Persephone Emerald

If you've been playing in SL & on the forums for awhile, you've probably already lost a few Sanity points.

Second Life is a virtual, computer-generated world, with different possibilities & limitations than Physical Reality has. If you like playing games in RL, or on other computer-generated platforms, you can play games in SL too. Some people like to play the "Annoy Other people As Much as Possible"" game. We call them trolls, & most people in SL don't like them. Many people like to play the "Live Out My Fantasies" game, with all the variation & weirdness this game can create. Some people like to play the "Build Cool Stuff" game. Some of them are so good at this game that they make money they can take into Physical Reality. Some people like to play the "Virtual Dolls, Dollhouses & Worlds" game. (I like this game myself.) Some people like to play various Roleplaying Games, kind of like D&D or "Vampire, the Masquerade", but with wonderful, moving & dressable avatars, instead of pewter figurines, cards or drawings of their characters. Some people like to play games where they shoot zombies, aliens, or other creatures. Some people like to chat with other people, often while having their avatar dance at a club. Some people like to play "Cartoon Porn Fantasy". Some people like to play "Erotic Fiction Writer". Some people like to play both at the same time. The goal of all these games is to have fun & help your partners have fun, while virtually doing & saying things that you would likely feel uncomfortable doing & saying in RL. Many people like to play "The Shopping Game", where you can buy all kinds of cool stuff you could never afford in Physical Realty, then get to complain about how hard it is to keep track of it all or get rid of stuff you don't really want anymore. Some people like to play "The Dating Game". In RL, you win this game by hooking up with someone you like who also likes you, but you can also lose it by getting an STD, unwanted pregnancy, robbed, raped, or other unpleasant outcomes. In SL you can only lose it by having your heart broken, having virtual property stolen or destroyed, or having other people think you look foolish. I'm sure there are many other fun games to play in SL (such as "Make Fun of Noobs Behind Their Backs"), but I can't think of any more right now.

Yes. You can set your object to "Physical" in the Edit window. For a ball, you should set the physics type to "Rubber". Kicking or dropping balls around SL can be fun, but be careful not to use them to annoy or grief people. If you don't have land of your own, a sandbox is a good place for playing with physical objects. You can also set objects to Temporary, so if they roll away from you & get lost, they will disappear after a time. The virtual gravity & collisions in SL don't work exactly as they would in RL. You might have a sky platform hanging happily in the sky with no support, but if you turn it physical, it will likely crash into a neighbors house or business, not breaking any objects, but making their experience of SL very broken. You might also have a picture hanging nicely on your wall, but if it's turned physical, it will fall off & land in a very unlikely position from where it would fall in RL.

I think they're the crazy ones, but that doesn't really help your situation, does it? I don't think your avatar looks like a child, but I'm not the one running the clubs or sims that are giving you problems. I'd suggest having a back-up Outfit (including body shape & clothing) to change into when you get those kinds of remarks, but otherwise look however you want.

Unfortunately there is discrimination in SL based on how one's avatar looks. This is especially true for young-looking and furry avatars. Once you've explained to the management of a store, club or region that you're not a child, it's up to them to let you in or not, and no amount of complaining will change that fact. You can either have a taller, more mature avatar for such places or not go back to them. It might help to understand their perspective, though this likely won't help your position. Second Life has a bad reputation, partly deserved but also largely undeserved, regarding sexual age-play. Because of fears that someone might report a sim owner for allowing sexual age-play, sim owners & managers tend to be overly strict about allowing young-looking avatars in places where there could be any kind of activity deemed "adult". The Second Life TOS doesn't forbid child avatars in Mature or Adult rated sims, but many sim owners act like it does. They're overreacting, but they're not doing it to be mean to you, just to protect themselves.

Wht you describe sounds like a newer, spifier version of what I have, & mine works great. Do get that cooling pad if you plan to use it on your lap, though.

I love exploring & showing places to peope, but I'm not always in SL consistantly. Contact me in world if you like. Tableau is a great place to explore, part south-western shopping town & part pure fun exploration. The colors & details are amazing. Climb up to the campfire on the rocks & look for the peyote. When you wear it, you have a trippy experience. Jump past the yellow warning tape & see what's hidden at the bottom of that hole. Look for gifts & goodies. There are a few hidden about. Cimb up on the stages, touch stuff & try the animation. Be sure to look over the sim from the highest spots in the middle of the sim. Look though the viewers there. That's one palce that's best with a buddy, but it's cool on your own too.

