Month: February 2010

Plurk Party

You know you are at an SL happening when you’ve been there for over 30 minutes and the people are all still gray. You know you are at a happening when the local chat is so full that it makes no sense because the comments appearing are in response to something that was said 20 lines above. You know you are at a happening when individuals keep crashing. So in that way, the local chat almost makes sense because a lot of it is “wb” and “ty” and “omg i crashed again”. You know you are at a happening when you finally the crash the sim itself.

Yesterday was the initial Plurk Party in SL of 2010. Okay – I admit this freely. I have no idea if there were Plurk parties in 2009. Or if there will be more Plurk parties in Sl in 2010. The party was held in Forever Young, in Serena Almeria. I believe we had 3 hosts, but I only remember the names of two: Di Hoorenbeek and Barbara Nicholls. 😦 Yes, I am very bad for not knowing all the hosts. Thank you all for setting up the party and providing a venue!

I’d heard the “talk” on Plurk about the party. I wasn’t sure I’d be home at that time. As it turned out, I was home about 2 hours after the party began. There were plurks all over about the party was great, come on down and plurkers not able to tp into the sim because it was full. I tried repeatedly for about 5 minutes and finally got in. There were 68 people in the club when I rezzed. Ouch. Gray people, natch. I’d been IM’ing with HellSpawneD. LOL – I could see him only a few meters away (well, I could see his name and gray shape) but I couldn’t WALK there, the lag and crowd were so horrific. So he tp’d me right to the middle of the dance floor, which is where I stayed until the sim crashed. According to the local chat, there had been as many as 87 folks in the sim at one time. 🙂 It’s been a long time since I’ve been in such a full sim and that was a live concert.

It was fun to see all the different names, hear everyone laughing. Rusch Raymaker was DJ’ing at the time. Oh my, that woman has the most gorgeous sexy voice. She could read the phone book and make it sound thrilling. I made 2 new Plurk friends – people who are friends of friends of mine and I see their names/plurks. I tp’d Chestnut in. That made a grand total of FOUR people who I knew out of that crowd. *grin* There are a LOT of plurkers in SL.

So the sim crashed and we slowly rezzed back in and partied on. 🙂 This time I pulled my draw rate way way down and since I was one of the first back, I actually saw something other than gray. 🙂 I have no idea how long the party lasted. After 90 minutes I needed some RL dinner. I tp’d home, logged and waited til it was time to come back inworld to hear Fricker Fraker’s music. Talk about polar opposites. That was last night’s music adventures.

Fricker Tonight!

okay – I may be coming back to SL. How can I not, when Fricker Fraker is playing?

Tonight: Saturday, Feb 20. 7pm SLT.
Find him here at the: Benefit Concert for Project Children

I expect to be there. Fricker’s music always soothes my soul. Hope to see you there.

If you like more information or details:

Benefit Concert for Project Children
The West of Ireland (WOI) Estate is owned by South Texas Celtic Music Association (STCMA) via the avatars Irish Westland and AliciaKay Kilara. AliciaKay is on the Board of Directors of STCMA and Irish represents STCMA within Second Life.
The West of Ireland’s mission is to advance Irish and Celtic culture in SL, raise awareness of and donations for Project Children, and to provide a friendly and entertaining environment for our guests. Information on Project Children can be found on the attached notecard and at the following web site: www.projectchildren.org

An Explanation of Sorts

Why am I not posting to my blog?

I post here when I want to share what is happening in my virtual life. For the most part, I try to follow the rule of “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing”. Sometimes I rant and rave. It is MY blog, after all. *wry grin* But these days my virtual life is giving me mostly tears. And I’m loathe to come here and cry repeatedly.

Why has my my life in SL turned to tears? Because I loved SL so much, I bought myself what I was assured was a kick-donkey top of the line gaming computer – an Alienware M17x. I had to buy a new computer because the nVidia GeForce 8800M video cards in my Dell XPS M1730 burned out in November and Dell and nVidia could not tell me when the cards could be replaced. Up til then, well, I’d found Dell first line support a bit annoying, but no more so than much of life. Dealing with ordering the Alienware became an ordeal, thanks to Dell, who now own Alienware. I was going to blog about that, but quite honestly – it infuriated me every time I thought about it and I didn’t think that frustration and agony needed to be aired.

At long last my gorgeous fantastic super-duper Alienware M17x arrived (late, thank you Dell Order Modification Dept). Sensational. Until I ran SL. 30 minutes into it, then Blue Screen of Death. The whole first weekend – BSOD on SL, Portal Factory, SOLITAIRE!!!!! I mean – obviously a Dell issue. Then mysteriously it stopped BSOD’ing. Only SL died. Repeatedly. With the BSOD. Sometimes with just “normal” SL crash-end. I called SL support to see if they could help. With great joy in his typing, Fog informed me that I was running unsupported software and graphics. Not HIS problem. Oh? Then why are so many folk running the same and SL works for them?

Anyway, there really is a post here someday about Dell and Linden Labs and customer support if I can stop crying. I took a day and drove my computer to an SL friend who has years experience in getting machines to run SL. We thought it was solved. It seemed to run without crashing. No BSOD. Until I brought it home. Turned it on, raced into SL. Hung out there for an hour. Went to feed the cats, the dog. Came back to BSOD. Rebooted – let it sit running Firefox and Norton for an hour. No problem. Raised the machine on blocks (better ventilation). Went into SL with my alt. Didn’t move, just sat there. 2 hours – SL crash.

The truth is, I’m no techie. By my mother I’m a techie, but by a techie I’m no techie. I do NOT know what to do, where to turn, except to continually throw myself and my useless extremely expensive computer onto the mercy of friends. And there is only so long you can impose on friends. Dell isn’t going to care that one application doesn’t run – they will blame the application. And trying to fight your way past firstline support sucks you dry of all energy, patience and coherent thought. And LL has already gleefully told me THEY don’t care.

So I sit and look at this $$$$$ computer that won’t do the one thing for which I bought it, and I cry. Maybe that makes me a drama queen or totally emotional. So be it. But because I cry every time I look at it, and I cry each time I boot up SL on my other computer (which needs to run other software, do other things), I’m not having fun. I have nothing positive to share. I cry, my heart sinks, and all I want to do is simply walk away from SL for good and go back to reading. THAT is technology that actually works right out of the box. 😦