Girl Wonder Speaks...about Second Life®

Isn't It Ironic?

2012-01-27T08:37:00.001-07:00

There's been some rumbling in the blogosphere about why LL uses less than ideal photographs in their marketing and on the web site.

Here is my theory: Could the reason behind Linden LabL's use of old, poorly photographed avatars be to make Second Life even less popular?

I submit to you that YES! That is the reason! "But Tymmerie," you ask me incredulously (because you never believe anything I tell you), "Why would LL want to make SL even less popular?"

To attract hipsters.

Linden Lab also did away with the unique naming system* -- complete with clever and meaningful surnames -- and replaced it with one reminiscent of a sad AOL chat room. Pretty uncool, if you ask me. And what is something that hipsters like? Uncool.

Now, imagine internet cafes full of hipsters in ill-fitting pants running badly named avatars on their Macs while playing SL ironically.

And just how do you play SL ironically? By shunning mesh clothing and prim hair. Going Premium since it isn't cool to be Premium - until it is. Moving into Linden Home neighborhoods in droves, and then, once the neighborhoods start to get gentrified, scrambling to move to Mainland. By enjoying lag. And that store where they get all of their vintage 2007 duds? You've never heard of it.

This is Linden Lab's plan:

Step 1 - Make comically bad marketing and website pictures that will catch the attention of the notoriously trend averse crowd in the hopes that they will find the clumsy avatars as wonderfully awful as fingerstache tattoos.

Step 2 - While everyone lame-stream is off playing Glitch or WoW, hipsters sign up for the terribly unpopular and much maligned Second Life.

Step 3 - PROFIT!

So there you have it - that's the niche LL is going after. Linden Lab wants a chunk of that mad Urban Outfitters money.

I've cracked the code of LL's Marketing Strategy. What do I win?

*Yes, I know LL is bringing back last names (When? Who knows.) but I'll bet hipsters will still choose awful names. Like, they'll choose the last name resident on purpose.

SLifeguard

2012-01-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

OMG January is almost over and I haven't done anything yet for Bath Safety Month!

Sadly, nothing relevant came up when I searched in-world for 'bathtub safety'. Well, by "nothing relevant came up" I mean, lots of stuff came up, but if you go to those places I imagine that you will end up sore rather than safe.

Anyhoo, in order to properly observe National Bathtub Safety Month, I decided to treat my husband Jerremy to an extremely risk-free bath. I think I have almost everything we need here for complete bathtub security... except a 'No Diving' bath mat. (SL creators? Get on that, please!)

I also surfed the web to bring you some bathtub safety tips:

Prevent slips and falls by ~~keeping floors dry~~ not using slippery looking textures on your bathroom floors.

Don't have a bathroom in your house. (This is a no-brainer for bathtub safety in both worlds, really.)

Keep electronic appliances away from the tub. (We are out of luck on this one since SL is pretty much 100% electric.)

Avoid the use of falling or slipping animations near your tub. (Seriously. You can get hurt. And I have told you about the horrible state of SL medical care before).

Never leave a ~~child~~ husband unattended while in the tub.

Since I am both a responsible wife and certified in CPR (Cardio Pixel Resuscitation), I will now supervise Jerremy's bath. That means you need to leave now. Or at least look away.

The World's Most Dangerous Zoo

2012-01-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

This is me and a furry friend chillin' and waiting for my husband Jerremy to log in.

Not only did I enjoy myself at my recent field trip to Zoo World, but I was able to use it to bump up my blog's Monkey Ratio. The Monkey Ratio is the percentage of monkeys to blog posts - an indicator of blog quality that I made up myself. According to my extensive research, my blog still has the highest monkey-to-post ratio of any Second Life related blog. That's saying something! (I am not sure what exactly it says.)

My Monkey Ratio started with a post examining why someone found this blog by Googling the phrase "monkey is watching us masturbating" and continued in various other posts for years. I'm not sure how other bloggers measure their success. I'll have to ask around.

By the way, this zoo is super cute and a good place to take pictures. There's a big variety of animals here, too - including the dreaded South American Sloth. (Seriously, I know they are slow, but I find them really creepy. I'm certain they would kill me if they could only catch up to me.) Also, there is free cotton candy.

You should visit Zoo World - even despite the fact that it is very badly designed in terms of visitor safety. See below for evidence.

I mean, really! Really? Does this look safe to you?

$h!t Girl Avatars Say

2012-01-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

"Ugh - I really need to sort my inventory.

"FATPACK! ...I want those shoes! ...The new hair is out! Squee!! ...Where is that dress from? ...Is that a group gift? ...Why is there no fatpack option? ...My inventory is out of control.

"OMG. That girl has the same outfit as me! ~~Twinsies!~~ Thief! She stole my look! ...Ugh, no. It's got an invisiprim... Is he an alt? ...Is there a demo? ...Look at my boobs in this shirt. ...Who wants to clean my inventory?

"TP me. ...Will you TP me? ...I don't have a landmark, can you just TP me? ...TP, please! ...I just sent you a TP. ...Will someone TP me?

"Prim babies are soooo creepy... Goreans are creepy... Furries are creepy... Lindens are creepy... I'm going to buy a prim baby. Soooooo cute!

"Were you AFK or were you ignoring me? ...He had a freenis!!!! Ewww!! ...I got hit on when I was in a store today. Ewwww! ...I love being single in SL. ...I hate being single in SL...I should just marry my alt. ...I can't find anything in my inventory.

"Are my boobs too big? ...What do you think of this skin on me? ...I think my avatar is fat. ...I need a new skin. ...Are my boobs too small? ...Do you think her avatar is pretty? I'm prettier, right? ... Do you think my arms are too short? ...I decided to be a redhead. ...I'm just going to play with my sliders.

"I should just delete everything I own and start over."

Post Inspired by the meme inspired by Shit Girls Say

A Bit of Ostrich for a Joke

2012-01-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Photo by Jerremy Darwin.

"Hi, Honey. You have a box on your head."

"I know. Do you still love me?"

I've been slow to jump on the mesh bandwagon. There are two main reasons for this: my husband Jerremy can't use a mesh viewer right now and I have just not had the time to fuss with sizing and adjusting for it.

Anywho, I recently saw a hairstyle that was cute enough to get me to dip my toes into the meshy waters. Sadly, it pokes into my ears and, since it's no mod, I am at a loss about what to do. I've seen this particular hair blogged a lot on the fashion feeds. A lot. Like, when the hair first came out, it was in every other post. "Was I some wide headed mutant?" I thought to myself. I went back and looked at some of these posts and realized that the headband pokes though many of their ears, too! The fashion bloggers are just trying to hide the ear poking using carefully posed avatars... and voodoo.

Speaking of voodoo, someone suggested that I change my shape in order to get my ears out of the way of the hair. Sadly, I can't. The width of my head is the key to my charm and beauty. Don't believe me? Look. This is my normal shape - complete with my hideously huge ears, but posing carefully to hide them - with nothing changed:

Now, this next photo is me after narrowing my head by only one slider point:

iStockPhoto.com

I'm unrecognizable! It's a good thing Jerremy loves me...

...because I adore the hair!

Your New Year's ResoSLution

2012-01-01T14:21:00.001-07:00

I have a New Year's ResoSLution for you. Yes. Yours. Well, yours if you are still using a facelight.

Facelights are so 2008. Trust.

With the way the lighting in SL works now and the way skins have evolved since 2008, you don't need a facelight. Not to mention how annoying they are to everyone else around you. The glare follows you around like you are wearing a searchlight on your face. You are washing out everything (including your potentially lovely self) for everyone around you - which is incredibly bothersome for others, who then derender you. You are so pretty when you are derendered - all invisible and see-through and transparent!

For those who think facelights make you look pretty here is a little demonstration:

Here is what you could look like to everyone around you WITHOUT a facelight - using myself as an example:

And this is a picture I took of a polar bear eating marshmallows while standing in a snowstorm:

Not really. Polar bears *hate* marshmallows. But this is what a facelight wearer looks like to everyone around them! This photo was taken with a facelight made up of only 3 lights! I've seen some facelight addicts rez in with an entire solar system of lights around their heads.

Pretty girls don't need to wear facelights. (See what I did there? I am throwing down the gauntlet!) Help make SL beautiful -- ditch the facelight.

Occupy the Floor

2011-11-14T20:23:00.001-07:00

Just the other day, I was reading a book called The Millionaire's Handbook, which supposed to be a guide to faking it until you make it and presenting yourself as one of the 1%. I'm pretty happy that I only borrowed it from the Amazon Prime Lending Library and didn't have to actually pay for it, because so far, the advice is fairly ridiculous. I'm not going to start trolling laundromats in hopes that some millionaire who doesn't own their own washer and dryer has left an Armani catalog behind so I can snag it for free and learn how to dress.

There actually is a reason I am talking about the "book" in a SL blog - lo and behold the author briefly referenced Second Life and SL fashion! This got me wondering if the author is a SLifer, too. After all, she must know a little about SL to talk about the shopping fix you can get from buying virtual fashion.

Anyway, this is a photo of me, taking the "author"'s advice and living it up by wearing my colorful, trendy virtual fashion - while in RL, I am dressed in severe head to toe black and not letting anyone important examine my watch too closely.

I am also living it up virtually by drinking coffee on my the floor. You can't drink coffee on the floor in RL because you will choke or burn your face off. Burning your face off will apparently cause you to be shunned by the 1% almost as much as not subscribing to Vanity Fair.

This blog post is also my demonstration of just how festive a Linden home can be if you are willing to forgo things like seating and decor. This tree may be the only thing we can fit into the house, but if it was a sex tree (which it is not) Jerremy and I would be totally set until Boxing Day, at least. Or the end of Kwanza. Maybe even Three Kings Day. What I am trying to say is, please, someone, make a sex Christmas tree.

Because I am sure the 1% didn't get to be the 1% by buying things that only do one thing at a time. I'm pretty sure that if I had read the whole stupid Millionaire's Handbook that advice would have been in there, too.

A Dirty Mesh

2011-11-11T11:46:00.001-07:00

I'm impatiently waiting for Vintage Fair to open to the riff raff. Do you think anyone is going to interpret 'vintage' as 'colonial'? because I can really use some Pilgrim-style things. My typist has the day off of work today, so all I have to do is kill time. I'll just stay here and flip through blogs and make up lists of things I need for Thanksgiving.

