Post Valentine's Blues

Have I mentioned I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day? Ever since whatever her name was in 1st or 2nd grade MADE us exchange those cute little valentine's cutouts with everyone, whether you meant it or not .. I haven't liked it much. Then there was the time my boyfriend's dad sent me flowers and a wonderful card about how great I was, and my boyfriend thought it was just another day. And those are the two GOOD valentine's I've had. The rest were .. well ... just another day.

So why do I have the post Valentine's Day blues? We decorated the Zyngo park for Valentine's Day and now I don't want to take them down! It wasn't like Valentine's Day was especially good this year or anything .. it was .. just another day as usual.

It's almost too early to decorate for St. Patrick's day ... i need a holiday between the two! It's not leap year and Easter comes in April ..too early for spring flowers ... maybe ice skating? Olympics will soon be over but ice skating .. mhmm.. that might just work.

We'll get back to you about it!

It's 5 o'clock somewhere on Wolf Isle!

Wolf Isle! It exists! It was worth the wait!

I'm back from running away from hom..err...my vacation :) I stayed a month with Wolf and the family and it was awesome!

Zyngo Game Park & More is up and running on it's spot in Wolf Isle. We have 3 houses there.

Wolf Pet Creations new store build is up - but mostly empty. The MR Design eye affiliate vendors are up. That's about it because I discovered -----FISHING!!!!!!!

OMG! How did I go 3 years in SL without ever fishing! We will soon have a most awesome fishing area with cool customs .. well maybe .. because ..we'll ..i'm

Islands and Patience

Miscalculation is a bad thing.

Second Life opened up it's move to Zindra on June 29th and since we had decided to go the island route I didn't really work to get my ticket in early because I thought - 1) hey ..i'm giving the bottom line of LL an extra $250 up front and an extra $100 a month or $1200 a year ($3495 a year total), they'll like that beacuse hey! that's a definite profit for a what .. a $400? computer .. IP address ..etc .. and 2) it has a different classification under the tickets and after all how many folks could be going the island route?

So now it's July 7th - my $250 is still in my account and we have no island. Maybe a zillion people wanted islands and they had to order more servers.

I'm "turning on my patience" or "practicing my patience" as we tell the little ones in my family.

And I'm laughing .. at who i'm not sure .. probably myself .. BUT

I have managed to read 4 decent books .. go 11 plus levels in Everquest on an old SK i had there (I'm at Wolf's so we play together ) and make about 30K plat in EQ -

I should be making clothes for SL or zyngo skins or something but I'm having fun doing other things and once that darn island finally magically appears we are going to be having tons of fun setting it up ...

So I'll wait ..and try to do it patiently.

The Short Straw

The last couple of weeks I've been hitting up various Lindens and their offices hours to help us decide which option we want to pursue on the whole .. stay or move ..and if move where to issue we have.

If you haven't been to Blondin or Blue's office hours I highly recommend them. I usually don't get to go because of work, but because we are off for a bit, I've been teleporting my avatar self just about everywhere.

The array of people attending ... and their opinions and downright tenacity is truly amazing. The amount of somewhat passive agressive crap Blondin and Blue at least pretend to put up with is staggering. I'm probably guilty of some of it myself.

It's been loads of fun though. I hope they find it somewhat amusing as well even if they did draw the short straw on the deal.

See you in world,

Tawney,
Wolf's

Fun with Age Verification - is it dishonest? disrespectful?

Ah yes, now that the new Second Life viewer is online and the Zindra continent preview is in full swing it's time to think about the whole age verification issue.

First off, I really don't get the whole Aristostle will have my info and dispurse it issue. I kinda go on the theory that NOTHING is secret - whether that is first or second life :) Now there may be things people don't know but it's not because the information is not out there.

Soo -the powers that be at SL have assured us that payment info on file is enough to access adult places and they are correct about that - BUT once i discovered that if the land owner checked the allow only age verified box I COULDN'T go to their parcel .. then i DID age verify Tawney Bian, and i used my real info. So now I'm age verified and payment info verified and the only way you can keep me out of your space is a group only tag or a ban!

BUT I got to thinking, from a "we do want customers to find us" and what if THEY don't want to give their real info to verify standpoint we have the whole - CAN you REALLY age verify with dead people's info?

Well .. my alt ..... err... i ain't saying one way or another!

However, hypothetically speaking ...

This IS for SL afterall ... lets at least be creative about it folks!

Step 1: Social Security Death Index - if you use the ADVANCED feature ..you can pick somewhere you always wanted to live for example and the age you wish you were ... the possibilties for creativity are endless.

Step 2: maybe choose the name you WISH your parents had given you .. an enemies first name .. an old lover's last .. a childhood friend .. see .. amazing possibilities!

Step 3. White Pages - you can use the zip code and name info to get a street address ..

Step 4: hypothetically speaking i didn't even check the box that wanted me to say it was true and correct info .. though legally it IS true and correct ... it doesn't ask if it's YOUR info .. but it verified my alt anyway .. well .. it WOULD have .. had i done it that way you know.

Sooooooo ... questions remain:

Is it disrespectful to the dead person you don't know or does it give them a "second chance" to live?

Is it dishonest to age verify with someone else's info or because the info IS correct does that make a difference? What about if you didn't click the "this info is true box?"

