I keep real life and second life separate, but some events of the last few months now have as most of you have noticed impacted my “second life” and blogging.  I just wanted to let people know where I’ve been and that I’m not going away.  I had a end of the year physical as part of a bonus for my health insurance last December and a blood test came back bad - very bad.  I needed another really fun procedure to go spelunking, to use a technical term, for bad things in January.  It was not fun.  This generated, um, a lot of angst, before, during and afterwards.  They did not find anything, yet.  I have a family history for these bad things, thus the angst.

I thought I would just keep it private at least to my second life, but as I’ve become a bit detached lately in SL it has made me concerned that the people I have grown fond of and love in second life might feel slighted or wondering what has happened.  I have been logging in periodically, mostly in the morning to take care of my sim - things I have to take care of, but not staying on long.  That might deepen the mystery even more.

It hasn’t felt right yet to get back into “it” yet.  I thought it would only last a few weeks, but now I know it has gone on a lot longer than that.  Veyron is as most of you know a rather wild, happy go lucky, inane, flirty, whaterver kinda avie and that is something that I have not felt in a while.  I also did not want to act like an attention seeking avie or get hysterical - at least online, something I am not looking for with this post.

As most SLaddicts, when they stop or slow down, people notice (that or they think they’ve been unfriended).  I’m not willing to predict when I’m going to be back in the full swing of things again, if ever.  The whole experience was a wake up jolt about my real life.  At the same time, I do not want to give up my second life.  Right now I’m doing something I needed more of in real life, a vacation for a few days…  It’s just time to find balance somewhere.

-Veyron

Now that this OpenSpace fiasco is almost upon us, I feel that there is more coming from our new pal M Linden.  I think the OpenSpace price hike was just the opening shot.  LL has demonstrated time and time again they will do whatever they and pretty much without disregard to their customers.  And I mean their customers by saying the sim owners.  Scum avies are just annoyances.  Bots are better than us avies as we don’t cause nearly as much problems.

What’s in it for round 2?  My guess is they are going to make being a premium account paying resident a requirement for a number of things.  This is all about maximum revenue extraction now.  They will add some fluffy things to it as a bone, but pretty much force everyone who wants to stay in SL beyond a casual player to pay.  They’ll loose about 50% of their active users, but their revenue will increase, which is what they want.

I expect more too…  Let me think now…  Class 6 servers are coming, so of course they will be about 4-10 times faster than the Class 5 servers.  So let’s say the bump the prim count for a sim to 20,000 prims, but up the cost to $395 a month.  Costs them essentially nothing, and they get a 33% boost in revenue!

I used to have like expectation for improvements and more features, now I’m just hoping for status quo.  I should know better.  There’s just an endless supply of things they could and pretty much will do to based on past experience now.  How depressing….

-Veyron

Yup, just when you though the year was over, news breaks of new fun at the end…  My guess is Linden Labs is up for a lawsuit over this Patent, (US Patent 7,181,690), “System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space”.   Process patents in the US have lost recently in the courts, so this might not be very enforceable any more.  Hard to tell.  Ahh, the smell of young lawyers frolicing in the  courts, producing absolutely no economic value….  mmmm.  Now who said they’d be the first ones up against the wall? 

-Veyron

As is always in vouge for this time of year, it is time to look back upon the last year.  It’s been a year of big changes for me in Second Life and in real life. 2007 was not a good year for me, but 2008 was a better year in a lot of ways.  Somethings were not good.  I spend a lot of time on the road as some of you know, which has been pretty hard, but I’ve found myself to be tough and adaptable.

I’ve made a small business out of Second Life now, well, more or less a slightly-more-than-break-even hobby.  I bought a sim from Night and much to my disappointment, I had to demolish the thing and turn it into a dystopian nightmare.  Some of you saw the sim at the Blogger Auction.  It’s now the Rampart sim and part of the City of Lost Angels role playing chain in Second Life.  I’m rather proud of the whole thing, and I’ve spent a lot of time on it.  In fact, that has been almost a sore point.  I spend a lot of time on it, that I’d rather spend playing.

I had to get all kinds of tools to help manage the payments, the renters, and visitors and of course, the griefers.  But I still have had a great time with the sim and the people who live in it.

I also was hit directly with the pain of the Openspace sim pricing change.  As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.  I had a few lessors left on the old sim before I was going to transform it and move it.  Rather than just buy them out and boot them, I offered to move them to a smaller opem sim space for free, which I did.  About a month later the bomb was dropped and I was left holding the bag.  More money down the drain….

On the upside, my pocket book has stopped taking hits, which I’m pretty pleased with.  That was my goal when I started was to come out slightly ahead and now I’ve reached that.

I also managed to challenge myself and create something in Second Life.  Something actually useful, the Ping.fm HUD.  And to top it off, I even put out an freebie script (okay, it’s L$1).