In RL I need a cute new apron, centerpieces, a good book of Mad Libbs, Advent calendars as favors for kids, Christmas ornaments to tie around the napkins, foodstuffs, etc. In SL, I just need slut-wear. My handsome husband Jerremy has already given me a figurative pat on the head for putting out a stuffed turkey on our porch. Since we can't spare any more prims for decoration (unless we want to give up our grown up furniture) that is as festive as things are going to get around the house. Costumes are a different story! I had an awesome slutty pilgrim outfit last year. This year, I want a new, technologically advanced slutty pilgrim outfit! With, like, mesh buckles that will be all meshy and nasty! And a bonnet that is rigged! Rigged hard! Oh, yea!

To be honest, I'm still not clear on what the benefits of mesh are. But, I have high hopes that mesh = highly detailed, pilgrim sexiness.

Girls Don't

2011-10-29T12:10:00.001-06:00

You learn something every single day. It seems that girl faeries do something that ordinary girls do not!

If you are a Faerie or a Fairy Princess or a unicorn or fashion review blogger (I kid!) you can get this item on the Toyland sim at the building that looks like a giant pink jewelry box. I actually had a pretty good time exploring here and I still need to go back to make sure I didn't miss anything. Many of the toys and games are interactive - you can knock the dominoes over, make the Rock-em-Sock-'em Robots punch, etc. They have a "Pac Man" hunt going on and I did about half of it - but I think it is still being set up since some of the hunt items were not active.

I Suppose I am aDiva

2011-10-26T09:50:00.001-06:00

I was taking a break from all my cheering, voodoo, etc. for the Cardinals when I noticed some strange chat in one of my groups - aDiva. As I've blogged before, aDiva holds a special place in my heart since I bought my wedding dress there. I love the store.

So anyway, people kept plurking letters and SLURLS in the group chat and I was confused. I guess I missed the notice (thanks, LL), but there was a Halloween Pumpkin Hunt going on! AnneJoy Paine, aDiva's Supreme Diva, has done these in years past and they are so fun -- mostly because of the fun chatter in the group as we help each other find pumpkins that match the first letter of our names. When the group explained what was going on, I TPd over to help with the 'Pumpkin Identification and Tracking'. Each time I posted a letter and location, I felt like a Very Responsible and Active Group Member I've already manged to win a couple of prizes, but I'm going back again this week just because it's so fun to hang out with everyone.

Side note - back in ancient times, before display names, it was quite easy to know if there was anyone else nearby with your same letter with whom you needed to take turns grabbing pumpkins. But now? CHAOS! Complete chaos! On the scale of dogs and cats sleeping together. Obviously, none of the Lindens responsible for display names has ever been to the aDiva pumpkin hunt.

There's No Crying in SL!

2011-10-22T16:04:00.001-06:00

Why yes, I am rooting for one of the teams in the World Series this year. Sadly, I couldn't find a baseball diamond in which to take this picture. I am in a sandbox - which is only two letters away from the word sandlot, which just happens to be the title of a movie that had some baseball (and Dennis Leary) in it.

Anyhoo, I took my bat with me all over the grid, this week - including to hunts and sale events like the [elikatira] sale that started today. I'm not sure if it was because of the bat, but someone who bumped into me apologized right away, no one asked me to "make the sexy time", and people seemed to clear away from landing points much faster. Does this bat make me look fat? Because if not, I'm taking it with me everywhere.

Adventures in Hunting

2011-10-15T10:28:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of me loitering at NSD waiting for unsupected Season's Hunters to enter the store so I can follow them around until ~~they~~ we find the first hunt object.

I normally don't get all excited for hunts, but some of the prizes in this one seem nice so I am going to at least cherry pick those out. Oh, and so much for "getting free stuff in SL!" - I've already spent over $500L while hunting in the first store.

Update: OK, I am lame. I am writing this while stuck at store #1 unable to find the prize. But there is no way I will admit to that and ask for a clue for the very first location. I shall soldier on!

Live update: Gah. Caved and asked for a clue but, now, feeling really bad about my intelligence because prize is elusive. Will not give up. Trying to conserve $Lindens.

Live-r update: Still here and still prize-less. Clue was something about polo, but after thoroughly searching any polo related items, have come up empty. Abandoned my AO in the jewelry department in an effort to lighten my load. Am still hopeful.

Even Live-r update: Desperately low on supplies ($Ls) now and injuries (lag) have started to take their toll. Hope is fading.

Screw this: Please tell Jerremy that I love him. *cough* *wheeze* *collapse*

I'm a Little Behind

2011-10-08T12:28:00.000-06:00

What are you going to be for Halloween? I waited too long to decide on my RL Halloween costume and now I am stuck paying a rush fee for one of the items I need for it.

In SL, where I never have to pay rush fees, I started shopping for a costume at one of my absolute favorite places, A Touch of Ireland. I adore ATOI's holiday outfits and decorative things! When I saw the above pictured bit of Autumn decor, I had to share it with you. Also, in one of the costume areas you can get a FREE couple's costume - that kind of goes with this item, actually, in a very troubling way. I'll be honest: I left the FREE couple's costume right there in the store, but it might be right up your alley. (If you have trouble finding it, IM or email me and I'll help.)

In Real Life, I'm putting together a Toddlers & Tiaras Pageant Mom costume -- complete with every awful crazed, inappropriate, stage mom cliche that I can think of. Think cigarette hanging from mouth, evidence of trying to live vicariously through my child (to be played by one of my niece's dolls), doll sized stripper tassels and a little something from the Kardashian Kollection.*

I might try to replicate my RL costume in SL. Wait. I *will* replicate it in SL. It'll give me something to do when Jerremy isn't in world.

*I am so kidding - I would never give those horrid women any of my money.

A Little Pwivacy, Pwease

2011-10-01T16:38:00.000-06:00

Something that (usually) doesn't happen in RL:

[13:49] T***** R*****: wow your cute
[13:50] Tymmerie Thorne Darwin (tymmerie.thorne): TY
[13:50] T***** R*****: ::D yvm
[13:50] Tymmerie Thorne Darwin (tymmerie.thorne): Please stop camming into the house
[13:50] T***** R*****: sowwie
[13:50] Tymmerie Thorne Darwin (tymmerie.thorne): s'ok

Dragon Tails

2011-09-24T16:40:00.002-06:00

It's a good thing I watched TV with my nieces when they were tots or I would never have been able to come up with the title for today's post. On the cartoon Dragon Tales, dragons transport small children to a magical land where everyone speaks in incredibly annoying voices. For this blog post, a dragon transported me to a magical land where the motto is: "Come for the mesh! Stay for the va-jay-jay!"

This picture was taken at Weird, Mesh Mellows which is lovely example of the highly detailed and amazing things that can be created with mesh. Also, there are a lot of decorative things and flowers shaped suspiciously like... well you just have to look. Maybe I was seeing things.

This was the only picture I got of my time exploring there. You can't really see the ride-able dragon I'm perched on. Sorry. I have been having a ton of trouble taking pictures without crashing in the newest official viewers. But, I vacuumed out my PC tower, so obviously, I have done everything I can possibly do on my end to fix the situation.

Back to SLuburbia

2011-09-18T16:42:00.000-06:00

So, Jerremy and I sold off all of our plots of land this summer and moved into a shiny new Linden Home. (We think the schools will be better for our prim son, Blocky.)

We just got one house under my account, since you can't specify that you want two next to each other. Maybe we'll get a second for ... I'm not sure. Storage? It would have been so cool if Jerremy and i had been able to get two right next to each other. However, we lucked out and got one that has a lake view. And a neighbor with a cow.

It's been a good "staging area" so far. For me at least. You see, I forgot to set the land to our group. Which meant that Jerremy couldn't set it as his home location. And he hadn't saved a landmark. So, my darling husband has been wandering the neighborhood, unable to find our home again in the sea of look-alike houses.

It reminds me of a story I heard a while back about a man in France (?) who rented an apartment, went out shopping and couldn't remember the address to his new apartment. He wandered around the city, searching for it for a long time. I'm not sure how long, but it was apparently long enough for the media to notice. (I'm looking for the article on Google because it was a true story and it made me very sad. Almost as sad as I felt when I realized Jerremy has been SL homeless for weeks and did not say anything to me.)

To be honest, a 512 Linden Home plot makes me feel a little cramped - with only 94 prims free after rezzing a pose stand, script scale couch and bed. But, now that we have "Rift Raff Free"* Premium Sandboxes, I'll be able to let loose once in a while.

*Well, that's how *I* would describe them if I was in charge of writing them up for the SL web site.

Stirring from my lucid dream.

2011-04-29T10:09:00.000-06:00

I'm ending this blog.

It wasn't an easy decision because this blog has been sort of a security blanket for me. It gave me a focus for my in-world activities and was such a huge part of my identity in-world. But, it's time. I simply don't have as much time to blog as I used to.

I'm not leaving Second Life, though! (So, please say hi sometime.) I am still happily married to Jerremy! And, I'll be blogging for the 2011 Shoe Fair (May 14-27)!

Maybe after a while I'll get the itch to start a fresh blog or re-open this one. Who knows? Who knew when I started this (terribly named) one on September 14th, 2007. that I would end up doing 752 posts?

To those of you who read this blog, THANK YOU! Thank you for your comments throughout the years and for giving me ideas and for sharing your thoughts! I will miss you most of all!

Until I write again,
Tymmerie

Passion

2011-04-19T06:27:00.001-06:00

I finally had a chance to check out über couple Rylan Carling's and Sixx Yangtz's photography exhibition. I knew it would be amazing because they are both talented photographers... but wow. It blew me away. The photos demonstrate technical skill, of course, but each also tells a story full of emotion and sensuality. The show is open until May 14th. Do not miss it!

Phase 1: Collect Underpants, Phase 2: ?, Phase 3: Profit

2011-04-18T19:40:00.002-06:00

I can't ~~admit~~ explain why I ended up searching for this on the Marketplace today. With only the 'General' maturity level checked, search only found the clean ones. The used ones only came up when the 'Adult' maturity level search preference was checked. Interestingly, the dirty ones cost more. But since some of the work is done for you (ewww! eww! ewww!), I guess that makes sense.

It'll be a happy house.

2011-04-17T12:54:00.000-06:00

The Second Life Blogger Group now has an in-world headquarters / clubhouse. I sent the landmark to the in-world group -- so check group notices for it. Members can hang out, chat, grab a martini, check the shiny new events calendar, etc.

I'm still decorating. I might put in some games -- but I am not sure if people would like that. Whack-a-mole? Yes? No? Connect 4? Yes? No? Arggghhh. Maybe games have too many scripts?

