Just What I Needed

No one's looking?

Need to take out your frustrations?  Glitterati has the perfect "vehicle" for your therapy!  It consists of a sports car, eleven poses ... and a baseball bat.  And while you're there, check out the football field size collection of poses.

What is it with the darn chickens?

Who could ask for anything more?

Detachment

The big, fancy machine arrives, April of 2008.

Not only have I had four good years in the virtual environment, but I've gone through four graphics cards.  Each time it has been a minor pain to convince Dell that the card is the problem - until this last episode where they decided they wanted to see if the software was the problem.  The software was not  under warranty like the card.  I'd toodle off to work while my husband wrangled with software assistance until after three days, $200, and absolutely wiping the hard drive, they gave up and said it's probably the card after all.  Now we can't get hardware assistance to respond.  At least my computer is up again, although anything more complicated than YouTube is probably out for now.  No more 3-D immersion.
I am going to have to face the possibility that there will be no more Second Life for me.

This isn't such a horrible fate.  I'd been getting bored with it for quite a while.  The clothes weren't interesting me anymore.  I looked at the freebie blogs and just went "Ho hum."  This could have been because I'd been busily fashion blogging on my own.  That was making it Work, right?  And once it's Work, it isn't fun anymore?  No, I just think I'm getting choosier about what made good virtual clothing.

Must. Have. All. Toys.

Next, I became more interested in furniture and houses and fun toys.  I had to have that donkey with the twitching ears to carry around.  In fact, I had to have absolutely everything off of that set of lucky boards.  I was off the grid for two weeks while I was on vacation and dove right back into it when I got back.
But I'm tired of it now.  Hardly anything piques my interest.  What I believed I would miss the most, the people, I realize I have contact with other ways.  I'm connected to them on Facebook or Plurk so I won't completely lose them as friends.

The same hostessing outfit for the past coupla weeks because I can't change.

Then there are the jobs I had: dance-hall hostess and book-talk facilitator.  They weren't hugely successful, but they provided me with a place to stay, some extra Llinden dollars, and a purpose other than just wandering around collecting things just to "own" them.  What about my jobs?  I was raised to be Responsible and while a year in SL is more like 10 RL(tm) years, I would still feel like a flighty slut for ditching after so short a time.

Lludmila shows off her horse, Major, to ... hmm, might be Cal.

And what about my stuff?  Some of it I actually purchased, like the horse.  I remember losing my whole Toy folder, which included all my transportation, weaponry, etc. and how devastating it was.  I was slowly replacing it with more toys, more vehicles (although I couldn't bring myself to buy another penny-farthing bicycle), more silly things that made me smile because the creators can be just so, so creative!  Am I able to give up my stuff?  What would I do instead?

Necklace using pendant from Kay Pere.

Well, what did I do before?  I made things.  Made jewelry.  Performed (I have an extensive acting résumé).  Wrote.  Good merciful heavens, I even cooked!
Lately, I've been rediscovering the Fun of Ironing.  No, not Irony, Ironing.  Unable to get on SL Sunday afternoons, I've been starching and ironing clothes while listening to audiobooks.  I'm actually enjoying this.  But I realize Homemaking will get old after a while (and if I start cooking, I'll be getting in my husband's way). 

We have yet to settle the graphics card problem and the situation might change ... but I'm starting to slowly detach myself and find something else to do with my time.  But then what sort of news do I see?  Articles about how much better adjusted people with online friends are and how effective the virtual world is at helping you lose weight.  Dang!  Just my luck! 

Goddess of the Hunt

All hail the Albero Mall Hunt! I saw a photo of a cute blouse on one of the freebie blogs and thought I'd go looking. (Note: still haven't found the clue box for that blouse - rats!) I'd never been to the Albero Mall, but it's an attractive space with many nice shops and very little empty space.

Even though the hunt has numbers, the prizes are not necessarily sequential, so if you can't find one, you aren't totally lost until you can wheedle a clue that makes sense from the hunt group IM. That's a plus! Also, the merchandise at this mall seems to be really great stuff! Avs who know me will go into shock when I say that I actually bought some items ... with real Lindens. But the hunt itself is a bit fiddly.

You walk around the mall (which is huge) and find the grey boxes with numbers on them which are supposed to be in front of stores, but some may have strayed. They may also be slightly embedded. These numbered boxes have a word floating over them. So, what I did is, I wrote down the number and the word next to it and created a big list. I didn't find all the boxes (prob-bo-lem number 1, but since it's not sequential, who cares?), but at least I had a list to go on.

Next, you find the grey landmark givers in front of particular stores. The landmark is to the main store of the satellite shop the LM giver sits in front of. Yeah, try saying that five times fast. You click on it, and, theoretically, you will be sent to the main store where you will have to hunt (in vain in some cases for me, but it's not sequential, so who cares?) down the numbered box. When you find it, you just say "/(number) (code word that goes with number)" near it and it gives you your prize. It took me two days to get the hang of this!

Lest you think I'm somewhat of a "thickie" - I was hindered in my searching by frequently being sent to the wrong location:



The above picture is of the map with the landmark (above, circled) that was given to me by the hunt LM giver. Along with it, the shop itself gave me a different landmark (below, circled). Note the difference. Using the hunt landmark, I often wound up in strange locations, causing me to tp back to the mall, relocate the shop and the giver, and trying again. Usually, the second time took me to the correct location. Usually. As far as I can tell. (This is prob-bo-lem number 2.) A good clue that something was terribly wrong was that instead of rezzing on solid ground, I would rez in midair and fall a considerable distance.

Eventually, (note on learning curve graph "over two days" for this maze rat) I tried the shop's landmark that was given at the same time. That landmark was accurate. Look where the hunt would have landed me on this next example (see orange arrow):



Can yew say: "Refreshing landing for Lludmila"? In another example, I would have been sent to coordinates that were similar to the ones from the shop, but on a totally different sim. I might have found that a tad confusing! (See below)





















Those two problems aside, it's still a fiddly hunt with much traveling back and forth even after you've found every single numbered box. And then there's more hunting at the main stores. If the quality of the shop merchandise hadn't been so good, I'd have given up long, long ago. Haven't had a chance to look at much of the hunt merchandise, but I have high hopes for it.

By the way, the mall map above, which is posted in several locations, is, as far as I can tell, utterly useless.