Month: September 2010

I Wanna be a Big Rock Star

Just like Von Johin of SL. I’ve posted before how much I love his music. I’m not alone in thinking Von is fantastic. He’s recorded CDs under his RL name. But his new album: it’s being released under his SL name!!!

On September 28, Von Johin’s album ‘Von The Revelator’ on LocoBop Records will be released. There is a ‘Cd Release Party’ in the works. Please visit the website, vonjohin.com, for full details.

MY understanding is that the party is going to be at Von’s standing Tuesday night gig: Dr. John’s Prim Economy on Isere at 7pm SLT.

The Vonettes are rumored to be planning a surprise as well. *grin* Don’t know who the Vonettes are? Better get on down to the party!!

So until we are rocking Isere with Von, I will practice my moves! See you all there! It will be a blast!

Revive Your Soul!

It’s that time again. The last Sunday of the month. That means the Right Irreverent HalleCalliLujah (sometimes known as Callipygian Christensen) will be leading us all in song and puns and laughter at her Gospel Brunch. It will be held on Sunday, Sept 26 at 11 AM SL time.

As Calli describes it: The brunch is *not* about religion, it is about the wealth of music that has come to us through people’s musical expression of their faith. With tongue in cheek we DO discuss sin and souls, but most would decribe the tone as somewhat irreverent. So please consider joining us for the brunch – dig out a big hat and some ‘Sunday-go-to-meetin” clothes and join us to listen, wade in the water, and ‘second line’ our way around the sim.

Oh yes, proper attire is fun! *grin* I neeeeeeed to go shopping for a new outfit. What a great excuse, right? So come and rock your soul with HalleCalliLujah! You will find us at Meatspace Lounge

Oh! You mean *I* was supposed to do that?

I state this freely and without coercion: I LIKE viewer 2.0. Yes, I understand all the reasons why it’s not as good for building, I don’t like that I can’t detach tabs, and all sorts of other things. But mostly – I LIKE it. I know most of you will stone me for this – but I actually DO find it intuitive. I never found v1.x intuitive. I realize this puts me on the pale of civilization, but it’s simply what it is.

Lately, however, I have been having problems logging on to v2. It seems to hang and I hold my breath while I hope that I make it to the promised land. On Monday it began failing at the office – I could not get in. Sigh. So I used v1.23. I got in, no problem. I figured it was a firewall issue or port or something. I logged in from home, no problem. Tuesday – same thing at work. Then at home – I could not log in again.

I have two laptops: my work laptop and my gaming computer. Sigh. I have bad karma. Something is not right with the SL settings on my Alienware and until I can take it to Zha so she can rid my hovercraft of eels, I have been using the Lenovo. It’s been fine. Until the last week or so. Slow, slower, not working at all.

So – here are the symptoms. You see if you can solve the mystery first, okay? You can see the pictures of the errors. The meter bar would get to downloading clothing and then I’d be logged out. Then it only got to downloading world (or whatever that message is) and I’d be logged out. Ready?
Ahuva/Lenovo/v2 = Fail
Ahuva/Alienware/v2 = Success
Ahuva/Lenovo/v1.23 = Success
Alt/Lenovo/v2 = Success
Alt/Alienware/v2 = Success

I have to thank Zha Ewry who patiently listened to all my testing, suggested other tests, read my log files, and helped me stay hopeful and sane through the hours (literally hours) that it took to deal with this. We both agreed that perhaps it was a scripting issue (which of course doesn’t explain why I could login on the Alienware. I logged in on the AW in v2 and stripped myself down to pants, a shirt, a skin and eyes. No hair (oh the pain), no AO, no scripts, no HUDs, no attachments. By the way – did you know that v2 does not know what you were wearing in v1.23 when you logged out, but v1.23 DOES know what you were wearing in v2 when you logged out? That also caused me some puzzlement as I tried to debug. Zha cleared that up for me. I thought maybe I had too much inventory, but Zha has twice as much as I do. I know many people who have much more inventory than I have.

