Lewis Luminos

Crikey... they can read??

All of the servers used by Linden Lab are owned by Amazon and, afaik, they are located in the USA. A private region will cost $2748 per year, plus a setup fee of $349. So that's well within your 5k per year budget.

I think these two points are related, and are why Rowan doesn't get as many IMs as other women. They look at the avatar's name first, and often they just stop there. They don't look at anything else in the profile, they're not even looking at your avatar. They're just spamming out a list of identical IMs to everyone with a feminine name and ignoring anyone whose name is ambiguous or masculine. Only after getting a reponse to the first "phish" will they start to look at the avatar or the profile. "Rowan" is most definitely an ambiguous name, leaning towards masculine (especially here in the UK where it's exceedingly rare as a feminine name). They're not IMing you because they're terrified of IMing a man by mistake and they're stopping at your name before checking anything else. I never, ever get hit on as Lewis. Then again, Orwar is much better looking. I am exactly the same - much more an extrovert in RL than I am in SL. I think its partly because in RL I can see what people are paying attention to; I can tell if they're totally absorbed in one other person, or scanning around the room looking for someone to talk to, or sitting in a corner reading their phone. You can't see any of that in SL. So any other avatar you meet, you can't tell if they are busy in an IM or even AFK altogether. So I am much less likely to talk to someone I don't know in SL than I am in RL. But I am much more likely to chatter away in local chat. than I am to send or engage in IMs. Then again, I often find that peolple misunderstand what extrovert/introvert actually means. It does not mean "how talkative you are". It means "do you get energised from being around other people (extrovert) or do you need time alone to re-energise (introvert)?" I'm an extrovert because being around other people energises me; the more the better, even when I'm not directly interacting with them. In fact sometimes it's better if I don't.... And after all of that, I realise I have not answered the OPs question. My preference for a female avatar is one that is curvy but natural, and tending towards overweight. I'm not a fan of inflated boobs and butts with a teeny tiny waist, but rather, an overall thicker and more natural shape. Larger breasts, yes, but not looking like they're silicone implants.

This is where someone comes in and posts the "How old do you look" AI thing... https://howolddoyoulook.com/ It thinks I'm 27 but it's only trying to flatter me.

Aside from infohubs and other newbie places, some clubs and stores may have (accidentally or purposefully) left the Set Home feature available for their group - this only works when the land group and the customer group is the same but you can check this by going to About Land and comparing your group with the land group. If they are the same, it's worth a try.

I've used this one for years; https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/LAQ-Decor-Christmas-Tree-7-color-pack/24241070 It wasn't cheap, but it's low LI, looks really good, comes with several colour schemes in the pack, and is mod so I can scale it to fit any home.

The reasons why this won't ever happen, and the available solutions (go to a different SL location, make an alt, don't log in at all) have already been addressed. But there's one more thing I'd like to add. I am very much getting the impression that the OP is young and doesn't yet have a great deal of life experience. Or maybe older but still having a somehow sheltered background. As you get older and more experienced, you will learn that, unless you are an actual celebrity, other people's opinions of you generally don't matter. If someone is rude to you, so what? It says more about them than it does about you. Once you have muted them, you can't be harmed by them any further, and demanding a "reverse mute" comes across as being immature and entitled. By far the best solution to this dilemma is learn to accept what other people think, let it roll off you and get on with your life as normal. If you're unable to achieve this by yourself, there are self-help books and videos that may help. But don't expect an instant change; it can take months, even years, to change your thinking. Oh, and quit working at that club. If they're more interested in footfall than protecting their staff from griefers, they're not worth your time.

My avatar (at least my main one) is literally just me. Not a separate character at all. It's an image that represents my ideal RL self within SL. Talking to my SL avatar is no different from talking to me in any other online or offline space. My alts on the other hand, are not quite me, though if you had a conversation with one of them, you'd still hear the same words as you would if you were talking to my RL self. Only the image is different. Back in 2009 when Indra was brand new (still on Orientation Island or whatever it was called back then), another guy approached her for sex. I taught him how to make an alt and run two viewer windows at once. 😁

I wear Tegan nearly all the time.

Both (but not necessarily at the same time). I'll need an immediate "quick fix" to resolve the current problem as quickly as possible, but then I appreciate knowing what caused it and how to prevent it happening again.

A little late; picked this one up last week but didn't start decorating it right away. I didn't realise that seaside trailers even existed, but this one is lovely, right on the shore.

