Rufferta

Today I decided "one last try and I will settle for whatever I get and stay put for awhile". The giver-of-homes was wonky - i could not teleport from the page or the map, so I tried to remember where on the map my new place was, use the in-world map to go to the Region, and then walk around clicking on parcels until I found which one was mine. I tried different stilts, and a log house, and on my last attempt I tried for a houseboat. On the map it looked great, until I found the spot.....I forgot one thing for a "perfect place" - there should be a structure on it....

Botha Stone Fountain B, Bay of Space Pigs, Misso 141,54,25 I love your avatar.

Thankfully I live in a retirement community where we have some limited social interactions (6 feet apart, outdoors), otherwise I think I WOULD go crazy. Yesterday we had to drive to the bank and the petfood store. It was an adventure. I'm not very social in Second Life, but I am spending more time there since the corona.

That was fast!

Here - this one should be easy

OK - Blake Sea - Half Hitch 172, 136, 20

I spend most of my time wandering, taking pictures, playing "Game of Homes" (both in Bellisseria and Mainland) and just wondering at all the things that Second Life Residents and The Moles have created. I have dabbled at being a real estate baron, builder, and scripter, but have given up that fight for the time being. Maybe this year I'll try to tackle Blender again... Pixel sex? I'm very afraid that anyone whose first experience with 'sex' is in Second Life is going to be disappointed. I imagine a wedding night "What do you mean, your thing doesn't talk?" Sorry.

I confess I've been playing GOH lately, and I've been trying to figure out what it is I'm looking for. I tried to put together some thoughts: square plot or end of row (houseboat) view attached to land (houseboats, stilts) privacy - or at least one view without another structure protected water nearby place to put a boat and a place to sail (I'm not a good navigator and I need a wide straight channel) neighbors who don't have flourescent palm trees not a parcel with uncertain future - will the empty space next door be more houses or something nice? A place that "feels right". I know I'm asking a lot - what do you think?

Second Life Endowment for the Arts (SLEA) is open. Like LEA, it provides multiple regions of space for artists to display their work. The region schedule currently shows the regions being assigned to artists for a two- to three-month period; although one of the regions seems to be allowing individual artists one week slots. Note: right now if you click the SL Map for SLEA 7 'landing hub' you will end up in the water. Try http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLEA7/29/31/55, or aim for the center of the blue circle in the lower left corner of SLEA7. You can get a hud there, and there are teleports nearby to take you to some of the smaller displays around SLEA7. Don't miss the wonderful Bridge Project! Right now there are art displays in three regions, and the last one is due to be finished by the end of January. I recommend visiting it.

Nomad Isil Studio Skye Schadenfreude Never Totally Dead are a few...

When I'm shopping for buildings, I try to get as far away from the model as I can to see how it looks at a distance. Also, beware of creators who say something like "If the structure does not look right to you, you need to improve your viewer settings."

If you go to Marketplace you can click on Buildings/Residential and then specify your prim limits*. Myself, I like Chin Rey homes. "Prim Count" does not equal "Land impact" as I found recently. Some 'tortured prims' can be only 'one prim', but have a land impact that is much higher. The other day I thought I was being smart by using a prim with a square hole as a fence - turned out the computer decided it had a 24 land impact....

I'm not in Second Life much anymore, but I remember the pod tours as a great way to explore the Mainland. I would ride with the map open and mark areas I wanted to return to. I'm hoping this is just a miscommunication, and not some part of a "DeJoy" conspiracy to sabotage the Mainland so that residents are restricted to Bellisseria and private Regions. I hope Yavanna gets better and one of the Lindens finds a way to reward her - how about at least naming one of the new Regions (or even a new continent) after her?

Update: Support has agreed to restore my premiums' statuses (stati?) and restore some of my land. I am very grateful that I can now make a more graceful exit... I am still a bit in shock - over the years I have tried to be a cheerleader for Second Life, even though I sometimes pointed out problems that could be fixed. I even set up an Unofficial Tourist Information Center online and inworld. The sudden realization that I was just a silly old woman trying to build castles on the sand hit me hard. All that terraforming, landscaping, castle-building, etc....just blown away like dust in the wind. (Picture silent movie heroine with a handkerchief clutched to her bosom, here...) I apologize for being political. I realize that people who disagree with me are not ALWAYS wrong. On the 'being kicked back to basic' thing I blame myself for not communicating better. I still don't like the "automatic renewal" thing and I will set my calendar to cancel before the next renewal comes due. I hope my rant will help someone else avoid problems.

Last year when Second Life was offering discounted Premium membership renewals, I got carried away and set up all my alts for Premium. A few days ago, when the first $99 automatic renewal hit, I realized I needed to rethink my budget. My expenses have gone up, and my income has gone down. I was also thinking about 'what if' someone else had to handle my finances in the future - would the premiums be automatically renewed every year even if I was no longer able to enjoy Second Life? - so I sent in a support ticket asking that my premium alt memberships not be automatically renewed NEXT YEAR. Instead, they demoted all my premium alts to BASIC, and all my land has been emptied and marked as 'abandoned.' I had planned to gradually sell off land and downsize until things got better. Perhaps it is all for the better. Even if I've lost all my premium benefits, money I paid for premiums, and any profits from land I could have sold, I no longer have to pay tier. I am sorry, in response to "how did we handle your support ticket?" I wrote that the person who handled it was probably a Trump supporter. Please learn from my mistake.

No longer for sale - sorry.

