Making a Withdrawal

I cashed out all my L$s today. Even shook down my alts for spare change. We’re in the RL Deep Freeze in more ways than one and there’s no time for sentimentality.

Well maybe a little.

I can’t bring myself to delete most of my inventory from any of my avs and I think the only way I could see my avs deleted is if LL’s server crashed. And then I’m sure I would grieve.

I am, however, going to sell off some loose stuff out of inventory. Clover’s liquidation of the DFS gear has brought a return of about 550 L$ on a 6k investment (but then, we can never get the land tiers back). I’m not sure how well that will do since I guess right now a half gallon of RL milk goes for 800L and (or 200 DFS Milk Crates). Still it feels good to actively be doing something, and to know that it’s only going to be a couple pay periods in which things are this tight.

Here’s Clover’s shop, what remains of it.

And here’s Mistletoe’s. I’m still fond of that Tipping Cow!

New Costumes for St. Patrick’s Day

You know I love my old-fashioned small-town 1910s community of Philomena. Well lately I’ve been inspired to make some things for St. Patrick’s Day festivities and to start, here’s a matching pair of costumes I made.

We Bought The Farm

You may recall that when my sister alt, Clover, closed her shop, it was largely because the world had changed too rapidly for her to keep up with. Hundred and thousands of Ls and av-hours of work to create the products that made Clover’s Kitchen a success were suddenly all in vain and the food and beverage became almost laughably obsolete, practically overnight.

Well, you know that I love creating food for people in the Grid and so– in what may or may not be a moment of weakness– I invested a sizeable chunk of my savings into starting up what will be Clover Farms. (People who were fans of Clover’s Kitchen may remember, back in the day, that “Clover Farms” was an imaginary brand name used on items such as milk and orange juice).

I don’t contribute to the economy?!

I was talking with a particularly cynical acquaintance the other day who had some less-than-kind things to say to me when I mentioned going to Marketplace-only with Clover’s Kitchen, and no longer having a prim-and-mortar shop in his estate. Two particularly stinging things he said were that I’m “part of the problem” for going to MP only, and that by not having a prim-and-mortar shop, I’m no longer contributing to the economy.

On Closing Clover’s, and more

Made the announcement, trimmed the friend’s list a little (basically any time I couldn’t answer the question “Who is this person?”) and now I’m a bit saddened.

I have the tier on the supermarket parcel til Oct. 3rd. I’m closing shop on the 1st. I figure a day or two of redirecting LMs, then on the last day, blow it up. I’m saddened because all good things must end. But as a wise robot once said, it need not be a sad end or a serious one.

As for what’s next, I don’t really have a SL-based answer. I have a place to stay, much thanks to my good friend Tel. I’m also putting the Lionheart Times on hiatus so I’ll likely close the office to that before too long too. Then again, it’s not a lot of expense, and it’s some comfort having a space. Eh, we’ll see.

Another friend of mine is closing his shop as well, for many of the same reasons that I’m closing mine. He’s found joy in RPing and in streaming entertainment. I just don’t have much SL joy right now. Even Petal’s getting a bit bored.

Right now my joy is in RL, and in the brief space between unbearably hot summer and wonderful, wonderful autumn (wonderful, that is, except for allergies). August never seems to last long enough. I pick blackberries and cook with them, I work on sewing SCA garb, I write and I make comics and I sleepwalk way too much on social media. I’m not depressed with life at all, I’m just not feeling SL is all.

Still not here, but…

I’m still on my cyclical break from SL and, even more than before, I’m finding myself pleasantly surprised by how little I’m missing it. What I miss is conversations with my people (though at least one of them is on Skype and we’ve stayed caught up that way).

While I’ve been away, I’ve been thinking about what needs to stay and what needs to change. Some things, I think I’m holding onto simply because I have a fear of change and I’ll stay with what’s comfortably familiar for a long time instead. I’m not kidding when I tell you that when I was a RL kid, I kept my training wheels on until I was 8 because it was too much of a comfort for me to want to risk changing. That’s me, I’m like that. Which brings up Clover’s Kitchen.

I’ve had Clover’s Kitchen since November of 2008 and it’s been a tremendous creative outlet for me. It started with me making food out of oldschool prims, then as I got more skilled I incorporated sculpts and hours and hours of texturing said sculpts. I have spent countless thousands of lindens on sculpt build kits, which I mix and match and sometimes include with sculpts of my own. This has led to about 120 pretty damn good items in my shop.