Does it matter whose info you use if you really ARE an adult in the first place?

The Seven Deadly Sins...Errr..I Mean Checks!

I downloaded the new preview of the proposed Second Life viewer they made available for testing today - because I'm getting my "Click It to Pick It" .. "It's Your World - choose ALL of it" adult content consumer education campaign ready and I wanted to see for myself how it was going to work. I'm a see for myself kinda chick :)

Soooo ...I go to preferences before logging in and under "Ratings" .. which is in the general tab so easy to find ... and the statement is:

I want to access content rated: PG only is checked AND I can't choose anything else. I think to myself, "Mhmmm." {for real}

I log in.

Once in world I WAS able to go back to preferences and look at ratings, and now my options are not grayed out. I can choose between PG Only, PG and Mature, and my favorite - PG, Mature, and Adult. I clicked apply and "Ah Ha!" we were good to go. {for real}

Then I pulled up search. In the All search tab I selected PG Content, Mature Content right below it, and Adult Content right below that and played around a bit, finding myself - if only it was that easy offline :)

Then I went to the Classifieds tab - another "Mhmm?mmm" {for real} .. I am only checked for PG Content. So I check Mature Content. Then check Adult content.

And Move Along --

SAME story on Events, (no options on Showcase), Land Sales, Places, (no options on People), and Groups. EVERYTIME I moved to a new tab I have to check Mature and Adult.

Sooooooo .... in Preferences I have to choose I want to view mature and adult content before I get to search, THEN on SIX tabs I have to specifically choose Mature and Adult Content before I can "see" them.

7 Deadly Sins = 7 Deadly Checks ...(ok 13 if you count checking both mature and adult) but you get the idea.

Shoot, in some places I'm not even committing ONE deadly sin by being an adult, much less all 7.

Now they are just starting to amuse the heck out of me :)

Wish you well & i'll see you in world!

Tawney Bian,
Wolf's

Zindra - To Move or Not to Move ? That is the Question

As we - we being the adults who deal with adult stuff in Second Life - anxiously await the announcement that Zindra is open for the big 2 week preview the questions loom closer ...

Do we move all of it to Zindra? - I'm going on the theory that we can move all of it .. our homes ..businesses .. game park .. the whole thing -- because i've been resigned if not entirely happy about the whole thing since we intentionally purchased our land in a "mature" region instead of a PG one .. but I'd move to seriously pissed off if they said .. well you can move half ..your other half doesn't qualify .. one advantage of owning a buncha land in the same sim is a buncha prims in a pool after all -

Do we move just the adult part of our business to Zindra? - while we pay for a whole sim ..we don't own a whole sim .. just MOST of it ... so in theory we "could" move probably 2 of the 3 fantasy suites and the statues and not pay anymore tier ...but again ..there's the whole prim pool thing we have going on which is rather handy .. and it would be JUST my luck that as soon as we took some land in Zindra .. then poof ..the land we've been waiting to open up in Coulours would magically appear for one linden or something and then where would we be? ..

Do we just ditch the adult content part and stay where we are?

Do we take them up on their offer to give us a reduced price for an island and pay an extra $100 bucks a month?

I've been checking out various Linden's office hours .. and the Land Expo presentations and researching the whole island thing. I think the Linden employees are trying very hard, it's just that it's hard to explain that mature and PG didn't work out like they planned .. mature got a little more press than is good for business ... well other than the sex trade business .. and that's hard for ordinary corporate boards to accept .. when they see these millions of potential people NOT coming into SL because "It's just one of those internet sex sites." We know it's alot more than that but the press and public like "the story", not details that might contain truth. Anyway Blondin gets the patience of the year award for his office hour session this week - and not just because he answered one of my questions :)

The Land Expo was somewhat useful to learn about islands .. even though I think I scared [or possibly just irritated?] MJ Linden .. hey HE ASKED why we were there :) ... i just told the truth .. i generally ALWAYS tell the truth ... i was there to explore options about whether or not to move to Zindra or take them up on their reduced island fee offer or not .. in his defense the employees have taken alot of crap from alot of people about the adult content issue .. so I get where he was coming from

i didn't even point out that i took OFF my "I am adult content" tag before porting over to the site .. {speaking of the site .. /rant on y'all should DO something about having the same pose for all the balls on the benches there - that irritated me more than the whole A/C thing does - because it's SUCH a .. i don't know how to explain it ... but it's not a good for my avi kinda pose *L* /rant}

Anyway, MJ and Mia and Kate all gave some useful info or at least where to find useful info about island ownership so i'm glad I went

We've wanted an island since forever - or at least about a month or two since joining SL - i have visions and possibly even delusion of grandeur regarding my ability to rent out land - curtailed only by my cynical and realistic approach .. that if you can lose money in SL .. then i'll find a way to embrace it and make it my own ... who else owns a game park that costs them about an extra $100 real dollars a month ...

Mhmm ...maybe we ditch the game park and get the island ... only then I want more than one island because .. i have this plan .... damn ..where's that rich benefactor when you need em?

What I do know is this .. we'll make the best of it .. whichever option we end up doing .. i just wish I knew which option that will be

Wish you well,

Tawney,
Wolf's