If you have items you think would be good for our calendar, let me know. Right now all I have is the 52 Weeks of Color Challenge information. I'm trying to come up with a date for a new Meet-Up Party.

I tried to IM the group to let them know the HQ was open... but group chat didn't work. (Rodvik? Are you reading this?) Again. I don't know why I even try to send group IMs anymore. It is just sad.

When setting things out for our group's happy new home, it made me think of one of my favorite Brian Regan routines on party games and my favorite quote from it: "You said it would be a happy house!"

I hope our new HQ is a happy house for us! With less bloodshed.

SLine Dancing

2011-04-07T19:22:00.001-06:00

Today was a good day for exploring while I waited for Jerremy to log in. And by exploring, I mean pretending I was taking a Zumba exercise class with a zillion prim, zombie statues. Or maybe we are line dancing to Achy Breaky Heart. It could happen.

Awww. I haven't listened to that song in years and years. It brings back memories. It is a catchy tune even though I don't like Country & Western music. And one of my RL exes looked a lot like Billy Ray Cyrus -- only with a shorter mullet. Good times.

The Open Road

2011-04-02T19:02:00.000-06:00

Jerremy and I went exploring a couple of weeks ago and while we were out and about we bought some hang-gliders to play with. Also, Jerremy got a bike and I picked up a scooter. Unfortunately, he wasn't in-world to race me for these pictures. If he had been able to log in, we would've challenged each other and bet sexual favors for the winner... and then it wouldn't matter who won, of course.

I found a nice quiet stretch of Route 7 to ride around on. I like this scooter because when you ride it, a little bike bell rings and that makes me happy. (It's the little things, people.) I totally need one of these in RL now.

SLinterests

2011-03-26T17:42:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here resting after updating my Second Life profile. I still detest the web based profiles, but there's now a new tab for "interests". Apparently, that's supposed to help you find others with the same interests so that you can ...well, I am not sure. But our Glorious Leaders will probably think of something. I've been amusing myself by making new categories of interests. So, now you look at my profile and BOOM! you know that I am interested in being a professional wedding guest just like that. And someday, I will find others with the same interest and we will form a gang and wander the grid, crashing weddings very politely and dressed appropriately.

The Two Suns of Second Life

2011-03-22T14:18:00.000-06:00

I call this picture Two Suns. It's SL, so anything can happen.

OK First? I wanted to point you to two blog posts that I enjoyed reading today: Mitch Wagner's "Is Poor Communication Killing SL?" and Dale Innis' genius post about Second Life as a chicken farm.

Awesome, yes?

Anyhoo, I was just sitting here in my "work chair" thinking about the great ideas and feedback I got when I ask ed for input into the Second Life Blogger group a few weeks back. Thanks!

I'm working on a few things for the group -- which, of course, would all be easier if group chat and notices worked.

I'm trying to find a workaround for the broken group communication tools (Rodvick? Are you reading this?) by reviving the old Google Groups account the group used to use. I asked Zoe (the group's original founder) to make me a manager of the account. I'm still trying to figure things out with it, but it might be another way we can communicate as a group. I've never used Google Groups much before so, pretty please, have patience with me as I learn it.

I'm also working on a group Headquarters/clubhouse. This will be an experiment -- I want to see if it would be used by members and what it might be used for.

Stay tuned for more news. Also, isn't it about time for another Second Life Bloggers Group Meet-Up Party? It sure is!

We Ducked All Night Long

2011-03-20T09:09:00.001-06:00

There is nothing as nice as a good, fast duck and a big finish! We needed some entertainment last night, so Jerremy and I went at to Quackerstate Duck Racing. Although this picture appears to show me in the lead, Jerremy won the race. That man has skillzzzzz!

The Even-More-Basic Viewer

2011-03-19T08:26:00.000-06:00

Have you read about the new beta Basic Viewer? You can read about it here (Raul Crimson's blog) and here (Alicia Chenaux's blog). It's a stripped down version of the viewer intended for new users. It lacks such "confusing" items as inventory, landmarks, voice, avatar customization and movement controls.

Well, I have created what I call the The-Even-More-Basic-Viewer. It's by far the easiest viewer to use EVER, in my humble opinion. Here's how you can try it out:

Step 1: Find a Second Life user in your geographic area.
Step 2: Ask their permission to come to their house and watch over their shoulder while they do stuff in world and explain what they are doing.
Step 3: Profit!

I feel that The-Even-More-Basic-Viewer is better because the new SLer has the opportunity to learn about things like inventory, building, commerce, griefers and Windlight settings with a set of training wheels of sorts.

The only downside of The-Even-More-Basic-Viewer? Finding someone who is willing to admit in RL that they use SL. Enjoy.

Irish by Injection

2011-03-17T08:01:00.000-06:00

Neither my RL self nor my pixel self are Irish. But Jerremy does have some Irish in him. So, I'm Irish by injection! Oops! I mean by 'extension'! Wow. Sorry. I think that's the Irish Coffee talking

I have all of my bases covered to avoid pinches in both worlds today: I'm wearing lots of green for St. Patrick's Day. I'm even shopping for shiny new St. Patty's Day prim foods since I'll be eating an Irish pot luck lunch at RL work.

I don't know about you guys, but this post was just what I needed: a dirty joke and a drink!

SL People Amaze Me

2011-03-15T07:02:00.002-06:00

More than 250 Second Life creators are busy putting out their items for the Pacific Crisis Fundraiser which is raising money for AmeriCares. The event starts tomorrow, Wednesday, March 16th. I took a look at things that had been put out so far and you are going to find oodles of incredible things to buy -- poses, clothing, skins, hair, jewelry, furniture and more. All of the creators have put out at least one item for which 100% of the proceeds goes to the charity.

I am awed by the speed at which this got organized and it really shows the capacity for caring that the SL community has.

Linden Lab Relief Bear for the Red Cross

2011-03-12T07:18:00.000-07:00

Want a way to help the people affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami? Buy a Relief Bear from Linden Lab on the Marketplace! I got mine! Isn't he adorable??

Per the product description:
"Our thoughts are with all of those who are suffering in the devastation caused by the earthquakes in Japan and the tsunami in the Pacific. We encourage all Second Life Residents to support the relief efforts however they can, and we would like to help.

We have created a couple of special Linden Bears (one sitting, one wearable) and set them for sale. We will donate all proceeds from sales of our bears to the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief efforts of the American Red Cross."

They are available in 3 denominations: $300L, $1000L and $3000L. Way to go Linden Lab!

How do you catch a unique avatar? Unique up on her.

2011-03-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

I had been having a very hard time without my MystiTool. I had the overwhelming feeling that someone was going to sneak up on me all the time.

I explained before that I rarely used any other MystiTool features besides the radar - I like knowing who is around me. But the script cost seemed to outweigh the benefit. However, the level of paranoia caused by not knowing who was nearby made me seek out something new.

I found another HUD called the Statis. I checked it against the Mysti and the script use seems a lot lower, so I have been trying it out. The free version only has a radar and a lag meter. I could do without the lag meter since if I'm lagging, I know it. But it's free. And now I can find something else to be paranoid about.

The IRS has a sim?

2011-03-06T19:11:00.000-07:00

Yup. It's true - the RL IRS (the Internal Revenue Service) has a sim in Second Life. I found it after I finished up my RL taxes to give to my RL tax person so that I won't go to a RL prison for tax evasion. I decided to see if I could find any tax related things in SL.

You can get tax help and apply for jobs here. And once you are done doing boring things, there's a night club where you can dance and win prizes in a trivia contest. While you're here, you can pick up gifts like jewelry and watches - which is kind of ironic, since the IRS takes away all the money I could use to buy myself jewelry and watches.

A New Orleans Morning

2011-03-04T17:17:00.002-07:00

Mardi Gras is coming up soon. Jerremy and I aren't having a party this year. That makes me kind of sad because our party was so great last year. But RL has been too busy to even consider it. So instead, I'll be exploring the Mardi Gras/New Orleans themed sims. Maybe I'll even expand my horizons and find some Carnival themed sims.

I miss throwing parties more often. Our last one was our Hell themed one for Halloween. Finding time to prepare for that was challenging for us, to say the least. (We still refer to the part of our sim where we built our party room as Hell.) I still have a theme without a party in my head: The Love Boat -- which I may have talked about on this blog before. I will find an occasion to do this party theme, if it kills me.

Hmmmm... I look a little cross eyed here. It's the angle, I swear. I haven't had any adult beverages yet. (Where is the waitress with my beignet and coffee?)

Give me the group scoop!

2011-03-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

The SL Blogger group needs some revitalizing, IMO. I really don't want it to fade away -- we have a killer logo, for Pete's sake! We can't waste that!

The group was started ages ago - before I first rezzed. It was one of, if not the first, group I ever joined. It was a group formed for social interaction and to promote the "vocation" of blogging about SL. Blogging in SL has changed a lot since then. There were relatively few bloggers and there was really only one blog feed. Today, there are gazillions of bloggers and lots of feeds!

So, in the interest of keeping the group fresh and interesting and above all valuable to be a part of, it needs to evolve some.

What would make a group for bloggers valuable to you? What do you need as a blogger? What can you contribute?

So, if you blog about SL -- no matter what kind of SL blog you have or even if you are a member of the group - please tell me the things you'd like the group to be. It wasn't founded as a "chatty" group - but I have heard from a member or two that chatting would be welcome. There has been extremely low attendance at some of the recent blogger parties -- what would help increase this?

What would make a group for bloggers valuable to you? What do you need as a blogger? What can you contribute?

Communication through in-world channels is challenging at best. Should we find some alternative means to talk to each other and share information? What alternative means?

There are some things the group could do: have a space at the next SL Birthday party sims, build a group headquarters as a hangout/meeting space, hold a convention, host a session at the next SL Convention. etc. I am sure there are other ideas, too. But they all take time and most of all participation. Are you up for that?

Comment here, email me or send me a note card in-world! Thanks!

Mysti Eyed

2011-02-26T19:09:00.001-07:00

I've been feeling naked lately.

I've been trying to get used to not wearing my MystiTool HUD. I've taken it off for all the events this week (Garden City Relief, etc.) because of the scripts. Having it off in general does improve my performance in SL. It's the scriptiest thing I wear and I only use one function; the area scanner that tells you what avs are around you.

In Viewer 2.5, the people tab will tell you who is around you. Although it is clunky to get to (as everything is in Viewer 2.X) and I don't want the tab open and blocking my screen all of the time, it does serve the same function.

