inventory – Ahuva’s Blog

Lost All Control

Maybe I haven’t lost ALL control. But my inventory has. Not just my SL inventory. My opensim inventory is rapidly becoming a disaster as well. (Don’t look in my RL closets either.)

But this post is a serious plea for assistance. I am doing development in opensim. I have co-developers. We are all working on pieces of the whole. In our regular software development we use a version control system. We need something similar inworld with our prims. It doesn’t even have to be that complicated. We have very few prims and we simply want to remember which is the latest version. Does anyone out there know of something? Has anyone developed their own method that could be shared? We are constantly asking “WHICH one of these is the latest version???” We need to clean up our act. We know it can be done better. As I stood here looking at the boxes, trying to figure out which was the right version, the sun moved across the sky. HELP!!!!!! *watches as all the blue boxes fall on me*
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House Arrest

Lucky me!!! Lucky you!!! Oura is taking over this blog today to tell you how to deal with your inventory. And how to make your friends crazy. 🙂 Both are EXTREMELY necessary skills in SL!

Inventory out of Control? What to do about it? Well the only thing to do, buckle down and clean it out, get organized, or get an alt and start over. 🙂

I decided to buckle down – I put myself on House Arrest. I decided I was not going to leave home until I had some semblance of order. Priority #1: I could at least FIND the new stuff I had just bought. Otherwise I’d just have to buy MORE new stuff. And if I couldn’t find THAT stuff, I’d have to buy MORE new stuff and… well – you see the problem, I hope.

While cleaning my inventory, I found lots of things that you would expect: clothing, landmarks, notecards, skins, hair, shoes, and boots, chairs and more. But I also found all this stuff that I had no idea why I had it: old tires, dirty mattress, boxes (omg at the boxes), tents, trailers, lawn chairs, bean cans that make a gassy sound 🙂 “Hmmmm, now why would I have THAT?” I asked myself.

After about a week of doing nothing but staring at my inventory, I got really bored. After all, while sorting inventory can be soothing, too much soothing simply numbs the mind. I found a nice T-shirt in my inventory that read “Under House Arrest (You didn’t see me here)”. I decided it was very fitting for the occasion. So what to do when cleaning inventory, at home under House Arrest? Plan a diversionary prison break. Trash your sim of course!! I set up a Tent City. LOL. The only problem with trashing my sim – I shared it with 2 other friends, Sam and DL. So I was trashing THEIR sim, too. You’d better watch out when *I* get bored!

Luckily I happened to get an IM from a good friend Rickk Shippe. He felt sorry for me, lonely in my house arrest, and came to visit. I was going a little crazy having no contact with the outside world for so long. He was quite surprised to see my tent city and decided to join me in my ‘creating’. Rick was a huge help. He had many things in HIS inventory that I can’t imagine why he would need them, either. We had old Christmas trees on fire in a ‘huge’ camp fire. Wild horses started showing up out of nowhere. More mobile homes, fire barrels, bouncing tires everywhere. Seemed like a good idea at the time. 🙂 WE were having fun.

When Sam and DL ‘noticed’ the new additions to the parcel, they were less than thrilled. SL was pretty new to them at the time, and some obvious methods of determining the culprit had not become second nature to them as of yet. They didn’t know how to inspect items and determine the owner. They didn’t know their land tools. So it was a great deal of fun to push them a bit with this practical joke.

Cleaning it all up was very easy and quick… but alas, it seemed to just add more BACK to my inventory. What will I do for this next week of “House Arrest” to entertain myself? Maybe prepare a big folder of STUFF and give it away?? Look out…. it could be coming YOUR way!

Thanks, Oura!! LOL. /me makes note to refuse any inventory offers from Oura in the near future…..

When Girls Talk

One of my favorite things in SL is hanging about with friends, talking. Maybe you’ve noticed that in this blog? But there’s really nothing like “girl talk”. “Girl talk” can range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from secrets to broadcasting, from the deeply personal to the totally generic. We love to share information and tips. We love to hear how others solve the problems that we encounter. And oh yeah – *I* can use the word “girl”. That’s because I am one. Female. A Gal. Even, on occasion, a chick. But if you are male – you may NOT use that word unless you are talking about a female under the age of puberty. You’ve been warned.