Okay, I was now a newb. Ahuva/Lenovo/v2 = Fail. I uninstalled and reinstalled code. Fail. I did rmdir /s SecondLife. Fail. I reinstalled. Fail. I erased. Fail. I stared baffled at the screen. I shutdown the machine. Not restarted – shut it down. Came back up. Installed v2. Logged in Ahuva/Lenovo/v2. Crawl. Crawl. 60 seconds and counting on “downloading world”. Then – OMG!!!! I was logged in. I was there. I tp’d home. I noticed that my messages said 99+. I was still convinced that somewhere somehow we were dealing with a memory issue. What else could be different at that point?

Okay Sherlock – do you know the solution yet?????

I don’t know about you, but I don’t pay much attention to the myriad of notices I receive every session. I only open one if I missed seeing it as it flashed in and I knew I needed the information. Someone is sharing their dance HUD, or I want a slurl. Did you know that they don’t go away on their own after each login? I used to try to keep up with them and close them. But there were WAY too many. So I just started ignoring them. The blue boxes in v1.23 used to go away. *shrug* No big deal. Rut-roh. Way big deal. I do not think I have closed the messages since, oh, let’s say July. Maybe June. So I thought – let me close all as long as I’m trying everything else. Well. Everything kind of froze. You know – that old familiar hourglass. And then I was logged out. 😦

I took a deep breath and headed back in and…… got there. Fairly quickly even. *smile* I logged out (still a newb) and came back. FAST. *grin* I had a moment panic when I went to my outfits and nothing was there. But then all my inventory filled in. I put on my outfit: hair, skin, HUDS, scripts, AO. Yeah – I’m loaded. 🙂 I tp’d to my sky box. Logged out. Logged in!!!! Fast! Complete! *grin* I loaded up everything else on the Lenovo that I run during my typical day. Logged in. *grin* I was BACK!!!

I guess this means that I am now expected to clean up those unread messages. *grin* Fine, I can do a little housework now and then. Now comes Fricker Fraker time! Fricker is bidding farewell to summer and hello to autumn tonight!! Come join us all for a wonderful time at Piper Point! At 6pm SLT! Get there early for Crap Mariner’s storytime!!

Neeeeeeeeeding Boots

I don’t always have to be enticed from my skybox. Sometimes I am DRIVEN out by urgent NEED. I decided I wanted a more risqué look. I have one friend whose avatar is always on what I would call the risqué end of the spectrum. *grin* I figured if she could do it, so could I. Well, okay, NO ONE can do it quite the way SHE can. But I figured I would do an Ahuva-version.

I knew what I wanted. I was going for a gold top, gold boots, gold jewelry and black pants. Except… I didn’t have any gold boots. And I didn’t have the “right” gold jewelry. I assembled what I could and called Dale in to check it out. We agreed that my boots, wonderful though they are (I LOVE my Bax boots – don’t get me wrong – they almost always work for my outfits) weren’t quite the look I wanted. Dale was playing with inventory, trying on different outfits. I liked one set of boots, so we tp’d to that store: Dark Eden in Olive.

I was in boot heaven. *grin* After much deliberation, I settled on the Vagabond boots in black. Of course in black. I ALWAYS buy black, it seems. In my atomic closet I have THREE pairs of black suede boots. Okay, I have purple also. And others in leather. But I do seem to have a special affection for black boots. After buying my boots and wearing them, I decided that I liked them with that top and pants, I no longer NEEDED gold boots. We wandered about the store which was a LOT of fun! All sorts of goodies. Dale’s inventory was increased by many indulgences, including a great mega pack of tops in many colors and variations. Had we found it again in time (that is, before I spent more money), I probably would indulged as well. It was too late for me, however, because I’d found the discount area. I indulged in another mega pack: the Nyx boots mega set – 9 pairs of boots, INCLUDING gold!

We also found the room with furniture! Dale has taught me well – always sit everywhere. LOL. So I tried out the chair. I liked it, it had some good sit selections. And you can get a good look at my Vagabond boots! I love the carton. I think I really have to go back and buy the carton, the poses are so cute. There is a pose sitting on the cushion, back against the carton. You can kneel on the cushion resting your elbows on the crate. Or, of course my favorite, lie down and relax on your belly on the crate!

