offending wave).

This is another item for the list of Things I Want To Find Out About: why was this one particular object different from all other objects I've left on parcels up for sale?

As far as guaranteeing I'll never again be gone for as much as 2 1/2 days---no, I can't do that. So another thing I should find out is: is there a way to leave an "Away For A Few Days" message? Maybe on my profile, some way?

Gotta check on that.

Results!

I had several days more away from home--so no blogging, and no Second Life.

But on my return I was happy to see that the Group-owned 16m parcel's extortionist sign had been taken down.

I believe this all happened when I had only very limited time on the computer; the last I'd mentioned was that the parcel in back of my pond (which had been four 1024's originally, I think) had been cut up into 512s-minus-16m's. And these are not along a road (though a road was nearby).

I still think I shouldn't have sent that first Abuse Report, because the giant green neon sign wasn't up, yet, on the L$62/m parcel.

But when I next came inworld, there it was!

And the obvious nature of the extortion attempt was that the same group owns several of the 16m parcels made from the 4096m-or-so original parcel----but ONLY the one that directly backs on my build had the thirty-foot-plus-tall neon-green For Sale sign on it.

So apparently the Linden who looked at my second Abuse Report (with snapshot of the sign) agreed that the person was not, er, conducting legitmate business.

But, you know, there must be quite a number of people who spend their entire time in SL doing this: looking for not-too-expensive parcels next door to parcels with builds that would be impacted by Giant Neon Green Signs; buying and carving up those parcels; changing the per-meter price from L$5/m to L$60/m or L$80/m or such, and then sitting back and collecting the nuisance-payments.

After all, a lot of parcel owners probably DO just pay the five bucks (US) or so, just to have it over and done with.

And since the ad farmer paid only the equivalent of about a quarter-dollar (US) or so for that parcel, it could add up.

Really nasty. How do they justify it, in their own minds? I mean, if someone has a computer and high-speed Internet connection---and how could they be in Second Life otherwise?---then they're not Starving, or Needing to Feed Their Starving Children. So THAT can't be the justification.

I just can't imagine the mindset that would find this sort of thing to be fun. But clearly such minds ARE present in SL.

Anyway, the whole ad-farm phenomenon has been hashed out ad (!) nauseum wherever SL residents gather to post, but I did find it interesting both that the ad-farm-extortion attempts do continue to take place, and that Linden Lab is responding to reports about it. And I'm very grateful for the latter.

Not Yet Abuse

Well, I do think now that I ought not to have filed that Abuse Report, just because someone had cut out 16m parcels and priced them at about L$62/square meter.

When I'd done price checks of Mainland parcels in the past, the highest-priced 16m parcels I'd seen had been around $50/m. But just last night, while flying around looking at parcels to be auctioned, I'd seen a 16m in another sim that was above $75/m. So maybe prices have gone up that much since I last checked.

However, if a glowing spinning neon ad-block goes into any of those spaces (or flashing lights or persistent sound-effects, or anything else calculated to annoy)----then it will be time to Report Abuse.

(And, I think, apologize for having jumped the gun, yesterday.)

How Quickly Addiction Takes Hold; Ad Farm

I had to be away from computers (except for a couple of minutes here and there) for two days, and naturally had no Second Life. I certainly wasn't thinking about it every moment, but I did miss it: it's become a relaxing part of my daily routine that I really enjoy.

On my return I had the little 'up' that comes from seeing another piece of property has sold---that was nice.

I'm still trying to find my way with the wisdom--or lack of same--of having gone up to full-sim tier level. It could all pay off (in the sense of financing my tier, even if not of making an actual profit). But clearly I have a lot to learn.

I did file my first Abuse Report---some property adjoining mine has been sold yet again, this time being carved up into some 16m parcels and some slightly larger others. The 16m parcels are set at about L$62/square meter. Clearly that would be Ad Farm Exploitation if big ol' revolving neon signs are put up...so I may have jumped the gun in reporting, since they weren't up when I made the report. (I guess I was just shocked.)

I did make clear that it's an exploitative price, but that no nuisance is yet in place (though it may be by the time I go back in---the person might just have subdivided the land and just not yet had time to put up any nuisance objects. Well, we shall see.)

Anyway, it's all interesting. The human drive to profit can take some rather unethical forms, without a doubt.

Answers from the Forum

I ventured into the Second Life Forum to ask about the persistent Group Invite I mentioned yesterday, and got some good information in return.

I know from experience that getting established on a message board can take a while, so I was grateful to the people who responded. There's always that tendency to 'wait and see' with a board noob. (For that reason, the odds are that for a while I'll be more likely to get responses to explicit requests for information, than to observations or general remarks. That's just human nature, in its Internet manifestation, anyway. ^_^ )

I'm continuing to be interested in the selling of land. Yesterday I sold a good amount. But it's an unpredictable biz.

(I would benefit from reading the SL Forum threads on the topic---I've read a fair number, but not recently.)

What is LL Getting for This??

In the past week or so, whenever my avatar touches the land (or air over) the Linden Road, I get a VERY persistent Group Invite. It keeps coming back, after I click Decline, time after time after time.

I'm just curious what people---those hoping to get residents to join their groups---pay for this service.

It's REALLY annoying. Even if the group were one I'd ordinarily WANT to join, I would decline, to stand up for the principle of NOT rewarding annoying ads.

!!!!!!

Rational or rationalization? (HINT TO MARKETING!)

So I've gradually been moving up in the tier I pay to Linden Lab. And this weekend I moved up to the full-sim price, $195.

I was first attracted by the prospect of being able to create things in a 3D environment. And that remains very compelling for me.

But to create some of the things I wanted-buildings and waterfalls-with-stream-and-pond, for instance---I needed more space than the 512m parcel I'd originally bought.

So I went up in tier (eliminating other monthly recreational expenses to finance the expansion).

Then I decided I might as will try to finance my expenses with the sale of land, as that's a faster return than I could expect by selling objects I'd made. Not that I've given up on making objects-I continue with that, as well as with the construction of my shop. Eventually, when I've purchased classified ads, started promoting this blog (which takes time and effort), created a website to promote the shop, etc.----then I might start to actually sell objects.

But in the meantime: land.

The title of this blog post is not facetious: I think that the story outlined in this post COULD be typical of thousands of prospective new Second Life residents, IF SL would deign to advertise so as to attract people who (like me) would find the whole SL experience compelling in a way that translates into the--you know--transfer of Lots of Money to LL. As has been the case for me.

More anon.

Treacherous Cylinders

Well, not in a 'consciousness' sense. But in a 'when you reverse them you can't go by the numbers' sense.

