Second Thoughts

Rental Dementia: You Were Never New to Second Life and Need Help?

So this tenant comes and rents the waterfront, and puts up a house boat that is really too large for the lot -- it could fit, but she doesn't bother to fit it straight, she puts it cross-wise spanning three lots -- her own, the commons, and neighbours on two sides. 

I first noticed that there was furniture all over the place in the air. Well, that happens, SL acts up, or people are new at putting out furniture, or whatever, I return it, not even with a comment. Why bother? 

Then I notice the skewed boat, and I think I should just return that as well since soon, other tenants will start complaining. But instead, I send an IM explaining how to turn on property lines and keep within the lines. I send *another* IM, which I see is wiped out, possibly because installing Firestorm, in order to put some 1024 textures into a homestead (SL only takes 512), evidently wipes out chat notecards on your hard drive, just like SL does. I periodically save the chat for that reason.

So a week goes by, this person does not move their boat, likely they'll claim that "messages cap," but honestly, I'm done. These are cheap rentals, it is a virtual world, put your boat out right. I return it -- this gets your attention finally. So I return it, I explain once again that she needs to colour inside the lines, and sure enough she begins screaming and raging and sending me TPs and going on and on - because it's apparently a language and situation misunderstanding. She thinks I am evicting her even though she just paid for another week.

But since her rental box remains paid, and she is still in the group, obviously she's not evicted. I keep trying to explain about the boat and the lines -- it just never penetrates. First I try Portugese, as many tenants who speak Portuguese have this issue, but then it turns out it's Spanish, and they also have this issue. It gets tiresome. I've developed a theory about people from big countries -- and that would be Texas, Brazil, Australia, etc. having trouble staying within small lots and keeping to prim limits whereas people from the UK, Japan, Italy, don't seem to have this problem. Except the theory is more often disproved in the breech, and I dunno, it tends to be mainly Brazilian and Spanish who do this, often pleading language barriers and force-porting you to talk to them because Google appliance long since ceased working inworld and the only translators they have need you to be in room chat with them. I refuse force ports and I demand that people use Google translate just like I use Google translate, you know? I'm a translator by profession. Google translate can be very terrible (Yandex.ru is so much better for Russian, for example, and there are other sites that are good for the Romance languages), but for a few sentences, it's more or less comprehensible. It means tabbing down your SL, going to Google Translate, and pasting it in. Not rocket science. So don't be lazy, if I can do it, you can do it. So here's the kind of insanity that ensures:

First, the profile:

Biography

Nací en SL el 17 de Noviembre del 2011

El alma es la misma en SL Y RL ,al menos en mi caso :) 
«╬♥ɦɑGѳ ʆѳ QUɛ ɱɛ ɦɑCɛ ԲɛʆIZ, 
ɛรTѳY Cѳɳ QUIɛɳ ɱɛ ɦɑCɛ รѳɳʀɛIʀ♥╬« 
ஐRIø ŧαηŧø Cøмø RєsρIRøஐ 
«╬♥ Y ɑɱѳ TɑɳTѳ Cѳɱѳ ѵIѵѳ..=)♥╬«

So note the 2011 birth date but actually on the profile the system puts the birth at April 19, 2013. So either she has come back after a long time (doesn't seem so given the profile with the feed going back for months). Did she buy the account from someb0dy else? Again, doesn't seem so. But anyway, here's the insanity:

[2020/05/02 09:31] Prokofy Neva: Hi, welcome to Ravenglass Rentals! I added you to resident powers in the group. Switch to the title "resident" on the group menu to access ban, media, set landing, change parcel etc
[2020/05/02 09:31] Prokofy Neva: This will require relogging
[2020/05/02 09:32] Second Life: Inventory item 'Ravenglass Rentals Quickstart' offered
[2020/05/02 09:33] Second Life: Inventory item 'News from Ravenglass Rentals April 27, 2020' offered
[2020/05/02 09:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): Can i put my music?
[2020/05/02 09:35] Prokofy Neva: yes after you switch the group tag to resident
[2020/05/02 09:36] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): how can i do it
[2020/05/02 09:36] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): excuse me i dont know about
[2020/05/02 09:36] Second Life: Inventory item 'NEW How to Change Group Title' offered
[2020/05/02 09:46] Prokofy Neva: go on the first page of the group menu and half way down see "title" and toggle it to "resident" -- but first relog
[2020/05/04 20:20] Prokofy Neva: Hi, can you straighten out your house so it is on the parcel you are renting and not on the commons? To see the parcel boundaries, wear the group tag and select world/show/property lines.
[2020/05/04 20:20] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2020/05/04 20:24] Prokofy Neva: Also I'm returning your furniture from other parcels, you have to stay on the parcel you are renting on the waterfrontt and use only 375 prims.
[2020/05/04 20:24] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2020/05/14 21:40] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/completename paid you L$265.
[2020/05/15 00:51] Prokofy Neva: Hi, I'm returning your house because you are not answering my messages that your house is overlapping several other parcels rented by others -- you need to straighten it out and just stay on the parcel you're renting. While wearing the group tag, turn on world/show/parcel boundaries and you can see the aqua lines, put your boat out into the water, it will fit
[2020/05/15 00:53] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): good nigth
[2020/05/15 00:53] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): you send me my things
[2020/05/15 00:54] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): and i today i give you a week more
[2020/05/15 00:54] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): a new week
[2020/05/15 00:54] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): what happened
[2020/05/15 00:54] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): please
[2020/05/15 00:54] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): why you did it
[2020/05/15 00:56] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): i paid tonigth
[2020/05/15 00:56] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): come and read
[2020/05/15 00:56] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): my box
[2020/05/15 00:57] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): time remaining:7 days,22 hours,25 minutes
[2020/05/15 00:57] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has offered to teleport you to their location:

"Ven conmigo a Ravenglass
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ravenglass/135/134/22”
<icon>Parcel_M_Dark</icon> - Moderate
[2020/05/15 00:57] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has offered to teleport you to their location:

"Ven conmigo a Ravenglass
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ravenglass/135/134/22”
<icon>Parcel_M_Dark</icon> - Moderate
[2020/05/15 00:57] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has offered to teleport you to their location:

"Ven conmigo a Ravenglass
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ravenglass/135/134/22”
<icon>Parcel_M_Dark</icon> - Moderate
[2020/05/15 00:59] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): Do you know the work it took me to learn to put a house and everything in its place?
[2020/05/15 01:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): at least give me an answer
or give me back the money I paid and I will leave, you should first verify that I paid you before returning my things, I hope I can get them back.
[2020/05/15 01:00] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has offered to teleport you to their location:

"Ven conmigo a Ravenglass
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ravenglass/135/134/22”
<icon>Parcel_M_Dark</icon> - Moderate
[2020/05/15 01:01] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has offered to teleport you to their location:

"come and see my box time remaining
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Ravenglass/135/134/22”
<icon>Parcel_M_Dark</icon> - Moderate
[2020/05/15 01:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): heyyyy
[2020/05/15 01:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): im so angry with you
[2020/05/15 01:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): better dont come
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: get a translator, you are not understanding
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: it is not about time remaining
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: it is about HOW YOUR HOUSE IS PLACED
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: put your house on STRAIGHT on the lot
[2020/05/15 01:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): i donthave a horse
[2020/05/15 01:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no horse
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: be angry all you like but you are trespassing on other people's lots
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: HOUSE dear
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: HOUSE
[2020/05/15 01:05] Prokofy Neva: YOUR HOUSE
[2020/05/15 01:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): first time i learn to put
[2020/05/15 01:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): it
[2020/05/15 01:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): you could have told me and took everything
[2020/05/15 01:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ahora no encuentro mi lampara en mis cosas
[2020/05/15 01:06] Prokofy Neva: O barco da sua casa está atravessando 3 lotes e está invadindo o aluguel de outras pessoas. Você precisa arrumar sua casa até o fim. Não é hora, e não é sobre cavalos. Pedi duas vezes e você ignorou ou não entendeu, então tive que voltar para sua casa, no final.
[2020/05/15 01:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): I can't find my lamp on these things, plus you don't have exactly regular terrain
[2020/05/15 01:07] Prokofy Neva: I told you twice in IMs in the last week, you didn't get or didn't understand, so put it straight or refund, that's it
[2020/05/15 01:07] Prokofy Neva: I didn't take anything, it is returned to lost and found
[2020/05/15 01:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): because you allow me to pay you then
[2020/05/15 01:07] Prokofy Neva: https://translate.google.com/
[2020/05/15 01:08] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): please give me back my money and I'll go
[2020/05/15 01:08] Prokofy Neva: um, I don't do anything, if you rent a parcel, you have to stay on that parcel only, not go sideways across 3 parcels and annoy other people
[2020/05/15 01:08] Prokofy Neva: if you can't figure out how to put your house straight click the same box you paid and select "refund"
[2020/05/15 01:08] Prokofy Neva: my God this shouldn't be so hard, use a translator, I do
[2020/05/15 01:08] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): I tried to see the shape of your terrain, but it is very irregular
[2020/05/15 01:09] Prokofy Neva: it's a square dearie pie
[2020/05/15 01:09] Prokofy Neva: turn on world/show/property boundaries and put it out into the water, thousands of other people have done so
[2020/05/15 01:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): I'm sorry if I crossed other people's lines
[2020/05/15 01:09] Prokofy Neva: you are not special
[2020/05/15 01:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): I'm new putting houses, remember that I didn't even know how to take your group
[2020/05/15 01:10] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): you should have asked me today not to pay you and take my things
[2020/05/15 01:11] Prokofy Neva: Busque en la carpeta de objetos perdidos los artículos devueltos. Es muy fácil poner tu casa directamente en el agua, es una casa de botes, Dios mío, no es difícil, pregunté varias veces y cuando me ignoras, la devuelvo porque otros están enojados, al final basta\
[2020/05/15 01:11] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): do not evict me you are a bad person please give me back my money to put my house in another place, it is fair, I do not have another house
[2020/05/15 01:11] Prokofy Neva: Por última vez, no seas perezoso, usa un traductor, si puedo hacerlo, puedes hacerlo. No tomé tus cosas. Los devolví. ¡Hola! Están en la carpeta de objetos perdidos. El fin
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): esta bien
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): debiste decirme que me echarías de aquí
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): te pagué
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sin saber
[2020/05/15 01:12] Prokofy Neva: Y una vez más, y esta es la última vez que hablaré con usted, si no puede resolver cómo arreglar una casa, haga clic en LA MISMA CAJA QUE PAGÓ, ¡HOLA! que tiene REEMBOLSO como un botón. Se cobra una tarifa de cancelación porque se va temprano
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ahora devuelveme mi dinero no tengo otra casa más pequeña
[2020/05/15 01:12] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ok adios
[2020/05/15 01:13] Prokofy Neva: No te echan de la casa de muñecas, tu casa es devuelta porque no pudiste mantenerla en el lote que alquilaste
[2020/05/15 01:13] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no dice nada de reembolso
[2020/05/15 01:13] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): es que no sé hacerlo
[2020/05/15 01:13] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): traté pero tiene una forma irregular
[2020/05/15 01:13] Prokofy Neva: You must be blind, click on the box, it says refund, now I"m truly done with you bye
[2020/05/15 01:14] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no puedo
[2020/05/15 01:14] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no sé hacerlo
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por favor
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): es lo ultimo que haces por mi
[2020/05/15 01:15] Prokofy Neva: You are used to being a helpless idiot but you should stop
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ayudame
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no sé hacerlo
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): solo dice pagar
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no reembolso
[2020/05/15 01:15] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): si doy clic
[2020/05/15 01:16] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): porque eres malo?
[2020/05/15 01:16] Prokofy Neva: what is irregular about that square?

 

This is where I go to the lot, put out a prim and size it to the lot -- there is nothing irregular about it. It has one section at the very tip where about 16m is gone from the corner in the water but that shouldn't matter.

[2020/05/15 01:16] Prokofy Neva: you're just being lazy and not turning on the property lines
[2020/05/15 01:16] Prokofy Neva: it is a perfect square
[2020/05/15 01:16] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): rectangular

Oh, smart one, after all. Yes it's not "square" but "rectangular" technically but...not irregular, you know? I mean, not some jagged thing or a triangle LOL.

So you might want to get out Google Translate yourself for the rest here:

[2020/05/15 01:16] Prokofy Neva: like your house boat is rectangular
[2020/05/15 01:16] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): irregular here
[2020/05/15 01:16] Prokofy Neva: so if you are not smart enought to figure out a rectangular house boat on a rectangle, I can't help you
[2020/05/15 01:17] Prokofy Neva: bye
[2020/05/15 01:17] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por favor ayudame
[2020/05/15 01:17] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no fuiste nuevo en second life alguna vez
[2020/05/15 01:17] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y necesitaste ayuda?

That last for those too lazy to go to Google translate: "You were never new to Second Life and needed help?"

But...she's not new to SL. So...hmmm...

[2020/05/15 01:18] Prokofy Neva: HAGA CLIC EN LA MISMA CAJA QUE PAGÓ Y ENCUENTRA EL REEMBOLSO, ES UNA OPCIÓN, MIRE DE NUEVO Y NO SEA ESTÚPIDO
[2020/05/15 01:29] Second Life: Inventory item 'What do you call this' offered
[2020/05/15 01:30] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has given you this texture:
secondlife:///app/inventory/18c5b5f5-41f3-af1d-c3bd-2c6fb4084c6a/select?name=DSC_1082

Here she shows me a picture of how she is seeing the rental box supposedly:

[2020/05/15 01:30] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): SEE THE PIC PLEASE
[2020/05/15 01:30] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y no me insultes
[2020/05/15 01:30] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no dice reembolso omg
[2020/05/15 01:30] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): T.T
[2020/05/15 01:32] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): SI VES LA FOTO TE DAS CUENTA QUE NO TENGO ESA OPCIÓN
[2020/05/15 01:33] Prokofy Neva: ummmmm what do you think "cancelar" means
[2020/05/15 01:33] Prokofy Neva: lol
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): si das clic en cancelar
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): se cierra
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y quiere decir que no quiero pagar
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): cancelar
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no es otra cosa
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): es para cancelar la operación
[2020/05/15 01:33] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y no pagarte
[2020/05/15 01:34] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): porqué no lo cancelé antes
[2020/05/15 01:34] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): omg

Here she seems to indicate that "cancel" just means cancel whatever operation you started. Except...the menu in the original English doesn't have such a "cancel". Apparently she never clicked on it to actually see what happened -- people are learnedly helpless in that way.

Possibly there really is a problem with how translated viewers render things but I have to wonder. BTW this looks like the blue of Firestorm and not the SL viewer but stay tuned...

[2020/05/15 01:34] Prokofy Neva: it's not my fault if your viewer doesn't translate things clearly, go and complain to Firestorm not me
[2020/05/15 01:34] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no abre otras ventanas
[2020/05/15 01:35] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): de verdad eres poco amable,solo devuelveme el dinero no puedo instalar otro visor
[2020/05/15 01:35] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): es lo justo
[2020/05/15 01:35] Prokofy Neva: ask Firestorm, not me, or download the regular viewer and then you'll see it
[2020/05/15 01:36] Prokofy Neva: please explain why zillions of other people with other language viewers including Spanish are able to refund all the time
[2020/05/15 01:36] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): No te quedes con mi dinero,yo no tengo dinero en sl para poner ahora mi casa en otro lugar ,por favor
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no deseo molestar a nadie
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): para eso es SL
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): PARA ESTAR TRANQUILO
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): Y SI MOLESTÉ A LAGUIEN NO FUE MI INTENCIÓN
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): SOLO DEBISTE DECIRME
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y me iba tranquila
[2020/05/15 01:37] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sin pagarte claro
[2020/05/15 01:38] Prokofy Neva: First, I need an apology for all the screaming and false statements you have made when all I have done is ask you to put your house straight
[2020/05/15 01:38] Prokofy Neva: Twice I sent you messages to move your house -- you ignored them
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya te dije que no quise molestar a nedie
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): nadie
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): que lo hice sin querer
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): porque no sé poner casas
[2020/05/15 01:39] Prokofy Neva: Here is a copy:
[2020/05/15 01:39] Prokofy Neva: Hi, can you straighten out your house so it is on the parcel you are renting and not on the commons? To see the parcel boundaries, wear the group tag and select world/show/property lines.
[2020/05/04 20:20] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.
[2020/05/04 20:24] Prokofy Neva: Also I'm returning your furniture from other parcels, you have to stay on the parcel you are renting on the waterfrontt and use only 375 prims.
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): soy una ignirante de eso
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ignorante de eso
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero ya te había pagado
[2020/05/15 01:39] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): a esa hora
[2020/05/15 01:40] Prokofy Neva: your furniture was all over the sim, in the sky, etc. That happens with newbies, I understand, I returned it, but I asked you twice to move your house, it's not that hard, learn how to do it
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): porque no me mandaste tp
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y yo sacaba mi casa
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): disculpame
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por favor si no lo vi
[2020/05/15 01:40] Prokofy Neva: it is not about payment, it's about straightening your house
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero tú tampoco fuiste claro
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): siendo yo una ignrante aquí
[2020/05/15 01:40] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ignorante
[2020/05/15 01:41] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): debiste de tenerme paciencia y echarme con modales
[2020/05/15 01:41] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no desalojarme
[2020/05/15 01:41] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por favor debo buscar otro lugar donde no me insulten
[2020/05/15 01:41] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): devuelveme mi dinero
[2020/05/15 01:41] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y no te molestaré más
[2020/05/15 01:42] Prokofy Neva: I told you twice, you ignored me, the only way to get people to listen is to return their house, it's a virtual world, not a big idea, you get it, you put it out right next time
[2020/05/15 01:42] Prokofy Neva: if you rage and scream and make false accusations, I don't respond
[2020/05/15 01:42] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): omg
[2020/05/15 01:42] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no te hice falsas acusaciones
[2020/05/15 01:42] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no te pasa que estas conectado
[2020/05/15 01:42] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sl
[2020/05/15 01:42] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y tambien trabajas real life
[2020/05/15 01:43] Prokofy Neva: what kind of viewer do you have
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sl
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): SL
[2020/05/15 01:43] Prokofy Neva: then how is it possible that it can't show the menu with refund?
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): EL UNICO QUE ADMITE MI LAPTOP
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no lo sé
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya te lo mostré
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no miento
[2020/05/15 01:43] Prokofy Neva: left-click on the box
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y tampoco soy estúpida
[2020/05/15 01:43] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): como me dijiste
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): same
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sigue igual
[2020/05/15 01:44] Prokofy Neva: I'm going to go download the Spanish language SL viewer now and see what it says
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): quieres que llore?
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): omg
[2020/05/15 01:44] Prokofy Neva: because it looks to me like you have Firestorm not the SL viewer
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): i have sl
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): el que puedo poner
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no sé otro
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): gracias
[2020/05/15 01:44] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): comprobarás que no miento
[2020/05/15 01:45] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y lloraré de alegría
[2020/05/15 01:45] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): nunca me desalojaron en real life
[2020/05/15 01:45] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y se siente horrible
[2020/05/15 01:45] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): aquí
[2020/05/15 01:45] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): gracias por el aprendizaje
[2020/05/15 01:45] Prokofy Neva: You're not evicted dearie pie
[2020/05/15 01:46] Prokofy Neva: your house is returned because it's spread across three lots
[2020/05/15 01:46] Prokofy Neva: I will return on the Spanish viewer and look
[2020/05/15 01:49] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): hey vas a ayudarme ya viste en el visor?
[2020/05/15 01:50] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): dime
[2020/05/15 01:51] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): comprobaste que te dije la verdad y no soy estúpida por favor
[2020/05/15 01:59] Second Life: Inventory item 'Spanish Viewer' offered

So, out of curiosity, I go download the viewer so that I can put the "Spanish" option when it lets you change the language (you can't do that when it's already working). And sure enough, it's exactly the same -- and the picture does not look like what she is showing - when I test it on another rental box near my house:

[2020/05/15 01:59] Prokofy Neva: it's exactly the same on the Spanish viewer
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero debes darle clic
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): a una caja
[2020/05/15 02:00] Prokofy Neva: It's exactly the same on Firestorm

I then also logged on to Firestorm just to see if somehow it does look different even in the English -- you see how it's blue, not brown, but it still has REFUND:

[2020/05/15 02:00] Prokofy Neva: you click on it, you get the menu
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): para comprobar que es cierto
[2020/05/15 02:00] Second Life: Inventory item '2020-05-15 (2)' offered
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): :(
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no lo entiendes no se ve eso
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): en mi pantalla
[2020/05/15 02:00] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): para nada
[2020/05/15 02:01] Prokofy Neva: well then it's not the SL viewer
[2020/05/15 02:01] Prokofy Neva: and not Firestorm
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): tengo visor sl
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): de la mano verde
[2020/05/15 02:01] Prokofy Neva: I just downloaded the Spanish language viewer, and it is exactly the same
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no
[2020/05/15 02:01] Prokofy Neva: so call a friend who has the same viewer as you and have them try it
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no voy a discutir
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): de verdad me haces sentir mal
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): me insutas
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no me crees
[2020/05/15 02:01] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y solo renté tu lugar
[2020/05/15 02:02] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pensando que eres una persona amable
[2020/05/15 02:02] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y que era un hermoso lugar
[2020/05/15 02:02] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no quise molestar a nadie
[2020/05/15 02:02] Prokofy Neva: well that's ridiculous, there's something about it you're not understanding, or you don't have a real SL viewer, but regardless, I need an apology for your false statements, then I can give you a refund, but it's stupid, everybody gets a refund, no matter what viewer
[2020/05/15 02:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero ya me disculpé
[2020/05/15 02:03] Second Life: secondlife:///app/agent/133b8361-ce4c-4168-9e54-d51d2de044b6/about has given you this texture:
secondlife:///app/inventory/09a24f94-2167-c24f-7610-da9d6f76384b/select?name=2020-05-15%20%282%29
[2020/05/15 02:03] Prokofy Neva: I am a kind person and it is a beautiful place but you are raging and being crazy and if we're going to play macho culture here as you seem to want to play, I need an apology

Normally I wouldn't bother with all this. But I think it's instructive to give people back exactly the cultural methods they are using on you so that they get a taste of their own medicine. The cultural methods are: exaggeration, rage, repetition, deliberate refusal not to comprehend what is said even at the moment, more rage, etc. etc. Drama. Striking a tragic pose. I mean, your house was returned because it went on other tenants' land and they will be annoyed when they log on and see it encroaching. So it's returned, since 2 messages about this didn't do the trick.  That's all. It's not an insult, it's not mean, it's not rude, it's just your house is returned because it's taking up 3 spaces -- plus the commons -- and you need to learn how to colour inside the lines LOL.

