Telling: Like it Is

As I begin writing, this planet has turned beneath the sun's light so that the imaginary line projected through their centers is about to coincide with what humans, in their unbridled urge to enumerate, analyze, and categorize things, have elected to call The Prime Meridian.  That is, it is about to be midnight in Greenwich, England, as the civil calendar (another result of long-term social engineering, as calendars always are) also turns an arbitrary page from the last of December, 2010, to the First of January, 2011.  It is New Year's Eve, becoming New Year's Day.

The planet will make another 1/4-turn before that theoretical line passes through the longitude upon which my new home sits, but -- again, owing to arbitrary but (semi)convenient human compromise -- local civil time is 5 hours behind GMT, even though by simple mathematics it should be 6.

Whatever -- Happy New Year, everyone!

2010 C.E. has been... well, I wouldn't want to endure another year like that.  I became more certain as the days, weeks, and months dragged on that I faced nothing less than homelessness by the end of January, unable to pay the bills due... well, today, January 1.  Nevertheless, I pushed on, relying on as many resources as I could find, and applying for any position for which my resume had even the slightest chance of qualifying me... with no result.  Then, out of sky-blue-nowhere, a telephone call came from a recruiter who had been an early recipient of said resume -- which led to everything chronicled in the previous two entries, here and here.

One might say -- and I already have, to a couple of friends -- that my New Year began a month earlier than everyone else's.  So, now I can relax, sip at some tequila reposado, and celebrate virtually/vicariously with everyone whose calendars are catching up.

Speaking of catching up....

It seems that everyone and their maiden Aunt Martha have posted predictions of some sort or another about Second Life in the year to come.  Some of them are straightforward -- some of them are deliciously wicked.  I did that last year:

Linden Lab will continue to stumble through yet another year of poorly conceived, haltingly communicated and inconsistently executed policies, procedures, public relations campaigns, and platform and GUI "improvements". Those efforts will have the apparent intent of drawing more new Users, encouraging them to pay for Premium memberships, and perhaps even retaining them -- and those efforts will, by their very nature, continue to dissatisfy, alienate, anger and (in the extreme case) drive off the core population of existing Residents.

Your mileage may vary, but as I see it now, that was way too easy a prediction to make. And yes, I know: six months later I declared myself mistaken... but hey, sometimes I can be wrong about being wrong, too.

It's tempting to repeat the same prediction, and if the same old crew were still in charge of the Lab, I wouldn't hesitate. BUT: There's a new CEO in the wings -- a game designer, no less! -- who may not yet know the sims of Second Life as well as he knows the Sims of Electronic Arts, but who we can hope will surprise us in a good way, for a change.

[If I were feeling particularly egotistical, I might send @rodvik a Tweet with a link to the SL History page here.]

Meanwhile...

I'm still immune to the vagaries of Display Names, because I'm still using a viewer (Imprudence) incapable of parsing them -- though I understand the viewers which allegedly are capable end up with a lot of ??? where names should be.

And...

I don't hang out in public spaces, where the any-day-now influx of 16- and 17-year-olds might turn up, so I still can't be arsed about that issue. My profile is PG-clean (always has been), and I'm not about to be making sexy-talk with anyone except Alisa, let alone total strangers. As for the rest of you: "Be careful out there."

Also as reported last time: we've got new digs in SL. I learned shortly after we got the sim in InWorldz to just let Ali do her thing (which she usually does when I'm offline), because the results are going to be gorgeous. Well, guess what -- I was right again:



We haven't been neglecting our InWorldz home... just haven't been there as much since last Sunday.  We did stop by there last night to remove our goods from the "satellite" store in Equinox... lovely sim, fine people, but a business founded on providing the full range of available builds as samples on a three-level airborne "showroom" does not translate well, if at all, to vendor boards and boxed items.  (Would you order a car online?  No, you'd go to the dealer and test-drive it.)

So... now the midnight line has moved west by about 30 degrees (that is, it's 0200 GMT).  In another 3 hours it will arrive at the eastern shore of North America, and my New Year will gain a different number: 2011.

I wish, for those who may need it, that 2011 brings you what 2010 eventually brought me: rescue, and hope for continuation and growth.  For all of us, I wish the year to bring us joy, without taking any away.

Dona nobis pacem.

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If only relocating one's home in physical space was as easy as Take into Inventory, teleport, and re-rezz...

First of all, recall that the successful interview that necessitated this move took place on December 3.  A mere thirteen days later, after intense Internet research into where to live (thank the gods for Google Map!), who to hire to get me there (also Web-based), and a frantic four days of packing, the movers arrived at my place in Texas on the morning of the 16th, put it all in the truck and drove away.

I put a couple of suitcases, my computer equipment, and Mouse (my cat) in the car, and left town a couple of hours later, headed for Kansas City to stay overnight with a friend.