Occasionally, I'll use the dance function of my Mysti, but in a pinch I could just use dances straight from inventory. Oh, I use the Lucky Chair detector sometimes. That's it.

I don't think anyone has heard from the creator, Mystical Cookie, in ages and ages. I wonder if she will ever be back to update the Mysti? I wonder if anyone will ever build a 'new & improved' version of it?

If I Were Queen

2011-02-23T18:37:00.001-07:00

I saw Crap Mariner do a meme on his blog (inspired by Mitch Wagner) that asks you to share the first five things you would do as CEO of the Lab.

Oh!! Oh!!! Pick me! Pick me! I know what I would do!!

1. Call my own customer service line and ask for help with a made up problem. Better yet? I'd listen in on a day or two's worth of calls and find out how the folks who were on the front lines with my customers were doing and what issues came up. Oh - I'd file a ticket, too, and see how long it took for a satisfactory answer.

2. Try to search for something. Then, I'd know that one of my highest priorities should be fixing search. Fixing search benefits the economy, the creators, and the current residents. This is basic functionality and it needs to work.

3. Figure out who butters our bread and how to keep them happy. It's not just big land holders. Big land holders are nothing without the regular residents who rent from them. Find out who buys Lindens and figure out 'lifetime customer value.' SL will only survive if they can keep customers who spend spending and creators creating. Does Linden Lab even know what a profitable customer "looks like" right now?

4. Close the SL Twitter and Facebook accounts and remove caps on the number of messages customers can receive. Linden Lab needs to focus on making communication work in-world. No more emailing customers. No more asking people to Tweet or use Facebook. IM should work. Group chat should work. Notices should work. Voice should work. Flawlessly. That's basic functionality.

5. Start some aggressive image management. I'd hire a world class PR firm to start feeding positive stories to the press. The marketing department would be tasked with some serious brand reinvention.

If I did these things, I'd make the experience better for current customers. If the current customers are having fun, others will want to see what all the fuss is about.

Behold Rum

2011-02-21T18:22:00.001-07:00

I wonder if anyone has realized yet that the letters in Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble's name can be rearranged to spell 'bum holder'? Just me? OK. Carry on.

I had to ask.

2011-02-20T20:43:00.001-07:00

[17:19] Tymmerie Thorne: Excuse me - your panties say "put your dick..." but don't say where. I don't get it.

[17:20] L*** H**: in my ass of course :-P

[17:20] Tymmerie Thorne: of course.

Mmmmmmmm, bacon.

2011-02-19T19:26:00.001-07:00

I'd been contemplating doing a post about the hugantic variety of breedable animals on the grid these days by writing about some made up fantasy breedable. But everything I think up of has actually been made, sold, bred and traded. Fairies? Done. Snakes? Done. Unicorns? Done. Dragons? Probably. So, I will just sit here with some breedable pigs - which, just so you know, are quite happy and energetic but incredibly thirsty - and ponder that.

What I'd like to see is "breedable" prim food - like you get a pie shell and some eggs and mate them and get a quiche. (That's how I think of cooking in RL.) And maybe that quiche would have mushrooms and that would make it very rare and valuable. And breedable food would be better because no one would care if food was happy or energetic. We would just eat it. Sort of like what we should do with these pigs.

Saying Good-Bye to 2007

2011-02-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've been going through my inventory in a valiant effort to stay under 25,000 items without curtailing my shopping habits. This means picking through my inventory folders in search of things from 2007-2008 to delete. The time from 2007 - late 2008 was my "single girl era" in SL, so it's kind of funny to see the kind of stuff I wore while trying to woo Jerremy.

I remember some of the items just by name before looking at them -- in my mind they're still cute and current. But then I look at the vendor pictures or try them on and ZOMG! We really looked like that before sculpted cuffs??? Some stuff is so hard to let go of. I haven't deleted my Redgrave Used-Look Jeans yet because they make my butt look sooooo good! But they have non-sculpted cuffs! But they still look sort of OK! But they have a blingy belt! I am so torn. Back into the folder they go.

Jewelry textures are a zillion times nicer these days - so I've been rummaging through that folder too and deleting a ton of things. And quite honestly, I rarely wear nipple rings anymore so I'm not sure why I had an entire folder of them.

I'm a little over 23K at the moment... but after all that deleting, I'm dangerously low on slut-wear.

Foiled

2011-02-13T08:33:00.001-07:00

The other day, people were talking on Plurk (Add me!) about newbies coming into their houses uninvited - often to use their beds or other items. Ewwwwww! I've blogged about this before. Alicia Chenaux suggested that someone should go where the new players go and yell at them to not go into people's houses.

I thought this was a brilliant idea and offered to take an early evening shift of newbie-yelling. I found this especially critical timing in light of the upcoming St. Valentine's Day holiday - that's noob mating season. So, I got a really nice, scripted megaphone with an AO and everything. I was all ready to straighten out some wayward newbies.

I decided to shout the G-rated sim appropriate, "Hey, Noobies! Don't go into other people's houses! OK?" But sadly, the places I chose for this activity (welcome centers, Discovery Island and Help Island) were all script disabled. The power of my fancy megaphone was gone. Crapola. This meant that I had to walk over to people and just say my little phrase.

But as they say, go big or go home. Here is a little sample of how it went:

[07:27] Tymmerie Thorne Darwin: Hey, Noobies! Don't go into other people's houses! OK?
[07:27] Abigail Sassoon: IM:You Are Now Muted!
[07:27] Ladeev Sansome: IM:You Are Now Muted!

Noobs these days. Sheesh!

It's that time again.

2011-02-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

It's time to renew my Premium account for the year. I do it for the ability to use chat for support rather than having to file a ticket and then wait several months for it to be closed without a resolution. (Chat support is able to close an inquiry without resolution in 20 minutes!) Being Premium also makes me feel "official". I'm not sure why feeling official is so important to me, but it is.

I wish CEO Rod Humble had mentioned plans for Premium accounts in a recent interview he gave, but he alas, he didn't. Thing is, Premium accounts are unchanged since the last time I renewed (and also posted a blog post picture taken at a SL gas station). That's discouraging. And it is a little amusing to me that Linden homes are still being touted as a new benefit on SecondLife.com. How long do they get to keep calling them a new benefit? I guess everything is relative.They are new compared to say... blingy shoes and system hair.

I SLove you like I love cake.

2011-02-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

Mmmmmm. Cake. Holiday cake! I set this out so that Jerremy could have a slice. I decided that I'd better test it though, just to make sure that he'll definitely like it.

I love Jerremy much more than I love cake. He's not fattening and he's extremely good for me.

I love SL like I love cake -- and while it is yummy, it is best not to get too much of it. How far can I carry this analogy?

Let's see... Both are yummy treats. Both cake and SL can make you gain weight if you are not careful. You can share both with your RL friends -- but are more fun if you keep them for just yourself. You eat cake with a fork and when SL is laggy you might want to stab someone with a fork. There is little technical support for either cakes or SL. And that's as far as I can go with the comparison without getting dirty.

Stairway to Hell

2011-02-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

This week, I thought I had discovered that, my husband, Jerremy Darwin doesn't like prim stairs. But, it out that he only doesn't like stairs for stairs sake or crazy amounts of stairs. Whew. That makes house shopping lots easier.

One thing I actually did discover about house shopping is that I much prefer places that have house demos out for you to see without having to rez them yourself first. I can't tell you how many times I either had to sneak in and explore a house someone else was looking at because there were no empty rezzing spots or how many times I rezzed a house only to have some noob rez a different house on top of me while I was trying to walk around inside the one I had rezzed. I tried to be patient with the noobs - but I finally snapped and changed the house on someone who had changed it on me. Not nice of me, but as I quickly TPd away, I felt vindicated.

I'm going to hell, aren't I? Sigh.

Nyquil makes me feel tingly.

2011-02-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sick. RL sick. Just from the shoulders up - with sneezing, a stuffy head and a runny nose. I'm sure I'll feel better in a few days. This creeping crud has been going around and everyone is recovering. To help, I've been eating my Magic Chicken Soup. (Take one dead chicken. Add sea salt, onion, garlic and poultry seasoning. Boil the living daylights out of it all. Remove all of the chicken bones. Make Bisquick dumplings. Enjoy!)

Since I am sick though, I feel tired and too lazy to change out of this outfit. And I don't care. I am going to wear this all over the grid. (I do have shoes on - I don't want to get a sticker in my foot.) So, if you see me out and about, enjoy the view. :-P

See Ed's seed ads.... in SL.

2011-01-31T16:03:00.002-07:00

I've done it again: I have worn the letters -- important letters - off of my desktop keyboard. I've dragged my favorite giant keyboard out to pose on for you to illustrate.

The last time this happened, I bought stickers to cover the worn keys. But the stickers trapped lint and eventually peeled off, so I just bought a new keyboard. At the moment, the damage is limited to the letters A, E, S, D. But, if it gets worse, I am in trouble since I don't have the locations of these keys memorized. It's the sad truth: I'm a hunt-and-peck typist and this is my karma for not paying attention in typing class (yes - I am that old).

I have no idea how this happens to my keyboards. Am I really using the words sade, ads, sad, sae, sea, ad, add, see, as, seed, deed, Ed and ass that often when I write about SL? And before you even have to ask, L is perfectly intact. These keys are not worn off of my work keyboard or work laptop, therefore, it has to be something about SL!!!

What is it??

I have no idea.

2011-01-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

In my absence last week, one of our neighbors started to build a something. Something big and, if you squint, sort of in the shape of a squashed Star Trek Enterprise. The neighbors always seem to surprise me. However, knowing them for as long as I have I would bet cold hard lindens that it is going to be some sort of private sex room. I just need to know what that diving board thingy is for.

It is weird to be back after being away from the computer for what seems like a really long time. It didn't take me as long to catch up on blogs and sales and shopping as I thought -- which makes me think that my in-world time could be spent much more efficiently.

When I hang around in world when Jerremy isn't in, it's usually to try to catch some interesting chat. I may have to get more proactive about that. The groups I'm in are pretty quiet - even the Blogger Group. (I'd love to see that group get chattier - but I don't know what was promised to the group originally in terms of chat and every time I try to float the idea to the group, group chat borks. Such irony.)

In college, some of my friends and I had a name for our evenings out. I have thought about recycling the name to start a new chat group. But knowing how to go about and run it? I have no idea.

And now we'll pause for a word from our sponsor...

