Brenda Archer

Wearable tents and small boats exist, but they don't really feel like a home. Wearable skyboxes meant for quick wardrobe changes also exist, and don't feel like a home. If you use the Firestorm viewer, you can set up outfits and only need minimal privacy to quick change between them. What does exist are very cheap weekly rentals of land from land barons. This might be a way to experiment with the idea of having a small home if you're not ready to go premium or commit to a larger rental. You could also just remember to always log in at a LL owned water sim or park, if what you really just wanted was a chance to gather your thoughts and answer messages, before heading out onto the grid. When I was landless I'd keep two SLURLs to hand, one for the deep ocean floor on a LL water sim, and one at the sim where my favorite community did most of its gathering. It's also possible to belong to a group that will let you set home on group land, once you get involved with something.

It's been my experience that waterfront is cheaper in General. (Which is why I also rent in Adult from a land baron). For example, I have land in Poliahu facing a big LL protected lake (in Dedi) and I will launch a little boat from time to time. I wish to repeat the advice that you want to be sure your land borders Linden owned protected land so you don't get cut off by a new neighbor who puts up banlines over their water. (You can see examples of what I mean by protected water and banlines if you visit my place and start from the sailing ship.) Consider the prim size of your boat that you wish to launch, what's left over after that is what you have for your house, furniture and landscaping. Buying cheaper inland land on the same sim will still add to your prims if the only piece of waterfront you can get is small. The Blake Sea community is very active and worth getting involved with. A good estate landlord will often try to have sailable water on their estate, but all not advertised "waterfront" is real waterfront as opposed to sim edge.

@Michi Lumin: Well and elegantly said.

It's impossible to have an online business that is also a community and not have some grumpy customers. Often, with good reason. There's no good way to get out of working with your user community, that is if you want to still have one...

It doesn't make sense to not be able to add info when an issue is going on. New users who try to find answers to their problems in LL official sources and fail will likely leave SL. It is also a strongly chilling effect on anyone who might have been thinking of using SL to develop a new project.

@Ciaran Laval: I fully agree. I can't even set up a facebook account under my avatar name, so why would I want to talk about Second Life there? But I'm active on Twitter under my avatar name, and also on third party forums. My RL identity is not a secret, but I don't announce it in bold letters either for safety reasons. Not everyone on the 'net is a big fan of Facebook. Consider, for example, the brouhaha that happened when Blizzard tried to force the use of real-life names in their forums. Also, the Facebook format strikes me as a poor one for discussing technical subjects. Email lists and forum threads are far superior for detailed discussions, and can leave a permanent archive that can be used later for learning.