[2020/05/15 02:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y tú también me debes una disculpa
[2020/05/15 02:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por insultarme
[2020/05/15 02:03] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): yo nunca te insulté
[2020/05/15 02:04] Prokofy Neva: all I have done is follow the rules by returning a house taking up 3 lots, and returning furniture scattered all over the sim, you are not evicted, you are not removed from the group, you just got your house returned because you refused to pay attention to messages sent to you twice
[2020/05/15 02:04] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): lee cómo me trataste tú
[2020/05/15 02:04] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y eso que soy mujer
[2020/05/15 02:04] Prokofy Neva: if you go on and on about "insulting" instead of apologizing, you will not get a refund
[2020/05/15 02:04] Prokofy Neva: it's that simple

Again, while some are going to find this cruel and unreasonable, I would invite you to consider that it is merely mirroring the cruel, unreasonable -- and crazy -- dialogue from this creature up to now. The striking of the tragic pose; the assumption of ill will; the refusal to comprehend when explained over and over -- it's a type of person and type of culture and I think it's useful to counter it when it occurs. I don't always have time for this, but I decided -- enough.

[2020/05/15 02:04] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya te dije que me disculpes
[2020/05/15 02:04] Prokofy Neva: I'm really tried of providing cheap rentals to people and then putting up with the enormous amount of bullshit that I put up with here
[2020/05/15 02:04] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): cómo deseas que te pida disculpas
[2020/05/15 02:04] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no ´se
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): lo sé
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): eres amable
[2020/05/15 02:05] Prokofy Neva: the picture shows "refund time" on it, my God, click on that button
[2020/05/15 02:05] Prokofy Neva: this is insanity
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero no sé porque me odias
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no sale nada
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya no discutas
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): me iré
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): sin mi dinero
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no puedo contigo
[2020/05/15 02:05] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): eres intolerante
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y haces algo injusto
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no soy mala persona
[2020/05/15 02:06] Prokofy Neva: Instead of raging and carrying on with craziness and ddrama, you just have to say "I'm sorry, I didn't understand, could I get a refund" basta
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya me disculp
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): te pedíi disculpas
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y ya me voy
[2020/05/15 02:06] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): que fea experiencia en sl
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): ya te dije eso
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero en español
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): como tres veces
[2020/05/15 02:07] Prokofy Neva: OK I'm glad you apologized
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): tú dijiste que escriba en español
[2020/05/15 02:07] Prokofy Neva: you have not had ugly experience, but a learning experience
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no en ingles
[2020/05/15 02:07] Prokofy Neva: you have to look at the borders and place your house inside them
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no sabía ver los bordes
[2020/05/15 02:07] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): lo siento
[2020/05/15 02:08] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): intenté que esté en el agua
[2020/05/15 02:08] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): para no afectar a nadie
[2020/05/15 02:08] Prokofy Neva: I sent you the instructions on May 4
[2020/05/15 02:08] Prokofy Neva: turn on world/show/property borders
[2020/05/15 02:08] Prokofy Neva: I've said this multiple times and you refuse to read it and comprehend it
[2020/05/15 02:08] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): lo siento no lo leí
[2020/05/15 02:08] Prokofy Neva: use a translator if someone sends a message you can't read
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): no me negue
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): solo lo olvidé
[2020/05/15 02:09] Prokofy Neva: it's not about me
[2020/05/15 02:09] Prokofy Neva: it's about any rentals you are in, you need to learn how to see borders
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): si gracias
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): cómo
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): yo apunté y salieron unas líneas amarillas
[2020/05/15 02:09] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): y traté de meterla allí
[2020/05/15 02:10] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): pero había partes deformes
[2020/05/15 02:11] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): gracias
[2020/05/15 02:11] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): por la mala experiencia
[2020/05/15 02:11] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): adios
[2020/05/15 02:11] ღYєssнiaღ (yessikangel): yome fui no me botaste
[2020/05/15 02:13] Prokofy Neva: Nací en SL el 17 de Noviembre del 2011
[2020/05/15 02:13] Prokofy Neva: April 19, 2013
[2020/05/15 02:13] Prokofy Neva: um, not exactly a newbie dearie

When I finally focused on this person's dates, I had to wonder how -- in 9 long years (2011) or 6 long years (2013) she never put down a house or paid a rental box and got a refund. There's something very odd about this. It's either a bold lie, or it's an account that has been sold (which goes against the TOS as far as I know). Yet she spoke of a lamp she got long ago that was lost -- so it's not a purchased account, apparently. She claimed she was just learning to put out a house and furniture, but that seems impossible that she never did either of these things in 9 years or 6 years (if this is a newer account she came back on).  She keeps speaking Spanish instead of using Google to translate -- and seemingly sees the word "HOUSE" as "HORSE" but really? Yet she knows the word "rectangular"? Something doesn't add up here...So it's just hard to know what to think -- but often I find the more the bluster and drama and crazy, the more actually guilty the person is, of lying.

So then comes this:

[02:29] yessikangel: puedes revisar si se quedó por el terreno mi lampara por favor la tengo hace 8 años y no está en objetos perdidos ya saqué todo en un sandbox,si puedes te lo agradeceré es importante para mí Lamp

Translation:

you can check if my lamp stayed on the ground please I have it 8 years ago and it is not in lost objects I already took everything out in a sandbox, if you can I will thank you it is important for me Lamp

[02:32] yessikangel: sé que no te gusta el drama aquí pero me regaló esal+ampara mi madre SL y ella ya murió real life,tal vez me ayudes si puedes encontrarla.gracias.

Google translate:

 I know you don't like the drama here but she gave me esal + for my mother SL and she has already died real life, maybe you can help me if you can find her. Thank you.

[02:49] Prokofy Neva: There is no way I can take your objects. All of your objects on your parcel rented have been returned to lost & found. Try clearing cache and re-logging. Take everything out as it returns in batches and it could be named one thing but contain 10 things. If you still can't find it file a ticket with Linden Lab with the precise name of the object.
[02:56] yessikangel: ok muchas gracias.

So now you see this tragic story has become even more tragic -- a precious lamp from a mother in SL who died in real life has been lost because cruel Prokofy returned a house that was straddling multiple parcels.

I dare say most landlords would have returned everything from the sim at the first sight of a chair in the air, and likely evicted and banned the person. I at least sent messages, and 10 days passed and when finally I saw it wasn't cured, I took action. 

I have lost many precious things in SL - many - and so have others, inventory is always unstable and things are lost all the time. I had a tenant recently actually get the Lindens to reimburse her for something that was lost that she was able to identify and file a ticket about quickly. Something of sentimental value can't be replaced, of course.

So everything is terrible, and the world is sad, but let me tell you about something so far worse that I hope you will forget everything about me or this girl.

UPDATE

[11:16] yessikangel: (Saved Fri May 15 04:56:10 2020)hi
[11:16] yessikangel: (Saved Fri May 15 04:57:23 2020)Espero puedas ser justo,me avisas si te vas a disculpar por haberme llamado estúpida ,yo sí me disculpé porque creí que tú me echaste sin avisarme.
[11:20] Prokofy Neva: I never apologize for not doing anything wrong. Did you find your lamp?
[11:20] yessikangel: muacks
[11:20] yessikangel: .9
[11:20] yessikangel: YES
[11:20] yessikangel: I DID
[11:20] yessikangel: :)
[11:20] yessikangel: and excuse me again
[11:20] yessikangel: thank you
[11:22] Prokofy Neva: Well that's good, be happy you didn't lose your mother or baby like these women did https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attacks-hospital-insight/maternity-ward-massacre-shakes-afghanistan-and-its-peace-process-idUSKBN22P2F5 and that you are not sick or dead of COVID but a sex worker in a virtual world where you can look beautiful and pretend you are nicer than you are. Bye!
[11:22] yessikangel: wait
[11:22] yessikangel: o.o
[11:23] yessikangel: i need traslate it
[11:23] yessikangel: oh
[11:27] yessikangel: I am not what you think I just like the Arab culture, I am a real life shy dance teacher and here I enjoy music and dance as well as visiting beautiful places, now I work from home with my little students and I am a beautiful person IN REAL LIFE not as beautiful as my avatar but I love myself as I am and I thank you for the lesson, I thought that here in sl everyone was happy and kind and good but I already learned take care of yourself too.

Well, I'm glad she found the lamp. I know how that can be, losing something online where you think it should last longer.

See, you can misjudge a person for being in the sex industry when they aren't, they just like Arabic culture.

I didn't study this profile carefully, but when I saw "NO CAM" and "NO SKYPE" and "No rl talking" and "RP LIMITS" that signalled to me a person who does sex work but is telling you they don't do it on camera in RL, just inworld. Otherwise, they wouldn't put this. "RP Limits" also suggests that they are into "scenes". It does say "no sex, no bullshit," however even if not in capital letters so I should have assumed that this wasn't just a Weekend Gorean but just a shy Arabic dance teacher. Live and learn!

I don't care at all if someone does sex work in SL. Some of my best tenants are sex workers I imagine but I don't look too closely, it's not my business what people do in my rentals unless they violate either my rules or the TOS. Plenty of people make an income with this world's second oldest profession (acting, a close cousin, being the world's actual oldest). Some people find it repulsive but  I gather it must be hard work, certainly harder than making breedable cats who only say what you script them to say.

NO CAM No drama, no sex, no bullshit just fun NO LIER NO RL No rl talking NO SKYPE RP LIMITS☑no copy ☑no modify ☑no transfer

Rental Dementia: "i will be letting people know how this place is run"

Most people that come to my rentals and read the rules grasp that they can't use a security orb on the ground because it is fucking annoying. They agree with this themselves -- that's why they are in my rentals on the Mainland and not on an island bunker.

Indeed they are the bane of SL existence. In a group rentals with a lot of parcels next to each other on one sim. if you let anyone have orbs, all their fellow tenants nearby are bounced around; even I am bounced off my own land by some of them. It becomes a thicket of ejection and you can't even get to your own lot.

Most people don't have this overwhelming need for security of this type. They make a skybox for their sex lives or any kind of privacy. Or they go to another rental where they can have these kind of bunkers -- usually at a greater cost. Or they even just use ban because that's really sufficient. The key is NOT TO CARE if someone comes into your virtual house if you are not there. Either put your sex furniture on "name" only or put it away -- or put it in a skybox if you are rattled by the idea that someone may give you AIDS in a virtual world by going on your bed. No one likes the idea of home invasion -- which is why there is ban. But if the thought of anyone coming near or in your house while you are away is so horrible, this isn't the rental for you. The lion's share of houses never have anyone coming into them. But on a sim with a lot of parcels, either you have people looking for rentals, or you have newbies coming from Help Island who haven't figured out the rules yet, or whatever, but I find in the overwhelming majority even of these cases, they are not repeated affairs. Most people who are predisposed to get angry and upset about invasion of virtual space do this with ONE INTRUSION. NOT DOZENS. They don't see reason and they are bothered even by a visitor script that in fact may be picking up people within 96 meters that haven't even entered your house. As I said MOST PEOPLE DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS which is why I have many tenants. If they did, I wouldn't be in business.

But occasionally you find someone who just keeps arguing and arguing -- as if they are going to persuade me after 16 years of seeing the damage of security orbs.

For background: this fellow is on one of the cheapest rentals, on the sim Ravenglass, which is $165/225 prims or $265/325 prims, and management houses don't count. That's .73/prim. It isn't my absolute cheapest -- those are .50/prim or .66/prim in the "newbie" communities on other sims. I raised the price a year or so ago because I couldn't see the point of continuing to lose money -- which is what you do when you charge prices this low that don't cover tier, or perhaps barely cover tier but no other cost like content. More and more, I have made less and less cheap rentals -- because they are not worth it, they don't stay full anyway, you lose money, and you have more aggravation. Why bother? If you had a notion of "the good of the community," leave it at the door. Most of the time those "poor newbies" you are supposedly helping like they are Central American refugees deserving of our help in real life are in fact IT guys paid handsome salaries who are just cheap when it comes to wanting to spend online. Nowadays many people have lost their jobs and it's understood that there might be more demand for cheap rentals and more people returning to SL. Most of these types of customers are only grateful and I only have pleasant interactions with them. And why not? I lay out cheap, self-service rentals FROM WHICH YOUR CAN REFUND. Most rentals do not provide that option.

And as I've said a million times, it's always the people in the cheapest seats who complain the loudest.  This guy who was someone returning to SL after being away paid a grand total of $594 Lindens per month. That's US $2.23 a month, less than the a cost of a Starbucks or just about anything really these days. 

Ravenglass the sim is a sim that really does not have much going on. I am on every day for long hours and constantly taking care of customers and also looking at the map to see how things are doing on the sims. Some sims that have a fair number of people or are sometimes targets of griefing have a sensor that lets me know when they are "down" so I can check whether it is a rolling restart that is ordinarly on schedule or a crash. Ravenglass has about 30 little parcels with cottages or skyboxes, plus a tower with another dozen rooms. Yet there are never more than about 1-2 people on the sim at any time. If there is an event at a store that had 20 people like the other day, that's once in a blue moon. Because it's the flagship sim, I decided to have lower prices and "management prims don't count" and also put a forest with hunts in the sky. Since some people want to place their own house, and generally this is disallowed here, it's never full.

Why can't they place their own house? Well, they can, on other sims that cost more. But in a sim with smaller and cheaper rentals, I find it is better to supply the house and if they don't like it they can find something else -- remember the idea is to remain cheap and self-service, so that my time, which isn't compensated, is not wasted on things like showing people houses or carping at them to follow rules so that everybody nearby doesn't move out.

I find when people are left to place their own houses in heap rentals, this is what happens, as just did in Columbia once again: people put up orbs that aren't allowed, they are removed. So then they put big clear boxes over their lot, as if this is somehow a solution. It's not, because it's ugly and drives other people away. Or they put up ridiculous picture boards that supposedly give "privacy" but it doesn't, because anyone can easily cam through over over them -- but guess what, there is no one to care! And furthermore, "avatars can see me" is UNCHECKED so you are INVISIBLE. Yet people still reach for these cheap and ugly solutions that I guess are hardwired by evolution, from the days before DNA testing when men could not tell whose children their wives were having so they kept them under lock and key or even under veil and lockdown. 

People are terrified and angered that someone might see them having sex -- understood. But that there really aren't any people who have interest in this, as mostly the sim is empty (because people are on different time zones or don't log in every day) just doesn't sink in. That they could put up a skybox and have an orb there and ensure their privacy is a ready solution that many understand and do, but every once in awhile you get someone who is just excruciatingly learnedly helpless on this, and despite numerous efforts in teaching them to put a platform and a skybox up and deed an orb -- or even SUPPLYING all these things as part of the rental -- they can't focus on it. 

Whenever someone says they will harm my reputation -- because I have rules that were made clear to them, which they understood and obeyed for a time but then decided to argue about, and didn't win -- I publicize their bad behaviour.

First, annoying the whole group -- which people hate, which is why chat is not allowed in my group and the lease specifies that you have to contact managers directly. These rules are there for the good of the whole community since most people DO NOT like chat in a group unless they specifically joined it to chat in it -- and not even always then. A rental group is generally NOT the place to chat in. Yet even though I provided a Ravenglass chat/help group for years, nobody ever used it. That's because they're lazy and they want maximum attention, not the few who are willing to join and keep a group that has strangers chatting in it stupidly.

So first, the group chat -- and this time it was fortunately that it was late and most people didn't notice and therefore there were no others complaining:

[21:50] bioisback Audran: so banning people everyday that im on isnt there any security i can get for my house
[21:54] Prokofy Neva: No, you can't have security orbs at ground level because they annoy everyone around you, you can only  ave them in skyboxes at 500 meters or higher, ban should be sufficient, you can use it on your own parcel and any other parcel on the sim in our group
[21:55] bioisback Audran: well having people in my home is very annoying i would like to have some sort of security rather then logging on to find all my doors have been opened every single time i log on'
[21:55] bioisback Audran: security orbs are meant to be annoying they keep unwanted people out
[21:56] bioisback Audran: and its been everyday
[21:57] bioisback Audran: and i didnt want a skybox i wanted something ground level but i shouldnt have to deal with people being in my home every day
[21:57] Prokofy Neva: and the answer is no, you can't annoy everybody in the community 24/7 for a problem you have temporarily while you are online
[21:57] Prokofy Neva: if you can't deal with this, then this isn't the rental for you, refund is always an option
[21:57] Prokofy Neva: but what you don't get to keep doing is bothering everybody with chat in a group

Of course locking a door is one way to solve this at least to keep out the casual newbie or person landing and thinking the house is for rent as they don't see or don't understand the rental box paid nearby. To be sure, it's only a mild deterrent as most people have figured out how to sit through locked doors if they really want to get into a house.