I recomend joining a building help group like Happy Hippsters or Builders Brewery. You can get free textures & scripts, take building classes, & ask for help in the chat groups. Second Life is a very diverse & complicated platform, so you can keep learing more, finding more places to explore, & realizing new things you can do. It often seems overly difficult & confusing at first, but if you get a little help from others, you'll see it ofters wonderous possibilities.

Use Survey Monkey, but don't expect many responses. Very few people use these forums & many who do, don't like to do random surveys.

Roleplay is a good way to meet people. Pick a theme that interests you & look for groups in Search. If you like art, check out the Immersiva sim, as well as the LEA ones (Linden Endowment for the Arts). Hunts are a good way to meet people & to get good stuff for free. Look for free hunts that have a theme that interests you. Some hunt groups work for multiple hunts and may have chat going between the hunts. Building schools can be good places to meet people. Clubs are good meeting places if you like music & chat. Like in RL, find things you like to do, then you'll find friends who like to do the same things. I haven't been in world much lately, but if you'd like me to show you some cool places, send me an IM. I like exploring, building & landscaping my land, so I'm not usually very social, but I've been in SL long enough to know some cool places & how to get good stuff free or cheap.

The Game of Thrones RP sims now have 5 land regions, as well as more on sky platforms. Currently represented are King's Landing (year 1 AL), Highgarden & The Farmlands of The Reach, Casterly Rock & Lannisport, The Eyrie & The Vale of Arryn, Sunspear & Dorne, The Grassy Vale, The Dothraki Sea, Castle Black, The Wall & Mole's Town. The Riverlands will be coming soon too. There are opportunities for role-players in all levels of society, as well as for natural (non-speaking) animals, such as wolves & horses. Here are some pictures of this fantastic sim:

I'm agreeing with the previous poster. People in SL tend to be very touchy about even the suggestion of inappropriate sexual use of child avatars. It's best to not even have genitalia on a child avatar. Also stay away from areas with adult activities, even if it's just a dance club in a Moderate rated area. You may want to have both an adult and a child shape for you avatar, so you can go to Moderate & Adult rated regions without being asked to leave or even ejected without a warning.

Unfortunately, nothing is completely safe from accidental deletion in SL, so if your No Copy objects disappear, you could be out of luck. If you're lucky, your objects may come back to your Lost & Found folder after you log out & log in again. If it's something you bought recently and you know who the creator was, you may be able to have them send another copy, but if it was transferable, they probably won't. Sometimes a region reset can eat recently rezzed objects too, in which case you may be able to ask SL support for a rollback to get them back.

I've been reading all the more recent threads on this same subject tonight. I'm also looking at getting a new laptop for SL. With Server Side Baking starting July 9th, I'm going to have to update to something that can run the latest version of Firestorm without turning all the prims in my SL word turn bright pink. From what I gather, 8GBs of RAM is plenty, a good Intel core is fine, but don't get an Intel Graphics card. Get either an nVIDA or an ATI. (How many MBs though?) It's also worth noting that SL is hard on the processor & battery, so always use a cooler under your laptop & keep it plugged in when running SL. For a laptop cooler, I also love my light-weight & inexpensive Belkin (which can easily be taken apart to clean out the husky fur that accumulates in the fan).

I just hope LL waits untile after the Twisted Hunt ( all of March ) to do this.