I've taken to heart the advice that when you build items containing several prims, and you want them to fit together nicely, you need to look at the Position numbers to make them sync, and the Size and Rotation numbers to make things symmetrical.

And that's worked pretty well, so far.

But in the process of making a Cyliner, hollowing it, and Path Cutting it to make a nice little scoop shape.....and then Hold-Shifting to copy it, and then turning the new one around so that they make a symmetrical facing pair---the numbers fall apart to some extent. Because the Center of the rotated piece doesn't match the Center of the original piece.

So in making a nice bench, with these facing Cylinder-parts as the sides/legs, I've had to rely on my eyesight. Which is fine. But, as is notorious, perspective doesn't work identically in Second Life as in First Life.

Oh well. It's frustrating....but also fun to futz around with it all....

The Attention Required of Vendors

I tried to buy a tree last night from an interesting-looking shop. At first there was no response at all; I walked around and looked at other items. When I came back and tried to buy another tree, I got one message from the new attempt that I didn't have enough Lindens (and believe me, I had plenty), and another message, evidently from the first attempt, that my purchase attempt had gone "stale".

So I left, and bought the trees from someone else's shop.

Now, it may sound as though I'm in a snit. Actually, I'm just busy. I didn't have the spare time to figure out who to IM and write and IM to that person and wait for an answer.

So there was really no emotion involved here. And that's what people who want to sell things need to understand: if your shop isn't set up correctly, or if something goes wrong and you don't check on it and fix it, you will lose sales.

Practically speaking, I probably won't go back to that shop again. And again, that's not because I'm in a snit....it's because my time inworld is short. So I'm much more likely to go back to places in which I've successfully transacted the business I came in to conduct.

All pretty basic Business 101 stuff. But what I'm curious about is, how much do problems such as the ones I describe depend on the vaguaries of Second Life? To what extent can these problems be attributed to factors over which shop owners have no control?

(My interest isn't just academic: I do hope to get a shop of my own up and running, as soon as I've created more items to sell. I'm making great strides in creating the shop itself....oooooo, it's great-looking! All false modesty aside..... ^_^)

Being a Ghostly Cloud

When I first decided to look into Second Life, my computer was close to 4 years old---and I hadn't bought it with a sterling graphics card in mind, as my main interests at the time were being able to make decent Word and Excel documents and Power Points, and to be able to enjoy my message boards. Any games I played were undemanding of graphics power.

So when I did look into SL and saw how compelling it could be for me, I took advantage of five years of acquired credit card Rewards points, and got a new computer. Because it was clear that if I tried to enjoy Second Life with my current computer, I'd spend most of my time with a frozen avatar.

And having a quite recent computer, I haven't had to deal with the performance problems with Second Life that I read about all the time in the Forums and various blogs.

Of course I've sympathized with the people experiencing these problems (especially having run into the problems myself). And I could see that the prevailing philosophy of the Lindens---to concentrate on serving those with brand-new computers---would bite me in the arse eventually, as I'm certainly not in a position to buy the latest computer every 6 months.

So I figured I'd have those 6 months of excellent performance, and then have to deal with the frustrations, later. And so it has gone for 3 months or so. No lag, no freezing. A few crashes here and there, but, it would seem, not due to my own hardware.

So, last night: the night of several thousand Ghostly Clouds.

For anyone who didn't try to log in last night, or who was unaffected: at log in there was a message about 'downloading your clothes'. Then you appeared as a white cloud---a single mass when standing, a series of cloudy globes when flying. And you couldn't teleport.

Well, correction: you COULD teleport to certain water sims. But not to all.

I had a pressing reason to want to teleport to one of my properties, as there was another property I wanted to bid on in the next morning's (today's) auction, and I wanted to lower the prices of the parcels. But I couldn't do it. I persisted for quite a while, though I was three continents away from the location. I found I could get from Continent 1 to Continent 2 by teleporting to a water sim. But then I couldn't manage to get to Continent 3, not by any water sim (and I tried all those I could see from the World Map). And everytime I tried to either fly or walk out of the sim I was in, I got snapped back.

So I finally gave up.

Now, I don't think this was a case of my computer being Just That Bit Too Old. I could be wrong, though----maybe it WAS a case of precisely that.

But this was a pretty widespread phenomenon. So the odds are that my computer's age was irrelevant.

It really does bring home the pertinence of the calls for the Lindens to pay more attention to Stability, though. It was an extremely frustrating night. I would think that many people who weren't yet invested in Second Life, would certainly have made the decision to never attempt to return.

Shopping, and Progress in Products

I need some of two kinds of plants I haven't been able to find in freebie boxes (and they're not in the Library part of my Inventory, of course). To finish off my semi-Ancient-Egyptian shop installation on the east side of the Linden road, I need some papyrus and some Italian (or Mediterranean) cypress trees.

The papyrus I got last night, at one of the Tin Teddy islands. Looks pretty good, and is copyable, so I can fill it in all along my little Nile.

The cypress, I'm still searching for. There are a lot more Search hits for 'cypress' of the Southeastern United States variety, then of the tall narrow Mediterranean variety. One with a good appearance and good price (again, at Tin Teddy) is darker than I prefer, and is un-modifiable. So I'll keep looking.

In my searches I happened on an Old Continent plant-and-tree shop that really brought home how much progress has been made in building, since Second Life began. At least, I'm assuming that this shop and its products were created some years back. Anyway, the trees and plants were all of the two-flat-prims-crossed variety, and the photo-textures that had been put on each of the two crossed prims were out-of-scale or out-of-focus or both. Foolishly, I think, the owner had put a Linden Library dogwood in the middle of all this. It really pointed up how bad the merchandise for sale looked, in comparison with the quality of work in plants-and-trees that's now the standard.

Onward and upward!

Particles and Feuds

Logging in, today, I was possessed by an imperative to put some particles in my waterfall.

I looked at all the stuff I'd picked up as freebies. There was a package from 'Andrew Linden' which looks very valuable, but the problem I ran into today is that I couldn't see how to make it loop. I thought about trying to mash up the Linden script with the script I'd cobble together for my fountain sounds (which is still not satisfactory, but it DOES loop).

But I ended up going with one of three other freebie scripts that were already set up to loop. One was giant red spheres floating off, one was medium yellow spheres going 'pop', and one was medium gray spheres floating off. I messed with the last one to turn the medium spheres into teensy particles, and the result wasn't too bad. It kinda works for the waterfall, but it doesn't work at all for my fountains. So I need to keep working on it. (As well as on the fountain sound loop.)

So after an hour or so of particle experiments, I decided to go look at some of the properties to be auctioned tomorrow and the next day. Some, I would suspect, won't sell even at L$3 per square meter (which seems to be the Linden minimum---and that's only for the US dollar auctions).