Now, the history of chat:

[2020/04/03 16:44] Prokofy Neva: Welcome to ravenglass Rentals!
[2020/04/03 16:44] Prokofy Neva: I added you to resident powers in the group
[2020/04/03 16:44] Prokofy Neva: Switch to the title "resident on the group menu to access ban, media, set landing, change parcel etc
[2020/04/03 16:44] Prokofy Neva: this will require relogging
[2020/04/03 16:44] bio (bioisback.audran): i had a question and ty can you remove the items upstairs
[2020/04/03 16:45] bio (bioisback.audran): the chairs and the pole and that triangle thingy
[2020/04/03 16:45] bio (bioisback.audran): and should irelog now
[2020/04/03 16:46] Prokofy Neva: ok got it
[2020/04/03 16:48] Second Life: Inventory item 'Ravenglass Rentals Quickstart' offered
[2020/04/03 16:48] bio (bioisback.audran): User not online - inventory has been saved.
[2020/04/03 16:50] Second Life: Inventory item 'News from Ravenglass Rentals March 25, 2020' offered
[2020/04/03 16:50] bio (bioisback.audran): User not online - inventory has been saved.
[2020/04/03 16:50] Prokofy Neva: so you can't put any orbs on the ground level but you can in a skybox 500 m or higher
[2020/04/03 16:50] bio (bioisback.audran): User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

[2020/04/03 16:52] bio (bioisback.audran): ahh
[2020/04/03 16:52] bio (bioisback.audran): so what do we do for security
[2020/04/03 16:53] Prokofy Neva: you use ban/eject or type names in the ban list on your own parcel or any other one in the group
[2020/04/03 16:53] bio (bioisback.audran): ahh ok got ya
[2020/04/03 16:55] Prokofy Neva: no need to have a conversation, right click ban
[2020/04/03 16:55] Prokofy Neva: this sim is pretty quiet, and your parcel is out of search, so you shouldn't see visitors but eject them if you do
[2020/04/03 16:56] bio (bioisback.audran): so lets say i want to add a person here to stay with me how would i do that its been forever since ive done this lol
[2020/04/03 16:56] Prokofy Neva: well there is no such thing as "adding a person" because they just join the same open group you do to set prims and set home
[2020/04/03 16:56] Prokofy Neva: if you want them also to have ban powers, IM me so I can switch their titles in the group
[2020/04/03 16:56] bio (bioisback.audran): ahh ok

[2020/04/15 21:58] bio (bioisback.audran): dont have you on my list so i couldnt im you directly
[2020/04/15 21:58] bio (bioisback.audran): so how does the refund work
[2020/04/15 21:59] Prokofy Neva: of course you can IM anyone you want directly by looking for them in the People List in search or on the group menu
[2020/04/15 22:00] Prokofy Neva: you click on the same box you paid and select "refund"
[2020/04/15 22:00] Prokofy Neva: you're on a sim with numerous small lots in which in fact there isn't much activity every day so if you are bothered by somebody clicking on a door, lock it, or conversely just refund as cheap rentals are not for you, pay more and get yourself a bunker
[2020/04/15 22:09] bio (bioisback.audran): im not going to argue the merits of sl ive been here long enough to know every other place has security for their places.. and if someone opened the door they were in my place my privacy and that is something you do pay for in sl and honestly i really didnt think of looking at the group to click you as to "not cause issues in group chat " but realistically group chat is where people go to bounce ideas off each other ..and the fact that ive had to ban a person everyday for the amount of time ive been here is just dumb
[2020/04/15 22:10] Prokofy Neva: Then go and rent in the every other place instead of endlessly arguing with me over a cheap rental, you're not thinking of anyone else but your own momentary irritation at someone clicking on a door or coming in your house instead of solving the problem either by making a skybox or moving to another rental where you can eject and annoy people to your heart's content
[2020/04/15 22:10] bio (bioisback.audran): but you have yourself a good one and i will be letting people know how this place is run
[2020/04/15 22:10] Prokofy Neva: it's not where people go to chat in a large rentals and it states so on the lease, now go find someone else to bother
[2020/04/15 22:11] Prokofy Neva: I will let people know about you, too, big guy

 

So, attention Alwin Alcott -- and I really should do a special blog just on him. I don't "harass" or "dox" people needlessly. I publish their bad behaviour WHEN they threaten me. If this was just the usual jackass that bitched and then left and went on his way, who cares? But as soon as someone says he is going to "tell the world" about his alleged mistreatment or "how badly these rentals are run," then he gets a quick ticket to my DO NOT RENT list and my blog. It's the only recourse. This loudmouth can go around and tell any tales he likes and the background -- that not only there was a rule in the lease but one he had ALREADY indicated he understood and was informed about in person -- but he chose to bitch about it.

 

 

A Terrible KittyCat Birth in April: Part I

Melanie was born on a cold not-yet spring night in a world utterly changed by the pandemic -- born disfigured, misshapen, strange, vulnerable, yet with a royal cloak of ermine that was to define her indomitable spirit throughout her short, painful but brilliant life.


Only Grandpa Kermichil seemed to understand the gravity of the situation as he stood watch over the little one.

When he thought about the horrible new world she had been born into, and the afflictions she would suffer, he wept, his bright ball horns shaking...

It was bleak, and Prokofy was not going to be much help here. You could try to flatter him and ask him how he got so big, or where he got those big shoes, but you were lucky if he remembered to feed them before they all got to 30%...

Asking to go out for a walk -- pointless. They'd all learned that long, long ago.

Melanie's little black mom Earlene -- who was also her sister - lay sprawled after the ordeal of childbirth next to her big half-uncle and brother, Colin Powell. Yes, that was his name.

All the Chateau cats who had produced these two black kitties had fled -- only a distance cousin Raymond reminded. They had headed out for the territories -- the Menagerie.

Earlene's husband Dillin, that special child of Gram and Gramps who was the only one in the brood with the ball horns and festive fur, was nestled with his silk pillow. How like Dillin. The greatest challenge to his young life had just occurred -- and he was sleeping through it.

Dear little Melanie! With a pauper's burlap sack for a hat; with that royal robe; with God-knows-what taken out of a quilting bag in Lancaster, Pennsylvania... what as world! What a tortured life! But we will take care of you, dear...

Grandma Serihide came to take counsel and decide what must be done, as grandmas had done from time immemorial. She brought her mom, Olenochka, who had already fallen asleep, another brave reindeer tribe of cats from another era. Serihide stared into the distance.

Soon they would have to make a hard decision...She wished GiGi would wake up...

Prigs and Prats from Second Life: Coastal Waterways

I see no reason to use the word "bitch" -- or worse -- for the sort of smug bitches you find on the SL forums -- "prig" will do. It's British and not American, and already sounds more literary!

"Prat" instead of "incompetent idiot" or "dumbass" seems more literary too. Why not be more literary to describe the forums and those inworld who behave badly?

So this is my new rubric, and here are two forums regularls who are regularly a prig.

Bitsy Buccaneer at least makes nice murals and statues which I have bought for many years. I thought she made houses, even, I had seen one and even decorated one in a contest, and then got a free one -- but it turns out that house was made by someone with a similar name. 

From the forums (likely to be closed or deleted by Lindens, hence republication)

Prokofy Neva

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Posted yesterday at 02:43 AM

The best thing about these sims, really, was the names. I go visit them mainly once a year. I guess because "jungle" isn't what I want so much as "northwest". 

I've been going to these docks and rez areas and beaches not even so much around Bellissaria but the other continents. One problem with them is that when you take their landmarks, you are left with a generic name that doesn't help you remember what it was.

Bitsy Buccaneer

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Posted yesterday at 03:08 AM

  On 3/30/2020 at 2:43 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

when you take their landmarks, you are left with a generic name that doesn't help you remember what it was.

Landmark names can be edited. A friend drops LMs on me when he finds somewhere he thinks I'd like and I always add a FROM GEORGE on the end so I can find it again 

 

Tari Landar

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Posted yesterday at 03:27 AM

  On 3/30/2020 at 3:08 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Landmark names can be edited. A friend drops LMs on me when he finds somewhere he thinks I'd like and I always add a FROM GEORGE on the end so I can find it again 

I have a LOT of LMs that have changed names, most of my lms actually have different names than they did when I got them. Some of my earliest say things like "bits and danglies editing", "those blue flower things", "big bug thingy", "that one room, with the painting", "stretchy place", "really cool trees", "box", "worm place", "Weird", "bubble", "giant *****show", "Idiot room"...you know, fun stuff that you're not likely to remember when you need to 

I don't dare delete them, even though most no longer go anywhere at all, I'm a sentimental sod, sometimes. I can only tell you where some of those actually originally lead to, and a few of them actually went to the same region, just different spots, lol.  The first two went to a place I used to take people after field trips to xcite..for obvious reasons.  Big bug thingy was a giant bug..duh, but also on the sim with the first two just on the opposite end lol.  Dunno about room with the painting.  STretchy place was Dark Dharma's Haunted somethin, or somewhere along those lines, my spelling is prob. off, but there was something in the building that caused the stretch deform.  Dunno about cool trees. Box was my building box, a literal box, for about four years. Dunno on worm place. Weird was some random sim that just had all kinds of odd things on it, kinda strewn about, quite nonsensical but not always in a good way, it was like the grid just randomly tossed stuff there, it's hard to explain, lol, but I learned a lot about building from that weird place.  Bubble is that bubble ride. Giant *****show was a really messed up freebie place, lol. Idiot room I actually had a bunch of each with different numbers and lead to different problematic welcome areas (And places like welcome areas) around the grid..ie...idiots  All but two were created in 2008

Prokofy Neva

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Posted yesterday at 08:08 AM

  On 3/30/2020 at 3:08 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Landmark names can be edited. A friend drops LMs on me when he finds somewhere he thinks I'd like and I always add a FROM GEORGE on the end so I can find it again 

Yeah I know. I've been in SL 16 years. Again, when you take these landmarks, they are generic and don't help you remember where they are. If you are flying around and taking landmarks, and not stopping to edit them. Now, why is this? It seems to me the Lindens could make them work better so that no one has to edit them. Yes, if you click on them, you go back to that place, but again, there is nothing to make it have a unique name like every other place in SL.

Bitsy Buccaneer

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Posted yesterday at 08:17 AM

  On 3/30/2020 at 8:08 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

Yeah I know. I've been in SL 16 years. Again, when you take these landmarks, they are generic and don't help you remember where they are. If you are flying around and taking landmarks, and not stopping to edit them. Now, why is this? It seems to me the Lindens could make them work better so that no one has to edit them. Yes, if you click on them, you go back to that place, but again, there is nothing to make it have a unique name like every other place in SL.

The LM name comes from the parcel. The owner of the parcel gives it the name.

Are you complaining about this in general or because the Lindens didn't name things to your specifications in their parcels?

Tari Landar

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Posted yesterday at 08:31 AM

  On 3/30/2020 at 8:08 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

Yes, if you click on them, you go back to that place, but again, there is nothing to make it have a unique name like every other place in SL.

They are named after their parcel...just like every other place in SL. If you want it to be more unique than that, there still very much is something that can do this, it's called you. Stopping for a few seconds, at most, while flying to name a LM you know has the name of the parcel (because that's how LMs work) really isn't that difficult, nor time consuming. I do it all the time. I have huge groupings of LMs from specific sims, one sim in particular has at least 20 different LMs. It took me seconds, at most, to rename those LMs as I was wandering, flying, riding, walking, boating, and whatever else I was doing at the time. It's not a daunting task at all. 

I'm not understanding why this is a problem, those LMs function like every other LM in sl, regardless of who owns the parcel to which the LM leads. 

 

Prokofy Neva

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Posted yesterday at 10:32 AM (edited)

  On 3/30/2020 at 8:17 AM, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

The LM name comes from the parcel. The owner of the parcel gives it the name.

Are you complaining about this in general or because the Lindens didn't name things to your specifications in their parcels?

No, it's not about naming anything to my specifications, that's silly. It's about hundreds of Linden locations having THE EXACT SAME NAME SO YOU CAN'T TELL THEM APART IN INVENTORY UNLESS YOU MANAGED TO RENAME THEM.

I think you and Tari Landar have never visited these Linden places so you can't understand what I'm talking about, but that's common.

Anyone who explores a lot in SL and enjoys the Linden places get this, but you don't because you don't.

It's a chore to have to re-name LMs especially when you deal with thousands of them constantly because you run rentals and a land preserve where they are constantly needed and updated and when you put them on servers to be issued every day. But that's not an experience you have, either, so never mind.

They don't function like every other LM.

Here's a good example. The label on the land parcel is "Coastal Waterway" -- like a zillion other Linden parcels. this one is actually an entire sim.

Here it is: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gilpatric/148/248/22

Yes, once you pull up the map after clicking on it, you see "oh, it's that one in Gilpatric". Er, what continent was that on again? There are 5000 sims and you can't always remember. Yes, you can use the continent locator.

Here's another nice location near the beach I first posted -- this is a nice dock. But if you click on it, it makes a landmark that is called....wait for it...Coastal Waterway.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Gilpatric/14/218/25

Once you pull up the map, you see, yeah, it's in Gilpatrick, and yeah, it's not in the same location as the beach.

But in your inventory, with thousands of other landmarks, it's joining a collection called COASTAL WATERWAY of which there are jillions.

The dock isn't on its own parcel, although it could be, which might increase its use as people can get to it precisely easier -- if it has its own landing point and -- wait for it -- distinct name.  Lindens take the time to build these things, but they sit unused often. Taking the time to parcel them and name them distinctly, even "Gilpatric Dock on Coastal Waterway" just makes it easier to find again in inventory and share around, "Here's this great Linden dock I found".

It's hard to share a thing that says "Coastal Waterway" that joins a zillion other "Coastal Waterways" in inventory.

The Lindens are really brilliant at naming, very creative. But on these areas, they just didn't take the time. And while I realize they are busy, I'm suggesting that WHEN they can find time to 1) name distinctly 2) parcel 3) create separate landings which really only takes a few seconds they will see more usage because people can identify it readily without clicking on dozens of landmarks in their inventory, all of which say the same thing.

If you think it's just a problem of these particular sims I stumbled across, no, it's not.

Here's another one.

And another one

And another one

And another one

All of them, all over the grid -- and I could give you scads more -- all have the label COASTAL WATERWAY in my inventory. If you're having trouble grasping that they all have the same name because when you click on the forums, they show a SLURL with numbers and a sim name, go there, make yourself a landmark, and see how it looks in your inventory which is...wait for it...COASTAL WATERWAY.

Yeah, some of them I re-labelled on the fly because that's easy enough to do and I'm not stupid. But now I have an LM that says "Skradski". What is Skradski again? Skradski actually isn't a "coastal waterway" per se, and not a beach and not a dock. It's a little island with a castle on it which is pretty cool. 

So while I could name it "Pretty cool little Linden island with castle on it," quite frankly, so could the Moles as they build them. They will get this, even if you won't, so that's why once again, on the forums, I walk around the robots.

Edited yesterday at 10:38 AM by Prokofy Neva

 

Bitsy Buccaneer

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Posted 9 hours ago

  On 3/30/2020 at 10:32 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

I think you and Tari Landar have never visited these Linden places so you can't understand what I'm talking about, but that's common.

Anyone who explores a lot in SL and enjoys the Linden places get this, but you don't because you don't.

It's a chore to have to re-name LMs especially when you deal with thousands of them constantly because you run rentals and a land preserve where they are constantly needed and updated and when you put them on servers to be issued every day. But that's not an experience you have, either, so never mind.

Good morning Prok, did you have a pleasant time slating and slandering us for taking part in the conversation? I hope you did 

Anyway, I don't run rentals or a land preserve or a server. You're right on that. But I do sometimes make things to travel about on and include a notecard with some of my favourite scenic Linden locations and nearby rez areas (always Linden because they're stable and reliable). I have more annotated LMs for good places to take snaps to make the vendor images from. It's never been a big deal to me to amend an LM after I take it. It's just part of taking an LM 🤷‍♀️. I notice if it's sufficient or if more is needed and if more is needed, I add something. Do it with shops, places I come across on my travels, friends' places, wherever I think I might want to go back to.

When we were new, friends and I would explore endlessly. We'd spend days doing it and getting lost was part of the fun. We weren't in the mindset to document it all with countless LMs though, only enough to get us back to certain places and general areas. That we don't have your habits doesn't mean we don't enjoy Linden places. Why do you assume we don't simply because we don't share your particular habits?

May I be allowed to wonder how many are similar to me, my friends, Tari and how many might be like you? I suspect there's very few who process and update LMs in their thousands on a regular basis, and even fewer who do it without bots.

Anyway, wishing you a lovely day. All the best  

 
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Rufferta

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Posted 2 hours ago

  On 3/30/2020 at 10:32 AM, Prokofy Neva said:

No, it's not about naming anything to my specifications, that's silly. It's about hundreds of Linden locations having THE EXACT SAME NAME SO YOU CAN'T TELL THEM APART IN INVENTORY UNLESS YOU MANAGED TO RENAME THEM..........

I'd been collecting landmarks for interesting places for years before I realized I should rename them to avoid duplication and confusion - now I (try to) start with the region name, some description, then the 'official' landmark' name.

Same goes for naming things as you build - keeps you from having an inventory full of "Object"s.

I'm glad the jungle regions are back. I have fond memories of doing the first quests. I don't need a lot of high-definition scenary to be happy - sometimes you have to use your imagination* - and the Pioneer Moles had wonderful creativity, imagination, and great senses of humor**

*why I still play Minecraft sometimes

**not that the current Moles aren't creative, imaginative, and funny***, but they have more pixels to play with.

***which reminds me about the original topic - I swear I saw a region on the map last week named "We Are All Doomed", but now I can't find it.

 
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Prokofy Neva

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Posted 1 hour ago

  9 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Good morning Prok, did you have a pleasant time slating and slandering us for taking part in the conversation? I hope you did 

Anyway, I don't run rentals or a land preserve or a server. You're right on that. But I do sometimes make things to travel about on and include a notecard with some of my favourite scenic Linden locations and nearby rez areas (always Linden because they're stable and reliable). I have more annotated LMs for good places to take snaps to make the vendor images from. It's never been a big deal to me to amend an LM after I take it. It's just part of taking an LM 🤷‍♀️. I notice if it's sufficient or if more is needed and if more is needed, I add something. Do it with shops, places I come across on my travels, friends' places, wherever I think I might want to go back to.

When we were new, friends and I would explore endlessly. We'd spend days doing it and getting lost was part of the fun. We weren't in the mindset to document it all with countless LMs though, only enough to get us back to certain places and general areas. That we don't have your habits doesn't mean we don't enjoy Linden places. Why do you assume we don't simply because we don't share your particular habits?

May I be allowed to wonder how many are similar to me, my friends, Tari and how many might be like you? I suspect there's very few who process and update LMs in their thousands on a regular basis, and even fewer who do it without bots.

Anyway, wishing you a lovely day. All the best  

I stand by everything I've written here because it's true. And I'll repaste what I said because it's true, again:

I think you and Tari Landar have never visited these Linden places so you can't understand what I'm talking about, but that's common.

Anyone who explores a lot in SL and enjoys the Linden places get this, but you don't because you don't.

1. I surmised -- "I think" that you must NOT have have visited these places. Because you denied that this was an issue -- and still do. And I have to conclude that no, you still have not visited the Coastal Waterway issues because you are still huffing and puffing.

2. Those who explore the *Linden* places as distinct from any other place of which there are zillions knows this is a frustration especially when sharing something. I encountered this in my Mainland Appreciation Group with me and others having a bunch of "Coastal Waterways" and not knowing what they hooked up to FROM INVENTORY until we tested on the map - one more chore.

3. I'll say it again: you must not go to Linden docks which are nothing special with no markings, and get COASTAL WATERWAY and get frustrated. I have no doubt that your inventory does not contain COASTAL WATERWAY now -- and you'd admit that if you were writing in good faith here -- and it's not because you went and re-named them on the fly.

Nothing you've said or Tari said proves that you go to these places because if you did, you'd at least get the problem -- and you don't.

When people response to a statement of fact with "You are slandering me," I can often conclude that they understood something is true, but can't admit it.

Re: "But I do sometimes make things to travel about on and include a notecard with some of my favourite scenic Linden locations and nearby rez areas (always Linden because they're stable and reliable

No doubt these aren't COASTAL WATERWAY as you would have had this problem so many times you would have joined me in asking the Lindens to fix this. Old Linden places do have labels. These new ones do NOT. If you have these in a giver at your store, great, but they may not have Coastal -- and I bet you do NOT have them. Because if you DID, by now, customers would be saying , "Hey, these things are all named the same."

Another thing I can understand about it is that instead of serving the public, serving people and preventing their confusion, it's more important to you to rage about being "slandered". (By the way, "libel" is the correct legal term for *written* speech).

These Linden areas are all named the same which means landmarking them is pointless and cuts down on their visits and sharing. 

It's hard to keep re-naming lots of landmarks as you fly around and it's easier for the Lindens to give unique names to parcels they make as they parcel them. After all, they want use of their free places.

It's not a big deal for anybody to rename a landmark BUT THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO. Many people landmarking these nice places DO NOT REALIZE THEY ARE ALL NAMED EXACTLY THE SAME and will have trouble sorting them and returning them and - yes, renaming them.

I guess you don't have that many customers so you don't think first of what is a problem for YOUR CUSTOMERS, then a problem for you as the manager of a small boutique business. I do.