I have also found my tolerance for the typical Second Life party inanity (is that a word?) has pretty much reached zero.  I can’t really stand to hear the WHOOHOO! again, nor the WOW!  or any more text spam.  I’ve heard it for literally years now, and I don’t need to hear it anymore.  It was amusing the first, second, third and maybe fourth time.  The 4,323rd time I personally have heard it, I’m looking to mute that person.  I’m considering an Anti-Whoohooing policy such that if it happens in any party I’m at, I’m gone.

What’s going to happen in 2009?  In real-life, I have this forboding bad mojo feeling, but let’s not go there….  In Second Life, I have no idea really.  Oh, and I still don’t have more than 25 groups….

-Veyron

Looks like I have Wordpress 2.7 working.  I suppose this is a good thing.  It’s a lot different on the inside for management.  They do promise this will be the last time bloggers will have to go in an monkey around with files to upgrade the blog.  Although, it was pretty painless (except for one moment of panic) to upgrade.

I have noticed that a lot of my links on the right side are dead links.  ::sigh::  I think I’m getting old.  I did turn two in Second Life a short while back and I’m begginging to feel um old.  Good thing I never age in real life (um or is that Second Life)?

Anyway, the blog seems to be working, so email me, IM me or pester me through the usual means if you find something broken.

Cheers!

-Veyron

Merry Christmas to all.  It’s been a fun year.  Veyron is going to be gone for a few days doing ya know, that family thing.

Here’s a photo to keep you warm while I’m gone… 

-Veyron

Ahh, Veyron has been up to a secret project. Well, procrastinating one. I finally wrote it and put it all together. This little toy will allow you to update all of your crazy social sites from within Second Life - something we all need. It uses Ping.fm, a free web service that will allow you to send updates to all of your sites. Ping.fm and thus my HUD can be setup to send updates to:

Bebo
Blogger
Brightkite
Delicious
Diigo
Facebook
Flickr
Friendster
hi5
Identi.ca
Jaiku
Koornk
Kwippy
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Mashable
Multiply
MySpace
Plaxo Pulse
Plurk
Pownce
Rejaw
Tumblr
Twitter
Utterli
Wordpress
Xanga
Yahoo 360
Yammer
YouAre

You can find it in world at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Baird/54/47/301 or you can also find it on Xstreet SL or OnRez.

-Veyron

So, I’ve been naughty, I haven’t been blogging for a while. I’ve been busy. I’m writing this on a plane, disconnected of course (oh when will I get my in flight WiFi?), so I have some down time to catch up.

Mostly I have been working on changes to the sim I bought a while back. I purchased a sim a while ago. It had “lessors” on it and I tried to at least break even on the sim. If you were at a couple of the parties I held, like the Blogger Slave auction, it was that sim. Well, it just was not working out financially.

I went to plan B, which was pickup the sim and move into the City of Lost Angels group of sims and turn it from an idealistic mountain retreat into a dystopia nightmare. It’s turned out pretty well I think. I have the sim now all sold out and I have renters in it. I also get to interact with the owners and renters. Plus I get to give back to the City of Lost Angel role playing game in SL by adding more space for the game to play in.

I’m also now in the black on the sim, but before I break out the champaign on that, it is going to take about 6 months to make up for the losses to before the move when it started to empty out and the cost to move and rename the sim. Not to mention how much I paid to buy the sim. In other words, I won’t be retiring on the sim anytime soon. My real hope is to just break even on the sim, maybe come out a few thousand Lindens a month.

Before I moved the sim, I had a few lessors left and I wanted to take care of them. I bought an OpenSpace sim to put them into. This has turned into a demoralizing nightmare for myself from the new LL debacle of the pricing changes. I started out with three lessors in the sim, I’m down to two and one is shaky on staying and other can’t or won’t afford the price increases. Basically the sim is a total loss of about $300-400 I figure as I see it. I finally sold an open lot I had and now I might have a chance of making back on the sim, we shall see.

Lastly I have a new toy to announce shortly.

-Veyron

With Codie, GoSpeed, Gabby, Crap and others…. Now, only GoSpeed is in the same seasonal, festive outfit that I have had the sense to wear.
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Parkade Island using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Says he never gets hit on and is very lonely. Needs some attention and he’ll take off his mask….
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Eliza using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

When the Facelight 3000 is not enough, you need the generator powered Facelight 7000.
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Rampart using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

New home in Rampart - a house barge. Nice and dingy and dirty… Hmmm, might need some cleaning and some furniture…
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Rampart using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Trying out a new outfit I suggested…. Just’s pretty darn cute..
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Olive using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Looks like a new prototype homepage is being setup by Linden Labs….

This explains a lot…

-Veyron

Vint Falken and I in Rampart in front of the Neko Towers… telling me how she’s beeng a working girl since she was 18….
posted by Veyron Supercharge on Rampart using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]