(I wonder if at some point, if the backlog of failed-auction parcels get too large, will they back off to L$2 per square meter?)

There was one large parcel I liked, but buying it would mean moving up that last tier notch. And that doesn't feel smart, at the moment.

Anyway, the whole process is fun for me. I like flying over Second Life sims in general---it's always interesting to see what choices people have made for their land. And I like watching for trends in sales.

One anomalous auction today has me wondering---was the unusually high price (over L$30 per square meter) the result of Neighbor-desperate-to-block-Neighbor? I've no way of knowing, but the land (though fairly nice) didn't, alone, justify that price.

Yippee!!! Sales of Land!!!

Two parcels sold while I was out of town...a great feeling. I'm cautiously optimistic that I might Make Tier this month. (The parcels I still have up for sale are nice genuine-land-and-genuine-Linden-water ones.)

When I saw my Linden account amount, I was trying to figure out what particular parcels had sold from the amount...I teleported to the first of the sims, and materialized inside someone's new house! Luckily it was just a house up for rent--a speculator had bought the parcel. Could have been embarrassing, though! (Needless to say, I changed my teleport-to Landmark to another place. I don't like relying on the Teleport to Sim option, as too often I end up inside a shop that I can't easily get out of....I still want to learn whether this is something people pay for [it's often NOT the geographic center of the sim]).

I noticed that one of the Auction parcels for tomorrow was up to over L$30 per square meter, already, this afternoon...who knows how high it may go. I'm going to go see what all the fuss is about when I log in tonight. (Surely it's not just a question of being a beach-with-ocean parcel....there must be some other compelling features for the price to go so high....)

Fountains and Italian Cypress Trees

These are on my 'to do' list.

Or to be more specific: fountain sounds. The fountains themselves, I can make.

As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I was rather proud of myself for searching through my owned items and finding a Looping script, and putting a Library water sound in it. It does work. but it's too loud, and the sound clip being looped is too short--resulting in a sound that's more machine-like than water-like.

I've looked all over the Internet for advice. If there's a "here's how to make and/or find a sound for a fountain," or "here's how to adjust the sounds you put in scripts" how to, I couldn't find it. As with my 'storage prims' problem, it seems to be a question of doing a lot of reading and putting together the widely-scattered clues.

And, again: a more tech-oriented person would probably laugh at these frustrations. But I believe that Second Life can profitably be marketed to people like me----people with no experience in virtual worlds and little tech savvy. But I think it would be a more effective type of marketing if there were more clearly-understandable information around.

((Further caveat---I do applaud SL for having those excellent short videos, as well as the Knowledge Base, available on their site. I'm just hoping they continue to add to them...because I can't be the only one not finding information that is fairly basic---as with the 'fountain sounds' problem.))

Okay.

So through the SL Wiki I found notice of Audacity, and did download it this morning before work. Now I'll try working with it. It may well be the answer to my questions---I just need to figure out how to export the Library water sound into Audacity and, maybe, stretch it out or repeat it, and lower the volume. Those ideas may be completely wrong-headed. But at least I'll learn something from trying.

In re the Italian (or Mediterranean) Cypress trees: I want to buy one (a copyable one). I need tall-ish trees other than palms for my kinda-Egyptian build, and those seem like the best bet to look 'authentic'.

So I tried Search---but for "Cypress trees". That took me to the very interesting DePaul University pair of sims, and to Geon. I got some nice free or dollar-bie items.....but only American cypress trees. None of the Italian/Mediterranean variety. So, tonight, I'll try both "Italian Cypress" and "Mediterranean Cypress", and see if I'm more successful.

Victoriana

Saturday, before logging out of SL, I'd made myself a sort of faux-19th century outfit, hoping to get to the next day's discussion of Moby Dick in Caledon.

I had heard about this monthly book-discussion---or rather, had 'seen' about it---when touring the Caledon installation/exhibit at SL5B. (I'd particularly enjoyed the MushroomRoom, but also had been intrigued by the idea that Second Life might contain people who, ya know, READ BOOKS.)

I had somehow never read Moby Dick. Though I'm no youngster, I did grow up well after that period in which schoolchildren were expected to read anything more demanding than "My Weekly Reader". (I remember my parents being apalled that we were reading Tom Sawyer in the 9th grade---and still hadn't progressed to Huckleberry Finn by the 12th.)

So I started in on my lovely "Library of America" copy, which I'd bought by mail order back when they were offered by mail order. (Yes, I AM that old.)

I like Melville. I'm sort of assuming, here, that the narrative voice of Ishmael in MD is the same narrative voice of all Melville's first-person narrators----that Godly gamesomeness of his shines through. I always did like the Cheerful, Positive characters. "Augustus" in I, Claudius; Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks; Ed Grimley. Melville has a very similar presence.

Anyway, though I've made it only about halfway through the book (just past the Town Ho chapter) (!), I still intended to go to the discussion. So I made myself an outfit with full skirt, a la 1850s Britain, and suitably upswept hair, and overall gray/black scheme, in line with Serious Womanhood of the era.

But, I ended up having a schedule conflict, and didn't make it.

(So I need to go into Caledon again and find out what the August book is.....)

Hard Times for Land Sellers

I've been watching the Second Life land auctions. There have been quite a few Linden Dollar-parcels that have received no bids. (So far, the US Dollar-parcels have all had at least one bid, which I assume means that they sold at the minimum bid.)

In my home sim, there has been a triple row of ~1024m's (some were a bit less) for right around L$10/m^2 each....for as long as I've been in the sim, which is over seven weeks.

Last night, I noticed that the owner had split them into 512s and spent quite an amount of time landscaping them with palm trees and privacy screens, and putting "free with purchase" houses on them. The price is the same per square meter as was the case with the 'unimproved' plots from which these 512s were made.

Which seems like a fair indicator that the owner is willing to put in a lot of time and effort to---it is hoped--earn the same price he-or-she thought was possible to get without the time and effort.

And if this pattern hold true throughout SL---not so good for those holding land for sale.

The news in the last couple of months has been "Premium Memberships Down"....fewer people willing to pay the $6 per month (assuming an annual payment---$10 per month for the month-to-month customer).

The often-quoted Silver Lining is that those who HAVE bought Premium Memberships have been spending longer periods of time inworld. But that lining is only so silver. It can easily be seen as mere pewter. Or tinfoil.

Surely, if SL is to remain a going concern, they're going to have to break down and pay out some cash for advertising.

"F" is No Longer for "Fly"....

...and that is annoying. I'd gotten used to just hitting the F key to lift off.

I suppose if I hunt around I can find that you can still fly by hitting some key plus the F key. But it was nice when it was just the F key.