If you log in and travel, that's great, but since so many of the mainly anonymous and unaccountable people on these forums do NOT, and make avatars with zero activity to post on the forums, it's a safe assumption.

Most people who are ordinary and not on the forums and not special and not in with the Moles find it difficult to do this. Some don't even know you *can* do this. Some can't make landmarks. You are not thinking of this because you don't deal with the masses; you deal with a small sub-sett of the SL population who buy old mosaics for their walls. bTW that includes me, who has a) bought your products for years b) won a design contest in your house, giving you enormous amounts of publicity.

It's easier to keep sniping and raging and imagining that things you do are the norm though, isn't it?

Well, don't. 

PPS I stopped by your store. I didn't see any landmark givers of interesting places to explore, but that's ok, it's not required, people can just be hobbyists and just collect places and sometimes share them. Let's recall how you greeted my point about this problem:

Landmark names can be edited. A friend drops LMs on me when he finds somewhere he thinks I'd like and I always add a FROM GEORGE on the end so I can find it again 

The LM name comes from the parcel. The owner of the parcel gives it the name.

Are you complaining about this in general or because the Lindens didn't name things to your specifications in their parcels?

So before you rant and rage some more about "slander," consider that your nasty, vicious, stupid, vitriolic comments to me about things that we both know I know and are obvious -- and aren't the point -- just to be "clever" -- they get a pushback from me. You then focus on that pushback and not your behaviour as if you are flying around in a white robe like one of your art pieces.

PPPS I considered buying the Pompei Bouillabase which is nice but I knew you had copied it from the Internet -- it's in the public domain after all -- and I could pay $10 and upload it -- after lightening it in Paint -- rather than $225. I do buy public domain from people even for that much. It's a skill to get it framed and lighted properly and looking good in SL and I value that. But sometimes my own $10 upload will do.

Edited just now by Prokofy Neva

 

 
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Prokofy Neva

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Posted 1 hour ago

  2 hours ago, Rufferta said:

I'd been collecting landmarks for interesting places for years before I realized I should rename them to avoid duplication and confusion - now I (try to) start with the region name, some description, then the 'official' landmark' name.

Same goes for naming things as you build - keeps you from having an inventory full of "Object"s.

I'm glad the jungle regions are back. I have fond memories of doing the first quests. I don't need a lot of high-definition scenary to be happy - sometimes you have to use your imagination* - and the Pioneer Moles had wonderful creativity, imagination, and great senses of humor**

*why I still play Minecraft sometimes

**not that the current Moles aren't creative, imaginative, and funny***, but they have more pixels to play with.

***which reminds me about the original topic - I swear I saw a region on the map last week named "We Are All Doomed", but now I can't find it.

You're a good use case to prove my point. You do an enormous amount of exploring as I know from chatting with you as you have come to my land preserve areas.

If you didn't realize you have to rename them, how much more the average schmo who is just flying around trying to enjoy SL.

I am very savvy about making and renaming land-marks, because I run 3-4 servers with interesting places I update constantly with landmarks I sometimes rename because the Lindens named them all the same in the Coastal Areas and because people rename things or re-parcel. It's not a problem for me to do this.

But I recognize IT IS A PROBLEM THAT THE LINDENS CAN FIX EASILY AND NOT MAKE ANNOYANCE FOR OTHERS. More to the point, fix and get A LOT MORE USE OF THEIR LAND.

That there are two forums regulars who regularly snipe and hate on me who can't grasp this, and have to rant and rage about how it is easy to do, or I should do it or else I'm a moron, is never surprising. As I said, Lindens, even Lindens who might close this thread, are so much better than forums regs who behave like this. They get it. They will rename their parcels -- watch them.

Yes I saw that region too. Was that Linden? Well, whatever. Let's hope not.

The Lindens can easily ensure that THOUSANDS of their special locations ARE NOT ALL NAMED EXACTLY THE SAME, COASTAL WATERWAY. They may not have reflected on this. They make the places, then go to the next and don't worry about how to get use out of them; how to share them. They may figure if it says the sim name when you click and use "show on map," that's enough.

But the average clueless SL travelers, casual or experience, doesn't first check the map. they just go. They make a landmark. And now have a mess. The end.

 

 
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BITSY BUCCANEER

Good morning Prok, did you have a pleasant time slating and slandering us for taking part in the conversation? I hope you did 

Anyway, I don't run rentals or a land preserve or a server. You're right on that. But I do sometimes make things to travel about on and include a notecard with some of my favourite scenic Linden locations and nearby rez areas (always Linden because they're stable and reliable). I have more annotated LMs for good places to take snaps to make the vendor images from. It's never been a big deal to me to amend an LM after I take it. It's just part of taking an LM 🤷‍♀️. I notice if it's sufficient or if more is needed and if more is needed, I add something. Do it with shops, places I come across on my travels, friends' places, wherever I think I might want to go back to.

When we were new, friends and I would explore endlessly. We'd spend days doing it and getting lost was part of the fun. We weren't in the mindset to document it all with countless LMs though, only enough to get us back to certain places and general areas. That we don't have your habits doesn't mean we don't enjoy Linden places. Why do you assume we don't simply because we don't share your particular habits?

May I be allowed to wonder how many are similar to me, my friends, Tari and how many might be like you? I suspect there's very few who process and update LMs in their thousands on a regular basis, and even fewer who do it without bots.

Anyway, wishing you a lovely day. All the best  

PROKOFY NEVA

I stand by everything I've written here because it's true. And I'll repaste what I said because it's true, again:

I think you and Tari Landar have never visited these Linden places so you can't understand what I'm talking about, but that's common.

Anyone who explores a lot in SL and enjoys the Linden places get this, but you don't because you don't.

1. I surmised -- "I think" that you must NOT have have visited these places. Because you denied that this was an issue -- and still do. And I have to conclude that no, you still have not visited the Coastal Waterway issues because you are still huffing and puffing.

2. Those who explore the *Linden* places as distinct from any other place of which there are zillions knows this is a frustration especially when sharing something. I encountered this in my Mainland Appreciation Group with me and others having a bunch of "Coastal Waterways" and not knowing what they hooked up to FROM INVENTORY until we tested on the map - one more chore.

3. I'll say it again: you must not go to Linden docks which are nothing special with no markings, and get COASTAL WATERWAY and get frustrated. I have no doubt that your inventory does not contain COASTAL WATERWAY now -- and you'd admit that if you were writing in good faith here -- and it's not because you went and re-named them on the fly.

Nothing you've said or Tari said proves that you go to these places because if you did, you'd at least get the problem -- and you don't.

When people response to a statement of fact with "You are slandering me," I can often conclude that they understood something is true, but can't admit it.

Re: "But I do sometimes make things to travel about on and include a notecard with some of my favourite scenic Linden locations and nearby rez areas (always Linden because they're stable and reliable

No doubt these aren't COASTAL WATERWAY as you would have had this problem so many times you would have joined me in asking the Lindens to fix this. Old Linden places do have labels. These new ones do NOT. If you have these in a giver at your store, great, but they may not have Coastal -- and I bet you do NOT have them. Because if you DID, by now, customers would be saying , "Hey, these things are all named the same."

Another thing I can understand about it is that instead of serving the public, serving people and preventing their confusion, it's more important to you to rage about being "slandered". (By the way, "libel" is the correct legal term for *written* speech).

These Linden areas are all named the same which means landmarking them is pointless and cuts down on their visits and sharing. 

It's hard to keep re-naming lots of landmarks as you fly around and it's easier for the Lindens to give unique names to parcels they make as they parcel them. After all, they want use of their free places.

It's not a big deal for anybody to rename a landmark BUT THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO. Many people landmarking these nice places DO NOT REALIZE THEY ARE ALL NAMED EXACTLY THE SAME and will have trouble sorting them and returning them and - yes, renaming them.

I guess you don't have that many customers so you don't think first of what is a problem for YOUR CUSTOMERS, then a problem for you as the manager of a small boutique business. I do.

If you log in and travel, that's great, but since so many of the mainly anonymous and unaccountable people on these forums do NOT, and make avatars with zero activity to post on the forums, it's a safe assumption.

Most people who are ordinary and not on the forums and not special and not in with the Moles find it difficult to do this. Some don't even know you *can* do this. Some can't make landmarks. You are not thinking of this because you don't deal with the masses; you deal with a small sub-sett of the SL population who buy old mosaics for their walls. bTW that includes me, who has a) bought your products for years b) won a design contest in your house, giving you enormous amounts of publicity.

It's easier to keep sniping and raging and imagining that things you do are the norm though, isn't it?

Well, don't. 

PPS I stopped by your store. I didn't see any landmark givers of interesting places to explore, but that's ok, it's not required, people can just be hobbyists and just collect places and sometimes share them. Let's recall how you greeted my point about this problem:

Landmark names can be edited. A friend drops LMs on me when he finds somewhere he thinks I'd like and I always add a FROM GEORGE on the end so I can find it again 

The LM name comes from the parcel. The owner of the parcel gives it the name.

Are you complaining about this in general or because the Lindens didn't name things to your specifications in their parcels?

So before you rant and rage some more about "slander," consider that your nasty, vicious, stupid, vitriolic comments to me about things that we both know I know and are obvious -- and aren't the point -- just to be "clever" -- they get a pushback from me. You then focus on that pushback and not your behaviour as if you are flying around in a white robe like one of your art pieces.

PPPS I considered buying the Pompei Bouillabase which is nice but I knew you had copied it from the Internet -- it's in the public domain after all -- and I could pay $10 and upload it -- after lightening it in Paint -- rather than $225. I do buy public domain from people even for that much. It's a skill to get it framed and lighted properly and looking good in SL and I value that. But sometimes my own $10 upload will do.

Edited just now by Prokofy Neva

 

 

Is This a Scam from Goons Warblood? You Decide

Now here's a judgement call for you.

This avatar contacts me and claims the gatcha he has just purchased from me is an empty box.

I doubt it, because I don't see how I could be posting an empty box. Sure, that's possible, but here's the circumstances:

See, this is MadPea Conquer the World - The Conqueror's Table - RARE

I won two copies. MadPea offers you the opportunity to get a copyable/no-transfer version if you go to their store and place the item on the machine. You can't keep the box and put the item itself on their device; it has to be boxed. Read their policy:

✄ Only the RARE item from this gacha set are eligible to trade for copy versions. All tradeable items come double boxed and/or with full instructions on how to trade for copy versions. More information can be found in the Gacha section of our Mainstore in Mad City next to the Trade Station

So I went and made this copy, and had the other single copy available to sell. There'd be no reason for me to take it out of the box -- I already had a copy -- and even have an empty box. 

Thus, I remain skeptical about this fellow's claim:

[18:27] Goons Warblood hello
[18:27] Prokofy Neva: Hi
[18:27] Goons Warblood: i just purchased a madpea gacha table from you for 950
[18:27] Goons Warblood: its no in the box
[18:27] Goons Warblood: conquer of the world table
[18:28] Prokofy Neva: Well, I think that's unlikely, and given your name, I'm inclined not to believe you
[18:28] Goons Warblood: i can screen shot it
[18:28] Goons Warblood: and my wife
[18:28] Goons Warblood: is standing right here
[18:28] Goons Warblood: you took 950 from me
[18:28] Prokofy Neva: Screenshot it all your like, but that isn't proof of anything, you could have removed it from the box
[18:29] Goons Warblood: ill just report it to my friend
[18:29] Prokofy Neva: I upload my gatchas in the boxes, or as is
[18:29] Goons Warblood: and ill make sure to post this on facebook
[18:29] Prokofy Neva: well report it all you like, this seems odd
[18:29] Goons Warblood: ravenglass huh let me screen shot
[18:29] Goons Warblood: this profile as well
[18:29] Prokofy Neva: Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. ~ Buddha [I quote from his profile]
[18:29] Goons Warblood: this is why us creators
[18:29] Goons Warblood: hate doing gachas cause of scum like you
[18:30] Prokofy Neva: screenshot all you like, there is something that doesn't sound right here
[18:30] Goons Warblood: who resale empty boxes
[18:30] Prokofy Neva: I'm a creator too
[18:30] Prokofy Neva: and I support creators extensively
[18:30] Goons Warblood: we own rawr are in tms shiny shabby
[18:30] Goons Warblood: why would i lie to you
[18:30] Goons Warblood: whatever dude
[18:30] Prokofy Neva: I'm finding this an odd thing that you are hastily accusing me of theft, seems like a set-up
[18:30] Goons Warblood: your scum
[18:30] Goons Warblood: we do tmd
[18:30] Goons Warblood: shinny shabby
[18:30] Goons Warblood: why
[18:30] Prokofy Neva: because people do that? They pretend they didn't get the item and then try to guilt trip the seller into re-sending
[18:30] Goons Warblood: wopuld i lie
[18:30] Goons Warblood: over 950
[18:30] Goons Warblood: i asked you
[18:30] Goons Warblood: you instantly told me MY NAME
[18:31] Goons Warblood: so i must be lying
[18:31] Prokofy Neva: why would you lie? Because you would. And the name "Goons" is a marker for that
[18:31] Goons Warblood: give me qa break
[18:31] Goons Warblood: like i said
[18:31] Goons Warblood: ill take it to facebook
[18:31] Goons Warblood: and other creators i know
[18:31] Goons Warblood: np
[18:31] Goons Warblood: keep the 950 if you that hard up for it
[18:31] Prokofy Neva: I wouldn't have a reason to put up an empty box
[18:31] Prokofy Neva: I have another copy even
[18:31] Goons Warblood: you did
[18:31] Goons Warblood: its empty
[18:31] Goons Warblood: and its a leaf
[18:31] Goons Warblood: with nothing but a lm and a notecard
[18:32] Prokofy Neva: well when people make accusations when I question their possible scam -- which is a very common thing -- and don't even give me a minute to check inventory, I'm not inclined to trust them
[18:32] Goons Warblood: scam?
[18:32] Goons Warblood: you used my name
[18:32] Goons Warblood: as a reason
[18:33] Goons Warblood: to not believe me scroll
[18:33] Goons Warblood: up
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: It's a very common scam surely you realize it
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: that's why every merchant puts up a disclaimer
[18:33] Goons Warblood: you dont find that disrespectful?
[18:33] Goons Warblood: anyway
[18:33] Goons Warblood: dude keep the 950 you stole from me
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: I don't need 950
[18:33] Goons Warblood: ill make sure to post it on facebook flickr and all my dsigner friends
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: go ahead and post away, I'll post too
[18:33] Goons Warblood: then give me my table or my refund
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: perhaps someone can vouch for you and convince me of your honesty
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: alone, you can't do that
[18:33] Prokofy Neva: so I'll wait
[18:34] Goons Warblood: yeah i thought so a scammer
[18:34] Goons Warblood: its all good
[18:34] Prokofy Neva: well I will publicize it, and that will help determine if you have done this to other people
[18:34] Prokofy Neva: thanks!
[18:35] Goons Warblood: already did scammer
[18:42] Goons Warblood: https://gyazo.com/05255d1758e40e5de570cc471f5dee15
[18:42] Goons Warblood: yeah im lying lmao

[18:56] Prokofy Neva: https://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2020/02/is-this-a-scam-from-goons-warblood-you-decide.html
[18:57] Prokofy Neva: https://twitter.com/Prokofy/status/1233949490933063681

[19:00] Goons Warblood Like i said to you before go to dubai event go to shinny shabby we are a store called RAWR at both those events we are in tmd we are at wonderlust currently why on earth would i put my store at risk over a 950l scam you are seriously tripping
[19:00] Goons Warblood: Oh and by the way the name GOONS is a comicbook you can look that up to not everyone with a goon in his name is trying to rob you.

So, um, sure.

Being a creator showing in tmd and Shiny Shabby doesn't mean you are not a thief; it's unlikely, however, but frankly I never heard of this guy. I do see that there is in at least one of these shows? Perhaps someone might vouch for him and persuade me I should refund this money. 

The picture proves nothing, it merely shows an empty box -- but it could have had the gatcha in it and he already removed it.

And "Goons" is hardly a trust-building name; goons are griefers; "goons" are what Anonymous and 4chan call themselves; goons have mercilessly harassed me for my entire SL and cost me a lot of losses. So don't come swinging at me with a name like "Goons" and expect instant service; if you also use lower-case letters and instantly make accusations and pledge to ruin my reputation, you know, I'm not goaded into believing you any more LOL.

So I hope by publicizing this I can first learn if anybody had this experience from this guy. As it's an obvious scam method to claim non-delivery -- which is why all merchants put up disclaimers on their pages -- other people may have had this fellow come and claim a loss. If there are such other cases, chances are he's a scammer.

But if NO ONE has had this experience with him, maybe he's telling the truth although it remains a mystery why I would take a gatcha out of its box when I had two copies and already had obtained the copyable version.

He may have very loyal friends who come and vouch for him -- although they could be in on it.

If you think this isn't a scam, write in the comments and persuade me.

And you can donate to the land preserve at my office so I could raise $950 from sympathizers. If I'm persuaded by some one outside his little friends and/or I get donations, I will give it to this fellow. So put your money where your mouth is. Let him come up with 100 friends with $10 or let 100 readers here provide $10 to solve this situation or let someone persuade me.

UPDATE

Now the girlfriend weighs in. She's slightly nicer, and if I had heard from her first, I might have given her the benefit of the doubt, but I didn't, I heard from her pugilist boyfriend. So I am waiting for more input as I said.

[18:57] Circe Boucher: Hey there, sorry to disturb you, today me and my partner (roons warblood) were at madpea playing a discounted gacha for a table, chairs and some ornaments on it, table is a rare and after crazy amounts of plays. The rare didn't drop for either of us, to complete our collection we decided to look for it on marketplace, he purchased it from you, unfortunately when it unboxed there was only lm and notecard in the box, now we have no use for 2 of these tables so we aren't trying to scam you, we are decorating our house and really wanted the table
[18:57] Circe Boucher: any chance you could please check?
[18:57] Prokofy Neva: https://twitter.com/Prokofy/status/1233949490933063681
[18:58] Circe Boucher: as for his name, its from a comic book, we are both creators and have owned a store on sl for years
[18:58] Prokofy Neva: https://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2020/02/is-this-a-scam-from-goons-warblood-you-decide.html
[18:58] Circe Boucher: So as a creator and owner you use form of public opinion rather than resolve the situation?
[18:58] Prokofy Neva: I checked, and I had two copies originally, one I turned into the store to get a copyable version, which is all I have, and the other I put on the MP
[18:58] Prokofy Neva: yes
[18:58] Circe Boucher: I am coming to you very calmly in hopes we can resolve it
[18:59] Circe Boucher: I'm not sure what happened but for whatever reason it truly wasn't in the box
[18:59] Prokofy Neva: when I find someone like your lovely "Goon" immediately accusing me of theft and engaging in behaviour that is a very, very common scam and claiming not to realize it, sure, I publicize it heavily
[19:00] Prokofy Neva: when people instantly accuse ME and say "I'm putting it on Facebook" blah blah when in good faith I looked in my inventory, I don't have it, and have no reason to open up a second box, take out a gatcha, and sell an empty box
[19:00] Prokofy Neva: I've been in business for 16 years
[19:00] Prokofy Neva: I don't scam people
[19:00] Circe Boucher: To be fair, he msged you nicely and you made a connection between his name and assuming he's trying to scam you also...
[19:00] Prokofy Neva: so I'm going to wait to see if I hear any other reports from other sellers who had this experience with "Goons" and he made this claim, then I know it's a scam
[19:00] Prokofy Neva: but if someone outside his little friendship circle vouches him, I can consider reimbursing him
[19:01] Prokofy Neva: he didn't mention me nicely
[19:01] Prokofy Neva: he accused me of not delivering immediately, and with his name, he has to expect static from the general non-furry non-Anonymous non-rawr public
[19:01] Prokofy Neva: hello!
[19:01] Prokofy Neva: now you both are getting blocked until I get some more input

 

Linden Office Hours: A Triptych

You could read my long post here (10,000 words!) which I think is fun and has many useful historical anecdotes and thoughts on latter-day SL, or just look at my art works which is faster and more fun.