2011-01-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

My sponsor is Real Life because, without it, I couldn't have a SLife or a blog about it. Some RL has happened. Very real. Too real. This is just a quick note to let anyone cool and kind enough to read this blog that I will be AFK for a few days due to a RL family emergency. Of course, I won't be posting until I get back, but I will indeed be back. If you need to contact me, an email is the best way since gmail doesn't cap (tymmerie at gmail dot com) - but please do not expect any sort of response until late in the week.
Be good and be safe until I return. <3

Shabby Shriek

2011-01-20T19:45:00.001-07:00

So, new CEO, Rod Linden, has been in-world exploring and learning to build and finding out what our world is like. He even built a little house! I am so excited that he is taking the time to experience SL like one of us!

However, I have one caution for Rod when he starts to decorate his new abode: I hope you like pink, Rod!

You see, one of my biggest challenges in decorating the home Jerremy and I share is that - although there is an abundance of gorgeous, well-made home decor in SL - much of it is girl-y, lacy, pastel, and/or shabby chic. Even though I'm a girl, it's even too much for me sometimes. It would be mean to make Jerremy live in a home that looks like Holly Hobbie threw up in it.

It can be a challenge sometimes to find what I call "macho shabby chic" or even gender neutral decor. But it can be done, Rod! It can be done!

You Can Leave Your Roof On

2011-01-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, I sit in my office and just think. Just like in RL, my office is very comfy and cozy. (But unlike RL, there are no food crumbs in my SL keyboard. For some reason, when I eat prim food, I manage to act like a civilized person and eat in the kitchen.)

I am still trying to figure out shadows and Windlight settings for them. Also, I can't take the roof off of our house every time I want to do a shadow picture indoors, so I need to figure that out, too. This pic has a combo of viewer shadows (sort of) and prim shadows. I've been using either the default 3 PM, 9 AM light settings or Strawberry Singh 's shadow setting (which turned out to be too bright for this room).

Speaking of roofs and shadows, I am going to make the underside of the roof in my skybox studio transparent so the sun shines in when I take pics up there. I hope that works.

Funny memory - in my first apartment in SL, I had one way windows - brick wall on the outside, lovely windows on the inside - and I thought that my landlord was some sort of freakin' genius/magician for building it that way. I bragged to everyone I met about my fancy one-way windows. I kind of miss the days when SL was *that* magical and amazing for me.

Big Love

2011-01-17T18:10:00.001-07:00

Today, to give myself a break from prefab beach mansion shopping, I decided to go exploring for new prim food shops. Search brought up a place called Big Cake - which turned out not to be a prim food shop at all. It's a Valentine's Day shop and I was charmed by the line of pink trees at the entrance. (You can buy these pink trees there!)

I wasn't even thinking about Valentine's Day yet. In my mind, we still have months before the holiday - but I am wrong! I think Jerremy might appreciate a little romance from me this year. (He married one of the least romantic girls on the grid. But me? I totally hit the jackpot because he is amazingly romantic.) I only have a few weeks to do some planning. Yikes!

Teenage Dream

2011-01-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

I remember being a teen. It was a good time even though computers had names like Commodore 64 and we were forced to entertain ourselves by watching Wham! videos and going outdoors.

Today, computers have names like iPhone and Droid and we entertain ourselves by watching the cast of Jersey Shore go outdoors. It is soooooo different for the teens of today.

Because of this, I wanted to put together the top ten tips to help teens navigate the virtual world we'll share soon. But, I could only come up with four.

Tym's Tips for Teens:

Stay in school.
Begging is unattractive when adults do it. It's not any cuter when "almost adults" do it.
Just say no. (I'm not sure why - but adults said this to us a lot when we were young and we turned out just fine.)
Learn to dance for real. Yes, you are a darn good dancer with that HUD, but when you go to prom, you'll be expected to dance under your own power.

That's all I've got. What? I have no RL kids and our prim baby, Blocky, will never get older ...because, tragically, he is no mod. However, in the coming days, I'm sure other adult SLers will have other advice to add that is much better than my own.

You can call him a girl's name!

2011-01-14T18:06:00.001-07:00

If you have a hankering to do some television sitcom role play, do I have the thing for you: a JD from Scrubs avatar (at Kitty Boom)! I couldn't find matching Dr. Cox, Turk or Carla avatars but I am sure you can improvise. Now, If you actually end up doing this RP would you please, please, please a thousand times please make a machinima of it and send me the YouTube link? Thank you.

The Short List

2011-01-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Jerremy and I have lived in the same house (slightly modified) since we were first married. We got to talking and are going to see what else is out there and maybe get a new one. This is exciting! To us at least.

I have a list of things I want in a new house:

a media room
lots of windows
at least one fireplace
a double door entry
a garage
a patio off of the master bedroom
high ceilings
a laundry room
a place for a home gym
an office
a pretty staircase
space for entertaining
a nice master bath
a guest bathroom
an inviting kitchen

Jerremy's told me what he wants to find in a new house:

a master bedroom with lots of room for camera panning
me

I love that man!

It gives you wings!

2011-01-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

OMG! At last someone shared the trick to overriding a no-fly zone in Viewer 2.4:

Here's what you do:

1. Goto > Advanced > Show Debug Settings: type in AdminMenu and set it to TRUE
2. Click Advanced > Show Develop Menu
3. Click Develop > Show Admin Menu
4. Fly!

Now, please use this power responsibly. Stay out of private skyboxes, work studios, etc. Use it to move faster than walking and to shop high walls of merchandise. Don't be a jerk and ruin it for everyone else. Please.

Hair. Where?

2011-01-08T12:31:00.002-07:00

Bloggers often mention the odd phrases that someone used to find their blogs. I haven't looked at mine in ages, but I was curious after someone mentioned theirs on Plurk (Add me!). Chestnut Rau shared hers here.

For what seems like the entire lifetime of my blog, other than searching for my name, people get here by searching for "second life pubic hair" or "pubic hair second life". I'm not sure how to feel about that.

When you search for "pubic hair" on my blog, you won't find any - unless you read it while you are naked and your screen is very static-y. (OMG. I am so sorry that I went there, but I couldn't resist.)

Ahem. Actually, if you search for that term you will find this post from the early days of this blog: Weed Whacker. I hope that helps the follicle-challenged people of SL to understand that in a virtual world, having one in the hand is better than having two in the bush, so to speak.

ETA: I remembered another place where someone had recently talked about search terms for blogs: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/01/odd-keywords-google-finds-your-blog.html.

My Favorite Dress

2011-01-07T17:02:00.001-07:00

I heard yesterday that the store aDiva is closing. (They are having a closing sale now through the end of January.) I was only able to get in-world for a few minutes yesterday so I didn't have a chance to post anything about it (and very late so I even missed Jerremy. Boo.). It has always been one of my favorites for finding little gems.

I also bought my wedding dress from aDiva back in the day. I decided to throw it on and take a picture in the ensemble as my way of saying thanks and good-bye to the creator, AnneJoy Paine. I love this dress. You can't see in this pose, but the straps sit on the shoulders and give it an off the shoulder look that I adore. (I tried to take a picture to show this - but I crashed 1000 times just taking this one. I think it's time to go graphics card shopping.)

I had started to get worried when the store notices stopped suddenly. Then, word got out that AnneJoy was not feeling well. I hope that AnneJoy recovers and I wish her all the best. Thanks for making such a fun shop and such creative items. And most of all, thank you for making the dress that takes me back to my fondest SL memory.

This is a Hump Day Post

2011-01-05T18:00:00.001-07:00

I wanted to do something to give a nod to today being Hump Day.

First, I thought I'd find a zoo and a camel and tie in the camel's hump with Hump Day. Not terribly creative of me, but I like prim animals and Second Life zoos.

Search came up with a place I'd never been before called Media Zoo. I was only able to locate one animal there and it was not a camel (but it did sit still for a picture) - which makes sense since it is a place dedicated to research into the use of virtual worlds in education and not an actual zoo.

Next, I decided to look for a camel on the Marketplace. I thought taking a picture while riding one would be appropriate. But it struck me how presumptuous The Marketplace is. It is as though the Marketplace is saying to me, "Look - you really don't want a camel; they spit. Have a nice lamb. If you fluff up the wool on its back it will look hump-ish." Or perhaps sellers are loading the descriptions of their animals with other animal names on the off chance you will say, "Oh hey! This polar bear is much better for the desert scene I have in mind! This is genius!" I'm not sure which.

Anyhoo, Happy Hump Day.

Reruns & Irene Cara

2011-01-04T17:43:00.001-07:00

I like a good rerun. And I am not just talking about this kind of Rerun:

I added this thing-a-ma-bob to the bottom of my blog posts that shows you other posts that you might like to read. I am not sure how they are selected, but I hope it digs deep. I have over 3 years of posts to select from and I think a few will entertain you. So, as an experiment I am going to load this post with key word that might bring up some older posts and we'll see what happens! Thong! Baby! Cat! Tattoo! Birth control! Cake! Volcano! Starting Point! Sword! Couch! Windlight! Meme!! Hamster! Exercise!! Lucky chair! Hospital! Bloggers! Star Trek! Daddy!

There! Let's see what happens.

Just in case, I am sticking this video in for your viewing pleasure:

NOTE: After including this video in this post, I now have the highest Irene Cara-to-blog post ratio of any other SL blog!!

Bling Dawn

2011-01-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

I mentioned that I was going to make a concerted effort to have more people in my blog pictures. Feeling too self-conscious to IM my friends list and ask them to come stand around for no reason, doing nothing while I took a picture, I decided to start out small. Instead of real rezzed people, today I'm taking pictures with almost people - balls of mist.

I TPd over to the Boardroom Infohub - which is listed in the Destination Guide as a place to go for 3D chat. If 3D chat means one guy repeating "Hey!" over and over while no one responds to him*, then I found it! (*Except for me - I had to ask him why he kept saying "Hey!" He responded by telling me "Hey!")

It was actually pretty crowded there despite the near silence and the resulting lag meant nearly everyone was gray or misty. For some reason, I found it very funny that one person's bling was rezzing faster than she was. Bling is like a cockroach - nothing can stop it.

Remember that time when...?

2011-01-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

Time moves so fast in our virtual world that looking back on the year is almost like looking back on a decade. So today, I decided to drag a big prop onto our island, take a picture and reminisce.

Remember that time when...