Here are a few shots of the interior of "Bears All The Way Down" in Cozy. Many items are from the gacha resale markets; although I bought the blue-canopy sleeping area at the recent Fantasy Faire. The big bear on the front porch was a table-top Half-Deer item I enlarged. I loved decorating this home. The fact that separate walls could be re-colored was a great help and I loved the big upstairs area. Putting in a partition to make room for a downstairs bathroom was not a good idea - the bathroom ended up too long and narrow. In future I would put a bathroom in an add-on. Kitchen not shown because I hadn't realized all the photos had not turned out before I removed all the furniture. You will have to take my word for it that it was fabulous. I will be abandoning parcel tonight.

Not for those afraid of heights. . Ukanipo http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ukanipo/130/237/56 - Almost straight up and down. There is a very smalll part of the parcel that touches the river, but there is a 32m parcel 'group-access only' spot right next to it that can mess up a direct teleport, so I put the landing point on a platform half way up. Great view! There are a few small abandoned parcels nearby that you might be able to talk the Lindens into selling you if you want a full 1024 parcel. Right below Mahalu volcano. The map makes it look as if you could sail down the river, but there is a small waterfall you would have to go around.

Was that named 'gggggggggg'? I believe this may be a clone of my place in Comfy - was curious why you abandoned it. Are there any absolutely unique Log Home regions? I don't have a problem with cloned regions, because I believe that which house we choose, and how we decorate and landscape, will make each place unique. I visited the place in Hardly There because I wanted to see what could be done on a similar plot. Visiting the different Log Home regions gives me lots of good ideas.

Do houses reflect personality? Does an alt's character affect their choice of housing? My main alt 'lives' in a castle in Upaniko, the dreaded Mainland, and plans to stay there as long as she can afford tier. Because I had excess tier, she was also able to cycle through a Bellisserean traditional, Victorian, camper, and Lodge Home. I was not totally comfortable with any of them, because I miss being able to terraform and annoy my neighbors, but I love the community and the environment. RuffertasAlt got a wonderful houseboat in Echo Cove and plans to stay there as long as she can afford it. Since she has become more involved in Bellisseria, and belongs to different groups than the other alts, I believe she has a slightly different character. Some thoughts - in RL I am a dollmaker, and there are times when the doll/person I start to create turns into something different. I have heard other dollmakers say that "the doll talked to me and told me what it wanted to become." I have heard writers complain that their characters took over their story and sent it in a different direction. In Good Omens* a hell-dog is sent to Lucifer's son and becomes an ordinary dog, because that is what Lucifer's son wanted it to be. In Second Life we often judge on appearances - Body, animations, Profile, age, etc... and on the Display Name of the other avatar. I am going to react differently to a one-day old wearing an off-the-rack body whose name is 'Jane2000056' than I would to an alt wearing an advanced body who has a last name**. I have several alts, most of them started out as tier-alts or crash-test dummies, but as they were treated differently by others, depending on their avatars/clothing/Profiles each became somewhat different in my mind. Perhaps they are all different aspects of my personality? I find find "I" am treated differently depending on which alt I am inhabiting. In my opinion the more noob I look the less respect I get. Wearing anything non-Caucasian seems to attract more pervs than usual. I think that a Dinkie avatar seems to be perceived as more approachable. *Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - I couldn't find the exact quote, but I recommend both the book and the Amazon movie. **Which is why I want a last name.

One of my current pet peeves (I have a lot of them, like a crazy cat lady has cats) is going to an event and finding it full of avatars with complexities beyond 100,000. I have my preferences set relatively low (old computer) so if someone has a complexity over 60,000 they are just jelly people. Why get all dressed up if not everyone can see you and (perhaps) increase lag for everyone)?. It would seem that common courtesy would dictate that people wear low impact avatars when going out ....("Naah, who would see my beautifulness.") Ran into an avatar yesterday at one of my favorite regions - I don't know if it was an SL glitch, or whether she had gone beyond jelly person into invisibility. Anyway, I tried to use a vendor and instead of the expected response got "Pay ____________". I knew that wasn't the creator's name, but I couldn't see anyone, so I used 'show transparent' and set my preferences to what I call "computer crash" until I could see her. I IM'd her that I couldn't see her because of her complexity (103,000+) and perhaps she shouldn't stand in front of the vendor. No response, for many minutes. Later I got a long tirade from her, calling me the 'b' word and telling me I should mind my own business. That made me feel not so bad that I had AR'd her, thinking that perhaps she had become invisible on purpose to get money from the vendor. She was right, but really I was trying to be helpful. Really.

I gave up my Traditional and started playing GOH with the lodge homes. After several days of getting and abandoning places that just didn't inspire me, I used my last pick and tried for a Victorian. I couldn't believe my luck. I did derender the hedges, but otherwise it is perfect. I hope that whoever abandoned this has been able to get a wonderful Lodge Home as a replacement.

I saw this house around the first of the month. Was it an April Fool's joke, or someone who just likes outdoor living?

I decided to try to decorate a traditional home. It's harder than it looks. Most items were from my inventory, or from garage sales. In the kitchen I splurged on a D-Lab refrigerator, but the kitchen cabinets are just textured prims - when I found one of the prims had stuck out into the living room I textured one side and pretended it was a painting. The lean-to greenhouse and freebie gazebo were textured to match the house siding. I got nostalgic and used some Julia Hathor furniture in the bedroom. Trying to decorate made me appreciate what others have done, and hope to do as well myself some day.

Ran into a patch of rough weather in Petticoat - tornado, fog, snow, rain....It drove me batty.