In this lovely decorative egg, called "Linden Office Hour: Sansar," you see a dead horse. Well, while Ryan Schultz was stepped on for reporting this, and won't blog on it now as he has nearly been "canceled," a guest author of his admits it is "dead". Ebbe saying it is "running" is like saying my computer was "running" last Saturday after it froze upon using SL, then could not be booted. Yes, it "ran". But I couldn't see anything and the hard drive had to be replaced.

Also in this scene is a VR goggles. Peer closely (use ctr-0 to zoom in even closer than ctr-left click). The rubber on the strap is decomposed, like something left out after Chernobyl. The headset part is Bakelite, not even plastic. It's done.

There's a copy of Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" in the dust (see previous post or look it up) -- BTW this is a desert mountain texture, to show its loneliness and remoteness, and it has a Zen garden around the edges, signifying a certain complacency and resignation...

There's a elf portal that was supposed to take you into another world -- but then there's that dead horse.

There's the famous painting, "The Scapegoat" by William Holman Hunt which signifies the fired staff. Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist here....If "The Scapegoat" wasn't clear enough, the basket of skulls will be...Click, and it plays "Crazy Bones Rag" . Why? Well, just because I had that tune and music book already made last year or even two years ago, and it is such a chore to upload music files to SL and reassemble them and get them to work, I just wanted to use what I had on hand, rather than going to find new tunes. If there was world enough and time, I might put "Idumea" into the one with Oz... BTW "Idumea" is definitely on my funeral playlist. No, maybe that's not quite the right song. But you know, something glorious and idealistic flying in the face of war and death... Instead, what I put in was "Mind Flowers" by Ultimate Spinach which is really the quintessential hippie song -- because that's what I had from a hunt I did last year where that was the prize.

"Take a trip to the center of your mind....with only your conscience...as your guide..." Wonderful, eh?

 

Next, there's "Windlight". In this world, a dark figure -- Ryan is kind of in a "Dark Shadows" get-up --  plays a sad song on a violin (no need to get heavy with meaning -- it's just what I had left over from an installation I made for Halloween called "The UnLinden Trailer".) Look closely -- he has a blindfold on that says "Sweet Dreams" -- he may be blind to his own ideology.

The users gathered at this office hour also have blindfolds -- or rather two of them do. One is a wild cat -- and it's hard to get a blindfold tied on him, but it's on there. Another is a pious Virgin Mary -- her pink blindfold from what seems like something from an SL skybox sex scene seems incongruous. But the bottom line is -- they cannot see that Windlight though it plays on their machines.

Meanwhile the dragon -- Whirly -- who often cuts through the bullshit and sees when something is really wrong when the forums regs claim it isn't -- has no blindfold.

There, on the glass mushroom table (Why glass? Why mushroom? Because I just stumbled on this glass mushroom table on the MP and I liked it, and it says something about the magic fragility of SL, I guess) is a book -- it is Bishop Berkeley's treatise, he of the theory that if you leave a room, if you turn your back on a scene, it no longer exists, it goes away, even if you later stub your toe on a table in the dark (I'm adding in that bid). But you know, that Berkeley, with a philosopher's fallacy, basically.

Windlight has such promise, and we glimpse a beautiful Northern Lights at the edge, but there is just the same mundane old Mainland NW Coastal Rock texture on the ground. Windlight is for the sky. But what about the earth?

 

Yes, that's a juice box of KoolAid, signifying the way Lindens drink their own KoolAid and the residents drink it, too. The painting in the egg's dome is another classic that shows two men gazing at a moon -- "Two Men Contemplating the Moon" by Caspar David Friedrich -- note it's not two men contemplating two moons lol. But I doctored it to have two moons to indicate the ways Windlight is broken. It was easier to put two moons than to try to show where the moon was on the "wrong" side because no one knows anymore even how the RL moon is supposed to look, and if God put it on the "wrong" side one day, nobody but a shepherd in Buryatia would likely notice.

Then there's the "Viewer Stability" egg with Oz, the Wizard (or St. Nicholas, but not in red) -- doesn't it look like him? Glorious! I already explained in in the previous post, but just to re-cap:

Merlin has a mortar and pestle and alchemist book on his glass mushroom table; his robes contain alchemy symbols and the mysterious green of the SL hand; he is a wizard and alchemist with code.

Click on his sack to get an engraving titled "Turtles All the Way Down". You know, that hold up the world, and no doubt SL servers.

The Hudson School scene in the dome  -- Albert Bierstadt's "Mount Corcoran -- is an innocent, untouched world of sparkling glacial lakes in the pure mountains -- the ideal of SL, away from that very dead horse of Sansar.

He has a belt of stars as in "My God, it's full of stars" to show his contact with Eternity and Space (Merlin) and has epaulets of stars from some secret Outer Space initiation ceremony that we can only guess at (working at the Lab).

 

The furry dog is holding an ancient stone table which was the first complaint to a merchant ever discovered; the eternal complaints of the customer which can never be satisfied and are etched in stone. Then the dragon Whirly is holding a tattered parchment with a two-year old blog on it by Inara Pey about last names.... Wonder Woman holds a spear -- well, make of that what you will. I was starting to use too many prims -- all three are 44 as it is so it's not exactly your typical home decor...

Well, you get the idea. I love making things. My reach exceeds my grasp and it takes a long time but I will make more things. These are not for sale yet but will be at an upcoming event called "Steampunk Expo" on the Mieville sims and I will have the LM to it at this location on March 1. There will also be a hunt and I'll have the hunt in my store. Each one is $50 during the event and $125 for the fatpack. I'm going to see if I can make a bonus one then about machines of loving grace and Ebbe...or something...

P.S. I should mention that I was inspired not only by Fabrege of course, but the SL tradition of making these eggs. I love Libertine's eggs which are filled with rich art and cultural references and meaning -- I have posted some of that on my @prokofy Twitter account and have been meaning to discuss each and every one in his 2019 winter gatcha, they are fabulous. His eggs are real art by a master. He does some of his own things and also uses models to good effect. It's the selection and the ability to be spare and rich with meaning that really counts in this art.

I have more trouble with that -- I want to put the VR goggles AND the book AND the horse AND the skull basket AND the elf portal -- maybe two or more of those things could be cut for better effect, you know? But I want them.

I also love the eggs by 3rd_eye perception, which are very talented and very different than Libertine's, which are usually on the whole BDSM theme which I don't care for, although the classic art he draws from is great. 3rd eye also tends toward the BDSM monstrosity because it sells to a certain segment of the SL population, but he also verges more on to fantasy and elves and such which don't go with BDSM. He has some very beautiful Grimms' fairy tales. I think there are some others doing these eggs out there.

I couldn't get the dome template to work with the baked-on-mesh thing (I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a piece of a painting to show up right on the dome -- but it was because BOM is more complicated with layers, I guess. I am definitely not ready for BOM, having only just learned after 15 years in SL that to make layer on something, you can use paste on layer in Paint (which is the level of my skill, and it won't go higher) -- which I knew about for years -- but use the section with the layer toggles to thin out that layer and make it pale enough to let the texture show through. I always wondered how to get that effect. But it was only when I really, really wanted to do it with these rocks in Crespo and this mermaid's dress -- oh, and before that these cats I wanted to come from outer space clothed with cosmic garb to walk through the elf portal for Halloween -- that I finally learned about that layer stuff after reading miles of help desk stuff. You only can learn things like that when you have a reason to want them.

Usually these eggs in RL have elaborate shellac, or laqueur in the Palakh or Kokhlomo schools of icon-painting and painting of figurines and boxes and such. Then they might have enamel or perhaps mother-of-pearl -- very beautiful. So to signify that this was something more mundane, I used the enamel of an old plate, and the enamel of an old coffee pot and so on. 

The Linden Office Hour

This is going to be a very long and meandering post, as I haven't blogged really in more than a year, so if you are just here to see what my take on the office hour is, skip to the bottom where it says HOW MANY USERS LOG IN WITH FIRESTORM?

Or you might like to TP in and see my art works called "The Linden Office Hour Triptych" which I think conveys the issues better in some ways, although you'll have to decipher some of the references. This one is called "Viewer Stability" and features Oz as Merlin standing before a painting of an idyllic glade from the Hudson School with a sack containing a little gift (click to get) called "Turtles All the Way Down".  You know that one. The glass mushroom table has a mortar and pestle and a book of alchemy. He is wearing a robe of alchemy symbols and his inner garment is kind of the green of the SL hand. He is on an island surrounded by Victorian rose wallpaper with odd green-coloured water lapping on the shore. In attendance is a dragon (*waves to Whirly*) whose claw is holding a tattered post from Inara Pey of two years ago about last names, and a furry (a dog) with an ancient complaints tablet before him, and a superhero woman with a spear. Make of it what you will.  I will do a post on the the others later.

But damn, doesn't that St. Nicholas look like Oz? This is a model from Bad Katz, and the egg is Katy Dirkle's. I certainly can't make stuff. I will post the rest of the credits later. One of the reasons I decided to have a scene where Oz as a Linden looms so much larger than the users, the furries and fantasy characters below, is that I couldn't get that model to shrink down further even using that special shrink script. This is a puzzle to me. I could have unlinked its parts and tried to get it to individually shrink and then put it together but I so suck at things like that, that I decided the message also has to be about "Big/Little".

It's probably been years since I've gone to a Linden meeting. I used to go to a fair number of them and publish the transcripts and write about them -- like this one in 2008, where Jack Linden, who used to be head of customers and left long ago, tried to stave off my angry questioning and quite frankly, the exasperated comments of most people regarding the insanity of rapacious ad-farms, and turned in this wonderful line, about how the Lindens' new homestead offerings or premium Linden Home improvements would be about enabling customers to "choose the level of unpredictability".

AD-FARM EXTORTIONISTS

The context there is important: it took four long years for Jack to put through a policy against ad-farming. This was a practice whereby unscrupulous land barons bought up parcels and split them into 16m chunks to be used for ads -- whether in the middle of prime waterfront or on a mountain -- and then charged extravagant amounts. That 2008 office hour has the extra bonus of being attended by Chrischun Fassbinder, AKA "Mr. Lee's Hong Kong" (gosh, where did he get that from) who used to put 32m parcels near my rentals, on the waterfront or in the middle of a sim as well as roadside, and set them to sale for $9,999. He pretended this was legitimate activity. I once met him in RL and asked him why the hell he went around extorting and ruining SL for other people. He is a highly-paid computer programmer in RL, he told me, and doesn't need the cash. And it's not even "for the LOLs". It's pushing the envelope to the breaking point to see what happens. The Lindens encouraged and indulged this destructive activity.

If I sound angry in that Office Hour, it's important to understand how I and others got to this point: because the original Lindens refused to enforce any rules for common living on the Mainland, and decided to solve the problems of humans living with each other by selling private islands and overselling homesteads (until they had to stop and throttle those sales by forcing you to own a private island before you could get one). They could have said that charging $9,999 was simply extortion intended to force people to "buy back the view" -- the location of them in the line of sight of private parcel owners and not the general public would tip you off to that. There was absolutely no rationale of "advertising" with these things. As one Linden acidly pointed out, it's not like you can sit and crochet on your 16m, there's not enough room for a rocking chair.

PREMIUMS NOT A PRIORITY

Just at that moment, the CEO of LL -- M Linden (Mark Kingdon) had declared that premiums were no longer a priority -- leaving all of us who had got multiple premiums (to solve the problem of officer recall and the need to hold land) and had invested a certain amount inMainland realizing we didn't matter. (Island ownership does not require premium accounts -- islands were not available at all in the early years of SL, then they slowly began to be added, and sales picked up briskly under M).

Why drop premium accounts? Back then, during the 2005-2006 glory years, they reached a peak of 100,000 and then began to plummet. For Lindens, they were too much work for too little revenue -- private islands were the main source of revenue. Obviously, collecting $295 in tier for islands, versus $9.99 a month for somebody with a 512 (those were the extremes then), it was a no-brainer. All this furious activity the Lindens do now with Bellissaria and the Moles and content and games is because they've changed their thinking on this -- more customers with smaller amounts to pay but with more dedication and more online hours and content purchases are a more solid base than island dealers who often disappear because they can't handle the tier burden, leaving their customers without their homes. I don't know how they evolved to this position, from the back-tracking and double-talking and hedging that you see Jack Linden doing in 2008, but they did. Jack actually did try to push for these reforms and did achieve them before he left. But he faced a range of indifference to ideological warfare from fellow techno-communist and techno-libertarian Lindens who though bourgeois suburbs and entrepreneurial malls and pioneer homesteading were all high- and middle-class activities that they should thwart in favor of adding more affordances for furries in sandboxes and griefers with machine guns. They provided better load tests, you see. This was not an experiment in international living; this was a hackathon.

WHAT IF YOU COULD BUY AN INCH OF A WEB SITE AND GRIEF AND EXTORT WITH IT?

I actually come up with a very interesting analogy in this office hour of 2008 -- 12 years ago! Imagine if you bought a domain name, built a web page, and someone was able to come and by a corner of that page from some unscrupulous domain seller who let micro-spaces go to sale as well as the whole domain. That is, not just an ad served from Google or somewhere which you yourself might sign up for, but someone invading that space and putting up ads that forced you to pay  him to go away. That's what ad-farming in SL is like.

The Lindens devised a somewhat complicated policy (that has to do with the number of ads or the square meters) and also have steadily increased the number of meters required to put a parcel in search and make a classified out of it (I don't really see how this quells ad-farming because it's more legitimate businesses that want you to come to an actual store rather than obliterate the mainland view with billboards, as Kalyrra Estates did and still does, to force people off the Mainland into more expensive private islands.  Ad farming was directly caused by their original policy of letting abandoned land fall into 16m chunks automatically to be "helpful" to people on that sim who wanted more prims but not a whole parcel. It's hard to imagine they countenance such idiocy but I starkly remember it -- they finally got rid of that insanity but that didn't stop greedy land barons from buying land people were ditching at fire-sale prices and then flipping it -- while keeping several micro-parcels to extort with.

I just saw this the other day at a parcel next to the awful GTFO gang that ruined the view in Tuliptree. I'm pretty sure this outfit was related. They put a "Roman port" and barge up, then suddenly flipped the back part of the lot and another avatar, likely related, put up several extortionist parcels. I immediately AR'd him, although that led nowhere, and also tried appealing to his decency, by buying his full parcel, which was low-cost and open for some grief-build by my rentals, and urging that he put the micros to a normal price. He did. Several other would-be extortion parcels were abandoned by another land baron who has abandoned even prime real estate so I don't know what goes on there. I doubt the AR had any effect; maybe it did. I doubt this avatar re-thought his extortionist bid on his own; I doubt my purchase of that lot helped him un-extort those parcels. But I just don't know.

MOUNTING ANNOYANCES

The reason I decided to go to Oz Linden's office hour is because a number of awful things had been mounting, and while normally I deal with this by filing tickets and writing a comment on the forums, when I saw a nice picture of a dock and the notice of Oz's meeting flit by amidst all the Tits & Ass on the events list, I thought, "I should go and hear what their latest thinking is." Office hours are not the place to get some one specific complaint fixed such as I have had -- with everything from the edit window always covering up objects to the beacon not disappearing to the stupid yellow line that intrudes showing the parcel boundary when you are in edit mode(NOT the same thing as the parcel lines showing when you CHOOSE to see "show parcel lines" -- DIFFERENT). Then to beat all, People Search ceased to work.

I wonder if that was tied to the forced log-in which happens when you use the search panels or when you click on an avatar's profile -- often these days it forces you to log-in through that window to the outworld secondlife.com -- and KEEP doing that even during one log-in session. MOST annoying. I go to search for my own parcels, which cost $30 a week each (I've now made much less of them), it gives me only the "G" parcels -- I have to re-check "M" and "A" although I already checked them in "Preferences". I sometimes turn off "A" because of the grisly offerings on the events list which usually include X-rated child avatars, although that is ostensibly against the TOS, posing as hentai, and other grotesqueries. But since my customers often put their profiles in "A," and I have at least one small community in "A," I can't afford to shut it off.

PEOPLE SEARCH DOWN

I decided to ask the Concierge about People Search, even though the forums drew the usual haughty "Not on My Machine" comments, or the explanation that it "didn't matter" because Firestorm, used by a majority of users, reverts to Legacy Search (which I and others liked better) so it's not noticeable when "modern" search with the Google appliance is "down".

The Conciergerie Linden on duty acknowledged that it was weird, and I sent her various screen shots of "WHOOPS" even looking for my own name, or my son's name, or my friend's name. I tried typing in "Linden," and what was weird there was I only got "Jagix Linden". Is he on his own server? Or maybe it was only showing "G" and he's the only Linden in "G"? It seemed appropriate that when People Search was broken, he was the ONLY Linden showing in search given that his job is community liaison from what I gather. He could be the last Linden standing to tell people that it was busted.

WHY YOU NEED TO SEARCH FOR PEOPLE

Anyway, I next tried to work around this hobble. Now, let me pause to explain why this is a nuisance that some don't appreciate. If you are one of those people who logs on and sits on one sim and talks only to your friends for whom you have friendship cards, you wouldn't notice. If you only go to those grotesqueries on the events list, you wouldn't either, as you just click on the avatar of interest.

But if you are a rentals agent, here's what happens. A person pays, then refunds a minute later. I find that usually happens when people don't understand that they have to join a group to set prims, and get angry or confused when their stuff returns on them even though they paid. Even though there are rental boxes with a hover text that says 'JOIN THE GROUP TO PREVENT PRIM RETURNS" and another prim that says "JOIN OUR GROUP IN THREE CLICKS" because people are so witless about group-joining via search, it's never enough.

People also don't read the info cards and get mad when they can't return other people's prims, such as those of a previous tenant whose rental box has expired, enabling someone else to rent it. (I don't know of a single rental system that enables you to return group-set prims or any prims not your own or the group where you have permissions, but this is the single biggest irritant people express. They believe that a payment event -- their own -- should trigger a return of all the prims on that parcel. There are rental boxes that remove prims if you are late, but I don't know of any that remove them after a payment. I don't think that's possible. And there are reasons why it shouldn't be, especially if you have a grace period, or if someone has contacted you saying they have difficulties buying Lindens in Europe. This is another chronic problem for countries that don't always have PayPal or credit cards that work with LL.

Or another situation: a person rents and happily joins the group, but then they log-off in exhaustion -- I find that a common pattern as well and sometimes ask people about it. Usually it's because they've been searching for a rental for hours, tired and cranky. When they find one, they pay and log off in relief to have dinner or go to sleep. Or yet another problem -- a person tries to pay an already paid box on behalf of another avatar (which won't work on my rental boxes and while you can get systems that take multiple payors, I don't want to deal with the hassles that can come with that, especially with ex-boyfriends trying to take over rentals for which a girlfriend in fact paid for months, etc.)

Manual, real-time peopled systems are just better than automatic systems in my view.

PATCHES OBLITERATE USER CONTENT

Or let's say a person sent you a query about a prospective rental, or a rental they just got, but before you could answer, a new patch came in. You log off and put in the patch, agreeing to let the patch wipe out your existing files because it's a chore to go copy or move them and put them someplace. It's rare that software reaches into your machine and wipes out your content -- but Second Life does that, at least now after asking you. If you are having game problems you want a clean install and you agree to all those wipe-outs and registry changes. But then...you have no chat history with individual avatars. You remember that some complicated name spelled with a frivolous font and lots of xxs and oos came in, but how to find it? They didn't join the group, so you can't see it there. They didn't lay down a prim yet, another way to pull up their name. You could go back to your chat notecards deep within those roaming files, but oops, they've all been wiped out as if they never exist. Do you see the problem?

I tried taking the unique avatar key that comes to the rental box from a payment and put that in a messaging script. But the only script I have says "Someone rang the bell in Ravenglass" and is bewildering to a customer who doesn't understand its history (I have that same thing on RacerX Gulwing's shack in Baileya and get rung all the time from it, maybe he wrote that script). Sure, you can substitute another text than that one, but when I try to do that it doesn't work. Too long? a quotation mark missing? I try another messaging thing from the MP and it doesn't seem to work. Possibly because People Search is down.

So after seeing a half dozen of these People I Couldn't Search go by, I realized it was quite a problem, and went to the forums and the Concierge. Missing or losing 6 customers might be nothing, as these are micropayments of 68 cents or $1.35 per month, but it's a principle. You need People Search for business. And for shopping and many other things. Yes, people often go to the back of an avatar profile, and it's amazing to me how many merchants do not put their stores in search/places or even classifies, but just trust their VIP group and regular group to do their advertising. I have gone through amazing searches sometimes to find merchants using various names for their businesses.  Given the silo in which most people reside in SL, "People Search" doesn't seem important. But it is for business -- that is, if you care about customer service, and not everyone does, or has to care.