I was doing that 365 picture-a-day blog project (which I still am in the sense of counting my posts from when I started and today is 360 so I am almost to my goal even though I took the scenic route which lasted a bit longer than 1 year)?
we were excited by GnomeAir and his hilarious machinima? (and by "we" I mean me, Alicia Chenaux and Nika Dreamscape)
we had last names in SL?
1.23?
Avatars United (or Avatars Untied for the dyslexics or BDSMers among us)?
Philip was CEO?
Philip wasn't CEO?
shadows were prims?
the old school Planet SL blog feeds were up?
LL thought voice morphing was a brilliant revenue enhancing feature that people were desperate for?
XStreetSL?
Elika started making hair again? (YES!! WHEEE!!)
I was up in arms about how horrible display names would be (but then I changed mine to my married name and then I was happy again)?
there was a teen grid?
LL changed the TOS...again?
when seemingly everyone went bonkers and went premium in order to get a Linden Home?
when seemingly everyone went bonkers and made accounts to reserve variations of their avatars' names and brand names?

I'm certain that I'm forgetting a zillion other significant events. But I'm going to blame that on staring into a large glowing screen to watch my alter ego buy shoes for what feels like at least an entire decade.

Two Heads are Better Than One

2010-12-31T11:31:00.000-07:00

Photo by Aldwyn Zanzibar.

Jerremy and I put our heads together to come up with some predictions for the new year.

In my last post, I mentioned something I foresee:

As a nod to the breedables craze (and interestingly a technique similar to that used by child abductors to lure children into their windowless vans), all new players will find an adorable puppy or other baby animal in their starting inventories. It will cost $72 USD/year or $9.95 USD/month for pet food. The players who choose not to let the animal starve to death will be called People Raising Echinoderms, Mollusks, Invertebrates and Unspecified Mammals - or PREMIUM. (And they will get a free house.)

Jerremy thought of a brilliant one - and then someone mentioned it at Alicia Chenaux's New Year's Eve Eve Party last night! So it is certain to come true! Great minds and all!

In 2011, someone will develop a Kinect-inspired virtual sex application that will allow SLers to have SLex without pose balls or clumsy menus! Imagine hundreds, nay, thousands of players humping the air in sync with their SLovers (who are possibly thousands of miles away) as their avatars match their movements on screen! (That won't be awkward for someone to walk in on at all.)

Also in the new year:

Forsaking tradition, Rod Humble will not be R Linden or even Humble Linden but ... The Situation Linden. His avatar will wear this shirt:

2011 will also see the end of 'bling'... only to be replaced by 'blang.' Blang will be 1000 times worse than any bling. It will be like...like nuclear bling combined with smell-o-vision! Or something.

I needed to have a couple of serious predictions, so:

LL will introduce some cool new benefits for Premium members - including the restoration of the old support levels, new inventory management tools, higher group limits (beyond 40) and more. I hope, I hope, I hope.

Premium members will get the option to override fly EVERYWHERE just by thinking about it!! (Yes, I realize that I am obsessed with being able to override fly, but the list of places I am boycotting because they won't let me fly is growing and it makes me sad.)

I will continue to have an absolute blast writing this blog and continue be humbled and honored that people read it. (Thank you, by the way!)

Have a safe celebration! Talk to you next year!

Did I see into the future?

2010-12-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

Last year, I made some predictions for SL in 2010. Let's see how I did!

* I predicted that LL would finally notice that they seem to have a lot of female customers and aim for that market when targeting new users: "LL will finally realize that it has hit a sweet spot as far as reaching the females aged 18-49 demographic. They'll give up on trying to get male teen gamers to sign up and start advertising during Oprah and in Elle magazine." I was terribly wrong on this one as they tried to get Facebookers, virtual animal breeders, sparkly vampires and Avatar movie obsessed fans to sign up. Maybe next year?

* I was dead wrong when I predicted that "Premium account holders finally get some additional benefits..." Despite things I heard from actual Linden friends about additional Premium benefits being just around the corner, nothing happened. There is still very little difference between a basic account and a premium account and LL is letting potential revenue & loyalty enhancement tool slip through their fingers.

* I was wrong about inter-species breeding: "The breedable pet market will collapse into chaos as animals start mating cross species leaving everyone with farms full of incredibly horny, taupe-ish colored chickpigbunnyturtles." I'm still crossing my fingers for this to happen in 2011.

* I got one right!!: "Philip comes back to LL full time after the fun of telling people the Love Machine is, '...in his pants!' wears off." He came back! And then he left again as the fun of telling people he was in charge of SL wore off.

* I was wrong on this one, but not far off the mark for LL's 2010 advertising strategy: "LL will continue its efforts to enhance the first hour experience by actually assigning parts in role play sims." They didn't quite do this, but did play into people's desires to be vampires or blue aliens and, eventually, into their desires to play Facebook games. In 2011, I predict that all new players will actually find an adorable puppy in their starting inventories. Interestingly, it will cost $72 USD/year or $9.95 USD/month for puppy food. (And will come with a free house.)

* I was also wrong on my prediction that "The Linden Home program goes belly up as SLasbestos is discovered in the construction materials." Instead of SLasbestos, there were dangerous levels of meh.

So, I got one prediction right. Which is just sad. But luckily, I will have a chance to redeem myself when I make my predictions for 2011. Stay tuned!

Goldilocks and the Inner City Gang HQ

2010-12-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to find a place on the grid where I could relax and think about my predictions for the coming year. I figured that it wouldn't hurt if that place has some New Age or mystical stuff going on. I discovered the Crystal Cave of Enlightenment and it's alleged psychic energy and meditation spots. But this part of the cave? This feels a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Inner City Gang Members. And I am not about to find out if the pot is "just right" or not.

Optimism?

2010-12-28T16:39:00.001-07:00

I am a relatively optimistic person. But, the people trying to sell New Year's 2010 items on the marketplace have me beat by a mile. 2010 was a challenging year for most people, I'm not sure anyone wants to ring it in all over again.

This person saved time by using the previous year's photo:

Those trying to sell 2009 things may be Pollyannas, but at least most of their stuff is cheap:

Yes, this 2009 calendar is out of date. But it's FREE!

Resolutions for a Virtual New Year

2010-12-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'm here at DeCuir Creations Fireworks' New Year's Eve Ball Drop display, looking at the countdown clock to 2011 and pondering resolutions.

Last year I didn't really make any resolutions for the new year other than to use an emoticon of a person spinning on her head more often on Plurk. (Add me!) On that resolution, I succeeded wildly. That success has made me think that might expand my efforts into other areas.

If I do them, I won't call them resolutions though since that is too much pressure. I'll just call them "stuff I am going to do more of." Here are some of the possibilities:

I will leave comments on at least 6 blogs per week. (With one day for rest, of course.) I read so many blogs and I have so much fun doing it that I really should show my appreciation by commenting.

I will be more social with my friends list in-world. Bear in mind - I always assume everyone on my friends list is very busy having deep discussions about how to fix the world economy or boinking, so this item might be very challenging to me. Also, I have friends notifications turned off. If I happen to IM you at the moment that you log in, and you think I am being obnoxious, please know that I have no freaking idea of when you logged in. I'm a patient woman. IM me back whenever. Also, please - if you actually *are* discussing Keynesian economics or pixel mating, tell me you are busy. It won't hurt my feelings. I don't want to mess up your chances for a Nobel prize and/or getting SLaid.

I will have more people in my blog pictures. I may put out a call for extras for pics so pay attention to my blog - or I'll just IM you. I'm going to shoot for 1/3-1/2 of my pictures having people in them. And yes, Jerremy counts.

Carve out time to do more for the SL Blogger group. This goal would be helped by having group chat actually work and the viewer interface stop hiding group notices quite so well, but whatever - I'll leave that to Humble's team. I'll start now: If you blog about SL and would like to join a group of people who enjoy the same hobby for fun, support and more, contact me or any other member of the SL Blogger group with your name and your blog URL for an invitation to the group.

Four seems like plenty for me to consider for the time being.

OH! I forgot one I already promised to do on Plurk: if a person begs for Lindens or says something like, "Somebody buy me that [insert name of fatpack here]! *giggle*" or "I need a sugar daddy! *giggle*", I resolve to respond, "Get a job!" and shake my fists at them.

Free New Year's Eve Par-tay Pack from Kitchen Korner!

2010-12-26T17:15:00.004-07:00

OMG, you guys!! Run - don't walk - over to Kitchen Korner and join the group (it's free). Then, click the grocery bag on the pedestal next to the group joiner sign (you can see them behind me). You will receive a free New Year's Eve party pack! It comes with balloons, a fruit and cheese platter, champagne, a shrimp platter, cake, a cocktail tray, a mojito platter, oysters on a half shell, tequila shooters and a chocolate fountain!

While you are there, pretty please click the MM board for the fancy New Year's Eve cake.

I will slowly get all of you just as prim food obsessed as I am!! Bwahahahaha!!!

Holidizzy

2010-12-24T07:22:00.001-07:00

Hey! Look what Santa brought me! I think Santa could have been nicer and at least poked some air holes in the box though - Jerremy is still dizzy...even after I gave him mouth to mouth. It's a good thing I have a tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve, yes? Jerremy sure thinks so!

Anyhoo - I want to wish you a very Happy Holiday and let you know how much I appreciate all of your eyeballs and comments!!! I hope Santa brings you some good things!

A Gift from Torley

2010-12-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

Remember me complaining bitterly about not being able to select "sun and moon only" in Viewer 2? (The box is inexplicably missing from the graphics tab in preferences.) Not having this option means candles, lights, full bright/glow objects, etc. light up your avatar. Since not every light source can be turned off or modded, you don't have control over the light that is cast in pictures. I posted the question in the SL Blogs and I got an answer from Torley! (And some other helpful people! *cough*exceptnotsimonq.*cough*)

I'm passing the tip on in order to spread the awesomeness! This is how Torley explains how to select sun and moon only as light sources:

Select Advanced menu > Debug Settings.
In the DEBUG SETTINGS window, enter "RenderShaderLightingMaxLevel" and enter a value of "1".
You probably won't see any changes yet. That's okay, restart your Viewer OR in PREFERENCES window's Graphics tab, click the Advanced button, then click Atmospheric shaders twice (clicking some other settings also works).

For me, restarting my viewer didn't work because that just sets all of my debug settings back to their defaults, including rendershaderlightingmaxlevel. So, I did the "clicking atmospheric shaders twice" thing and that works beautifully. Now I can take pictures again without looking like I am standing on the surface of the sun!

Now, since I have been a very good girl, I'm certain that my next gift will be finding out how to override no fly zones. I'll be waiting here on my front steps for it to be delivered.

