Mistletoe Creek Outfitters opens

It’s official, I’ve opened up shop in Open Life. Say howdy to Mistletoe Creek Outfitters, a shop which will carry all sorts of Western-themed goods for life in this new frontier. Right now I only have a handful of furniture items available, but each and every item is built in Open Life, and soon I’ll have some clothes and other goods available. A few folks stopped by today and so I gave them free hats.

I don’t know yet if I’ll have a separate blog for MCO or not. We shall see.

The Unrezzed Kid

Here I am, in an outfit I built myself, in front of the wagon I built myself, wearing a hat I built myself. I copied my shape measurements number-by-number from that other place.

Some more exploring has turned up an Irish-themed sim with rental space available for ridiculously low. Unfortunately the lag is unbelievable; I did the “rubber band” walk every few steps. I don’t know if it was the usual to-be-expected sim performance or just an off night. At any rate, I may have found a place to set up shop and start earning a few credits. Also, the sim has *fanfare* an Irish pub!! A fine reminder of the Old Country; I shall have to see about playing there.

The plan is to get a steady flow of Credits (that’s the local currency) here, build in my off-time, and in a few months settle Mistletoe Creek properly. In the meantime it’s explore, meet, build, experiment, and invite my friends over.

OK, guys, just to clear things up…

Yes, I am indeed leaving SL. No I haven’t dropped off the face of the grid yet.

My rents are paid up to December 3rd. On December 2nd I’ll be closing both the pub and Clover’s Kitchen in Second Life. Until then, I’m still here. After then, I’m still reachable. My IMs go to my email, and I can answer them from there.

So I hope that worries some of you folks a little bit less.

Settling

I made prim ears out of tortured prims. It’s a minor thing and yet I feel so much more like myself with them.

I’m working on a covered wagon, in which I’ll sleep.

Bed now before himself gets pissed.

The Content Creator (song)

(c) 2009 L. Foster
Tune: “The Moonshiner”, Irish Traditional

(chorus:)
I’m a builder, I’m a scripter
I’m a performer too
This whole grid was built
by the things that we do
(I’m) done lining your pockets
With my hard-earned cash
It’s off to a new grid
Where I’ll rez till I crash

I’ve been an SL-er for over a year
I’ve made stuff from clothing to houses to beer
I pay for uploading, I pay when I sell
I pay for my land and to cash out as well

(chorus)

I’m taking my talents to a new count-er-y
I’ll sell all my lindens and go on a spree
I’ll get my own region for a quarter the price
And with triple the prims it’ll surely be nice

(chorus)

Oh Lindens, oh Lindens, how did I love thee
But you’ll never rest till you take all from me
So bless content makers and buyers of goods,
For you ne’er more will see me in this neighborhood!

(chorus)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Where I Go From Here

In the 19th Century, my ancestors (on my paternal grandfather’s side) were miserable. They were literally being taxed to death by greedy landowners, who left them little to eat but potatoes, and not very many at that. When a blight damaged most of the potatoes, their countrymen went hungry and many died.

But many others, including my grandfather’s grandfather and his family, said enough was enough. They got on a ship out of Cork harbor, bound for the new world. In this time the west was wild, and a lot of unknown, unsettled territory lay before them.

On a much, much smaller scale, I feel a bit like they must have. I’ll get lonely and long for my “old country” from time to time I’m sure, but I know in my heart that this new voyage can only be to a better way of life. In fact I’m likely to write to my countrymen and ask them to come along with me.

This wild new frontier of which I speak is OpenLife. Where land is cheap, prims are huge, and there’s no bloody Linden Lab and their greed to get in the way.

Inspired by this analogy, I want to build a wild west frontier town. Call it something appropriate, like “Independence” or “Freedom” or “Fuck You LL”. I’m open for suggestions for names. When I can get this land I’m not sure, but at $75/month for a region with 45,000 prims, it will be a helluvalot sooner than the day I buy any in SL, that’s for damn sure.

To my dear friends that I made in SL, I invite you to come and visit me. I go by the exact same name there as I did in SL. In fact, hell, if you share my vision of a western town in this wild frontier, maybe we can go in on it together. If you’re not prepared to do that, I do understand. Know however that this blog will remain here. It’ll just evolve is all.