ONLY A JIRA TRIGGERS ACTION

What happens at times like this, is that the Lindens won't act if there isn't a JIRA. They themselves have no need of People Search -- if necessary, they can reach any customer any time via their account. 

I'm banned from the JIRA for insisting that object return on "share" violating group return privileges was a bug, not a feature. I often insist on seeing SL through the prism of what is needed by a Mainland rentals agent and group land simply because no one else will. It's not like a common use case, although it's more common than people realize, as many, many people group their land and rent just to friends or partners, or have small little operations just to lower costs, even if there are not very many agencies for Mainland specifically -- most land dealers are in the more lucrative private island and homestead business. But there are still problems -- you cannot type in a full name and search, it simply won't find anything. You have to ease into it, give it a few letters at a time. It often takes minutes -- long minutes -- because a person's name who has joined and activated will show up, even if you refresh many times. Once it has more than 500 avatars in it, or X amount of land (500,000 meters? Something/) the group becomes very laggy. You try to see the land list -- you can't,

While I don't pretend my problems are universal, they ARE universal for the vision Philip Linden originally had for SL, which was people voluntarily forming communities for various purposes and  having the group tools help rather than hinder them in this purpose. The group tools have come a long way from their origins in radical hippie communes and collective farms which made it possible to recall an officer who had purchased the land from his position, and take his land from him.

FIXED

In the event, the Lindens fixed People Search in a little over 24 hours, but mysteriously, never had a message about it on the Grid Status page, and when a new patch that was in the works anyway named "Yorsh" (there are Ukrainians and Russians among the devs and they often give the latest patch a funny name like that -- watch out if they ever have GogolMogol!) in fact seemed to "cure" the People Search borkenness, it wasn't mentioned (but maybe fixing it didn't require a patch and that was a coincidence).

I was startled when someone named "Sir Vix Linden" (they know have knighthood for Lindens in England I guess) IM'd me and asked me if People Search was working, and could I check to see if names I had searched for could be found now. Well, I had already known it was fixed by then, and 30 hours is a long time to go, and in fact I lost two customers who refunded and one didn't rent. Even the kind of self-service rentals I offer seem to require enormous amounts of customer service even so. I wonder if anyone else besides me cared that People Search was gone. Maybe there was a sad Mr. Acorn somewhere, looking for a broken Miss Daisy...

Somewhere someone will have posted a transcript of this session, and I have one I made somewhere in chat, but I'd like to try to deal with the themes articulated.

Oz welcome me and said most of the problems I had expressed in my "Annoyances" post were caused by "security issues," i.e. your AVG fights SL, or some socket has to be changed or whatever. I don't think so, because my set up didn't change, I have the same computer I bought last year (which by the way recently froze during a complicated SL maneuver, I couldn't get it to escape out of the freeze, and when I tried to re-start the computer, it wouldn't boot. So much for mail-orders from CyberPowerPC -- this is a supposed to be a "blazing" gaming computer my son got for me when the usual Dell or HP or whatever crashed -- they never last). I had to get the hard drive replaced, but fortunately I found a Ukrainian computer guy on the West side and fixed it within 4 hours for $250 who was 10 times better than Geek Squad , which I will never, ever used again after they shipped my computer to Kentucky, kept it for 3 weeks, and then said that they couldn't fix computers with "after-market parts".

By that they meant a fan purchased to go with a better graphics card (to play SL), which their own Geek Squad had installed at the Best Buy on their own computer sold in their store, with their own parts from the shelves. I mean, if that is "after market," what is "market"? They didn't want to replace a better fan that didn't usually come with that computer, which wouldn't have cost more than $50. I couldn't get anyone, including my son, to bother with this, so while it was only less than 2 years old, I got a new one. Which is the idea. Like phones. Keep buying new ones, don't fix the old, or make them outdated, that's how Silicon Valley works.

All of this is by way of saying: no, my computer is not "ready to go to Kindergarten" as a Linden once said disparagingly of a user with a five-year-old computer. No, I am not clueless about going through files and looking at help desks and trying to fix things.

With a new hard-drive and tune-up and hence a very brand-clean install of SL, my SL worked no better, and exactly the same. All the performance meters were in the green. No packet loss of significance was shown. AVG was turned on and off -- no difference. Yet "forced log-on" persisted. The problem of needing to log-in to see a profile or a search result, over and over again, isn't related to packet loss or connection or security, I don't think, but prove me wrong.

NO COURSE CREDIT

I told Oz that I wasn't taking his course for credit, so to speak, but just auditing-- these office hours are attended mainly by people who either run third-party viewers themselves or make contributions of bug fixes to the JIRA -- in other words, geeks who actually work on the code, which I will never do (although I once found a bug in the classifieds which earned me a mention in the "Second Life is Brought to You By" notes) --  represented in dragon, supergirl, furry and other form (I believe there were a few other norms there besides me, but basically, most of the avatars there couldn't really be expected to "sit" as they were too huge or too many-tailed...or something. Whirly, who is my favourite geek because she is always helpful and not snarky, with really solid advice that works, was also there.

Perhaps it was telling that this Linden's own office had to be moved from his island to the IETF office (aren't those the "humming engineers"???) because of a rolling re-start, but there it is. I wondered what Oz did to the water on his sim to make it look different. Come to think of it, the land was odd, too. Maybe it's some windlight setting, but I don't have Windlight. More on that in a bit.

BLOOD-BATH AT SANSAR

While people were re-settling, the topic du jour was a mass firing at Sansar, which is the OTHER world that Linden Lab is making. I myself only went there a few times, and found some things were better (putting sound around the lot) and some things worse (you can't have real estate sales) and gave up because I couldn't work some things and there wasn't enough to do. It seemed asynchronous visits of a lot and leaving comments wasn't possible -- so for me, what was the point? I can't go to events on a schedule usually, as I have to do work or family things often in those hours.

As always, there were rumors and not a lot of solid data, but it did seem like there were an awful lot of Lindens fired. OK, some were being brought to SL. "We are bringing back some heavy-hitters," said the Lindens. I immediately thought of Michael Linden, not because he is a rather imposing tall and portly fellow in RL looking like a gentleman of the Victorian age, but because I think he contributed a great deal to the Mainland with the leadership of the Moles, the willingness to have difficult Governance office hours, and even the willingness to accept reports of griefing when it seemed all other systems failed to produce answers. I'm quite sure we don't agree on most Internet and SL philosophical issues, but he was a presence and seemed to be let go merely because he was old in a world of young "rockstar programmers" or something. 

MEETING OZ IN RL

I should pause to remember that I met Oz Linden at the SLCC in Boston in 2010. That's 10 long years ago! For me it has been a lifetime, with leaving a job and starting another and yet another, the war in Ukraine, my son's terrible motorcycle accident and long recovery, my diagnosis with a rare immune disease and endless treatments and medications that have changed my life. But SL is still strangely the same, even with mesh and baked on mesh and all the rest. Avatar foot shadows!

I remember having a very long and intense debate with Oz Linden about SL, about copybotting, about protection of copyright, about the decision to open source the viewer (which I thought was wrong), about the whole techno-communist/libertarian thang and the culture of software engineers -- the cult of the "Benign Dictator". Oz has long hair and intense eyes and seems something like a hippie, but I think he's actually too young to be a hippy, and you can't actually be much of a hippie at LL, where you do have to work 9-5 and longer hours. I think he used to do something with telephony or something on the Internet, and this job is more interesting to him, and he has stuck with it for 10 years, which is to his credit. I expect that he believes in the mission of SL, as he understands it, but it was clear from talking to him that he was in an entirely different world than mine. No, planet.

That is, if mine is still the world of the 19th century, of books and translations and Russia and human rights and the UN and OSCE and Rule of Law and such, his is the 21st century electronic online collective and "code as law". I remember waving a copy of Guy Debord's "The Society of the Spectacle" there, which I then had Philip Linden sign, can you imagine the irony? But it was the only thing around for him to sign.  Even in the new translation, Debord is very difficult to understand and of course something of an asshole, who after the 1968 demonstrations ended in tears and lice, basically sat in the cafes getting drunk every day with various girlfriends with German and French publishers subsidizing him, before ultimately committing suicide. Well, communism is a death cult. But he is important to read to understand the transition from the old to the new world, if you will. Read some of the quotes here, sift out the Marxist clap-trap, and he is talking about how this togetherness program of the Internet actually produces alienation even more severe than the capitalism that alienated workers from their products. Because now they are the product, I guess. The quotation of his I have on my other blog Wired State kind of sums up the SL phenomenon: "Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."  That is, there is little direct experience nowadays, and a lot of virtuality and imagination.

When you read the stories of Flannery O'Connor (or lately I'm reading Eudora Welty), you see life before the Internet, if you didn't know it or forgot it. People getting up early in the morning to milk cows, not fire up a computer. People dying at home, not hospitals, and then having their corpses washed by members of their community, who came to long wakes and helped out the bereaved. It's all different now; it's actually against the law to have a wake with a dead body in your home in New York State anyway. People fishing, or going to the post office, or going for malteds to the drug store, but that isn't the half of it. Their intricate relationships welded from a thousand tiny details of life before conveniences -- farming, cooking, cleaning, etc.

Anyway -- different world. But aside from the basic transition from atoms to electrons, if you will -- I think that's basically how Philip Linden would describe it, the ability to manipulate electrons in ways you can't manipulate atoms sums up the attraction of the virtual world -- there is just the whole sub-culture of Linden Lab.

THE LAB'S SUB-CULTURE

So even though this terrible thing had happened with dozens of colleagues axed and the other world they made in jeopardy, their boss, Ebbe Linden, was saying "Sansar is still running". I had a vision of the infamous Lee Linden, who once told me enthusiastically, when I was lamenting the fact that this oldbie with a giant laggy submarine could kill the FPS on a sim for everyone else, that sims run best when there are no avatars on them, a kind of early vision of The World Without Us that I think some find attractive.

But nothing could be said about the Sansar Valentine's Day Massacre because internal things like that are never divulged and since Peter Linden has left, I think even the dedicated bloggers don't know whom to call. Good for Ryan Schultz, who persistently keeps a blog on Sansar and SL -- he really loves Sansar, a love I can't say I share, but I appreciate. He had a source within the Lab who told him about this big lay-off. Any rational person would grasp that this was a terrible blow to this world, maybe a death blow. Yet everyone was jumping on Ryan as if he had told an untruth. He didn't tell an untruth. Whether it was 40 or 20 layoffs doesn't matter. The point is that it was a lot, given the staff size. Ryan should persist through this nonsense.

Chic Aeon, whose buildings I like but who is often annoying to me on the forums, huffed and puffed about Ryan not practicing the sacred arcane art of "journalism" because he didn't call the Lab to get a comment. I guess she's never worked as a reporter trying to call the Kremlin -- or even the State Department -- to get a statement on something -- even if not terribly controversial (like me). You can go through these motions, but you might get an answer days later. That's why so many stories in the NYT etc say "At press time, X had not yet commented" or "Efforts to reach X were unsuccessful at press time". 

If I want to report on Surkov's departure from the Kremlin -- which I believe I was the first or among the first English-language sources to do on Twitter -- I'm not going to wait to get the Kremlin take on this. There won't be one. There will be double talk when there is one 48 hours later. The story is now, and in dealing with a black box and an authoritarian government -- which is what we are dealing with in SL even if LL is an American company more open than the Kremlin certainly (or the State Department, I suppose), on THIS kind of story you have to report what there is, the end. Especially if you are a blogger doing this unpaid in your spare time, and nobody else, even the paid fancy Silicon Valley reporters are bothering. Um, did you see TechCrunch or Protocol or the Politico tech daily or Arc Digital or ANYONE report on this big lay-off at Sansar? Of course you didn't. It might well have been the proverbial tree falling in the forest. But Ryan did, so good on him.

It's really sad, however, to see him now falling all over himself to apologize -- maybe because he had to speak at a high-profile educators' conference and was worried about fanboyz' backlash. He should NOT have apologized. You are NOT required to query every statement you make on your blog with the Lab WHEN YOU HAVE A RELIABLE SOURCE. Hello! Have trust in your own journalism! Yes, it's "nice to do" and a courtesy -- but when the Lab did this, they didn't have the courtesy to immediately put out a notice that day explaining why all those people were leaving. THEY didn't hasten to reassure the public, especially the small circle of users, that it was still running. So the problem lies with them, not Ryan, who reported in good faith. I can't emphasize that enough. This isn't a fuck-up. It's not something to apologize for. It's something to keep doing. If his source was just some gossipy prim-a-donna on Plurk, understood. But not with the source he had.

COPYBOT

It reminds me of the time I reported that the Electric Sheep -- who are no more -- developed and used copybot for a client. This was the absolute truth but because there was so much controversy about it, they didn't want to admit it. Their own staff person was in LibSL, the griefers' and "reverse engineers" (perverse engineers, if you ask me) group which reverse-engineered the client forcing the Lindens to open source it and who conceived and executed copybot because they hated the permissions' system (which Lindens can override, of course in god-mode). One of their associates bragged about copybot, demonstrated it, TP'd me to a sim, and proceeded to duplicate my avatar several times and leave it there slumped in the usual bot position, which is always detectable (I guess because real people will either have on AOs or they move around more organically). So yeah, I had a direct source. I also knew who else in LibSL was involved who was on the Sheep's staff -- he talked to me about it. That their client's purpose and the Sheep leadership's purpose was to have concerts on different shards simultaneously, and not steal copyrighted material doesn't matter. That was their official story; but honestly, they couldn't really vouch for all the hacker dudes in their midst. They were in deep with copybot and helped it invade the world. That I didn't call the Sheep first to get their pablum press release doesn't matter. The story had to be told from the sources available, which were solid.

I was forced to print a retraction that in fact I knew was untrue and later verified just to retain my position at the Herald. I was scolded like Ryan was scolded -- worse, as the stakes were higher and the whole world was threatened with copybot and its backlash -- and it was claimed I should have gotten the leadership of the Sheep to comment. Why? They didn't see fit to explain themselves to the world; those of us in the weeds had to see it in person and feel it on our backs first. Did they call the Lab before they deployed copybot? Did they tell the public their reasons for deploying copybot? No, they didn't. Are we, as vulnerable users to be profoundly affected by copybot entitled to blog about what we know when we know it? Indeed, we are. Let's not be children here.

Sorry, but there's a duty to the truth here, and tip-toeing around corporate sponsors -- which the Sheep were of the Herald -- was not my obligation. Nor is it Ryan's, as a blogger in good faith who loves Sansar, to kow-tow to the Lab worthies. If anything, LL should thank their lucky stars that a blogger cares enough about their little-used world to blog about it as much as he has.

I left the Herald eventually as I was griefed mercilessly with Herald editors' connivance. An awful business. Blogging is not for the faint-hearted when you are dealing with the black box of an authoritarian/totalitarian society.

Ryan should also not fault himself for overdosing on Coronavirus. As an immune-compromised person just blocks away from a hospital with a suspected corona case -- a hospital I have to go to myself often -- I'm not indifferent to this real potential global disaster. It doesn't even have to be a global pandemic in the way feared for it to do enormous amounts of damage. It's already cost business for small shops and cafes in Chinatown, where no one will go now. I hope Ryan will stay on this topic in the angle he took on it with virtual worlds.

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable..."

So that Sansar topic was glossed over, and now on to the viewer. Whirly forthrightly announced that People Search was hosed. Thank you! Just acknowledging there is a problem is the start to recovery! She hadn't been able to make a JIRA -- but honestly, a full report from a customer such as I gave to Concierge ought to be enough, and if they can go and log-on with their own bog-standard SL viewer, they'd see.

"Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity..."

HOW MANY USERS LOG-IN WITH FIRESTORM?

So I asked: how many people use the SL viewer versus Firestorm or other third-party viewers? I knew it was a lot -- virtually all my customers, and there are thousands, use Firestorm. I refuse. A few newbies or merchants who feel they need to follow the official SL viewer developments for all customers' sake do use it. But basically everyone uses FS instead -- for area search, which is a boon for cheating in hunts. I think that's the basic reason for FS and the basic use case. Yes, there are other reasons having to do with a user interface that is easier or nicer or cleaner or something; various features that SL has abandoned (like being able to post directly to Flickr or Twitter).

A key reason that the SL devs could so casually dump the ability to post to social media -- because it's a pain to keep up with the twists and turns of Twitter, FB and Insta developments and match them to SL -- is because they felt absolutely no lobbying force screaming about this, other than me. Likely I was the only blogger who found it great for blogging, and since they retired it I have stopped posting to Twitter and Flickr, because it requires taking a snapshot (which has been broken as well) and saving it and uploading it -- too many steps. Twitter broke with SL more than a year ago, and I stopped posting there -- it was too hard to blog without the ability to instantly send the SLURLS and pictures, more than anything.

If this had happened in such a way that Firestorm couldn't go on using it, trust me, there would have been such screaming in the land from the masses of Flickr users that the Lindens would fix it at least for that. (They let Twitter go easily as there was hardly anyone but me and a few oldbies posting to Twitter with it; Flickr has many thousands more and the very "Picture of the Day" relies on it in a way -- although not really (and that's why there was little screaming) -- as so much post-production work is done on those that there isn't the need for an instant post from the viewer. Still.

I couldn't get an answer to this simple question: how many. What percentage.

Oz said basically that because people use multiple viewers it was hard to tell and varied widely. But that's not a reason. The Lindens know the answer to this question and can find it. They just don't want to tell, as it will reveal that 10-20% of the user base uses a viewer that they spend entire days fixing sometimes in vain. I bet it's that low, maybe lower. That some might use both viewers can't obscure this issue. For one, you could say what the concurrency is -- at any given time of day, the overwhelming number of users will be on Firestorm. What would cause a Firestorm user to go over and use an SL viewer? Possibly only to help a customer, or because FS wasn't working that day (it has its problems). When I downloaded a version of Firestorm a few months ago to visit a friend on Open Sim, I couldn't get it to see things properly on OS, and it messed up the graphics on my computer so badly that I had to reinstall things. I have absolutely zero incentive to use it -- even before my exposes that it was the same set of griefers who used copybot and stole copyrighted items and spied on the user base with phone-home scripts who then developed Firestorm. There are many pious contradictions to this claim. Let me suggest that I wouldn't have to be griefed so heavily with chickens kicked off world and killed and sims crashed if it weren't true. You don't try to silence negative bloggers by ferocious and vicious griefing, including death threats and RL disclosure -- you ignore them if they print falsehoods.

It's too bad that one of the YouTubes proving this was deleted -- I remember showing it to the late Joe Linden and he acknowledged it.

HOW LONG IS A LOG-IN SESSION?

I also asked how long the log-in sessions were. Long ago, Lindens would cheerfully tell you "4 hours, and $2500 spent per session," which was a way to understand the market and its capacities. No more -- they have scrubbed all statistics. They answered this because it's the basic question any VC or even power user would have to understand what they should expect from any investment. 

To say that it varies so wildly that giving an average creates a mis-impression is a point I understand intellectually -- the same problem occurs with scientifically-accurate weighted polls that do things like enable people to predict Hillary will become president. Knowing what the statistical average of a premature infant's chance at survival is may be a scientific fact; but it can't really tell you if your infant will survive (she didn't).

That is, there are many variables and so on. So yeah, I get it, but you know, there are numbers, and scientifically valid samples. You can get more or less of an idea of how long a person with ovarian cancer will survive -- you will find the parameters. You can tell how long people are logged on. This is a fact you can compile numerically and look at. There are -- let's say -- 36,000 users on concurrently (I don't think it's more than that but I can't be sure those old scripts Lindens made with this information really still work). You can tell us numerically how many of the same ones are still there at 4 pm and 8 pm, even if the next day, their log-on time is zero as they are little old ladies who only log-on Sundays to go to poetry readings. Oz even mentioned that a boss of his said that averages are a lie, a statement to which Rider vigorously concurred. And I could as well. Except, you know, you can still SAY IT: "Two hours, but you know it's like your Twitter activity. While it might be safe to say you average an hour and you are never on at 3:00 am your time, during elections, you might triple that so it's not a terribly useful number." I wonder why there is this reluctance to tell us whether that four-hour peak of 2006 is now no more. Although it is longer, for those who remain.