(I wonder, when they [Second Life computer engineers or any other computer engineers] are 'improving' their software, do they say 'what can we do to aggravate people'? I mean, SURELY not. .....But it sure does seem that way, sometimes.)

((No doubt the removal of the 'touch F to Fly!' functionality was absolutely necessary in order to provide some other, much more wonderful functionality......))

........

Okay, on a less cynical note: night before last I decided to take advantage of the large number of spacious unsold parcels near me and try out some more of my freebie vehicles. When I'd tried some out on the Linden road, I'd lost them.

The thing is, I'm not a gamer. So the skills necessary to operate these various vehicles are NOT second nature to me. I need a lot of space to practice in.

I guess I drove around in three or so vehicles for about an hour....lots of fun, and my brain WAS trained, to some extent, on how to drive a virtual car.

maybe a land-purchase bot? and Fountain!

I'm still puzzling over the appearance of the Bot or Person.

Quite a few hours after seeing it (and unrelated to seeing it) I decided to reduce the price of one of the less-attractive parcels on the first US$ parcel I'd bought a few days ago. I figured it would be good to have one of the parcels appear earlier in the Search Land listings---that might bring people to look who would decide they might want to upgrade a bit to one of the parcels on the water.

Well, apparently I put it just a shade too low--someone did buy it, and turned it around. No improvements. The person will make about two bucks US more than he or she paid me, so it's not as if I'm seething or anything. Heck, if the person promotes the parcel, that will bring potential buyers to my parcels, too.

It will be a learning process to figure out if I can use the 'price one less-attractive parcel fairly far below the rest' technique in such a way that I don't trigger the bots, and/or the speculators. It's all interesting, so I'm happy to learn.

Anyway, before this occurred, I'd been thinking about what I could place on all my parcels to make them more attractive--something to throw in for free. I'd tried one of my 9-Prim Houses on one parcel, but frankly I'm still refining the House to make it more compelling to buyers. I wanted something that wouldn't take up a 10m x 10m chunk of a 512, too.

(Though I think one of the main potential virtues of the 9-Prim House is that it CAN be used on a 512m---it will save the owner so many prims that the 117-prim limit will be less of a burden--there's no doubt that it looks kinda big on such a small plot. And when selling a parcel [in Second Life or in real life!], you don't want to make it look small.)

So my idea was to make a nice low-prim fountain---with sound.

I respond to water features, and I feel safe in assuming I'm not unusual in that. I also love good sound in SL--it probably motivated me to buy my first piece of land. (And as it happens, the ambient sound in that part of that sim WAS part of a sales-come-on...from the big, expensive parcel next to mine. I just got to enjoy the benefit of it for all those weeks that the parcel remained unsold, and the nice waterfall and bird sounds were audible to all in the area.)

So I ended up making a 4-prim fountain that I think looks pretty good. But what I'm proudest of is that I figured out how to make a Looping script and put the Library water-flow sound into it....and it worked!

I stayed up way too late doing all this---the time just vanishes when engaged in building. It's a kind of fun I would never have predicted I'd find compelling.

bots

I was working on one of the parcels I have up for sale, night before last, when something that disconcerted me happened: a little robot-looking collection of spheres came into my range of vision, about 3 or 4 meters away (I'd guess). And when I looked right at it, it vanished. Then as I continued to work, it kept appearing and disappearing when I'd stop and look at it.

I nearly always have the Mini-map up, and saw that this phenonenon did show up as a green dot, same as any avatar.

One of its names ended in "bot". Now, what I can't remember is, was it the first name (in which case it could have been a person who named their avatar 'bot' and chooses to appear as a robot)? Or was it the last name? That could still have meant 'person', because I know there are (or were) circumstances in which people chose both their first and last names. (I should research that.)

But, conversely, if someone creates a bot, does a name with 'bot' at the end of it get assigned automatically?

When this happened, I wasn't even aware that a true bot (non-human directed, but rather just running according to a program) COULD appear as green dots on the Map. I assumed that since there was a green dot and an Avatar name-tag over the robot-looking thing, that that meant that a person was running it.

(A shy person, obviously, what with the instant teleporting away the moment my avatar stopped and looked at it.)

But having done some reading the past two days, I now know that it might NOT have been a person---that it IS possible to log in a program-in-the-guise-of an avatar. (And many, or even most, such creations aren't as clearly "robotlike" as this was---they look just like the humanoid avatars that most SL residents use.)

So.....I dunno. If it WAS a bot, what about my activities attracted it? What information was it seeking or gathering?

If it was a person.....WTF?

(No, I take that back...if it was a person, he or she doesn't need to be sweared at. I'm sure there is some unusual story there, if it was a person. Though I'm now leaning to the theory that it wasn't. A person.)

The 'spending more'

So, yeah. I went up one bump in tier. My rationalization was this (and I totally offer this as potentially useful information about the Average Second Life user, for the purposes of the Linden Lab marketing department):

I like building things in SL. I also have liked those instances in which I've logged in to see my L$ balance has jumped up, by the price of a parcel I've sold.

Those instances, so far, were about closing out of the first sim I'd bought into (two 512m parcels) and selling a parcel in my New Home Sim that I'd bought at auction. The first of the three represented a loss, as I deliberately sold below the L$/m I'd bought at, to avoid a tier bump up. The second and third represented modest profits on what I'd paid---if one does not figure in the tier or the monthly membership.

Now, to repeat the fun of seeing the L$ increase when I log on, and NOT be at a net loss each month due to tier and membership fees, I would have to buy extremely cheap. And, presumably, sell for a bit more per square meter. Even a couple of Linden dollars extra per square meter could result in a month in the black, if I'm dealing in a large enough number of square meters.

Thus, the move from a quarter sim to a half-sim of holdings. (Because the cheapest land to be had is in the 8000m range.)

So I have almost exactly a month to see how this experiment works out. I bought one of the two ~8000m parcels two days before my tier fee is due---a large chunk of money to pay for just two days, but I had felt that the parcel was worth it, in potential to return enough more than I paid for it.

If things don't move at the relatively modest prices I've set---and all pieces are as attractive as I can make them, in terms of parcel division, terraforming, and a bit of landscaping---then I can get out. Probably not at a loss, IF my time is considered to have no value. And since this is my chosen recreation--since I genuinely enjoy the terraforming etc.--then, yes, it's reasonable to consider my time as having no value.

......................................Thus ran my rationalizations and various and sundry calculations.

..............................................................(((a potential goldmine for smart marketers.......)))

Landing Spots

Going around to all these Auction sites, I notice that though the place you Teleport to when you enter the name of a sim into the World Map is usually the center of the sim, it isn't always. About a quarter of the time, I land off-center----in a shop.