Wrap it up!

2010-12-20T17:50:00.001-07:00

After accidentally retexturing one of the walls in our house with a holiday greeting card from a friend (Thank heaven it's so cute, Abernathy!), I decided to do something that required less brain power. I can wrap pretty packages! This is something I really, really, really need to do in RL but I keep putting it off.

I received this adorable wrap station as a gift from Gin Galtier, the owner of elefantu, when I was exploring Holiday Hill. Look how productive and organized I am in SL!! (I added the scissors and adjusted the arm position for them.) I'm channeling Martha SLewart!!

Why am I procrastinating on my gift wrapping in RL? Because I have no antlers in RL. How can I work with no antlers?

It's Blogger Party Day!!

2010-12-18T10:05:00.002-07:00

Today is the SL Blogger Meet-Up Party for December!! As you can see, I'm going to be dressed in my festive holiday attire - a sort of snowperson crossed with a reindeer. I am here at party central doing things like putting the music stream on the land, putting out some holiday decorations, etc. Is there a better place for a bloggers' holiday party than Fashion Bloggers' Wonderland??

The party is today (Saturday, Dec. 18) from noon-2 PM SLT here! And we have the talented Iris Seale playing music for us!

You don't have to dress as a reindeer crossed with anything to attend! Come as you are! Help us celebrate the blogging community and have a great time!!

A-maze-ing

2010-12-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'm collecting landmarks for fun things for Jerremy and I to do this holiday season. I am here at the Winter Maze, a part of Winterfest. This is a maze based on the hedge maze from the movie The Shining. I want to wait for Jerremy so we can go through it together, but I went in a tiny bit of the way just to see what it looked like inside. In that 2 minutes, I became hopelessly lost. However, I didn't get caught by any of the booby traps that are supposed to be inside of the maze. Nope, I won't meet my end because of a booby trap. I will freeze to death because I am lost in snow while wearing nothing but festive lingerie.

Elf Dressed Up, and Nowhere to Go

2010-12-14T18:58:00.001-07:00

I was *this* close to getting to be an elf in a vendor ad today, but I wasn't quick enough. Oh well, it gave me a chance to try on one of my new Christmas outfits. I have lots of them - slutty Santa, naughty elf, hot snowgirl, etc. I've bought so many, in fact, that I really need to start wearing them all or I won't have time to get to all of them before Christmas is over.

Power Trip

2010-12-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I tried exploring some Destination Guide places - but it's broken at the moment and won't let you select certain categories. So, instead I used search. I typed in the name of my hometown - Denver - to see what came up in 'search all'. I got a bazillion people with the last name Denver (Awww! Remember back when we had last names in SL?) and a few shops selling sports items and cheer leading uniforms. I got Jerremy a couple of jerseys and looked for any advances in prim pom pon technology since the I last purchased some. (Color change is all you've got?)

Just when will our Chamber of Commerce realize that it should set up a sim in here and sell ski passes? Or something.

Anyhoo, I finally gave up and resorted to scrolling though the entire Destination Guide until I stumbled upon the Oval Office. Sweet.

Shadows with the Moon in View

2010-12-08T18:50:00.002-07:00

Me: Hi, Santa - I came to visit your worksh...ZOMG!

Santa: Oh, ummm pardon me. I dropped this candy cane.

Me: Santa! Belts! Great new invention. Look into one.

Santa: Heh. Sarcastic little girls don't get what they want for Christmas.

Me: Wow. All I want for Christmas is to forget I am seeing this. And I have been very good so I think I should get that at the very least.

Santa: Sigh, you are going to blog this aren't you?

Me: Maybe. For Christmas I want a really easy to use, stable viewer with all the bells and whistles and for non-SLers to stop thinking SL is Sodom and Gomorrah for basement dwellers.

Santa: Son of a reindeer. Well, at least use a flattering picture of me.

Uncanny Valley Squared

2010-12-07T18:05:00.000-07:00

Isn't this sculpty elf creepy? He's too well done and looks too much like an avatar - which makes it the Uncanny Valley²for me.

Jerremy and I went to explore the Christmas Gone Wrong sim. I hadn't had a chance to look around when I was there the other day and I thought Jerremy would appreciate the creativity of the sim. (When you go be sure to chech out what's on the off sim islands, too!)

Jerremy made my evening by dressing as Santa for our visit. He took a couple of photos, too. Here's one of me checking out Santa's "package":

And here is my handsome Santa, chillin' with the real one:

I've really developed.

2010-12-05T16:43:00.003-07:00

You know what? I realized that since the last time I made this announcement, I've really developed...

...as a blogger.

Anyhoo, here is the announcement: the December SL Blogger group Meet-Up Party is coming up soon! Write this on your calendar!

What: SL Blogger Group December Meet-Up Party

When: noon-2 PM SLT on Saturday, December 18th

Entertainment: Iris Seale will be spinning tunes for us!

Attire: Whatever you like! (I will be in something festive and holiday-ish!)

Oh! Also - did you know that if you blog about SL and would like to join the SL Blogger group, any current member can send you an invitation? Now you do. This would be a good use for the 40 group slots LL promised us by the end of this year!

Crime SLene

2010-12-03T19:11:00.001-07:00

Operator: 911, what's your emergency?

Me: Ummmm...there's been... I'm at the Christmas Gone Wrong sim and...omg...there is a snowman here... flaking to death! There was a snow blower and...OMG! There is so much ice everywhere!! Please send help!

Operator: How bad is the melting?

Me: Well, it's pretty cold so...

Operator: OK. Help is coming, but meantime you are going to have to get in there and pack snow around the wounds.

Me: I'm not sure I would call these wounds...more of a pile. A drift maybe? OMG! I can't find his twigs! Or carrot nose!

Operator: Sigh. Ma'am? Have you ever made a snowball?

Me: Yes. Wait! Are you suggesting that...

Operator: That you rebuild him? Yes.

Me: But I'm not wearing gloves!

Operator: Let me guess - you are in a sundress and heels in a winter sim.

Me: ...and...ummm..antlers...

Operator: You SLifers will never learn! Lingerie in a forest, stilettos on sandy beaches, pants so low they look like leg warmers! Learn to dress appropriately and then call back! *click*

The Best Part of Waking Up

2010-12-02T20:00:00.003-07:00

ZOMG! I have never, ever had anything named after me before. The other day, Plurk friend and owner of Savoir Faire Shapes , Hybie Mynx, showed off her newest creation - Tymmerie! A shape that shares my name! That is Tymmerie - Hybie made her a hawt blonde in the vendor ad.

I am curious to see if it looks anything like my shape, so I bought a copy and I'll be trying it on to compare later tonight. Maybe I'll get Jerremy to help me - I'll turn out the lights and see if he can tell a difference - just like those old Folger's coffee commercials. "We are here at the Thorne-Darwin residence, where we've secretly replaced the Tymmerie they usually serve with Tymmerie Crystals. Let's see if Jerremy can tell the difference!"

Off Roading

2010-12-01T11:20:00.001-07:00

Strange things have been happening on Route 7 lately. If you know anything about mainland, you know that there are various routes built on the continents by the LL Department of Public Works. Most of the time the routes are roads. But near our house, part of Route 7 is a waterway and crosses the corner of our sim. It breaks a piece of it off into a nice little island for us. I have always liked it because people go by on boats and things, which I think is pretty neat.

Yesterday, Jerremy saw a taxi cab go by on the water. The other day I saw an ice cream truck and then a garbage truck. I was a little relived that Jerremy saw the cab because until then I thought I was imagining things. When I get a chance I'm going to investigate and see if I can figure out where these driver-less vehicles are coming from. Maybe they are the new breedable "pet"? I know the breedable horses from the next sim sometimes fly overhead.

Mainland is more fun than you thought, eh?

Golf & Shadows

2010-11-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight, before Jerremy logs in, I decided to go get some landmarks for the two of us to explore when we get some time. One of the places I saw in the Destination Guide was the Cheeky Cow Golf Club - which has a holiday themed golf game set up. This looks kind of fun. I think Jerremy might like this place. You can rent a golf club and get the HUD for $1L.

Obviously, I am still a bit fascinated by shadows. Right now, I can only get them to be very noticeable if I set the environment to 9 AM or 3 PM (I am just using what is pre-set in the viewer.) with no other Windlight tweaks. I am not sure if you can combine Windlight settings and shadows or not. I will experiment with this as long as my patience for crashing holds up.

The Annual Donning of the Antlers

2010-11-29T19:35:00.002-07:00

I have had a tradition in SL for (OMG!) 4 years running now. That tradition is wearing antlers throughout the entire Christmas holiday season. Today, I decided it was a fine day to officially don my antlers.

Also, as you can also see I am still playing with shadows in my pictures. I only crashed about 8 times taking this picture - which coincidentally is the number of Santa's reindeer if you do not count Rudolph. (And I don't.)

Me & My Shadow

2010-11-28T15:54:00.003-07:00

I ran across this blog post and decided to try playing with shadows again. I have been using viewer 2.3, but the last time I tried shadows I crashed immediately. In fact, I crashed as soon as I thought about using shadows. This time, I tried to think of puppies and rainbows as I made the adjustments in my viewer and it seemed to work. And look at the result: I have boob shadows!

Extra bonus? I was able to photograph water, too. (I have had trouble taking pictures with Linden water -- it comes out tiled with weird images on it.) Turning on shadows made my viewer lag so I think at the moment it would only be good for when I want to take moody, angsty photos. It does give a very "real" look to SL though, so I hope they can make it easier to run on our machines. (Who am I kidding? I will need a new Pixar/NASA level graphics card.)

We are redoing the house and landscaping so the best view today was facing my neighbor's sim across Route 7. These chairs are set up so we can keep an eye on them -- some of them are Canadian.

ETA: Hmmmm...there is a big line in the sand in both pictures -- but there is no line in-world since that is just ground. It almost looks like prims in the picture. I'll need to figure out how to fix that when I take pics.

Great place for a home and/or skybox!

2010-11-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

Jerremy and I are trying to sell 3 parcels of mainland. In RL there is a "trick" you can use to help sell property quickly that takes a little leap of faith and a trip to a religious trinket store - burying a St. Joseph statue upside down on the property you want to sell. Well, I didn't have a statue of St. Joseph in my inventory. But I did have a Philip Linden statue leftover from our Halloween party. Close enough! I expect the land to sell any moment now.

