I will no longer be posting to this blog. Enjoy your second life….and even more, your real life!

~Penguin

This past week has had way too many reality checks in Real Life, and somehow they have also managed to migrate into Second Life. I’m spending way too much time in SL and have lost much of the fun aspect of it as I’ve been working very hard to get the retreat ready for some sort of public opening. However, my friend has had too much going on to spend time working with me there, and my excitement and fun have definitely waned. Maybe that sense of adventure will return at some point, but it’s gone for today.

So, I think I’ll concentrate on the things that grabbed my attention when I first entered SL. I was fascinated with all of the fabulous builds that folks had created and, if you’ve been following my blog, you know that I have enjoyed exploring such things as city recreations and amusement park rides. I’ve decided to return to those days of fun and exploration as time allows.

I have some choices to make within in the next few months concerning my professional life, so I probably need to spend less time learning the SL scripting language and more time working with RL projects involving ASP.net and my schools’ web sites. I suspect that will look much better on a resume to most employers in my part of the country!

I’ve been working on getting the ITRT Retreat ready for primetime, and in the process, I’ve learned a lot about the more technical aspects of this vast new world. We needed a bridge, and I could not find one that wasn’t either too high prim or just too fancy for a woodsy setting, so I decided to try my hand at building. My first stop was Ivory Tower, a very impressive site containing numerous tutorials and examples for using the building tools already available in Second Life. After spending a couple of days with those lessons, I was able to create a bridge that I think will work out just fine.

Next came some exploration with the SL scripting language. We wanted to allow avatars to choose from a list of landmarks when they click on a prim rather than just giving them a dozen landmarks one after the other. I finally found an example that changed the chat window colors using llDialog, so at least I knew what the proper function was. After a few visits to the Linden Scripting Language Portal, I was able to create a dropdown type box with the choices as button labels. After that little adventure, I found that I had a wealth of free scripts from various sources that were easily edited to meet our needs. Many thanks to the SL community for doing an outstanding job of commenting and documenting every script I have opened.

Finally, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so it was time to lighten up a bit. We put two innertubes in the creek for folks to ride. The script had to be altered to allow everyone to ride, not just the owners, but it works now! I found a plastic float that I placed under the waterfall. You never know when you just need a nice relaxing float trip under a cool mist. In the Recreation Center, there is a tictactoe board on the wall, a beach ball that responds to touch, and a trampoline that bounces you up to the ceiling. There are other goodies free for the taking in each cabin and hidden in one of the caves.

OK, back to scripting….but I’d much rather be relaxing underneath that waterfall!

This has definitely been a learning experience in many, many ways. I’ve found that I have developed the bad habit of trying to figure out things on my own rather than reading directions. This has resulted in several comical events that Tyna has had to rescue me from, but some others were her fault, believe it or not!

For example, when we were first looking for a place to rent, she went to the top floor of a skyscraper and teleported me to her. However, she brought me in at the top of a stairwell, and I fell all the way to the basement, arms and legs flailing the entire way down several stories. Fortunately, I was able to brush myself off and walk all the way back up the stairs to her. Then later on, we were out on the balcony. As we stood on the balcony and I was trying to navigate to another location, she told me to jump! Now remember, I was still new to all of this, so when I jumped, I crashed to the ground….again. That’s when I decided that I needed to practice my flying techniques!

As I was shopping around for wigs, I found a shop that offered samples. Cool, I thought! Freebies! Unfortunately, I had failed to read the notecard before putting them on. So, I put on the new wig and went out on the town. I did notice that the wig was pick and white checked, but there are so many weird things in Second Life that I really didn’t think too much about it. Well, my good friend and mentor (Tyna) saw me and asked if I had on a sample wig??? I asked how she knew, and she said it had the word “sample” written all over it. Well, when I zoomed in, those pink checks were actually words. Duh! And I went out in public in that thing! Talk about a newbie!