And when that happens, I look at the area where the center of the sim is, to see if there are (say) Ban Lines that would prevent people from landing there. So far, I haven't seen any.

So...................................................do the people with these shops that Search (through the World Map) sends you directly to, PAY Linden Labs some fee for this service??


....This may be one of those things known, without needing to be mentioned, by long-timers in Second Life. But to me, it still seems rather mysterious.

(I might mention that one of the sims I Teleported to today, due to an Auction to be held there tomorrow, sent me into a dug-out area under a 'physical' floor---------so that I was trapped. I've been around long enough [less than 3 months, but long enough] to know I could pull up the World Map and click on another place in the same sim and Teleport there.

(But a newbie wouldn't know that. You have to wonder how many people have encountered such things and left Second Life in disgust....)

Spent More!

..and yes, I rationalized it, with PAGES of calculations...

(I love that sort of thing.....)

Vanishing posts

Wow, that's not good.

My post (the empty one below) vanished when I back-clicked to add "Labels for this post"---something I've never done.

Guess I won't try that again!

The confusing thing is, I've back-clicked before, to edit, and haven't ever lost a post.

So it must be some glitch connected with filling in "labels for this post". No labels in the future!

The post itself was a medium-length one to do with observations about todays LL auctions, the prices parcels sold at, and the seredipity involved in trying various textures that don't look promising initially. I had made some pillars and used a texture related to a TV show (that had nothing to do with Ancient Egypt), but had, happily, ended up with pillars that had a definite Ancient Egypt look to them.

Well, I guess I need to go to the extra effort to save everything I write here into Word before clicking on that Publish Post button. Annoying!!

Auction Prices, and Self-Sufficiency

Nice to be of help...

I got an IM from someone who'd seen the two ~20 meter-across "cylinders" I'd placed across the pond I'm working on. (I ended up replacing them with box prims, because I wanted the scripted water movement to mirror the movement of the 'real' water in the bottom of the little canyon I'm making into a pond---and the ~20m 'cylinders' can only be scripted to have circular water movement [I'm pretty sure.])

So anyway, I was happy to be able to send along the fairly-simple instructions, which I'd gotten from Aimee Weber (et al)'s excellent book "Creating Your World". (Published in 2008 by Wiley, as part of the Official Second Life book series.)

As I said to the person:

The way to do it is to rez a Tube and make it 10m on all sides. Then set Y-Hole Size to 0.05. Then make Begin Twist (B) 90, and End Twist (E) 90. Your result should be almost 20m in diameter...kind of cheating, but it's a good way to save on prims. Hope this helps! Ponsonby

I liked that. Part of my newly-discovered (and surprising, considering my background) passion for Making Stuff, is that I enjoy the idea (and actuality!) of making stuff that others might find useful. Of course this wasn't something I'd discovered on my own. And I do hope, through experimentation, to find things that might be new enough to be helpful to a lot of people.

But, just passing along knowledge that others have discovered is also fun and good and something I want to continue doing. Not because I'm all that altruistic a person...it's self-interest, really, in the sense that it makes me feel happy. And that is a very, very selfish motivation.

(which seems, in general, to work for us humans pretty well.....)

More Thoughts on Risk, and on Extortion

I don't see how buying a full Mainland sim, and hoping to make money from carving up parcels and selling them, can be anything but risky. I've seen enough parcels sitting there in all their Yellow glory for 6 weeks at a time---and I 'm sure that many of them have been there for longer than that.

(I've been in Second Life...what, 80 days or so, now? I didn't start being aware of particular unsold parcels until I first started seriously thinking of buying land, which was a week or two after I registered.)

So people with money to burn buy the land and just hold it....through inattention, one would assume. After all, though prices do rise and fall, SL land isn't like REAL land. With real land, the old saying is true: they're not making any more of it.

Clearly that is the opposite of the case for SL land. If the Linden Lab people decide that it's best for business if more people buy land (and therefore pay both Premium membership and monthly tier fees), then they will make enough land so that the price of a 512m parcel is, say, US$0.50.

I mean, they could do that.

They'd have to do it very gradually, because the move would enrage all those speculators who invested thousands (and tens of thousands!) of US dollars, or the equivalent, in buying SL land. I'm sure that if this is the LL chosen course, they will try to balance the potential income from new landowners with the potential mischief to be wrought by angry land barons. Not a fun equation to work out, certainly.

But, since any movement toward fifty-cent 512's will likely be very slow, my decision making has to be based on the here-and-now. In the here and now, there is a HUGE range of prices out there.

I'm thinking of my neighbor to the east, who got ~L$22/m^2 out of me for a seafront piece (32m of coast) because the parcel was smallish (~2000m), and because it adjoined my land, and because I decided that spending about US$190 made sense in terms of the fun I want to have in the immediate future. I could rationalize that expenditure.

I'm thinking, too, of my neighbor to the west, who has also put up his seafront land for about L$22/m^2. (About a dollar higher per square meter than the East piece.) In the case of that parcel, I'm not even remotely tempted, even though his land, too, adjoins mine, and the addition would give me even more lovely beach. But I would have to come up with nearly US$700 to buy the parcel that's around 8000m. And so my sales resistance kicks in. (The sales resistance is stronger because the vast majority of the parcel is far back in the sim---not along the coast.) I could not rationalize that particular expenditure.

Of course, different people will rationalize in different ways....but in general, I think I am starting to learn something about what will tempt people, and at what price. I'd generalize that if you have a parcel that's over 8000m, and most up it is inland, people won't want to pay nearly L$23/m for it.)

Of course I could log in tonight and find it has sold.....egg on my face and whatnot. That would be okay. But I'd bet that if that DOES occur, the buyer would be either someone who is quite new to SL, or possibly the person (or group) who owns the coast just to the west of the parcel (in a different sim, but it would make for a lot of nice beachfront).

We shall see.

The 'extortion' part of my title has to do with my discovery that there are still quite a few 16m^2 parcels selling for more than L$50/m, at the top of the Land Search. I wonder how many people have taken the time to page through far enough to see that this is the case...it does take a LOT of time. (Search, for me anyway, doesn't let you search for prices above a certain level. It just doesn't work. So you have to patiently let each page load---if you go too fast, it crashes---and go through dozens of pages to get to the highest per-meter parcels.)

I thought that the recent (February?) ruling by LL that they wouldn't permit ad-farm extortion to continue, would have gotten rid of L$50/m parcels.....but, I guess not. By the time I got to those last pages, I didn't have time to also teleport to those locations. But I would be amazed if those parcels did NOT have large revolving neon signs on them......

(sorry to be cynical!)

The Seductions of Selling Land

For various reasons, I've sold three parcels of land in Second Life.