I still thought I needed a gold necklace. I IM’d Calli to ask where I should shop. She sent us the taxi to come to her so she could check out the outfit first. When she saw what I was wearing she told me she would not wear gold with that. We discussed possible options and she said that my steampunk collar would be fine. *grin* (I bought the collar at Le Petit Prince on LPP, but neither the sim nor the store appear to be with us anymore. 😦 ) With that, the three of us settled down on the grass to chat. Perhaps we were tired, perhaps we were truthful, but a great deal of our conversation dealt with the lack of civility among SL (and net) citizens, and the perceived lack of honesty and clarity from LL. O tempora o mores!! But you cannot keep the three of us down for long, and we did cheer ourselves up and laugh before saying goodnight!

Voilà!

I DO remember how to do some things! My AO has been throwing off errors lately. I thought I’d fixed it – I noticed a typo in the notecard and corrected it. But the error kept appearing. Since I wasn’t there much lately, usually just bopping in and out, I didn’t devote much thought to it. We did a test last week, however, and my AO was throwing off the error like crazy and other people (Noobs) were noticing it. *red face* We explained what it was, but yeah, I was embarassed. So I went in tonight to fix it, once and for all. I didn’t see a typo, but I recopied and pasted. Error. Removed the pose. Error. Big duh. I saved the notecard and RESET THE SCRIPTS!!!! Tah Dah!!! Error free. Now that I look at that pose – I don’t know why I tried so hard to put it in. *grin*

Getting out of the Box

The skybox, that is. *grin* Keeping with my resolution to get out and enjoy more of SL and spend time with friends, I have made a conscious effort to DO things.


The other day Bree plurked about Robert Sawyer speaking at the Univ of Texas at Dallas. He was speaking live on campus but would also be streaming to the UT Dallas campus in SL. Both Bree and Honour really enjoy Sawyer’s books. They were both so enthusiastic about the upcoming lecture that I made sure to clear my schedule to be there. Many other friends showed up as well, including folks I had only just met at SLCC 2010. Initially the acoustics were NOT good – a lot of static. But someone began streaming the picture/sound from in the audience and we were able to hear and see Sawyer. It WAS very interesting. And I’m going to try out one of his books. *grin*

I joined Honour for a tour of The Curious Prim in Fairypunk Kingdom. I was TRYING to do some work, but she was very insistent. It is indeed a lovely build. I hope she blogs about it to do it justice. I mostly followed her about, looked where she told me to look and tried to work. *grin* Finally we found a room that reminded me of Maxfield Parrish, one of my favorite artists. I changed into an outfit I thought was relatively suitable and cajoled Honour into taking my picture. There was some great furniture for sale, lovely castle build. When I go to places like this, I realize that building in Sl is very much as involved as building a site in the atomic world. You must plan the earth, the landscaping, the buildings. My husband is a structural engineer, I’ve looked at plans, drawings. I don’t see the world that way. I can’t even begin to imagine how I would take a new sim and make it into something beautiful. We take so much for granted in SL – fantastic, marvelous builds are all around us. Our world is filled with talent.

I caught another meeting inworld during my lunch hour. The Gronstedt Group holds weekly “Train for Success” sessions in Second Life. They were doing a presentation on Virtual Worlds in the Enterprise. As you know, this is a subject dear to my heart. I’m still trying to make that connection between my “real” day job and the virtual world project from this past year. The panelists were Doug Thompson (“Dusan Writer”), Ian Hughes (“ePredator Potato”), and Maria Korolov (“Marie Kolache”). Again, I ran into friends I met as a result of SLCC 2010. I listened to the speakers and was a bit reassured. I think the most interesting comment I heard was made by (I think) Dusan Writer. I keep hearing that VW aren’t going to be mainstream until they are accessed via a web browser, removing the need for all the high-powered gaming equipment. Dusan (if it was indeed he) said that he did not think that was the case. I don’t know enough to know if that is right or wrong. But I do remember my first days in SL, and how I never really knew what was going on and never saw what other people saw because my equipment couldn’t render the world adequately. It was the people, the social networking, that kept me going until the hardware came. Anyway, I suggest you check out the Gronstedt Group sessions – they seem to be interesting and informative.

But today is a busy day for me in my atomic life. Participated in a VERY cool virtual world test. I will have to find out when and if I can talk about it. In my mail today was a letter from the IRS, wanting to discuss 2008. Uh oh. I thought we’d closed that book. Ugh. So between work and cooking and cleaning, I was at the accountant’s saying “This is YOUR problem!” *grin* This means that I don’t have time to explore any more today. I’m chilling in the sky box!

