Jahman Ochs

10 years ago, Mimi Carpenter was just getting started and the Pando region was the new home of the third iteration of the Bottom Line Cabaret in Second Life. We liked Mimi so much, we gave her a residency, and she played on a regular basis for months. Then in 2012 we severed our ownership of the sim for time constraint reasons, and the Bottom Line shuttered in June of that year. Now G&H Partnership is in possession of Pando once again, and, eight years later, Mimi returns to play at the Bottom Line! Come hear this wonderful female vocalist/guitar player sing originals and covers in a style all her own, on the renewed jewel of the mainland, Pando, at the legendary Bottom Line Cabaret! 1:00 PM SLT 11/7/2020 Taxi to Pando

The Pando Photo Contest goes into its final week with some great entries in contention - but there's always room for more. Be creative, and take a picture (or two) as an entry on our glorious new urban-themed full mainland region! Enter it to win up to L$5000! Details at the Flickr group link below:

The Pando region is in preview mode leading up to our grand opening next month, and we're running a Flickr photo contest! Come express your creativity on our fabulous new urban build, and enter to win L$!!

Thanks for your attention, this offer is now closed.

Hi there! After an eight year hiatus, I am once again the owner of the Pando Region. I've spent the last two months prepping it for re-opening, making use of the best mesh architecture out there on the market, and my partner and I are very impressed with the quality of craftmanship that is available today on the grid. While the build we had there for two years starting in the Summer of 2008 was a wonder for its day, and a popular destination for all manner of entertainment, the advances in design and the implementation of mesh have obviously kicked things up to a new level, and we've taken full advantage. There is one remaining prim-based building left over from the old 2012 build that I'm looking to have custom work done to upgrade to a mesh structure, and I'm hereby soliciting for creators to do so. I am quite willing to pay generously at the going rate for mesh work in SL. You will also be featured prominently in the documentation for this new mainland attraction. Please feel free to submit examples of your work. Thanks for your attention!

http://sl9b.wordpress.com/ - it's alread happening there, and dozens of other places! As I said above, I'm bitter-sweet about it, because my head says BOYCOTT! DON'T GIVE IN! etc - but my heart says WE ARE FAMILY, and I can't help but join in arms when the community stands together to celebrate, if nothing else, our tenacity in making the most out of what we are given, regardless of whether the masters join us or not.

I am sooooo where you are, Nozomi. So much so that I finally decided to actually "vote" with the only tool I know how, and gave up my full mainland sim I'd been working for two and a half years, because I don't want my tier going to support the current Linden Labs pursuits and behavior. It's only U$2400-$3300 annually denied from their coffers (I won't be buying the extra U$50 in L$ I needed to support the place properly every month, either), so it's a relatively small vote, but in the spirit of your metaphor, it's the only vote I have. That said, I agree with Temba - the community itself *is* going to celebrate, and it's doing a crack job at getting ready for it, from all accounts. I hope you'll join us, as we do so, in *spite* of LL. It's not the same place, but we who continue to survive the changes and thumb our noses at the rulers who do not know how to run their land are going to have a good time... Be there or be square, kimosabe.

Linden Labs has never shown any evidence of being able to follow through on things much less complicated than a change in course of platform concept. They can't even get regression testing right on the grid itself, and their enforcement of ToS is selective, at best, throughout. I do not expect anything more from them - they have one of the poorest quality assurance records of any service provider with whom I've been compelled to deal, which is part of the reason why I divested my land holdings this week. No more tier payments from me until I see a change in behavior.

In Pando, I was more of a curator; for my homage to Greenwich Village (an estate sim called The Big Apple, rip 2009), I did indeed use Second Inventory to move the contents over to Open Life, and then eventually to Kitely. Thanks for the thought, though - a lot of folks don't even consider alternative options for such preservation.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pando/128/128 - full 256x256 mainland region. No reasonable offer refused - will accept below abandonned land price. IM Jahman Ochs before 7:00PM PDT/SLT on June 8th, 2012.

I'm taking down the tent at the Carnival in Pando, after two and a half years. (Well, there is no tent, really, but you know what I mean.) Part of the reason is just sheer fatigue; 900+ days and 230,000+ visitors later, it's time to take a rest. Part of it is wanting to go out on top - our traffic is solid, our following is loyal, and people sing our praises on a regular basis. Part of it, of course, is no surprise to anyone who has read my (infrequent but passionate) posts here in the forums: this is not the Second Life I loved when I started here, and Linden Labs is not the proprietor it once was. I can't rationalize giving all that money when they've decided to take a different course. It's their company; I'm just a consumer of their services - or was, anyway. So in a few days, Pando will be vacant again. It's a full mainland sim (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pando/128/128), a relatively rare commodity these days - if you or someone you know is in the market, it can be had for a song (well under abandoned land price ;) ). If it doesn't sell by Friday, then the next buyer will have to pay L$1/sqm to Linden Labs directly. In the mean time, the Carnival and Amusement Park, the 10-lane bowling alley, the 32ksqm paintball/tankwars combat arena, the cinema, the voodoo shop, the boxing gym, the seedy hotel, and all the other features large and small will be there for just two more days, until I start the process of packing up. I'll probably post again during that. Happy trails 'til.