The first time, I priced the parcel somewhat below what I judged to be the market rate--and below what I'd paid. This was because I had a time constraint, and could have been bumped up to the next higher tier (a jump that, in US dollar terms, was more than I'd paid for the land). So the price was right, and (from what I can see) someone new to the sim bought it.

The second and third times, the price was at least at market, and (just) slightly above what I'd paid. In both cases, I had at least a fair idea that someone in the sim would want the land and wouldn't require a below-market price (as I'd employed in that first sale) to buy.

In retrospect, all three pieces sold so quickly, that I probably should have asked a bit more for each.

But even so: in each case, logging in and seeing that my Lindens balance had jumped up was TOO much fun.

I see that this is one way that people get sucked into to the Land Speculator biz. Or more properly, the Land Speculator hobby. Because there are fewer guarantees than even in RL, that you will come out on the positive side of the balance sheet.

But entering into this, er, hobby, is particularly seductive for me, because I enjoy terraforming so much....I could improve the HECK out of whatever I bought, and make it so attractive, that people couldn't RESIST buying it, and so I'd be able to completely cover the ruinously-high tier I'd incur if I bought entire sims, and....




NO. STOP. This way lies......madness......

(the kind of madness to gladden a Linden's heart.......^_^)

The Auction

The auction for the parcel in 'my' sim, yesterday, was more exciting than I intended it to be.

While debating whether or not to buy the expensive ~2000m next door (the L$22/m^2 waterfront one), I decided that if I was able to win the auction for the inland parcel for a good price---since that parcel, alone, would bump me up to the next tier level---I'd go ahead with the more land/more tier.

It took me quite a while to think through all the numbers and to decide; I watched a lot of earlier auctions, spent time with the inworld Search land-sales list, and drew up some alternate plans.

By the time I came back to the computer, having decided to make a bid, it was twenty minutes before the auction was to take place. And.....I couldn't re-establish Internet access. AAIIIIEEEEE!!!!!!!!

I tried a bunch of things; finally getting access back after shutting down the computer entirely, then powering up again.

By this time, it was FIVE minutes before the auction---and I still had to log in twice. (Maybe there's some way around this that's known to the auction-experienced. But I had to log into my Account, then log in a second time to make a bid.)

What with some loads that seemed glacial (but probably weren't, really) and some fumbling from nervousness, I finally registered my bid ONE minute before the auction was to close.

There had been two bids---one, at least, made a couple of days earlier. The second had been there a few hours, I think.

So this VERY last minute bid must have looked like a Tactic to those people. It wasn't really....it was just an Internet access problem.

Anyway, I did win the auction. I doubt that of the....what, always 38?.....properties up for bid, this one would have been of much interest to people not already in the sim. It's one parcel away from a Linden Road, true---but who knows how meaningful that will ever be? (As far as I can see, now, the main advantage is that the Road is handy for trying out the free vehicles I seem to keep acquiring.....)

So that is the saga. I hope I didn't seriously inconvenience the other bidders, but I guess if the parcel had been vitally important to them, they would have been certain to have a high bid on record. One would think.

(Back to terraforming!)

More for Lindens!

Here I've missed my Midnight deadline for blogging--so even though I'm blogging once each period-between-sleeps (otherwise known as a 'day'), it looks like I missed one. A cardinal sin in Blogging!

Anyway.......I ended up giving the Lindens more money.

On coming back to my home sim after the end of SL5B, I'd noticed that a 1024 in my sim was up for auction. More earth-shatteringly, the neighbor to the east (with a Road-reduced parcel around 2000 square meters) had put his/her property up for sale.

Now, all the finagling with the owner of that split-1616 (presumably a 2048 with the Road taking up the missing square meters) was in aid of staying at the $40 tier. Heck, even moving up from $25 to $40 had taken a lot of soul-searching.

But here was this nice parcel---a bit overpriced, at around L$22/m^2, even if it does have 32m of waterfront.

And if someone ELSE wanting to start a Club took it, my peaceful life would be even less possible....(there are already two Impressario-Hopefuls onthe sim).

Of course the only way to ensure against that is to buy a full sim. But since being on at least some water---real water, not plywood---is clearly important enough to me that I'll give up many Real World expenditures to get it----and furthermore, since paying out US$2000+ would NOT be smart at this time----then, spending another US$250 to get to beach parcel, plus some other cheaper ones to make the tier sensible, was something I could talk myself into.

I get the "US$2000" figure from that fact that in several full-sim auctions I watched last month the waterfront sims were going for US$1800 or more---and of course you are hit with the additional $195 tier fee, no matter how quickly you carve up and sell bits of the sim. I suppose if the Lindens bring so many new sims online that waterfront ones end up selling for US$200, I'll feel I've been foolish. But on the other hand, even if that does happen, I'll have had all the enjoyment of my little 14,000m, NOW.

(If you're going to pay a certain level of tier, it makes more sense to have property just shy of the point at which you'd jump to the next tier. This is assuming a long-term tenure in Second Life, of course, so that the cost of buying the land is amortized over that period. Might as well get that prim-capacity, since that's essentially what we're paying for when we pay tier.)

Anyway....lots of rationalizing, here. But I WILL enjoy the new land--I do love the terraforming!

Fun With Freebies

I've been enjoying unpacking stuff I acquired at SL5B....talking donuts and 'books' and interestingly-scripted stuff, as well as the predictable T-shirts and such.

I got some vehicles I'm anxious to try out, even though my previous attempts to drive vehicles have run afoul of the Red Ban-Lined properties in the sim.....when I inadvertently touch on these parcels, I lose the vehicle, freeze, etc. Generally the vehicle appears in my Lost folder (of my Inventory) eventually. Kind of a bore, really.

A piece of land adjoining mine came up for sale---at a price about 5.5 times the current rate for Mainland (prices about L$4 per square meter). Pretty high. I may not go for it, though I'm thinking about it. It would keep Red Ban Lines from appearing..... (!)

eight hundred seventy

...That's how much stuff I picked up in SL5B. About.

When I logged in last night, I had 6,867 items; I'm not sure of the exact number I had when I stepped on SL5B sims for the first time, but "870" seems about right.

I made 10 nice storage prims for the stuff, last night--the "Egyption pillar", with a texture from a Snapshot I took of my favorite place of all I saw in SL5B: the Grafix Writer 'building'.

I discovered this place only the day before the end of the exhibit. I felt genuine grief over this, as, if I'd known about it earlier, I'd certainly have visited every day. Many of the 30+ Snapshots that I paid L$10 apiece to download, were taken there.