Game Show Time!

Lately it has become very clear to me that I don’t get out enough into SL. I settle into my sky box and IM. Unless of course I tp to a concert and dance and IM. But I don’t go to new venues, I don’t interact with different people (unless I’m pulling a knife on them) and I don’t take advantage of all the cool things that happen in SL. I was having a particularly brutal evening the other day and realized I needed to break the pattern. It was my great fortune that it was Tuesday, which meant time for The 1st Question! I blogged about this back in December when friends were panelists. I laughed til I cried at the witty and clever responses by the panelists. I figured a round of The 1st Question was good for what ailed me. So Honour and I headed to the studio.

Back in December the panelists were most definitely smart and well-informed. They KNEW a lot and could answer the questions fairly well. They were also playing the game for laughs, however. There was no question that they worded their answers to play to the crowd, going for double entendre and puns and silliness. This week’s panel was smart. Smart, smart, smart. (Watch the show here!) They played for points. Yes, they threw in the occasional laugh, but mostly they went for the win. *grin* It was fun. I am impressed with how much people know on such varied topics. I love the questions that Hydra Shaftoe and Pooky Amsterdam ask. Forget the answers – the question are hilarious. 🙂 The contest was close for awhile until Barbara flew out ahead.

I think the favorite part of the show for me is when the contestants have to make up words. I was a bit hard-pressed again this time to pick my favorite. I can never remember after what they were, so I contacted Pooky directly this time to get the correct spellings and definitions:
Magellanosis: that feeling you have, as you reel down the dock after leaving a boat, that you’re still on board.
DIgipanic: A phenomenon which overwhelms otherwise competent and capable adults when they are faced with new technologies. Characterized by sudden irrational outbursts, a profound loss of common sense, and a deeply held belief that the computer ‘doesn’t like’ the victim.
slurlpy or slurlpee – Consumes many slurls in inventory.
Dogodiferous: the stinky stuff dogs like to roll in

It’s a great time. And its fame is spreading. The 1st Question was mentioned in the British Science Festival!! Scroll on down the list of SL events/places and there it is! Pooky also told me that she is compiling a PookyPedia – all the many fabulous words that have been created for 1st Question. That will be a WONDERFUL source for all of us. *grin* Let’s see how many make it into every-day usage.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the audience. The audience participates energetically. *grin* You need to be very quick-witted to hold your own with this group. I confess – I still have NO idea how to figure out the secret word. I don’t know how these folks do it. *grin* When I grow up, I want to be quick-witted and smart enough to hold my own in the audience! Then I can aspire to be witty and clever enough to be a panelist!

Thank you Pooky, Hydra and contestants for another great time in SL! C’ya next Tuesday!

Kohelet

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What profit has a woman of all her labor which she takes under the sun?
Ecclesiastes/Kohelet 1.2-3

So, perhaps you remember my garden? Remember my project leader J??? Remember how J always ultimately undoes my garden? *smile* Whether by making me pull the plants, or by removing the region or by returning them to my lost and found, J has a way of reminding me that all is vanity, nothing lasts. Funny, I never pegged J as a traditionalist, but this IS the season when we read Kohelet. And this is the season when J has yet again begun to remove my gardens, my trees, my work.

“Your object ‘Weeping Cherry Tree’ has been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J from parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 42, 242
Your 7 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 3, 179.
Your 4 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 2, 221.
Your 8 objects have been returned to your inventory lost and found folder by J near parcel ‘Room A’ at Room A 61, 249 due to parcel owner return.”

Sigh. Mene mene tekel upharsin. My trees have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Maybe if I’d learned to make better shadows? /me mutters several things under my breath that I’d prefer not to have overheard. *grin* Okay. Everytime J does this to me, she ultimately finds a better project for me. Or gives me a garden of my own in which to play. So I’m going to hope for the best here. And remember that I not only have my own region elsewhere, but I actually have my own opensim grid.

BUT. On one thing I stand firm: Touch my ducks, J, and you will be very very very sorry. 🙂 After all – YOU are the one who insisted on arming me. *grin*