BUY FIRESTORM

The mystery is why LL doesn't just buy Firestorm, the way they bought Windlight. That is, they've had their ups and downs with FS; years ago, they made a list of third-party viewer rules that FS didn't want to comply with at first and it has been a tug of war at times. But instead of just friending FS devs and using FS themselves as they no doubt do, why don't they buy it and make THAT their viewer? This is the mystery.

What is it about the SL viewer that they need to keep? Could it be its own ability to scrape data and match it to customer dbases, which Firestorm doesn't have today (we're told), whatever its phone-home aspirations of yore? Even so, you could take the FS viewer, perhaps shed some of the devs who wouldn't go along with the program, and do what you needed to do. All of Silicon Valley scrapes, it's just a question of how much and what they do with it. Google and Yahoo get in my face way more than SL ever could, and FB and Twitter helped the Russians interfere with our elections. How bad could it be? Well, given the amount of private sexual and other confidential chat there is on SL servers, possibly quite bad. But I think there are other technical reasons that the SL devs have -- problems they want to solve because they like tying a bow on things, or problems that FS doesn't set itself to solve, like crossing sim seams. I don't know. I haven't discussed this with anyone for years. But THAT there is some curious block to what should be a purchase of a third-party to go with the inevitable of user preference is a mystery. No Facebook or Twitter would stand for long for that kind of situation -- and maybe that's why Cory Linden works at FB, not LL now.

Then there's this about the hidden user statistics -- which is more my point: I have run non-profit corporations and worked in small businesses and large corporations. In an NGO, you might say, "We need to work on Chechnya" as that's where most of the torture is"; but the donors want to work on Tibet or Darfur, as they see it in the news and they want to feel useful. They don't understand Chechnya. Or Belarus.  But if you want to stay open, you have to do what donors want to do, or quit, and try to do a mix and bring them along. Or let's say you work at Xerox. The PC seems like a waste of time. You already have telecopiers that transmit documents and pictures; it's clunky, and the light pen is hard to use (my father worked with a light pen at Xerox in the 1970s; I worked at the Webster plant as a tester and then as a temp secretary at the midtown head office). Why spend time and resources on this other box, when we have our box selling so well everywhere? And the rest is history, as my father was one of thousands of engineers laid off there (and at Kodak) and other companies made a fortune on PCs. Now the Japanese have bought Xerox. My father, who served in Okinawa during the Korean War, used to say "The Japanese lost the war and won the peace" -- with their cars and cameras sold in the US. 

So my point is: if you discover that your source of revenue -- a donor or a customer -- wants to do a thing different than what you want to do, or think you should do even for the good of the company, at what point do you have to stop your indulgences? At what point do you have to CHANGE and do SOMETHING ELSE? Sansar was that hope of change for SL and the Lab years ago; it didn't pan out like the light pen/personal computer at Xerox Corp or Chechnya for us (we did a lot on Chechnya but it was too big to help). You have to know when to cash it in, then.

If only 10% of our donors gave to Chechnya, or 90% of our customers were flocking to IBM, wouldn't we have to change? Or go out of business?

But this becomes instead, for Linden Lab, a thinky discussion where you imagine that multiple viewer use complexifies the story, or where you pontificate that variations in individual user hours somehow makes it "impossible" to tell average log-on sessions to see if the world is growing more or less attractive. I mean, count the green dots on Bellissaria sims with your eyeballs, versus, I dunno, Corsica. You don't need to be a math whiz to see what is happening. You don't have to give up your religious belief about "lies, damn lies, and statistics". I mean, count the green dots, guys. Do you see what I mean about virtuality versus reality?

Philip Linden told me once that he realized that the telehub sims were the sim where the most financial transactions were taking place and therefore the most money-making sims -- for the Lab and residents. Yet they moved to kill the telehubs for purely ideological reasons.

There's more. I've written a lot already as I haven't blogged in awhile.

WINDLIGHT UNDER THE HOOD

Now take Windlight. After a few sojourns with the draft Windlight viewer (beta, or candidate, or whatever it is called -- but a draft, like all software is always a draft), I gave up. The world was too messed up. This interference happened even with the regular viewer -- and still does -- on days when there is a strange end-of-the-world haze or glow, or you see the moon in the wrong place (and the sun, too). I notice the SL moon more than the sun, as the sun is a blur -- the moon has a certain trajectory, and when you see it by your left elbow when it is normally above your right shoulder at that time, you know there's a problem.

So here Rider Linden explained something that the Lindens clearly think is an argument that "trumps all," and even seem to take a kind of vindictive glee in it. And that is Windlight is already running on your machine, but it's just that you can't see it.

That is, the code for it is already running in the regular viewer, but the viewer's ability to SEE it is still being tinkered with because it's not working.

To me, this is such an obvious philosophical botch that I don't know where to begin. I think for anyone running an ordinary business that wasn't all like on Slack and virtual, would grasp this.

One thinks of Bishop Berkeley's notion that the world didn't exist when you left the room and couldn't see it; it was always only an idea; it was always virtual (he'd be perfect for the SL staff, were it not for his strict moralist ideas in other realms). Where was the "thing-in-itself" of other philosophers? Well, it wasn't there, and if you stubbed your toe in the dark on a misplaced chair, why, that was only an idea of a chair, an imaginary chair, even if the pain was real.

Rider doesn't seem to be troubled by this at all, and as I said, takes delight in telling astonished newbs and casual normie drop-ins like me that it's running anyway even if they were too timid to download the beta viewer. Except...how can it "count" if you can't see it? In total puzzlement and frankly exasperation, I said, "Rider, it's like a tree falling in the forest that no one can hear. It's like it doesn't exist." He laughed; he had never thought of it that way. I doubt Rider ever read George Berkeley and I decided not to get into it with him. But there's a reason why Bishop Berkeley is not a still-cited philosopher, and Aristotle and Plato or Nietsche are. But no matter. From a purely commercial, customer-oriented point of view (a perspective with which the Lindens are not overly burdened), if your customer can't see your lovely machine you've been beavering away on for years, then you don't have a product.

This failure to grasp the direct, inalienable, organic link between a product and a customer -- who sees it, who buys it -- is why Linden Research, Inc. is a lab, not really a business in even the strange Silicon Valley notion of businesses that have evolved -- which are basically trinkets that VCs become fascinated with and then trade to other VCs when tired or when they see it is going to bust and is only burning cash. Rarely do these motley collections of kids who quit college and live 12 to a room on Red Bull and Ring Dings coding night and day with little adult supervision rise to the point of a public offering with real stock in it -- LL itself has internal stock traded internally.

OLDER, WISER LINDENS

LL has evolved from its wilder, earlier days when its staff members did things like appear in ads and events to boost their resident friends' businesses, hit on residents and cyber with them on alts, or even deck a resident at SLCC in some argument about child avatars or something.  More to the point, they have evolved from their collectivist days of wanting to give away everything for free including their own company; even the Mole continent isn't on all perms now, which is sad (there is a particularly nice new Mole willow tree in Bellissaria I'd love to get, and a strange October vardo I stumbled across on Hippotropolis, the Linden sim. I guess they got tired of people selling such content.)

By "evolved," I mean I think they work more with a plan that includes doing unpleasant tasks, instead of the Love Machine of yore, when it was "do whatever you feel like, and then quit if it doesn't work -- or be promoted". I think it is fair to say that the leadership of Ebbe Linden has been the best of the long line of CEOS the company has had since 2003. They haven't had any more turnover than any other Silicon Valley company, but they've had some strange birds. When I think of Philip's enthusiastic idealism about Mainland communities without any awareness of the killing of the Mainland by griefing and ad farms; when I think of the purely idealistic removal of telehubs; when I think of M Linden saying the killer app was "each other" -- as if you could get to "each other" through the gray squares and griefing and borked search; when I think of many insanities over the years (making the parcel boundary appear as a yellow line while in edit mode is surely one of them), Ebbe seems like a pretty square guy (I think he just never stood on a parcel in edit mode). I did meet him once years ago at a tech fair in NY, and he seemed reasonable and normal, not out of the gaming or wild bleeding edge programming worlds like Philip or Rodney. He worked at Yahoo and Microsoft -- normal companies where you have to go by -- as Anne O'Toole used to explain it wonderfully -- customer requirements. The market's demands. Reality. Getting to work on time and having to finish things. You know, like most business is run.

I remember my father used to say this mantra about Xerox and its projects and their weird insanity, and its levels: "Fantasy. Ecstasy. Reality. Search for the Guilty Parties. Reward the Uninvolved."

Those "heavy hitters" once in SL then Sansar -- were they the "uninvolved"? What did go wrong at Sansar?

Bellissaria is not my thing. The other day a savvy new friend named SanFroggy took me on a lovely boat tour of the sims there. I'm not good at sailing because I don't like having to look for directions on the map all the time, so it's nice to have someone navigate. Even so, if I panned out to look too far, I got unseated which was a chore. It wasn't laggy. The sims are very nice. There are some great little hangouts on islands and promentories and craggy mountains and such that the Moles have constructed. No one is sitting in them, but they could. I go to them; people do. There is a group called "Bellissaria Parade" that goes on jaunts around the continent with a variety of funny vehicles created by a member. Bellissaria looks good -- way better than Brown and Boardman with its dead palm trees and ugly street lamps and soil you can't terraform. It isn't crazy expensive like Nautilus or Bay City because you get it assigned randomly with a premium -- it's a little bit like "First Land," only with more randomness and a house. The houses are much better now.

But they all look alike. That gets to me. Still, there are "things to do," and solutions to problems built in (security orbs, decorating panels). So the Lindens have a winner with this project. This is to the credit of Patch Linden, who was once a high-profile resident (I don't know who) and his team of Moles. I can see where Michael Linden, who preferred to make railroads and tunnels and spooky houses and sit around and tell yarns with the nerdy furries, wasn't quite with the suburban Wonder Bread program of Bellissaria. But it's what the customer base wants. Like it or not, the demographics of SL consist of middle-aged women and young men who got bored on war games they beat -- often as couples, witting or unwitting, and some even marry in RL. So what they want to do is cyber and shop, and not necessarily in that order. I can vouch for the fact that most avatars spend more time shopping and decorating their avatar or their homes than they do on sex. And really, how long can you really spend on that? So Bellissaria is perfect. Zindra, with its chain gangs and gags and pony girls and many other vulgarities is still open and the land isn't even as expensive with the rush to Belli. But there are surely more green dots in Belli. The green dots want Belli; they don't want sandboxes; they don't want the Ivory Tower of Prims; they don't want hentai; they want to sit on the porch and talk to their neighbours the way we did in RL 50 years ago in small towns in America.

I remind you and myself that Windlight is a company and a software that the Lindens bought. And while it runs on our machines, as they are thrilled to tell us, we can't see it as it has too many problems. Hopefully when they do get it working for themselves (apparently not even that yet), we won't HAVE to have it turned on but can opt out of it. But I wonder about that. They are heading to a point as they did with 1.23 when they will force a viewer on us simply because they will cease to fix a past viewer. So cling to it as you will, but soon lots of stuff won't work or be viewable, as with 1.23 (which ironically, lives on in Firestorm, in the form of its better search -- which really WAS better for the rather small world of SL than Googleapi is.

LAST NAMES

Last names was promised two years ago. This is something really more important to a sort of middle generation of residents between oldbies and newbies who didn't get to have it and felt it was important. It's probably close to being finished. It didn't get done because -- again -- of the kind of not technical but "philosophical" problems that needed to be solved (really *psychological* problems for ideology-hidebound Lindens).

Lindens are very obsessed with what they view to be "fairness". Their hippie commune/techno-communist days left their mark. I don't know if Oz ever lived in a commune. I have, and there are a reason most communes die, sometimes in outrageous crime and scandal. People might be devoted, say, to meditating and eating organic food, but then, they want to go outside for a smoke or get a Snickers bar.

Human nature is hard to overcome, even with ideology amplified and accelerated with electrons. It seems the Lindens believe they can't just install last names tomorrow (or last year) because it won't be fair to some people who either didn't get them or won't get them because they will cost something (I'm not sure exactly what the issue is). But the hobble here isn't technical, because it is doable, it just takes time, and therefore should cost money.

STORIES WE TELL OURSELVES

And there's a psychology here to the Windlight issue. By telling themselves that it "works on their machines even if they can't see it," or thinking that it's "already is on everyone's machines even if they aren't using the viewer for it" they aren't admitting to themselves that the thing is broken. It's screwed up. It doesn't matter if it's "on the machines". What matters is that it breaks the world, messes up your graphics, and can't be proven to be attractive.

Meanwhile, I could point out -- as not a friend to this 3rd-party viewer -- that Firestorm has Windlight. That isn't enough for me to get Windlight on Firestorm; I think I'd have to be very desperate that I'd even use it for Area Search, given that Searchbert works well for most purposes, although when things are lost up in the sky that's a problem. The FS use of Windlight is very popular. Either to remember it, or because in fact that's how you get it to work, many of my tenants write the Windlight settings on the land description in my rentals. There's tons of them, some made by famous people like Bryn Oh; others just made up by people's friends and they like them. It's a great thing to see and trade.  People ask for them and tell you about them and ask you to turn your viewer to them on their parcel or sim so you can see what they like -- it works "not just on our machines" but on Firestorm. So that alone might be a reason to buy Firestorm and cease development on the regular SL viewer. And again, I say this as basically a lifelong enemy of Firestorm who will never download it until I simply have to because there's no other choice -- like voting for Sanders against Trump, which I will not wish to do at all but may have to do. Like that.

That Lindens can be so complacent about something working without people "knowing it," or "working for most people," even as they fuss about some putative injustice in the last names realms lets me know that they are still in la-la land.

They are still not in touch with reality. And as purveyors of virtual reality, they need to be. It could be their undoing.

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Sansar is not "still running" if you fired 20 or more employees and the concurrency is what...200? 500 people? Some terribly low number. That's not a world, that's a project that people refuse to kill. The wheels of servers still spinning like flowers in Richard Brautigan's poem "All Watched Over By Machine's Of Loving Grace" -- I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it, guys. Come back and make your main product, SL work.

I feel such a gulf between the reality we experience, or at least I do, as someone daily logging in and trying to wait on customers, with all the annoyances; the unreality of the forums where the fanboyz are in such denial they don't even know what they are fanning anymore; and the Lindens, thinking 10% of the customers using something or 100% of the customers having something deployed yet not visible is "ok" -- I have no words. This is not a way to run a railroad.

In a real business, even in a non-profit, you would kill the project or your group would die. You would have to. And in a business, if you don't shed the unviable, the market will kill  you -- and I don't want that to happen to SL.

It really is perplexing to me why an intelligent and dedicated engineer like Oz Linden could find the will to get up in the morning and work on a viewer that only 10% of the customers use. OK, let's say it's even 25% or 35%. But it's not more. How could you keep working on a project, knowing another one was working and all you have to do is buy it?

SL isn't going to die, it will limp along. Sansar may, too. But it's sad that something this expensive and wonderful on which talented people burned thousands of hours of their lives isn't much better. Not even sad; puzzling. 

And the other Lindens, working on Windlight. How can you let years go by thinking something is working when it can't be seen? There is a huge gulf of understanding here. Again, Lee Linden: "The servers work best when there are no avatars on them." Go, servers!

The Lindens are about to launch something called "Premium Boost" (or nick-named that, anyway) which will provide various other bells and whistles than Linden dollars, free gifts, sandboxes and of course Linden Homes. It will apparently do things like enable you to pay more and get more than 70 groups, or pay more and get to have 100 spider legs instead of your usual 26...or something.

This opens up coding nightmares, third-party viewer havoc, and of course the further splintering of a world already splintered by the private island/Mainland/now Bellissaria divides; the free versus premium divides; and even the "viewer to enable de-render" versus "having to live with it or try to get Lindens to answer my ticket" divides. The Lindens put a great boon into the viewer -- the ability to return encroaching prims. This didn't use to be possible, and you had to file a ticket and wait for Lindens to appear. But there are use cases when you can't return an encroaching prim. This seems to be when it involves Linden trees. Or when the lot from which you want to return the thing has "access only" turned on to a group or names. Or something. When you try to file a ticket to Concierge, they tell you it's an "abuse report" case they will not handle. They really need to get over this psychological problem. Clean-up problems on land caused by no-show neighbours or griefers -- passive problems of junk on land -- should be dealt with as a simple garbage detail. Maybe it goes in a long queue, but you don't claim it is "abuse" when a no-show neighbour's Linden tree comes fully on to your  land. It's a quick return for a busy Linden, not three months of me filing endless ARs that go nowhere.

It's impressive that Vix Linden IM'd me personally about this broken People Search thing. It's touching that Oz said I was welcome to his office hour and that I was something of a special case because I was the first non-Linden he ever met (oh dear, a sheltered life -- and then this!). It's great, it's grand. But I need a Linden to move the friggin' tree from my lawn. I need the edit box not to block the item I'm editing. I need the groups to load. I need  -- oh, lots of things, but they don't include a last name or Windlight or extra arms for my avatar. Two will do. Just get rid of the yellow parcel line in edit mode.

 

 

 

 

Wanderlust Weekend: Did you ever buy something for $50 that you wouldn't spend a dollar more on?

I think Wanderlust weekend is shaping up to be the best discount event of the weeks, better than Fifty Linden Fridays, and also $50. FLF has gotten repetitive and wan lately. This is indeed pretty, but it comes in all separate pieces so you will spend a time laying them out. This is from "Where the magic begins" 

I hate gazebos. So I rarely buy M. Law Designs things because he's all about gazebos. When it is 30L -- and not even 50 -- I will buy it mainly to take it apart and use the stuff.

This is his Wanderlust offering. Probably couldn't sell it otherwise as 62 prims is a lot for a lot of people. This pier has about 20 things on it it doesn't need. You could take them off and still make it good. Hell, just leave the deck by itself. But definitely take off the piano, it is at risk of getting out of tune from the sea air and waves splashing. 

This house was I believe $100 but my God, it's just unliveable. it has a TP inside and doesn't attempt stairs, but it's one of those typical SL houses that people like to put out and look at like a doll house, but not live in!

This is Chia Mia and well worth it. Fireplaces can be hard to find, especially without stupid candles in them or with no room for logs. This has room and no candles.

Or did he actually even have this for $40, not $50 because my God, if you thought 62 was bad, this is 146 and has about 40 things on it you don't need. Take them off.

But definitely take off the piano, it is at risk of getting out of tune from the sea air and waves splashing. 

 

This is $100 on sale. And had I known of its existence, I would have paid $500. It's a very good creche in a world of very terrible ones. On mod, to get rid of that ditsy Christmas lighting from the future and the candles that look like a BDSM fireplace. Those all go. Maybe the cushions, unless they had kneeling anims. But everything else stays.

The worst thing about 30L stuff is that you buy it again, having forgot you bought it already, and unlike DDD, who tells you that and refunds you, most don't. Which means you have to keep checking inventory and finally you don't want to bother. I do less and less of 30L and 35L and such because I feel like I bought a lot of it already, it repeats, and some of it is God-awful. 

It's worth not buying something even if it is only $50. 

Rental Dementia: "I Said It Was Sentimental, A$$hole"

So, the context for this one.

I have this winter lodge in the land preserve in Seefeld by the Linden's trail, across from the Alchemy store. Rather than just rent it to one or two people, I decided to make a winter lodge, and rent the separate rooms in it (three) to the public. The rent was set at $25/35 with the idea it would be for short stays. That's $180 x 3 or $540 which is US $2.00 revenue per month. The tier on this 2048 is US $5.46 per month, however. So that means that even when it is filled with 3 people (and it always was), it didn't even pay half the tier. What I noticed is that the people who lived there never left any tips. Ever. Just people passing by and having some cocoa on the porch and picking up some free cross-country skies and snow boards would leave the tips. The tips were not enough to cover the tier. It's not much, but it ads up -- all the donations and tier that I get for the Land Preserve I make up cover 15% or less of the tier, and I have covered the rest of it myself with rentals there and elsewhere, but this has become harder and harder as the cost of SL has gone up, even with lower tier (the cashout is less now) and with the need to buy new mesh content to stay relevant.