On my list of tasks: to find out if there's a more permanent installation by that artist (or group of artists?) inworld. Interestingly, this installation was one of the very few in SL5B for which there was no Notecard Dispensor, or any information, really.

Not that I'm faulting people for wanting to generate business for themselves, or (if one wanted to be generous) for wanting to inform visitors of their main Second Life places of business.

But I'd say the lack of commercial pressure fits amazingly well with the degree of artistry in that installation.

Anyway..........all I accomplished in my 90 minutes last night, other than making 10 varied pillars based on the texture (and of course I can't sell them, or use the texture in any commercial way---and if the artist(s) wanted the pillars destroyed, of course I would comply....but for now, I'm enjoying the reminder they represent)...where was I? Oh yes: all I accomplished other than to make the pillars and offload 95 of the new items into them, was to make three 'canvases' for three of my SL5B Snapshots. Then something weird happened to either my Internet connection, or Second Life, and my blank canvases turned "You cannot Modify this", and I had trouble even moving them. The Lag Meter had red dots, so I logged off.

I do hope that the sailing will be smooth when I return tonight; I have a lot to get done!

Back Again, with Heavy Inventory

Actually, I don't know how heavy it is. I haven't looked at it in days.

I'd made sure to get it below 6,000 items (barely) before first going into the SL5B sims. In my first days in them, I thought I'd offload stuff each night. But it soon became clear that I was going to want a lot more time in the sims than I could get, what with my 60-to-90 minutes per day limitation. And taking a solid 15 to 20 out of that, each night, to offload stuff didn't make sense to me.

(Similarly, I chose not to blog the last few nights. I wanted the time inworld.)

So I'm wondering what I'll find in that Inventory, when I log on in a few minutes.

My guess: at least 7,000 (we'll see!)

Most of it is notecards---I wanted information, but didn't want to stop to read it. I figured as I read over the cards, later, I'd remember the places I'd gotten them. If I don't, that would be a sign that the installations weren't that memorable!

I'll be aided by the 30 or so snapshots I took (again, a rough estimate). I plan to make a little photo gallery on my land.

I had been 'sleeping' on the SL5B sims, for the past 8 days or so...Quitting while there. I kind of wondered what would happen if I remained there right up until midnight, Linden time.....but I was nervous of creating glitches for myself, so I teleported Home before that point (and went to bed, as that's 3am, my time). I will read around to see if anyone talks about that....

One thing that interested me was being able to see the Orientation and Help Islands from the SL5B easternmost sims, on the World Map. It wasn't possible to look at them closely (I guess, roughly 1-inch-square overviews of each sim-sized one was as close as a person could get). It was fascinating, though, to see how the programs shunt people to one until it's considered full.

(As I may have mentioned, I never did get to a "real" Help Island---just to the Public Help Island, later. If I do end up paying the ten bucks to make an alt account, I will enjoy the Orientation and Help all the more, for having seen the aerial view of the sims.)

Well, I could blather on longer, but I'm anxious to get Home and start unpacking all my free stuff! I'll just say: the experience was wonderful for me. I would imagine the experience was different for people who get to spend longer in Second Life each session---maybe they tired of the SL5B sims and spelled themselves by going home. I admit to missing Building stuff TERRIBLY (something I'm looking forward to, tonight, at least as much as the unpacking of the free stuff.) But overall, the 10-days (for me) experience was mind-expanding. And that's never bad.

I Haven't Been Home in Three Days!

Home in Second Life, that is.

I feel a certain urgency to see as much as I can in the SL5B sims. And since, most days of the week, I have only an hour, or an hour and a half, in which I can enjoy SL----I've been Quitting while on one of the sims. (I usually try to find what looks like it might be a quiet corner...and not right in the middle of what might be a venue for Events.)

So this will probably be true tonight, as well. Though I'm curious to see what might have changed at 'home' during my absence. When you buy in a newer sim, you never know what the heck might show up!

One thing that I'm not at peace about: the question of ignoring people. I would never ignore someone who spoke to me. (Or more properly: who Local Chatted to me. I still haven't taken the time to activate the Voice modality; I figure I probably have to buy and install a microphone in order to take advantage of that, and I haven't gotten around to it. Though, from some of my reading on the SL site, it's recommended to activate Voice even if you don't have a mic, because then you can listen to speeches and such.)

Anyway, I wouldn't ignore someone who contacted me. BUT......and many will have had this experience on the 20 SL5B sims.....at some hours (when I tend to be on, for instance), they are pretty sparsely populated. So when someone's avatar is within a few meters, you sort of feel that they should be acknowledged in some way.

But here's my deal: I'm not really the Go Up To Strangers And Start Conversations type of person at any time. I HAVE done it, I CAN do it, but it's not my natural bent.

And on these SL5B sims.....I'm very conscious that the whole thing will cease to exist in a few days. (4, at this point, I think.)

So I'm more oriented toward seeing as much as I can than toward getting to know people.

So I don't approach these avatars.

I'm probably fairly safe in assuming that they've reasoned things out in a similar fashion, and and so are NOT offended that I don't speak to them.

Or so I've decided to believe.

Still, it can feel as though I'm being kind of rude, and I regret that.

Oh, well!

Rush, Rush, Rush....

I now regret those days in which I used up my 60-90 minutes per day in trying to get my Inventory down below 6K---they lessened my chances for seeing more of the SL5B.

It's clear now that there is a lot of fairly routine stuff. People selling their somewhat routine goods. (Not that they don't have every right.) But there's also stuff I'd be glad to see and know about....I just may not get to it.

Oh well. I'll enjoy what I get to. And not worry that my Inventory is creeping above 6K a little more each night, as I collect notecards and landmarks and Free Gifts.....

Flying, and More Than Busty Chicks on Black Velvet

Yes.....we can fly over the Birthday sims (the SL5B twenty).

Clearly the 60-90 minutes I have for Second Life most days of the week, won't be sufficient to let me see everything. But them's the breaks.

I will say that my available time for being in SL is 'wee hours' in Eastern Daylight Time. And that would be a bit before prime 'log in during morning work hours' time for Europe; late evening for Pacific (= Linden Lab time). So I guess that accounts for the fact that in my two visits to the SL5B sims, there haven't been many people around. I'd guess it's been maybe 50 or so total for the 20 sims (altogether....not each), on average.

No doubt things are livelier before, during, and after 'events'.

Still, you have to wonder how they'll assess the success of this event.

Personally, I'm enjoying seeing evidence of inventiveness beyond the cliched work I saw the first night I as there. People have achieved beyond the Busty Chicks On Black Velvet ideal!!

I was annoyed that the postcard I tried to send myself from inside the Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass exhibit, didn't arrive. (I've sent myself, and others, several 'postcards' featuring 'snapshots' from inside SL, and they have all arrived. This time it didn't work....me? or something else?)