Then mesh happened and once again I was faced with how behind the times I’m getting. I’ve made 2 items so far using mesh build kits, but the thought of shelling out more and more money to bring my goods up to date is appealing less and less to me. Add to that the big Food Fair, which I didn’t hear of before it opened and which didn’t hear of me. It felt like a huge missed opportunity, but rather than kick myself over it, I felt relieved at less to worry about.

All of these things lead me to believe that it’s time to make a hard decision regarding Clover’s Kitchen. It’s time to either take off the training wheels or else put the bike away. And, in my heart of hearts, I think it’s time to put the bike away and maybe later on get a new one.

Clover’s Kitchen will go to MP Only in about a month. I’ll close up the prim-and-mortar shop which has stood for over 3 years in Lionheart around the first of September. It’s been an outstanding run, but I know its time has come.

It’s a thing to do.

Honour Samuels (supportingactorw), yet another alt

So the other night I’m hanging out and dancing with my fabulous friend Teleny and we get to talking in IM. I mention that I’m thinking of getting some new lipstick for Mistletoe, because between the VERY pale skin and very thin lips, the lips just kind of disappear sometimes.

“Have you considered getting a new skin?” he asks.

“No, no, I really like the skin. I just wish I had a little more color in the lips is all.”

Well we got to talking some more and I mentioned, you know, I might consider doing bargain cosmetics as a kind of a side thing. I know I am FAR from what one would call a fashionista, but, I’m not completely inept and I think people would be willing to pay for something like that. And it’s a thing to do.

But I’ve got a marketplace shop for Manic Elf things as Mistletoe already. I have one for Clover’s Kitchen. I sort of even have one for Petal.

So, I dusted off a seldom-used RP alt and spent yesterday getting her made over. Meet Honour Samuels, founder of the not-yet-existing-but-in-progress Flattery Cosmetics. That’s my first-ever lipstick she’s wearing.

Keep an eye out soon for “her” products: lipstick, mesh nails, mascara, eye shadow, blush… you know. Pretties, but at an affordable price. Think like Avon or Mary Kay. In fact, once I get Flattery going, I plan to even have shop-at-home vendor “catalogs”, like Avon or Mary Kay.

I blame you, Tel. Unless it takes off. Then I thank you.

And as an aside, if I say so myself: how gorgeous is Honour?  I’m in love with her deep eyes and her new Wasabi Pills mesh hair.  And that’s what an expensive skin looks like, heh.

Think Flatterbots don’t listen when you talk back? Think again.

Backing the truck up, those of you who haven’t encountered them yet, a Flatterbot is a (duh) bot that IMs you randomly.  Their usual MO is to start by either accusing you of bumping them or else claiming to be catching up with you, their long lost friend.  They then compliment your avatar, give you a long sob story about an ex-boyfriend that made them log off, and their brave return to start SL all over again… and oh by the way, could you maybe “loan” me 300L to get a new avatar put together?

This is all old news for many of us by now. Many shops now have signage warning about this practice, and many blogs have covered what to look out for and not to fall for it.

But up until today, I was under the impression that any amount of reply to a Flatterbot went largely ignored or unheard by their anonymous programmer. I was wrong. And apparently I touched a nerve.

Below the cut, my complete interaction with just one such Flatterbot while I was shopping in Henmations.

Oh no! Dramatic Woe!

I stumbled onto a small shop called SWAN Animations by way of the Marketplace.

So I went to check out some of their animations in person. Not a bad selection at all, and I can see some of them being very useful if I’m going to make machinima. Like this one, called Dramatic Woe. Nabbed it for 50L. I’m demonstrating it along with the classic YadNi Emoter HUD.

Most of their animations are no-copy, and as such, are pretty reasonably priced. Check them out for yourselves in-world.

I’ll likely pick up a few more of their goodies when I have more funds, especially their “carrier” sets, and their medievally geek-liscious Horse’s Bransle dance poseball set.

Destruction at Antique Square

So last night was, as promised, my biggest and most explosive fireworks show ever. The opening didn’t go according to plan; I had a whole carefully programmed (pyreographed?) show to accompany Fanfare for the Common Man. And I was going to have the text spell out the well-known sentence from the Preamble to the Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” etc. But the text launcher decided it would fire text when it wanted to, not when I wanted it to, so I finally took it back into inventory and just kinda winged it.

The downside to that was that I had way more explosives going than I wanted, that early in the program. I like to crescendo my way in with these. Start small, build up. It’s the pyrotechnician’s rule: don’t blow your load in the first two minutes. Lots of people, actually, could gain from this knowledge. I’m looking at YOU, ex-boyfriend. But I digress!

The upside to the show was, with the scope of the finale, nobody even remembers the opening number.