So Girl Talk (GT) is the best. If you are a guy and you are there when GT gets going – run for cover. Because you are totally out of your league. Ask Alann. He had the misfortune to be present at the Crown and Pearl the other day when GT broke out. You never really get a warning – it just happens. We were hanging about, dancing, chatting. The usual. Rrishanna, Bailey, Marisa, Natalya, Alann and Nicole were hanging about when I tp’d into the CnP, fresh from my adventures in Victoriana. Somehow the talk turned to inventory (perhaps because I mentioned that I’d been checking out Shenlei’s new store). Someone, and I really don’t want to point out the miscreant (BL), actually claimed that one could have too much inventory!!!! HERESY!!!! 🙂 That statement was not unchallenged but we did all agree that managing inventory was time-consuming and even problematic.

Well, problematic for SOME of us. Bailey and Marisa are absolutely terrifying (to me anyway) in their approach to inventory. 🙂 Okay, I admit right up front – I am completely envious of how organized and efficient they are. I want them to come and clean up my inventory for me. I have actually cleaned up my inventory. But it takes only 1 day before it spirals out of control again. But this is NOT about me – 🙂 – this is about Bailey and Marisa. Bailey, who has actually deleted items (I can’t imagine that at all – I’m trying to remember when I last emptied my trash folder), has BOXES of inventory items that she doesn’t want. She has FIVE Don’t Want boxes and a Not Sure Box. She rezzed them out for us. They talk:

[2008/12/28 13:30] Don’t Want whispers: Please use arrows on box to scroll through items and click on box to retrieve or to choose other options.
[2008/12/28 13:30] Don’t Want whispers: Please see warning in instructions about having more than 100 items.
[2008/12/28 13:30] Don’t Want whispers: FOUND 131 ITEM(S).

OMG. Is that efficient or is that efficient???? Don’t YOU want one too???? Marisa has folders so organized that I’m sure that when she buys something new, it leaps directly into place out of respect and awe. Her clothes folder has sub folders. (okay, so does mine). Her sub folders have sub folders. And so do they. Everything is “sorted by category then color”. I can’t even figure out what half of my clothes items ARE, much less what color they are. Her shoes are organized into flats, heels, sandals, boots (tall and short) and others and then, yes indeedy, subfoldered by color. Bailey countered with how her clothes are in dresses, outfits, club wear, goth and separates and then the separates are by jacket, sweater, tank, jeans, skirts etc. Rrish chimed in saying that she organizes by item: casual / formal / dressy / designer. Natalya and I knew that we were in the presence of greatness. I was humbled and cowed and decided it would be way too much effort to emulate them, so I stood about gazing at them in admiration and uttering words of praise. Nat, who has way more energy than is healthy (for me, anyway), took their genius for inspiration and began reorganizing her own inventory. Alann – well, face it Alann – you were hopelessly out of your element. 🙂 Although you DID get off a few priceless comments. During the shoe-sorting discussion Alann let us know that he sorted his shoes by what he found on their soles. 🙂 Yes – I cleaned that up.

At the point where the conversation turned to organizing notecards and landmarks I confess – I wanted to flee. 🙂 But then we started discussing having a yard sale or giving away our unwanteds to Newbies. And conversation flowed on. But I have the image of those boxes with me forever. Perhaps one day I will be inspired to clean up MY inventory as well.

Sometimes GT is simply for sharing confidences and hopes and idle thoughts. Issa and I are both fairly busy, so I treasure the times we are actually in the same location, hanging out chatting. There was the day that Issa told me that she and Huk were pregnant. Yes, you can be pregnant in SL. I haven’t made up my mind if I’m going to blog on that or not. 🙂 You’ll be the first to know if I decide that there’s something I want to post. And sometimes we simply whine and complain at each other. Or encourage each other in some endeavor. But it’s good to know that Issa is always there for me. And I’m there for you, Issa, whenever and however you need me.

Yep, Girl Talk. The best.