So I decided to first, double the price. Even then, at US $4.00, it's not enough to cover the tier, even with tips. But it's something. I don't think I could charge more than $50/75/wk for rooms anyway, especially with no skyboxes.

I also decided to limit stays to two weeks. I find that 25L rentals often fill up with people who pay 6 months in advance to lock them in and stay there for ever. I haven't had a policy of limiting stays but I feel like they've lost their purpose then when essentially, a few people then shake me down for rentals that don't cover tier, rather than having lots of people come through to enjoy something as a getaway for two weeks.

More people wouldn't add to the tier, but it adds to the overall pool of customers who might then go to another rental and pay more, it does work that way. People leave a more expensive one, go in the cheaper one for awhile, come back to the expensive, or they start out in the cheap, go to the expensive. Remember, the purpose here is not my fabulous greedy land baron existence, which is all fake. My purpose is merely to get tier paid.

I announced this policy in my group newsletters, and did several things:

o gave existing tenants asked to move one free month at the Lodge or that Pueblo skyboxes, in my new area in Crespo

o in fact found some more cheap snow and put in another inn to add to the spots but still kept this policy

o successfully moved two of the three in Seefeld to other locations and they seemed happy enough and appreciative enough for literally the YEARS they had enjoyed a dirt-cheap rental for me.

At the time I cleared the house out -- and BTW immediately got two brand-new tenants I'd never had before, so the change was achieving its purpose -- a much older tenant who had come and gone arrived and rented. She paid a month and I made a note to myself that I would have to tell her of the new policy since she hadn't read two newsletters about it, understandably, people don't.

I then saw her pay for another two weeks, so that's when I IM'd her, and got a ration of shit. BTW, had I ever bothered to look at her profile (I seldom do with tenants), I would have been warned. Here's what it says:

I'm a phenomenal secret-keeper because, deep down, I really don't care about your shit enough to actually talk about it.

I CLEAN my friends list, if we haven't spoken and/or you turn out to be a fucking idiot, most likely i'll remove you. SAVE the butt hurt act for someone else.

Hm. This person might just be a woman and a total bitch -- OR a man, with that level of nasty. Does this work on anybody, really, except to drive them away? Why do people put such hateful and vituperative statements on their profiles?!

[06:27] Zooey (zeroz.cummings) paid you L$100.

[06:31] Prokofy Neva: Hi, I don't know if you read the newsletter, but there's a new policy for Seefeld (and the price doubled as you can see) -- limit 2 weeks from Nov-Feb. So after your current box expires you should go to another place to give someone else a chance because it is in demand. There's a new inn in Swain, and also the Lodge in Carlisle, and $25 skyboxes in the new area in Crespo, etc. here are some landmarks

[06:32] Inventory item 'Ravenglass Rentals $25 Snow Lodge - Home for the Holidays' offered

[06:32] Inventory item 'Ravenglass Rentals - SL Public Land Preserve Lodge $50' offered

[06:33] Inventory item 'Ravenglass Rentals La Montana Rosa OFFICE' offered

[06:33] ZeroZ Cummings: well, you can refund the money I just paid and i can go elsewhere

[06:33] Prokofy Neva: well as I said you can stay for 2 weeks there but when it expires you should move to another lodge

[06:34] ZeroZ Cummings: furthermore, i had time left and wasnt credited

[06:34] Prokofy Neva: I don't know what you mean by that, the boxes were refunded and people were given refunds plus the cancellation fee

[06:35] ZeroZ Cummings: i only rented the place because my friend that died used to live there. so i kept it for sentimental reasons

Let's stop right there, and note the similarity  with other manipulative, controlling people like the one in the previous post. When someone tells you of a tragedy -- their own, or another's close to them -- in a transaction that is impersonal and financial, what are they hoping for, consciously or unconsciously? They are hoping for pity, hoping for a deal, and hoping you will change your mind.

[06:36] Prokofy Neva: well I'm sorry to hear that your friend died, who was that?

[06:36] Prokofy Neva: but this place is in demand, so I have this new policy because people keep asking about it

[06:37] ZeroZ Cummings: wow, thats crazy lol

[06:37] Prokofy Neva: even at double the price it doesn't pay for the tier that it costs

[06:37] Prokofy Neva: why is it crazy to give more people a chance to live in a nearly-free lodge?

[06:37] ZeroZ Cummings: crazy that its in demand

[06:37] Prokofy Neva: you have had years with me subsidizing your Second Life, and I have never had a thank you or a tip or anything, and yes, it's in demand in the winter

[06:38] Prokofy Neva: so this is the policy, and you can live there for 2 weeks, move out, come back, do whatever, or refund by clicking the same box you paid

[06:38] Prokofy Neva: as for "not being credited" I'm not getting your point, but give me a date you paid and I will check it

[06:39] Prokofy Neva: I see now from your profile that you are quite nasty

[06:39] Prokofy Neva: I have had friends die in SL including one I shared a place with for years but I wouldn't then think that entitles me to a dirt-cheap rental forever

[06:40] ZeroZ Cummings: i said it was sentimental, asshole. i have my own sim

[06:40] Prokofy Neva: yeah, me too, and I need to get them paid and not have bitches like you freeloading on them and being ungrateful to boot

[06:40] ZeroZ Cummings: The person you messaged has blocked idiots.

[06:40] Prokofy Neva: bye

[06:40] ZeroZ Cummings: The person you messaged has blocked idiots.

I looked up the account and saw that indeed, while she paid for a month Dec. 7, the box must have somehow got reset. That does happen occasionally when the Lindens do a rolling re-start. It doesn't happen always -- these rental cubes can be taken back in inventory or returned from a sim to Lost & Found, and you can put them out and they are still ticking with the same correct days left and amount paid. But for some reason -- maybe sometimes the Linden set point is further back? -- they mess up now and then. Since you have a record on your accounts page, it is easy to rectify, I just need the date. But after this this nasty encounter, I'm not sending this person the refund I normally would.

Yes, it's sad to lose a friend in SL in RL. The friend I'm referring to was my friend in the Sims Online, and in SL at one point we shared this mountaintop cabin in Pickering behind St. Paul's Cathedral. He used to have a whole sort of Native American camp there on that sim. Either I bought the patch on the mountain top and he lived there or he bought it and I lived there or they were next to each other, I don't remember. We would sit on the porch and chat sometimes. He was then lost to Gor, which surprised me, since he seemed so nice and educated, but there it is, I hardly saw him after that, although occasionally we would chat. He also loved sailing. The really sad thing there was that his long-time girlfriend in SL and he were finally going to move in together in RL. I believed he lived in Texas or down south somewhere. So she went to his town and tried to get in touch with him. He didn't answer. He didn't log on to SL. He didn't answer e-mail. And she was frantic and trying to find him and IMing everybody. I had no idea, and I wondered if he got cold feet about the relationship moving to RL.

But it was worse -- he died suddenly in RL in his sleep. Maybe he had a heart condition. And died for real, it wasn't one of those fake SL deaths. His brother confirmed it. The poor woman! I felt so sorry for her, even not being a fan of Gor. People have the right to chose their own lifestyles. 

Anyway, I can understand why, if you have a sim, you would still rent a little room in the house, or on the sim, where this friend was who died. But why does this entitle you to be an asshole? After all, you are asking merely to leave for awhile in the winter, and then you could come back. 

To add to your snottiness the crack that this isn't really in demand is just plain selfish and short-sighted. You yourself stayed there for months on end yet you don't think it's in demand -- you saw how two other people also rented it literally for years? Hello? New people moved right in. If it has a vacancy for awhile, that doesn't undermine the point, that it should be made available for more people, not subsidize a few for years.

Russians always note that the other side of sentimentality is cruelty.

Navigable Rivers

I'm a big believer in navigable rivers, creeks, lakes, oceans etc in SL and keep such waterways as are on my property open, because the Lindens cut them badly and didn't think through the conflict generators.

I have neighbours that block entire rivers that become impassible, but then the Lindens refuse to terraform their land down to make it passable -- and it's the right of any land owner to put their land on no-access, sadly, making parts of the Mainland miserable. 

My land is never on no-access on the Mainland. Ever. Anywhere.

So here's what I get today:

[10:22] SanFroggy: (Saved Fri Nov 15 02:52:51 2019)Hi Prokofy, is thete a reason you have a "Spyralle Warning Chi" object blocking a navigable water channel in Tethys? It kinda puts a damper on my travel through Sansara :p
[10:22] SanFroggy: (Saved Fri Nov 15 02:54:03 2019)it's right here - http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife//120/156/64
[10:22] SanFroggy: (Saved Fri Nov 15 02:54:39 2019)wait... that's not right :p
[10:22] SanFroggy: (Saved Fri Nov 15 02:55:18 2019)there - Tethys (120,156,64)

That address is actually Protected Linden water, not my land, but my land is next to it.

But it's not required to go that way nor am I blocking passage nor does it put any "damper" on travel that you can proceed on two ways:

As you can see the tiny stake to the side is nowhere near the big gazebo in the river which this explorer isn't complaining about, but both of our builds are on the land and NOT blocking the river which has passage.

The Linden rock edge might have blocked you there if my stake wasn't there.

If you think where my stake is, is the better route, great but you have rocks blocking you then a minute later -- oh, and a house porch. So even if my stakes were removed, you'd still face the problem of the narrows created by the Lindens. On their land. Which is not my land. Which does have a passageway.

Because, you know, this is a Linden build supposed to be "interesting" and "fun" and "simulate rapids" by, you know, rocks and narrow channels.

So here's what I answer:

[10:29] Prokofy Neva: Is there a reason you're focusing on an article on my land which in fact does not block any navigation (I ride along there all the time) and not on the encroaching articles of the other land owner there who harasses me? While lots of people block navigable water channels because they own the water (see Keuka, annoying), in Tethys it is *Linden water* and I'm not on Linden water, I'm on my own land.

This is an area in which the neighbours have been endless trouble for years and years.

There is someone named Ben Jammin with a build there, with an alt Ben something, who I don't think is the RL alt of the former Linden Ben Linden, but maybe that explains it, because the old, original extremist Lindens often griefed me on alts and despised my critique of their software cult.

But he doesn't mind putting a sign for his gallery right on a Linden rock -- encroaching -- something I'd never have the balls to do with my rentals signs to make sure river boaters saw my offerings:

He then adds a deer to a Linden rock -- well, I'd like more scenery on Linden Land, too, but generally all I do is build a bridge across it for convenience, something that frankly they tolerate if it does not block anything.

I don't think this Ben Jammin guy is a Linden; I think he's just an asshole. His land was put on no-access, then taken off, then I was banned, then it was no-access; since it includes partly water that's annoying but hey, you CAN pass through on this river. Currently it is on access, but it's for sale for $30/m by another group -- I don't the story, but his build is still there. None of it is worth that price.

It's a rocky river rapids with Ben Linden's river rapids "Tubes of Saturn" which you can get here for free and it's fun to ride.

You can ride them down river because, you know, nothing is blocked the river because there is Linden water.

It's narrow, but it's a narrow creek BY LINDEN DESIGN. With, you know, rocks in it. I don't like that Lindens have not put ALL land underwater in THEIR groups and SOLD IT but that's not my problem. Where I do own river it is passable, as it is here. Just not on one side due to a tiny stake -- after a big gazebo which didn't bother you lol.

So why don't I just take it out?

Because the warning sign he is complaining about there is in fact put there as a bit of a joke to this asshole neighbour who harassed me with ban lines and ARs for years.

That Ben Jammin and/or his group members/alts would AR the Lindens claiming that my cliff rocks were encroaching.

They were not.

If they were, the Lindens could return them, which they race to do at the slightest whisper from their friends or really anybody, as they don't like me. But they haven't.

Because they don't encroach.

This asshole neighbour kept IM'ing me and complaining, and also putting ugly stuff up near my land but whatever. Typical petty behaviour. I ignore. Then he found one day on the other side, away from the area he first complained about by half a sim, that a corner of a cliff was encroaching literally a smidgeon.

 

If it were REALLY a problem for the tubes, not only I couldn't have passed, but others would have complained. But it wasn't.

This cliff slipped when trying to place it better for a tenant. I put cliffs there finally only because the tenants find it so hard to place houses or terraform. So if they have a flat Fanatik cliff or whatever, it's easier for them. And looks better.

One day I saw that neighbour had abandoned a small portion of prims, like 112 m of land. Seemed odd, but I immediately requested it because I really need prims there -- there are a lot of land preserve builds and tenants' homes. Even 40 prims is a big help.

I then made a little story which I posted on Flickr, the screenshots based on that little guy sort of appearing suddenly out of the water. And I decided to leave the stake, why not? It's my land. I have a nasty neighbour. And it's not blocking the river, as you can go several routes around it.

When someone can go on a river where they do in fact have passage not only on Linden water, but my land, and not complain about a large gazebo in that river and a deer encroaching right on a Linden rock (but which is actually on the neighbour's land), and find fault with my little stake -- when there are two alternative routes -- what do you call this?

You call this PRIG.

Yes, they're prigs, but this stands for Protected Route Interest Group.

Other people's land is not "protected" and not for them, but they often feel it should be.

This guy is in that group; he may be a spontaneous complainer about nothing; he may be spontaneously complaining once he sees it is my land, and it is labelled "Prokofy"; he may be a more calculated complainer looking around for ways to harass me and pick on things that he thinks "shows me up", as a tactic of this group -- or whatever. They're known to go around and harass competitors.

So I keep a record of such incidents, that's all.

I haven't named and shamed or complained the guy blocking our passage on another sim because he's within his rights, like Adam Schiff noting that the rule is that members can only yield to counsels on 45 minute question periods. Like that.

It's really the Lindens' fault for cutting the water up so badly.

I wish they would do a global revision of this.

UPDATE

[2019/11/17 16:20] Froggy (sanfroggy): User not online - inventory has been saved.
[02:04] SanFroggy: Well, I could get past the gazebo... with the Chi in the way, I have to do a difficult 'S' double turn between the rocks there. And I did try to get by on the other side of the rocks - no go, had to edit the boat through the rocks. I will keep looking for alternate routes though.
[02:41] Prokofy Neva: Well that's because you didn't plan your route, and as a member of PRIG I should think you would do that, nor did you take the turn at the right place, where you can get through the rocks. Usually people ride the tubes from the Linden game there, they don't boat through the narrow *Linden rocks* in the *Linden water* because even if they get through one place, how will they get through under the porch and through the even narrower rocks after my post? Say, we missed you all these years when my neighbour had this water with the gazebo in no-access, which I guess escaped your notice.
[04:04] SanFroggy: Oh, I plan my routes very well. This particular one takes me from southern Sansara all the way to Heterocera, and with my small, manoeuverable boat I can fit through narrow channels and jump down waterfalls. This stretch with the rocks is a challenge though.\
[04:07] Prokofy Neva: Oh, gosh, only Prokofy's stake is in the way OMGODZORZ. Guess you haven't traveled this stretch for years because you failed to notice how this was all in access-only in that area where you're complaining. PS as I said, if you get past Prokofy's stake, then what? Still obstacles because, you know, these are narrow rocks in a rapids created by *the Lindens*. Don't like waterways that have resident land in them because the Lindens wouldn't create more untiered sims? Totally agree. I know of much, much worse areas that the Lindens refuse to do anything about. So take it to the Lindens? Or I know, go to your pal Yevad and see if he can start a hate campaign, like the others he starts against people who are in fact not violating the TOS as he imagines.
[04:08] Prokofy Neva: Maybe you should study the maps better? Or get a smaller boat.
[04:08] Prokofy Neva: https://3dblogger.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2019/11/navigable-rivers.html
[04:08] Prokofy Neva:

So can we go over this again, as Froggy keeps IMing me?

1. This land around the gazebo and where my scary stake is currently WAS UNTIL RECENTLY ACCESS-ONLY creating a blockage on this river which was legal if annoying.
2. Neither Froggy nor PRIG ever complained about that to my knowledge nor asked that owner to take it out of access.
3. THAT it was in access-only can be seen by the fact that the access-only on the land menu is still checked; the only thing is now the "anyone" is ALSO checked because THE LAND WAS PUT TO SALE RECENTLY. Ridiculous price of $30/m no one will pay.
4. The owner released 112 m of land and abandoned it, so I took it for prims. And I put up the stake merely as a joke and made a little story which I hope to find time to put on Flickr.
5. I left it there (it's been there for months) because...it doesn't block the river.
6. That it seems to block the river for Froggy is because he chooses to make it so -- he won't go around through the rocks, perhaps his boat is too big, but he also won't admit that even if my stake wasn't there, he would get into a cul-de-sac from which he'd still have to sail under a porch and through rocks again.
7. So because Froggy keeps contacting me with this faux "concerned citizen" crap, I view this as a PRIG harassment gambit of the type we saw from "Yevad" here  against the LRC's notecard giver which was not in any violation -- and the regular harassment which I experience on Grote from Yevad's discipline Evol Courtois with her idiotic "Good Neighbour" obelisk plus garbage and an outhouse on a microparcel in the middle of my rentals. Oh, well. 
8. Yevad himself has mysteriously expelled me from PRIG for reasons he said I "should know". I have no idea, but it could be criticism of the abusive railroad scheme his pals are pushing, which you can read about here from the blue skeleton .
9. Honestly, this is so much petty bullshit, but I know the price I'll charge for removing my stake in the river in Tethys: restoration of my membership in PRIG. Gosh, is that Prokofy extorting someone like these common furries from PRIG and the SLRR fanclubs putting up hate parcels and obelisks by my land in Grote and Zephyr to prevent them from renting -- which they have done in multiple places? Well, it certainly wasn't conceived of any extortion when I put the stake there, and nobody noticed it for months. I don't want to be in PRIG because Yevad and some of the others are reprehensible assholes. Any group I have going is not a competitor, really, given their in with the Lindens and oldbie fan base, but apparently they see it as such. But if a group is open to the public and anyone can join it, and I joined it and remained in it for a long time, I shouldn't be expelled as there are no grounds for this.
   
   Yes, it's always possible that "Froggy" is just some random guy, who just happened to come by and be inconvenienced, who is totally randomly IMing me because of this, without any planning from PRIG of which he is a member.
   
   That's fine but I also see no reason to remove this stake as long as my neighbour remains the same person/group with the same "access only" checked off which only now in recent weeks has been put to "all access" because it is for sale.
   
   Let me suggest a larger project for PRIG and/or the intrepid Froggy would be to get this Ben Jammin and group Heady something to take their land permanently off "no access". Of course, they might well answer, "Buy our land and you can do that".

          Let me suggest a far, far more important river project to free up is here -- but I guess because it's a lot of my rentals here and ends in a cove, it's not "vital" for PRIG.

          It's called "Das Barenhaus" and owned by a group headed by Maschypnosub Robonaught called Altimore, which is on "private" so I can't see other names, although he looks to be no longer in the People List. His land has been terraformed up in such a way that it blocks the river AND he has "access-only" for his group so there is simply no way to pass at all. You have to put any boat in edit and move it.

        I've tried writing to him to request him to terraform down the land just at the river - 16 m or so in -- and put just that little strip in "access" (he could keep the rest of his land in no-access) so that the river is passable. He has never answered. Of course it's his right not to do a damn thing -- it's his land -- but again, it's a Linden-created conflict-generator that they should fix. They won't. I've asked the the Lindens through a support ticket to terraform down their own hill on the other side to create passable water -- they rejected my request. I can also see their point of view, that correcting these blockage situations will be endless with many claims and they don't want to devote the time and resources to this so that a handful of people can sail boats, when they have way more attractive and expensive land which they provide as Linden Homes in Bellisseria with the premium account, or enable wealthy players to trade among themselves for fantastic sums from which they get the cashout fees, or which they sell at auction (evidently as a sink not a source of funds, but that's still something) -- around the Blake sims.

    There's a build on this land owned by someone named Beefy Calamity. His profile says: "You can't be first, but you can be next. Bottom here who enjoys learning new things. Proud to be a part of the Talon & Rodenberger families."

    Well, I don't fear names like that and he sounds like a friendly guy but he hasn't answered, either.

    I've never seen a soul on this land for years and years, on the ground, or a green dot in the sky, but it doesn't matter. You can do WTF you want on your land. Let me suggest PRIG has more obstructive land-owners to harangue.