Then there was the trampoline. I found a trampoline in my free inventory items and drug it into our the apartment. Not realizing that it might actually work, I sat on it and bounced straight up. Wow! Wonder what happens when I stand up on it? Well, I bounced right through the ceiling and onto the roof. Since it was getting late, I decided to hit the sack and deal with the trampoline the next day. However, I didn’t realize that I had put the trampoline in the exact spot Tyna had been standing when she last logged out, so later that same evening when she logged in, she hit the trampoline and bounced up into the clouds. Poor thing, she had no idea what had just happened! Once she came back down to earth, she saw the trampoline corner sticking out the side of the apartment. I had not realized that was a possibility! Poor Tyna (bless her heart!) returned the trampoline to my inventory where it remains. I need to find a sandbox where I can play again!

My inventory is a wreck, so as I was cleaning out my freebies, I pulled out a flag, but nothing happened. Then, I pulled out a bouncing stone and sat on it. It was huge and literally bounced me around the apartment, finally flipping me upside down and stopping. So, I stood up, fell to the floor, and lost the stone. Honest! I looked high and low and didn’t see it anywhere. As luck would have it, Tyna arrived later that evening only to find a the stone at the top of a flagpole in the middle of the apartment. <sigh>

At the very least, Second Life provides some much needed laughter after a long day on the job. I’ve laughed until I’ve cried many times this week, and I think we all need that once in a while.

I saw someone in my travels with a keyboard that showed up when they were typing and then disappeared. I wanted one! Had to have one! Laelia had an extra one from the Podcast Pickle folks and gave it to me! Cool! She was very helpful and gave very specific directions. She told me to find it in my inventory and drag it to the floor, which I did. Somehow though, I got ahead of her at this point and clicked “wear” and found myself wearing the entire box! What a dope! She talked me through detaching it and saving the contents to my inventory. Then I was supposed to click on the keyboard and select wear. However, when I did that “wear” was not an option. Guess I messed up the script with the whole box routine.

Anyhow, I thanked Laelia for her help and tried again later…still no luck…until I noticed that when I typed, a small green keyboard showed up in the corner of the room, nowhere near my hands! When I stopped typing, it disappeared. Now I really felt like an idiot. Who wants to go out in public with a phantom keyboard? Yikes! Some friends came by and I was soooo embarrassed!

In fact, I was so disturbed that I jumped off of the balcony and ran away for a while. I discovered though that when I was away from the apartment, the keyboard was not to be seen! Very cool! At least I could go out again. The silly thing became a great source of aggravation for me though.

All of this happened in the old apartment, before our landlord moved our building. I was so excited to discover that the keyboard did not show its ugly face in our new place! I suppose it’s still showing up in the old apartment when I type, but at least I don’t have to see it.

My roomie Tyna decided that she needed a dog in Second Life, and we had lots of fun visiting pet stores. She found a cute little schnauzer, and after accidentally wearing him for a short while (and losing her hair when she detached him!) she brought home a new virtual pet. Actually, the little fellow is really neat, but he only responds to her commands. He can fly right along with her, until she hits a “no prim” area, that is. Then he just stops in midair and sends Tyna an IM with his location. Very smart little pooch, don’t you think?

So, I was jealous of her new pet and decided that I wanted a critter of my own…maybe a bird for my shoulder. Tyna, being the kind soul that she is, found a freebie parrot for me. It was a pretty bird, very colorful, so I clicked on him to “wear” him on my shoulder. He immediately attached himself to my left shoulder….sideways….and removed my hair in the process. Oh my! That was not a pretty site! After some hysterical laughter, I clicked “drop” and the bird feel sideways to the floor. Honestly, it looked just like a dead parrot in the middle of the apartment floor.

In the midst of all of this, Circe wandered into our aparment for a visit. Poor thing! We were laughing so hard that we couldn’t even communicate with him for a while. Nothing like walking in to find a dead parrot in the floor!