Hip Hip Hooray, It's My 10th Rezday Today!

How time flies! It amazes me to think that today I am celebrating my tenth anniversary in our wonderful world of SecondLife.

Bock 2017 by Richard De Grataine Suoh

It's been a wonderful and amazing journey and I wouldn't wish to be without it. In those days we were born ugly and we stayed ugly. We duckwalked and had our clothes plastered to our bodies. Some days we would crash 45-50 times a day and still we would soldier on through those bad days and log right back in again. After each teleport you had to check yourself, so that you hadn't ended up with your shoe sunk into your ass or your hair stuck to your groin.

But we sure did have fun, even when we and watched the number of logged in residents getting close to first 5,000 holding our breath and waiting for SecondLife to crash. Then that number rose to 10,000, 20,000 until we no longer thought about it.

Bock 2007 by Bock McMillan

Life improved gradually - and at times very fast - but most of the time there was some improvement that gave us all hope and energy. Well except for under the reign of M Linden, those years were a total waste and we were all rather despondent until Philip Linden took the reins again. At the moment we are experiencing another golden age with great improvements under the benevolent rule of Ebbe Linden.

I am going to stick around for a couple of years more to see where this whole exciting adventure ends. It's going to be a thrill!

The European Union & The Malaysian Jetliner (Updated)

On Thursday May 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 (en route from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) crashed in Eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members.

The tragedy has since lead to many speculations concerning what caused the airplane to crash, among other theories so far it is believed that the plane could have been shot down by a missile.

John Aravosis, over at the AMERICAblog, yesterday posted an interesting analysis of the event and it's political ramifications involving Russia, the European Union and the United States, see Destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight poses huge conundrum for Obama, Europe.

At this point, US intelligence thinks the Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine shot down the Malaysian airliner, and they suspect it was with a Russian (Soviet) “Buk” missile. And the Pentagon said today that it was basically inconceivable that the rebels could have learned to operate the missiles without Russian help. There’s also a serious question as to where the Russian rebels got their Russian weapons from (take a guess).

But it’s worse than that. CNN was saying yesterday that while it would have been obvious to the Russians that this was a civilian airliner, it would have been next to impossible for the Russian rebels in Ukraine to know the difference between a Ukrainian military plane and a civilian airliner. The Russians knew they couldn't tell the difference, the Russians knew they were providing weapons and training to people who were planning on shooting down planes in an area that was a major corridor for international civilian air traffic. And the Russians went ahead and trained them to shoot down the planes anyway (if, everything we now suspect ends up being true).

That’s not an accident. And it’s not simple negligence. It borders on premeditated murder.

You train someone to shoot down planes, in a zone full of civilian airliners, knowing full well that the people you’re training have no way of knowing which planes are civilian and which are military. You know they’re going to be killing innocent people, and you simply don’t care (or perhaps even want them to). That’s not a “mistake.”

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Although we are still at an early stage, and there has been no formal inquiry into the cause of the crash yet, I believe that Mr. Aravosis is on the right track. 

It will now be very interesting to see if - and how - the European Union and the United States decide to take action against Russia and "Little Father" Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, in the latter's attempts  "to reconstitute the Soviet Union in all its deadly glory".

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Update
Malaysia Airlines has released the full names and nationalities of every person on board. There were:

• 192 Dutch, including one who had a dual Dutch/U.S. citizenship
• 44 Malaysian
• 27 Australian
• 12 Indonesian
• 10 British, including one who had dual U.K./African citizenship
• 4 German
• 4 Belgian
• 3 Filipino
• 1 Canadian
• 1 New Zealander

Crash, crash, crash and crash again

Chaos by Rob Ijbema

I haven´t crashed as much as I have done the last two days since 2007, it is getting really boring. Even if I can still remember the evening when I crashed 24 times and came back these days I don´t have Ars waiting to get back too, so I usually give up after five or six crashes these days.

Anything can cause a crash. Editing an object, changing clothes or taking a picture but most of all simply trying to teleport.

For more paintings by Rob Ibejma please visit his blog "Painting Le Tour - 3 weeks of nothing but pain and torture"

DJ World - 4th Anniversary

 
 

Oh what a night it was! What a beautiful, wonderful, laggy and nostalgic night. I haven´t crashed so many times since early in the spring of 2008.

The music was good, people were in a great mood and the chatting in local and IM was funny. Jeff Ellsworth, Ziggy Starsmith, Larz Kaz, Khar Indigo, DJ Insyx, Flad Dagostino, Justin Pastorelli, Flupke Bekkers, Adonis Lubitsch and Trace Junkers were all there looking hunky as ever - except Khar who was sweet and not hunky at all - together with a lot of avatars I had met in my early days and some I had actually never seen at all. Sasch Petrov, the organizer of the event, was even seen dancing with this awesome Jimmy-hunk I remembered seeing at Second Pride.

Sure there was a bit too much "gesturbating", after all the event was at the Arsenal club in Gay Zone Germany and our German brothers love their gestures as we all know. I only had to mute about three Germans to get a tolerable noise level.

Sadly though the organizers decided to cancel the event after the third or fourth sim-crash, when we had only gotten through half the line-up, but Sarco Halderman had done his set and the time was getting late in real life so I was not too upset.

Sarco´s voice sounded hoarser and sexier than ever, Millimina Salamander and I suspected he had a very bad cold or a throat infection. When I asked him after his set he told me he had been whispering so as not to wake up his man, Harley, who was snoozing away in the next room.

I also enjoyed listening to the music of Sasch Petrov, Ralphy Triellis and Karl Kalchek for the first time, I hope to hear them again in the future.

In short everyone was there - or wished they had been - and some of the straight people too. Both my bosom-buddies sirhc DeSantis and Apmel Goosson made an appearance and even ush Underwood, who set foot on a German sim for the first time ever if I understood correctly.

UPDATE: I just caught this news on the Gay World News blog: Due to sim lag issues and because it went offline and restarted each hour… we regrettably had to cancel the DJ Night for today. We hope to have again this great event at a later date. Thanks All for coming !