Online, in SL and in RL, I never lie about who or what I really am, but I don't tell everyone everything either. I'm a middle-age, white woman in RL (and usually in SL), but I have other avatars & RP personas. When I wear an African avatar shape & skin, it is either because I'm RPing as a classical Egyptian woman or because I'm modeling male clothing I made for pictures. If I wear a wolf or cat avatar, I expect people won't think I'm really a wolf or cat either. If I chat with someone in SL or read something in their profile that I have in common with them, I may share more information, but much of the time my complete background & interests is not relevant to my interactions with people. Sometimes I don't even want to discuss information I've put in my profile, but it's there in case it's relevant to the person reading it. If in RL I'm discussing being a caregiver to a parent with dementia, my being a pagan witch is an identification that is irrelevant and could damage my interaction with the person I'm talking with. They might identify as Christian and might be upset if I say I'm a witch. They might not feel free to share their experiences or might view me with suspicion & fear. Online, I'm not going to tell people my real name, address or workplace, because that is information they don't need & I don't want to have shared with strangers. I may tell them what city I live in, but only because it's big city that won't provide identifying information to them. If I'm interviewing for a job, I'm not going to tell the interviewer than I'm a bisexual pagan who plays in Second Life either. It just makes sense to segregate your personal information and only tell people what they need or have a right to know.

Several creators make prim eye sparkles, which can be worn with your own eyes. You can serach for "prim eye sparkles" on Marketplace. Amacci also has some free ones at their in-world store.

Some people probably created alts to abuse this promotion, ...but what were the Lindens smoking when they though giving out free money on Amazon would be a good business model?

Once you get a few lindens, what will you do with them? - Buy stuff probably? If you want virtual clothing & stuff, I think Hunts are fun. You can explore shops & other cool places, make friends, and pick up cool freebies along the way. Learning which hunts have the kinds of things you like is part of the SL "game". You determine your own goals in SL, and the better you get at meeting them, the higher you advance in "rank".

I looked at the Amazon page & it says "This item is Currently Unavailable" Does that mean the deal starts at midnight tonight or something? I'll take the free lindens, if they're giving them out. I don't have much use for a hoverboard though.

Wow! You've done an awesome job of matching your avatar to your RL look. Now, if you upload these RL pictures to SL, you can look at them to adjust your face a bit more. Getting the match close to perfect is very difficult, so take your time. I don't suggest trying to match your RL body shape too closely, becaues SL clothing favors a tall, thin body that isn't realistic for 90% of real women. I've found that if one makes an avatar with a realistic height, then a 50 head size looks ok, but if you go for a normal SL height, then you need to enlarge your head slightly. Also, I think arm length needs to be around 80 to look realistic.Look at where your hands fall in relation to your hips in a mirror to get the right proportion. I've read that Redgrave skins look a little more mature than most good skins do, so you might want to look at their demos to see if they have any you like. I've had the same Redgrave skin for years for my main avatar, which I've tried to make look something like my RL self, & I've been very happy with it. (For my alts, I've used nice, free or inexpensive skins for the most part.)

*Hugs* Heart too. I'm sorry for your losses. Even though I struggle with dealing with my mother at times, I'm grateful for the times when she's funny & we get along, and I try to make the most of the time I still have with her. I also lost my sister to cancer about 15 years ago, then my father about a year later.

*Hugs* Angiewolf. I hope 2013 is better for you, that you got your laptop & that you get a better boyfriend this year.

Amie, I won't rake you over the coals for your response because other people have already done that. I hope you can appreciate from the other posts people have made that not everyone is able to have happy holidays with their family & friends in RL, so SL provides them with an opportunity to share time & love with others in a virtual world. Life is what we make of it. That goes for RL & SL. Often we get dealt crappy situations - such as poverty, disability, isolation or non-ideal families. The Norman Rockwell image of Christmas is unlikely to be possible for most of us. Yet we can still find blessings & joy in our lives. I hope that as your life proceeds, you will learn to appreciate people from all different lifestyles & backgrounds, because our world is much richer for these different experiences of real life.

Thank- you to everyone who shared their experiences of the Holidays in RL & SL. We in this virtual community come from all different kinds of RL lives, and I think sharing a bit of this helps us understand & appreciate each other. Czari, Your SL Posada tradition sounds wonderful. I think it's great when people have friendly, supportive communities & friendships in SL and when they find inventive ways of expressing their traditions & sense of community in SL. In RL, my friends live too far way for me to go see them & my family has never been very warm & happy. At least in SL, we don't have family arguments around the dinner table. Though I guess that could make for interesting RP. lol - I don't expect much for Christmas in RL or SL. I was happy to have a pleasant day with my mother & roommate in RL. I was happy to have a little holiday decor & virtual presents to open in SL. On the whole my holiday was ok, but it was better with SL than it would've been without SL.