The Pando region, a full snow sim (http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pando/48/61/101/) is for sale. Please contact Jahman Ochs if you are interested; I will entertain any reasonable offer, and this sim MUST go by June 8th - if it does not sell, it will be abandoned.

Seems to have abated, guess it was just "one of those things" - always disconcerting the day after a deployment.

Anyone else seeing *very* slow retrieval of group info and search results? I'm also finding it impossible to submit a group notice. As an aside, although I only tried it once, I got the "to Unknown" response making a L$ payment, although looking at my transaction log shows the money went to the right place.

Yeah, I'm onboard with that - but it is still NOT the same thing, and, unfortunately, gives Linden Labs what they wanted. So, we'll hold the party without them.

Linden Labs needs to fix lag across the grid, not just in this foolish distraction they've created.

If this was supposed to be a test bed for new tools for residents, why is it six months later and these new tools have not yet appeared?

I said I was done, but I guess I'm not. "They may even want to engage residents in some discussion of what those guidelines should be." That's the problem in a nutshell. Linden Labs has abandoned any pretense of caring about what the residents want; this has been clear in every action and deed they have instituted for years. As someone said above, as long as we have nowhere else to go, and they are getting our tier and our premium membership fees, they have no compelling reason to do anything other than whatever is the cheapest for them that they can get away with.

I'm done here. I wish everyone well, honestly, but nothing can be said to make me think this is a positive change. Were it done as a supplement to the traditional process, I would hail it as a major improvement - part of the problem with last year was a rather dychotomous reversal of promotion of concurrent events elsewhere on the grid while SL8B was going on - and now this tearing of gears and the trashing of years of tradition. So it goes. As I've said elsewhere, I no longer pay that much attention to what Linden Labs does, and only voice my opinion in these forums when I feel something egregious needs comment. I realize that makes me seem bitter, to some, and I apologize for interfering with anyone's rose-colored glasses. My life in SL really is in spite of Linden Labs, not because of it, for the past few years, which I know, too, is not an uncommon state for veterans of this platform. I maintain and tweak my content in-world, and will continue to pay my thousands of U$ annually until the traffic dries up, for whatever reason. Continued shame on you, LL. Happy trails to the rest of you.

To see what's next, go no further than "Linden Realms"...

"Generous donations...." Hard to see how that's "no extra cost".

Dilbert Dilweg wrote: Why couldn't the builders all combine resources and build a builders expo party/event and submit it? It is an event and all about the diversity of SL and buildings as well. There is absolutely no reason why all the builders could not combine forces and create this with little to no cost for everyone. . Its all about building and creating and I would imagine builders could do it best I just think its time to not worry about it and make it happen Why couldn't Linden Labs donate the land, as they have done in the past, rather than be really piggish about it and require us to pay for the celebration?

So speaks the anonymous voice. Your suggested purpose is specious. Your implied tone is condescending. We pay your salary. You exist to serve *us*. To say that you have changed the format of the birthday in order to serve *us* is a fraud. As I have said, I am a land owner; I have one of the most popular sims in Second Life. I have spent thousands of U$ to make it so. I DO NOT WANT YOU TO MAKE THE SECOND LIFE BIRTHDAY ABOUT EVENTS SPREAD OUT ACROSS THE GRID. Did anyone in Linden Labs ask? Does anyone in Linden Labs care? Based on your response, the answer is no. The only truth I see in your statement is that you are avoiding the obvious annual test of load that is SLB - seeing how well the sims can stand up to the rigors that such an event puts on them. At one point, Philip's goal was to have sims that could support hundreds of people simultaneously to share in virtual content. SLB was part of the process of moving towards that. Clearly, that no longer matters to you new people at the helm. No, what I see is that you are more concerned about creating your own content (so called "Linden Realms"), and therefore you don't have time or resources (what ever happened to the marketing people who work on such things?) to do what traditionally has been one of the premiere unifying events of each year. I stand by my original statement: to have this be on our land, under our tier, with entertainment paid for at our expense, is a copout of major proportions.

Not sure how you mean, Hunter. Given that there are parcels all over the grid for sale for L$1/sqm since Linden Labs in their infinite wisdom decided to dump abandoned land directly onto the market rather than go through the auction process that had served relatively well for so long, I don't see how this changes anything.

Actually, Knowl, I didn't read any of the posts beyond your first one; I extrapolated the rest from your post here, which explained how you realized that you didn't need Linden help to accomplish your goal. It was at that point that I concluded the context was completely different, and that it was irrelevant to the issue at hand here. I am quite content to have this be a thread of criticism, rather than of trying to figure out some bright side to this. If you want to start a thread for the latter, more power to you. Frankly, I don't believe there is one.