There's a couple of other hangout spots that are not necessarily the community centres, but also worth taking note of. Bellisseria Fairgrounds - currently empty but most of the big Bellisseria events happen here. Land on the pier so you don't accidentally get stuck in whatever the next build is going to be. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Whiskey Bay/173/3/24 The SS Galaxy - formerly part of the Blake Sea, it has been brought into Bellisseria to preserve it; this is an amazing piece of old-school prim architecture. I have some pics of myself on the Galaxy dating back to about 2009. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Galaxy AFT/190/59/21

I didn't really have help from a mentor in the very beginning but a friend and I joined together on the same day and even that was better than nothing. But it was a week or two later, when I was hunting for a rental place to live, that I stumbled upon a group of rental houses on mainland. The owner and her friend were there and they were both super-helpful. As well as explaining how land and rental worked, he took me for a ride in a helicopter and taught me the basics of building. My first thing was a chair. After that I was hooked. My favourite experience from the other side, with me being a helper, was one day when I was in my house, and I could see in local chat a "Sorry you don't have permission..." message coming from my boat which was moored outside. Someone was on my land, trying to steal it. I noticed it was a newbie (my home is just down the road from Braunworth which was, at the time, a newbie infohub) so instead of kicking him out I went to say hello. He said he wanted to try the boat. I decided that a Trudeau One would be far too difficult for a newbie to tackle but I had a full perm freebie in my inventory, so I gave him a copy, showed him how to rez it and steer it, and off he went. About thirty minutes later he came back to thank me for the boat and the experience. I hope it had the same effect on him as that first helicopter ride had for me. I don't think I would be as successful helping newbies these days though. Avatars are getting more complex and people getting more impatient; nobody wants to take the time needed to learn any more like they used to. If they can't get from zero to perfect in 10 minutes or less, they ragequit.

I don't usually go out of my way to add sounds to my parcel, but I'm on the shore so I like to have wave/surf sounds. One that annoys the you-know-what out of me is a particular fireplace I have which I love for its looks but I hate the overly-loud crackling sound it makes, so whenever I use it I tear that out and make it silent.

I wouldn't worry about it. Klytyna's only contribution to the forum is to laugh at everybody. That said, renting out mainland is only going to work as a business if you own the equivalent of a whole region, and rent out in small parcels with full occupancy at all times. Otherwise your customers will decide than buying is cheaper, or you'll have to drop your price so low that you'll lose money. There's a reason that many rental agents turned to the dreadful model of stacked, nearly empty skyboxes offering a tiny amount of LI per customer. Please don't do that though. It's a blight on the mainland.

I and my alts are almost always human, though the girls occasionally go furry once in a while (not often these days)

Two people DID help. You simply failed to provide the required information. Nobody here is Linden Lab. Nobody here is tech support. Nobody here can go round to your house to look at youyr hardware. The only person who would be able to fix this issue is you.

The lowering of tier on 8192m or more, and the dropping of VAT, is great news for me, and will save me around £60 a year. The new Plus level isn't tempting, but I'm now tempted to keep my 3rd premium alt on full premium instead of dropping her back to Basic. What I choose will depend on how my finances look this time next year. I don't think I'm really the target audience for Plus level - it looks to me like its aimed at people who have never been Premium before, to tempt them into a cheaper, lower level of land ownership and get a taste of how it works. I am disappointed that the new level doesn't allow the 512m Linden Homes though, like the campers and the smaller Newbrooks and Sakuras. That was a mistake I think.

Hmm - the apparent lack of any DMCAs coming from Maitreya over this, combined with the relative lack of activity from Maitreya as a brand (product updates/releases) makes me wonder if the people behind Maitreya are even active in SL any more.

Definitely looks like there's more to this than I first thought. Server-side issues.

I think a lot of creators did the Maitreya rigging by trial-and-error; I noticed some of them show something like "experimental" in the product name, which I suppose is a kind of get-out clause if the clothes don't happen to fit perfectly. I'm pretty sure that's what Lucybody did, because it isnt an exact match. I did wonder if some creators got the Lucybody devkit (if there is one) and were using that to rig for Maitreya instead.

I have both Teegle horses and Waterhorse. If you want a horse that looks visually realistic, I would go with Waterhorse. But Teegle is better in every other respect, including price.

It can happen on mainland too, if there are several parcels owned by the same group within the same region.

What error did you get? "The region is full" or "Can't rez because owner permissions do not allow" or something like that? Or something entirely different? But yes in general it is possible to run out of prims for the region even if your own parcel is under the limit. This doesn't just apply to private estate, it can apply to mainland too, if there are several parcels owned by the same group. Take a situation like mine for instance, I have about 10k sq m of mainland all in the same region and owned by the same group. It's split into 6 parcels of varying sizes and the total combined LI allowed is about 3500. But suppose one of my tenants, who has a 1024m parcel with 351m allocated, decides to go over their limit and builds with 650 instead. The system will let them, and it comes out of the group pool. Now if everyone else decides to go up to, but not exceed their own limit, whoever goes last will lose out, because there won't be enough in the group pool, it will be 300 short. YOU may have plenty but the GROUP does not, so you will get the "region is full" error. The only solution is to remove objects from the parcel that's gone over its limit. However if you got the "can't rez because permissions don't allow" or something like that, even though you know you have the right group permissions etc - that's a bug with certain mesh objects. The solution here is to rez outside the house, on Linden ground terrain or on a flat, non-mesh prim.

They occasionally do "one month free" but IMO it's not worth it. You'll save more than that just by buying the annual plan instead of the monthly one.