1085 miles
5 state borders
15 hours of driving in two days, not counting stops for fuel and food.
2 nights in a motel around the corner from the new place, hoping my stuff would arrive over that weekend -- which it didn't -- bored witless and jonesing for the Internet.

By the way, television is every bit as awful as I remember, if not worse.

So...

Since I already had signed the lease and got the keys to the new apartment, I took Ali's suggestion, checked out of the motel, dropped my cat off in the empty apartment and made a shopping trip for minimal items to "camp out": a foam pad, a spare blanket, a coffee maker, some food, a table to put my computer on, and a chair.  Set up the machinery and connected to my new ISP... and to all my friends in SL, InWorldz, and Twitter.

That was last Sunday.  The following morning, I began my new job.  By accident of timing with the pay periods, I even received my first paycheck Thursday, with two days' worth on it.

Mouse did not take well to the seemingly constant change of scene and the absolute disruption of our old routine.  But,  when the rest of our belongings arrived Tuesday night, she began calming down... except, she still hides under the blankets when she sees I'm getting dressed to go out and leave her alone.

This morning, the day most people in this part of the world call Christmas, I spent the morning "unwrapping presents" -- that is, unpacking the lower-priority items -- and finished the rough draft of setting up.

You'd think I was done moving, right?  I'd have thought so, too.


After I cancelled my Premium at the beginning of the month and -- with some sadness -- gave up the land in Tehama, Ali surprised me by renting us a skybox in the region called Nokomis.  No, it's not by the shores of Gitchigumi... it's on the continent officially called Satori, a few sims away from the Sculpty Mall.

Then, Crap Mariner posted on his blog that a parcel was about to become open in the Five Islands, a place I've wanted to live for a long time... like, since reading his many blogs about it; even more so after learning how many of my friends already had places there.  With a fresh source of real income, some of it actually available for "entertainment", I decided it was time.

The last couple of days, Ali and I have been building houses in InWorldz to export to our new SL parcel, which I've suggested should be called "Lalisalo" (lah-liss-ah-lo).


Hers, on the left, is a completely new design; mine is a rebuild of something I built a couple of months ago.  The hardest part, after six months of the freedom of InWorldz, is remembering "no prims bigger than 10 meters in any dimension!"  Both of them feature lots of windows, since there's beautiful water views on all four sides.  I think we're going to rez Ali's on the new land first.  Mine still needs tweaking... I got a bit carried away, and it's too big.

A new job and two new homes for the new year... not too shabby.

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Late night update: Tweaking accomplished, 3 meters narrower front-to-back, and a meter shorter... proportions are much better now. Here's two more photos -- the second one shows the side of each intended to face west, overlooking the Linden Sea.


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This is one of those extremely rare occasions where I'm going to talk about the organic part of my existence, rather than the avatarian. I'll try to keep it brief.

The last time I had a day of work was May 1, 2009 -- which immediately explains why my online presence has been so constant since then. I've exhausted my unemployment benefits, and this past Wednesday (December 1), after paying the bills I was down to $250 in the bank. Obviously not enough to pay rent come January 1...

However, by that date I already had an appointment for a job interview -- only my fourth in 19 months. With airline and hotel paid by the interviewing company, I left the apartment Thursday morning for DFW Airport to begin a trip which (after two changes of plane in Philadelphia; long story...), finally got me to:

Indianapolis! The capitol of my birth state, though I haven't lived there in more than 40 years.

The interview Friday went so well that I left there confident I would receive an offer. Even so, this past weekend felt like the longest two days of my entire life, just waiting for Monday. This morning, the hours just dragged.

But -- I got it!!!

Now comes the fun part: finding a place to live, arranging for movers and utilities, packing... Oh, I guess I should mention that my new employers are fronting me an advance on my salary so I can pull this off, too... and that they want me there by December 20, if possible. That's two weeks from this writing.

Short term effect: There's likely not to be many (if any) blog posts between now and that national holiday that happens right after the Solstice. And, naturally, there'll be a couple of days or so when I'm not online at all, until my new ISP is hooked up, since my desktop computer will be in transit and I don't own either a laptop or a phart smone.

Long term effects: I've done a lot of moving around in the last ten years -- about 5000 miles so far, from one coast to the other, then back to mid-America, then south to Texas. Pulling up stakes and adding another 800 miles to Indy is not going to be at all traumatic -- except maybe for my cat, Mouse, and she'll adapt quickly enough, once she knows where the food bowl and the litter box are.

It's both good and bad that I'm not leaving any friendships behind here, but that's how it is (maybe I knew, somehow, this stay in Texas wasn't going to be permanent, even though it's going to be a mere month shy of 5 years). On the other hand, I'm not losing a single one of my friends by moving: they'll all be right there, in InWorldz and Twitter and SL and this blog, next time I fire up the computer.