But overall, I'm having fun, and will continue to do so for the remaining 5 or 6 (?) nights of the SL5B celebration.

First Look at SL5B

Last night, I finally felt ready to go check out the SL5B sims (an 'island' of connected sims, located approximately between the 'original continents' and the 'newer continents'. Probably there are Official names for those places, but I don't yet know what they are.) I'd gotten my Inventory below 6,000 items---not that I know this is any Magic Number, but...somehow I get the feeling that smaller Inventories are to be desired.

I was kind of surprised that Search didn't really make clear where to go. Inputting "SL5B" in Popular Places yielded only the usual sex-bed shops and such. My notes aren't clear, but I think it was through "Places" that I finally found a link to the "SL5B Birthday" sim.

Teleporting there, I was somewhat confused by the ambient sound seeming to describe a football game.....must have been some memorable moment in Second Life, I guess, but I couldn't figure it out. I was near the Time Capsule, and thought about putting one of my sculptures in there (and I still may, as supposedly there's another full week for this thing to run.)

I walked up the stairs to what looked like a big safe....a visual to represent what the Time Capsule will be, I suppose. I then walked out and started looking around.

I didn't try flying last night. I wonder, now, if flying is disabled (I'll try when I log on, tonight). I would guess that Linden Lab is concerned about vandalism, and so they may not permit people to fly...we'll see.

I probably examined about 30 or so exhibits carefully. I figure I have 7 nights or so to look over the sims, so I decided to avoid skimming through.

On the whole, what I saw seemed about 5% interesting, and 95% pedestrian. But that might just have been luck of the draw. Or, on the other hand, 95% of SL5B exhibits might genuinely be of the 'paintings of busty chicks on black velvet' level of originality and sophistication!

We shall see...

Below 5K!...and Polls

After what seemed like hours of work, I finally succeeded in getting my Inventory down below the 6,000-items mark. I deleted only a few things outright (mainly T-shirts with profanity across their chests, which is something I don't think I'd enjoy having my avatar wear). Everything else, I put in 1-prim pillars that I'd made from a torus. I like the way they look--rather Ancient Egyptian, with the US stars-and-stripes texture I used, mucked around with as to number of repeats and colors.

(Playing around with such things is so much fun that I'm still avid to get into Second Life each night...I don't allow myself to log on during the day, usually, as if I did I'd get no RL work done!)

Last night appeared the fourth survey question I've seen since registering. (Apparently this is connected with the 5th Birthday.) This one was to do with whether or not I'm the same gender as my avatar (I am). The one previous to this was really irritating: it was "If you don't own land, why not?" What was irritating about that, from the viewpoint of someone trained in research (yes, I have a PhD), is that there was no option to say "I DO own land"...all the options were reasons for NOT owning land.

That sort of thing yields less-valuable results, because there's no way of knowing if someone refrained from clicking a response because, like me, they do already own land, or if they refrained out of boredom or impatience or such. If an "I DO own land" option had been offered, then those who analyze the survey would know that the residents who'd failed to choose an option were actually making the choice to ignore the survey.

Well, it's late in a long day, and I suspect I wasn't completely clear in that explanation.....I'll check it again in the morning!

Another Mystery

I went to my original parcel last night, and found something I've found on many occasions, both at the original parcel and on my new one: the prices of some of my creations have changed.

So far I've made some sculptures, some koi pools (still with only dummy koi, unfortunately), some tables and stools, and the Amazing 9-Prim House (!) I don't actually expect to sell any of this stuff---I have a lot to learn before any of it will be unique enough to attract attention. But, since we CAN put prices on our creations, I've done so. The prices range from a fraction of a penny, US money, to about $1.30 US for the house....just for the principle of the thing.

It's upsetting to have these items revert to "L$0" or "L$10", mainly because the reversion is mysterious. When I do learn enough to make creations attractive enough for buyers, will I log on repeatedly to learn that the fruits of my labor have become free (or as near as makes no difference)? what is causing this?

I began this blog hoping to be able to post answers to questions that don't seem to appear online---in some cases, because long-time users find the answers to be obvious. But newbies (or at least the less-technically-minded ones) may not find them quite so obvious. I know I've looked for a blog like that. But if it doesn't exist, I can at least make a start toward providing one.

And I want to continue to do that. Of course it's discouraging when the unanswered questions seem to pile up much higher than do the answered ones....still, slowly but surely, I WILL learn these things. And post about them!

Communication Occurred!

The leader of the group that owned the 288m parcel I was interested in, did, very kindly, re-divide the land and sell it to me for a bit over L$10 per meter, which was very fair considering all the dividing efforts. So that was a relief.

I'm still trying to tame my Inventory in anticipation of trying to go tour some of the SL5B exhibits---I'm guessing they will be very laggy, and the less I'm carrying around with me, the better. I'd like to get below 5K items, if possible.....and it ain't easy. I'm still trying to put things in storage according to some kind of classification (by permissions, at a minimum), and of course that slows things down.

Back to work!

The Festivities

This would be the celebration of the first five years of Second Life, SL5B.

I haven't made any plans to try to attend. I've never quite been able to figure out how people CAN make plans to attend functions when so few avatars can be in one place...as in real life, one must plan ahead, but with room for only---what, about 200 people if the venue is at a corners-of-four-sims location---then luck must play a big part.

I saw that we can watch (presumably at any time) 'video' of the speeches and whatnot. So I may content myself with that.

I had a possible experience with trans-cultural communication, last night: I had IM'd the owner (or the leader of the Group that is the owner) of a parcel that adjoins mine. I'd like to buy just the part on one side of the road--the parcel as a whole is split by a Linden road. (Of course there's no road yet, but the land the road will be on is Lindon-owned.) So on Sunday I'd asked the owner if he/she would consider selling me just the Western portion---and I offered to pay about 155% of the per-meter rate the entire parcel is priced at.

Well, I got a very kind and courteous answer---offering to sell me the EASTERN part of the parcel, and even setting that part for sale just to me. Which was genuinely kind and cooperative. But I'd say that the person is probably highly fluent in languages other than English. (Believe me, I'm not being critical---no doubt that person's English is a heck of a lot better than my Spanish or French, and I do respect those who manage to work in more than one language. )

So I wrote back to thank the person for the efforts, and to repeat that I'd really like to buy the Western part of the parcel. (I also put the coordinates of the Western parcel in this second IM---and should have done so in the first, of course.) We shall see. I hope I didn't word things so as to cause any offense....I can sincerely say I didn't intend any offense, but of course, international relations can often get derailed even when everyone involved has good intentions.

Now to log on and find out if there's been a reply.....