Free Range

2010-11-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I just ended a wonderful day of celebrating with my family. We have a tradition of going around the table and naming something for which each of us is thankful. Since I don't talk about SL to them, there are things I didn't mention that I an grateful for such as:

Being able to dress up for every conceivable holiday!
People who make things like sexy turkey costumes!
Money to buy Lindens to buy things like sexy turkey costumes!
All of the good things in SL like TPing and flying and being able to wear a turkey costume anywhere!
Free time to be able to come in world!
Being able to eat gigantic prim turkey dinners and still keep my amazing figure!
All of the creative people in-world with me!
People who read this blog! I heart you!
My SL friends!
Jerremy!
People who come to our parties!
In-world build tools and my building skills!
Other bloggers of all types - fashion, diary, news, op/ed, travel, etc. - who make the SL experience richer for me.
That SL time is only one hour different from my own time zone.
Did I mention the sexy turkey outfits?

Date Night?

2010-11-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

Hey! A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is showing in SL! It's playing at the Lush Theater until Friday, November 26th. Going to see this would be such a fun SL date! I will have to see if Jerremy wants to see it!

Talking Turkey

2010-11-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

I thought this turkey was very cute, so I brought him home from the store. It's a good thing he is cute, because he has zero personality. Boring. The longer we hang out, the sleepier I get.

There is a sleazy version of everything in SL.

2010-11-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

I am all set to Plymouth Rock Jerremy's world. We are going to start celebrating Thanksgiving! [insert inappropriate stuffing joke here]

While I was looking for some Thanksgiving stores and events in world, I landed at Aero Pines Park & Recreation Area (which I have visited before on this blog). They're having a Thanksgiving Celebration Dance and Pow-Wow tomorrow (Monday, Nov. 22) from 4-10 PM SLT. If you go, wear a costume - from their note card: "SUGGESTED ATTIRE: Colonial, Pilgrim, Native American, Wildlife Avatar, etc. Turkeys and other fowl attend at their own risk!" They're even having a turkey shoot. I'm sharing this because it sounds like fun and it was one of the few Thanksgiving events I could find.

I might stop by -- if I can find an outfit that won't land me in stocks.

Jerremy would have been one bad ass pilgrim.

2010-11-20T07:07:00.003-07:00

My wonderful husband, Jerremy Darwin, has done the very modern version of hunting for a turkey for Thanksgiving - he found a frozen one in the Marketplace! To reward him for his bravery and musketry skills (or the contemporary equivalent of knowing which key words to use), I shall don my slutty pilgrim outfit for him.

By the way, today is his Rez Day - so if you get a chance, please wish him a Happy Rez Day!

ETA: The frozen turkey was made by Cedar Bay Furnishings (Tibouchina Freschi, Krystine Qinan & Remington Pinion ) because I was looking for one! Tibouchina IMd me this morning!!! THANK YOU!!! And guess what? They are free and you can wear the turkey as a hat!!

What about a cowlambpigturducken?

2010-11-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

Do you know that Turducken is the brand name of a child avatars' clothing line in SL? Do you know how much my hopes got raised when searching the Marketplace for the edible type of turducken? Do you know how disappointed I am that there is apparently neither a frozen turkey nor a turducken in SL? Do you wonder why someone would name a clothing line after a meat on meat on meat orgy of deliciousness? Me, too.

$1L Submarine

2010-11-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

You are saved from a week long streak of grocery store posts. Jerremy and I went exploring last night. He was already in swim trunks so I suggested that we go explore somewhere underwater. We went to Atlantis. Oh - annoying thing: they had fly turned off!! Grrrrr! It is underwater, People Who Built the Sim - how can I pretend to swim if I can't fly? Oh well, I overrode that and flew anyway. (HAHAHAHAHA! Take that!) Eventually, Jerremy found a $1L submarine dispenser, got one and drove us around in it.

The buildings look pretty cool - there is even a disco. Unfortunately, after I found my way outside, I could not figure out how to get back in. I could have drowned!!!

I couldn't find a sitter.

2010-11-15T20:27:00.001-07:00

I couldn't find a sitter when I went to look for frozen turkeys at CyberKitten Bakery & Grocery today. (And again - no luck in finding one.) So, Blocky had to sit in "baby jail" while I browsed. But while that is Blocky in the photo, that is not my cart.

Kidding! There is chocolate cereal and wine - how could it not be my cart?

I'll be in the frozen foods aisle.

2010-11-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

I'm on the hunt for the rest of my Thanksgiving holiday dinner. The one thing I need, I haven't found yet. I need a frozen turkey. I need a frozen one because while live ones are nice, I don't know how to kill one. I'm a city girl. I would let it wander into a damage enabled sim and hope for the best (or worst, as the case may be).

I've looked for a frozen turkey on the Marketplace and at all the prim food shops I know. Tonight, I found a new grocery store, so I decided to visit and see if they had a frozen one. I had no luck, but I picked up a few other items and some Spam - just in case we can't find a frozen turkey in time.

Ummm...I think the checker decided to take her break in the middle of ringing me up. Stupid union rules.

Home Alone

2010-11-13T17:48:00.014-07:00

Sometimes, our avatars spend some alone time. Every once in a while, RL tasks need to be done, so Jerremy and I park our avatars while we each do stuff we need to do. It makes us feel connected. But today, I snuck back in-world to take a picture of our avatars. I wanted to see what they are up to when we aren't around to supervise.

See how innocent they look? They were on their best behavior. Obviously, Jerremy and I are bad influences on our avatars. If we'd been with them instead of AFK, I suspect that there might have been nakedness, taking of the Lord's name in vain, gambling, wearing white after Labor Day and a lampshade on someone's head. As usual.

19 channels and nothing good is on!

2010-11-11T17:07:00.003-07:00

I was in the mood to watch some in-world TV today. The comedy channel we get didn't seem that funny when I tuned in, so I am trying to find something good on the lifestyle channel. I haven't watched TV in world in ages -- even though we have a media room for it. I guess if we had more time, Jerremy and I would watch more - maybe even do a movie date night. Luckily, today was a lazy day so I have some time to check it out.

There's that new shared media thing in the 2.0 viewer so maybe if I don't find anything, I'll see if I can do something with that. I have no idea if shared media will work on our TV or if I just rez a cube and watch Hulu on that?

Oh, could the media controls possibly be more hidden in beta 2.3? (They are sort of stuck up by the search bar but the little movie camera icon isn't there any more.) I keep going to Twitter to give feedback as LL has requested (#slviewer2) - but since I don't use the site for anything else, I think I'm just making myself seem whiny and complain-y to any Twitter friends I have. Forgive me Tweeters! (You can add me but all you are going to get is my Viewer 2 complaints.)

Sigh. I just realized that I am watching an infomercial. We can't even escape them in SL.

Two Weeks 'Til Turkey Day

2010-11-10T18:05:00.001-07:00

I'm starting to do the same thing in both worlds -- check to make sure the silver is polished and that I have enough dishes and glasses for the Thanksgiving holiday in the US a couple of weeks. I think I am good. Now, I just have to find pretty table linens and clean the refrigerator. Well, The refrigerator in SL stays pretty clean, so I guess I should concentrate my efforts on the RL one.

I get such a kick out of these little details in SL - it's part of why I collect prim food! Oh, this year, I upgraded my salad bowl. I should not be as excited about it as I am - but OMG I have sculpty lettuce leaves now!

Hi There!

2010-11-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

I snapped this picture of Jerremy and me in our downstairs kissing spot - where we often say hello when we log in. <3

Won't someone think of the children??

2010-11-08T19:11:00.001-07:00

I Plurked (Add me!) about my hyphenated display name yesterday and someone pointed out the burden that hyphenated last names will have on the prim children of SL. I didn't realize the impact this will have on our prim son, Blocky.

I wanted to change my display name back right away so that Blocky doesn't grow up feeling awkward -- but LL has that rule about changing display names only once every seven days. Well, seven days is an eternity in SL!!

Heaven only knows what damage there will be to Blocky's fragile, plywood psyche. He's Blocky Darwin with no hyphen. (And no middle name that I can recall. Hmmmm...) I blame myself for not thinking things through. Will the other prim children tease him? Treat him like he has splinters?

And what if we had hyphenated him? After a few generations of hyphenated-name-prim-babies growing up and marrying hyphenated-name-prim-babies, there will not be enough room in the display name field!! IT'S NOT SCALABLE! ZOMG!

It's ok, Blocky!! Mommy is going to remove the hyphen so she matches you and Daddy! Next week.

It's not getting any beta.

2010-11-07T16:01:00.000-07:00

I gathered up all of my courage today and downloaded the 2.3 beta viewer. My main goals were more stability and anti-aliasing for pictures. (In 2.2 anti-aliasing is unavailable for some reason.) Anti-aliasing is still not available (Why???), but the viewer also comes with the fancy new feature of display names. (Because SL was not confusing enough, apparently.)

I bit. I'll try it. Not with anything crazy. My name is my brand - just as yours is your brand. However, since I usually wear a group tag that says Mrs. Darwin anyway, I thought I'd go ahead and use the hyphenated last name of Thorne-Darwin. Done. Now, I just have to get Jerremy to try the beta so he can see how fancy I am.

I wanted to show the user interface in this picture so that you could see my new display name, but alas, every time I took a picture with the interface on, there were huge black lines across it. So, you'll just have to imagine how it would look. (I am standing in front of some pictures from our wedding to help you imagine.)

What are you going to do with your display name? Are you even going to enable them?

Ho-liday Costume

2010-11-06T13:50:00.000-06:00

I have to admit that my interest was piqued when I saw a listing in search that said "sexy thanksgiving costume" when I was browsing the grid for holiday decor. I just had to TP over and see what it was. Well, there it is. My only surprise? I expected a slutty pilgrim.

I have come to realize that if it exists, someone will try to make a sexy version of it. Not just in SL. RL, too. Sex sells. I'm going to blame our DNA - which will do anything to get us to make more of us.

Did I buy the costume? No. But only because I bought a slutty turkey costume from a different store a couple of weeks ago. But I am still in the market for the perfect slutty pilgrim outfit.

No complaints today.

2010-11-04T19:15:00.002-06:00

I have no complaints today. Well, actually that is a lie. Jerremy and I only get a little bit of time together this evening. But that's my only complaint. But at least we get to be together at all and for that I am terribly happy! I'd be sad if we didn't get a good-night kiss in at least.

You know, I'd probably have him in more blog pictures if he ever wore more than a thong around the house. (I kid a little, but he did stay in the thong from his demon costume well past Halloween.)