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