Mind you, I'll only be online outside of work hours after that... so y'all try not to tweet too much, please? ;) [Note to self: Stop saying y'all, no matter how convenient it is to have a second-person plural -- you won't be in the South any more]

After I tweeted my good news this morning, Crap Mariner sent me a link to a quote from the movie Dave that sums it up perfectly:

If you've ever seen the look on somebody's face the day they finally get a job - I've had some experience with this - they look like they could fly. And its not about the paycheck, it's about respect, it's about looking in the mirror and knowing that you've done something valuable with your day.

Baruch ata Adonai Elohenu, melech ha olam, schehechianu v'kiamanu v'higianu l'azman ha zeh!

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It's been a busy 12 months since my last rezday...

In January, I managed to work through the scattered tutorial posts in wikis and forums to install and configure an instance of OpenSimulator -- first as a standalone on my PC, then connected to OSGrid. I discovered there that I had a modicum of the Pioneer Spirit; reduced to an aphorism: "Make it yourself, make do with what's there, or do without." I also discovered that yes, I actually could apply basic skills learned during a couple of decades of professional AutoCAD use and, working with the comparatively primitive tool kit available in the viewer(s), actually build things I could be proud of.

In February, a question asked in the SLUniverse forum set me off on a quest which eventually became the blog-within-a-blog I call "Seconderth". (I suppose, at some point, I ought to attempt to correspond with William Least Heat Moon and ask if he minds that I co-opted his title...)

In April, on a whim generated by some talk in SLU, I registered for InWorldz -- but, for technical reasons related to the viewer/server handshake, wasn't able to log in (the Imprudence folks fixed that shortly thereafter).

In May, I became a beta tester for something I thought was going to be a great idea: overlaying user-generated 3D content, with annotations, on a Google Earth-style representation of the entire planet. It had the unfortunate and (allegedly temporary) name of "Project X." It also, unfortunately, was a hobby project -- i.e., not a VC-funded startup -- of a handful of guys in the UK who, as "Micazook", had designed and sold a few Flash-based games for mobile phones.  Long on vision, painfully short on execution.

Also in May, I met Alisa Falconvale, who reminded me how much I enjoyed building. We worked well together, too, and ended up collaborating. Not quite coincidentally, by the end of May I had given up being a furry. I'd already lost enthusiasm for the soi-disant "lifestyle", and -- as there were no furry outfits in InWorldz -- the sense of continuity of self-image (what I eventually called "Transworld Syndrome") led me to adopt the look you see now.

The upheavals at Linden Lab in June prompted me to have another look at InWorldz, and by the Solstice, she had bought an island there, and we began what is now Falconvale Fine Prefabs by importing our builds there from SL.

The rest of the summer saw steady improvement and amazing growth in InWorldz, and our part in it. In August, I received my first (and so far, only) custom building commission, and delivered a 1500-prim megachurch to its patron in September. Meanwhile, I was steadily working my way through the Seconderth project, taking an occasional break from that to bitch about the "crisis of the week", as Botgirl put it.

But, the more involved I became in InWorldz, the less pressing Second Life's many issues became for me. That's not to diminish their baffling nature, nor the effect I believe they'll have on SL and the people who inhabit it... if anything, they tend to confirm the inference I'm not alone in making: Linden Lab has no desire to retain long-standing users.

And so... As promised more than once in these pages, on the occasion of my third rezday, I downgraded my SL membership from Premium to Basic. As a mandatory part of that process, I also rescinded my tier contribution to the Luskwood Residents group (and left the group, as well).

Interesting series of questions in that survey -- they all appear to me to be slanted toward the relatively new user.  Surprised?  Not me.

Notice that I am not cancelling my account, merely re-setting it to match the virtual reality of where I spend time, and why.  While I was at it, I also did a final culling of my friend and group lists: those who remain are fellow bloggers and/or Twitterers and/or people who are also friends in InWorldz.  If you qualify, and are not listed, IM me in either world (my offlines go to email) and I'll fix that asap!


You might expect that all of this has got me to thinking about the whole "rezday thing"... and here's what I've decided:  As my avatarian life continues to expand into more grids, I will collect, by default, a "joined date" for each.  I may mark them as special occasions in each of those worlds (for instance, April 8 in IW), but...

In the physical/organic world, we are each born only once.  No matter where we live (though we may note the anniversary of arriving there from elsewhere), we only have one birthday, regardless of where it occurred.  I see no reason to relate any differently to the date I first became an avatar.

When I was one
I had just begun
When I was two
I was nearly new
When I was three
I was hardly me...

-- A.A. Milne, "Now We Are Six"

I think I'm a bit more than "hardly me" (hope so, anyway)... but who knows what changes toward Avatarian maturity lie ahead?  If the last year is an example, there could be many.  Machts nichts -- wherever I am, as an avatar I'm three years old today.

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