A “Dear John” Letter

For the past year and change now, I’ve made just about every single thing I do a display of my love for you. Maybe I took you for granted from time to time; but most of the time I would turn a blind eye to your faults, and defend you to my friends who just didn’t appreciate you the way I do. They didn’t see, didn’t remember, the *real* you that I saw. And day after day, I hoped that dormant version of you that I remembered from earlier days would emerge, and prove me right, and acknowledge all the tears and all the pain I invested in you. I honestly believed that if I loved you hard enough and loud enough, you would finally love me back.

But it’s becoming increasingly more obvious to me that what I seek is in fact a fool’s errand. Maybe you did really care about me at one time. Maybe you genuinely wanted what was best for me. But I watched you make one decision after another that made it unavoidably plain: you look out for yourself, and yourself alone. My feelings don’t make a damn bit of difference to you; all you care about is your bottom line. In fact I don’t even think you know that I exist anymore. Is this any way to treat someone who cared so deeply? Just toss me aside, like I’m a faceless nobody?

You only cared about me when it suited your own ends, I see that now. I’d held on so long to hope, to faith in the best in you, but it just is not there. It’s all a fantasy, and only now do I begin to realize it. I kept going back and going back to you, but I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve got nothing more to give, and I don’t want to waste what life I still have ahead of me on someone who never cared about me at all.

And so, Second Life, hard as it is to do, as used to you as I’ve become, I’m breaking up with you. It’s probably the wrong choice of words, since as far as you’re concerned we never had a relationship to begin with. But it was real enough to me.

So in the next few weeks I’ll collect my belongings, and pick up the pieces and move on. Maybe I’ll work on cultivating a friendship with OpenLife; maybe I’ll even start seeing Blue Mars. Or maybe I’ll just take some needed time for myself.

Innovative ways to take our money

Recently I got an email from Linden Lab, inviting me to take part in a merchant-related survey. You may have gotten one yourself. They ask for your opinion on four different proposed “services”, which are in fact thinly-veiled ideas for making even more money off its residents.

First, the vendors. They propose providing merchants with “free” vendors, which enable automatic updates to Xstreet. And after you switch ALL your products into vendors of questionable security (after all, we’ve seen how well they enforce copyright protection), they take 10-15% of your sales in said vendors.

How about no?

Oh but we’re not done, not by a long shot.

*Too Much Serious* Claims Another Victim

Unfortunately it seems that another RP sim that a couple of my alts play in is becoming yet another case of Too Much Serious.

One of the fun things about playing as Petal is that I get to do a lot of the fun things that I either didn’t get to do as a kid, or can’t get away with doing as an adult. And, that school is a fun, social place; rather than a mandatory, stifling place where you’re required to do the necessary work or your life is DOOMED FOR ETERNITY.

Role-play school isn’t like RL school. In RP school, if you don’t do your homework, oh well. You can pretend you did. There are no real grades, no permanent record, no parent-teacher conferences, none of that stressful stuff. Just the good parts. And when I do have time to log on and play as Petal, if RP school is in session, I gladly go.

But imagine my disappointment when an announcement went around recently reminding students that they are required to go to school. Required? Excuse me? First off, RL always comes first. That’s why it’s called Second Life. And when I am on SL, Mistletoe and/or Clover (both are pretty much tied for “main” status these days) and their businesses and commitments come next. Then, if I feel like playing as Petal, I will; if I don’t wish to or don’t have time to, I won’t. I won’t have a group announcement telling me that 3 times a week for 2 hours, I have to drop everything to participate in RP. Remember what the P stands for, people. You want to kick Petal out of your group for that? You go right on ahead.

And if that were not enough, another announcement went out to the group stating that due to drama (their words not mine), no new people are allowed to move into town until further notice (i.e. when the admin calms the hell down I suppose). Now, if you have a shop in a town and you get an announcement like that, it tells you a few things. First, that there is drama going on. The admin chose to make private drama public, and I think most if not all of the populace would have been just fine with being none the wiser. Secondly, to a merchant, it says, “Hope you weren’t planning on any revenue!” Having fresh new faces to show your product to is an important part of keeping shop in SL. Finally, it has an overall tone of “some people are allowed here, others aren’t” that I want no part of.

So removing Clover’s branch shop was an easy decision to make, and a quick one to execute. I’d rather pay rent for a branch location where I feel wanted and welcomed than have free shop space in a place where I don’t.

So yes, another victim of Too Much Serious. When that starts to infect a RP area, in my opinion, it’s the Kiss of Death. Too bad really.

Nov. 7

I wish I could be half the “mover and shaker” in RL that I seem to be in SL.

Today is just not my day and I’m sure a large part of it is that I’m overtired.