Installation of SP New Board Today

In a notice in the Second Pride Festival Group, the chairperson Rez Vale-Starfall announced, that the new board members will be installed on the board on Saturday, October 6th, 2018 at 12 PM (noon) SLT.

At the event, Rez will also be announcing the candidates for Community Relations Director.

The event will take place at the Second Pride HQ (SLurl), hope to see you all there!
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After the installation, the Second Pride board will consist of the following people.

Chairman - Rez Vale-Starfall (DJRez Cyberstar)

Secretary/Treasurer
--- Secretary - Mikey Vale (MikeAdam)
--- Treasurer - Bock McMillan

Infrastructure Director
--- Security Director - Tootsie Nootan
--- Building Director - Starter Evenstarr (starter232)

Outreach Director
--- Events Director - Nicky Windstorm (DunceMidwest)
--- Community Relations Director - vacant
--- Marketing Director - Jimmy Augustus-Gracemount (jimmmmmy)

Technology Director - Lee MacKay

(In bold and underlined I give you the board positions directed by the newly adopted bylaws, under them in cursive are the positions according to the previous bylaws under which the recently ended election were run. According to the new bylaws, those positions are to be maintained until any of them become vacant when the responsibilities will be transferred to the remaining director. As of 2020 the only positions available will be the ones decided by the new bylaws.) 

Boo Yah!

After more than three months of trepidation and with some lingering fears about everything that could possibly go wrong today The Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm, prince of Cascade Falls, Sovereign Ruler of the Commonwealth of Southern Enchantment and Outer Territories, UN appointed Protector of the Mount Whitney sim in SecondLife and pretender to the throne of Macedonia and dependent territories, finally decided to undertake the task of installing a router.

Contrary to his usual habits when dealing with technical products the laird decided to read the instructions carefully - three times. It is not certain if this change of regular behavior perhaps was the key to the success - but that aside - the process of installing the device and managing the settings went miraculously smoothly.

In honor of his amazing achievements the laird declared the day to be a National Holiday and sent all the princesses and princes home - except a mere 50 of them to serve his personal needs. He also awarded himself the Imperial Star, 1st class with Emerald in honor of his technological brilliance and wizardry.

Catching Up with My Lives

After a good night sleeps my internal hard drives have started working again as they are supposed to do and I have started catching up with my lives.

So what has been going on while I was away in Uppsala for three days and zonked out for a fourth?

My parents, who live on the fifth floor in their building, have been trapped inside for four days because the elevator stopped working, apparently some safety fuse burned out. 

In modern day Sweden it has become customary for the service companies to keep as few essential parts as possible in stock, so they had to order it from the manufacturers in Germany or some similarly "distant" country, and not by express delivery or overnight shipping either. Instead my elderly parents and some of their similarly elder neighbors were held as prisoners in their homes.

My mother told me she had actually gone down to the mailbox, which in modern Swedish buildings are located on the ground floor close to the entrance, on the second day. Going down had been easy she said, but getting back up to the apartment again had taken her several hours in the stairs. I promptly scolded her for this adventurous trip, while at the same time understanding why she did it.

Luckily my parents - as always - had been well stocked with food and other essentials, except they ran out of milk, and could stay indoors.

However it seems to me that modern Swedish society seems to willingly making itself more and more vulnerable and unable to handle "unexpected" or other crisis situations. Our modern day society seems to live with the concept that everyone is young, healthy and fully functional, which should be apparent for everyone that we aren't as the population gets more and more elderly and modern technology exposes us to a larger dependency of spare parts. Nothing these days can be banged into place or fixed with a rubber band, you need an electronic card or something highly complicated.

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My dear friend and mentor in blogging, the amazing Eddi Haskell celebrated his seventh rezday on Wednesday January 22, 2014.

Belated congratulations to you my friend!

Eddi shares some of his accumulated wisdom on life in SecondLife in his celebratory Ask Eddi-post, Ask Eddi: What Advice Can You Give To Others After Being a Second Life Resident For 7 years?


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"Sailor in the wild..." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"911, called." Photography by Tomais Ashdene

"Isle of Mousai" Photography by Tomais Ashdene

My husband Tom has been busy photographing and today posted this wonderful picture on his Tumblr. For more of Tomais photography please visit Flickr - Tomais Ashdene or Photomonkey SL (NSFW).

Note: I changed the photos because my hubby informed me that the two above were the ones he actually did while I was away, while the first picture I posted was done several months ago.

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My bosom buddy Apmel Goosson on his blog "My Avatar's Name is Apmel" in two posts informs his readers about the project that has been going on Tom's and my home-sim Southern Charm over the last week, which will come to it's conclusion with a concert by Ultraviolet Alter in an installation by Betty Tureaud today Friday January 24, 2014, 2PM SLT.

SLurl to the event

Apmel's posts can be read here: Oändligt långt från Southern Charm (in Swedish, but translation is available) and here Friday Tip: The Infinity Space over Southern Charm (in Swedish but translation is available)

Photoshoot with Ricco

This evening I went along to watch as Tom had a photoshoot with Ricco Saenz for his blog Second Sighting. Ricco Saenz's journey in SL.

The shoot took place at the wild, mysterious and beautiful Dark Moon Avalon Isle sim. Tom was in his centaur avatar while handsome Ricco was a satyr. I could tell that the two knew each other well because their collaboration on the set was effortless and smooth.

In one of the pictures they took, Tom was supposed to have an arrow sticking into his bodacious rump and he was whining about it. I and Ricco ganged up on poor Tom and told him to "man up" and "take it like a man".

While the guys were posing, chatting and taking pictures I tried for the longest while to add Ricco's blog to my SecondLife blogroll, but it just would not stick whatever I tried. So I blamed it on "that darned technology" and decided try doing it after I had logged off.

When I tried it again it still did not let itself be added but I was reminded by a similar experience a while back so I checked my blogroll. Sure enough, the reason I could not add it was that it had already been added a long time ago duhhhhh. 

Technical Malfunctions

Since a couple of weeks I have been experiencing some strange technical problems in SecondLife. Below I will give you a complete list of the various problems, the causes that have been suggested to me and what I have done to try to solve them.

I noticed all the problems at the same time, so as far as I know they arose simultaneously. At that time I was using the Firestorm viewer.

Problem 1:  Repetition of my chat in local

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I speak in local chat all my remarks are repeated once. It looks like this in local chat:

"Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat.I am speaking in local chat."

or 

"Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat.

A.A: Bla bla bla

B.B: Yodel-yodel-yodel

C.C: Di-da-de-da-dum-dee-dum.

Bock McMillan: I am speaking in local chat."

What I have tried to illustrate above is that sometimes the repetition is instantaneous while at other times there is a delay of between 10-60 seconds. There are no brackets around the repetitions. Mostly I can see it happening myself but at other times I don´t see it.

Suggested causes: a) Translation is activated, b) Pushing Page Up, c) Lag

a) I have checked this at least 25 times and translation is never, and has never been, activated, besides if it were a translation it would - usually - have brackets around the repetition.

b) No, I do not try t annoy myself and everyone else at the venue by pushing the "Page Up" key on my keyboard every time I have spoken in chat. (You will have to take my word for this, I´m afraid.)

c) Yes, it happens in venues where there is lag, but it can also happen where there is no lag at all.

Problem 2: Repetition of my chat in Instant Message

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I speak in IM all my remarks are repeated once. Reportedly sometimes the repetition is instantaneous while at other times there is a delay of between 10-30 seconds. I cannot see it myself but the people I am talking with tell me about it.

Suggested causes: See Problem 1.

Problem 3:  Repetition of payments

Frequency: Daily

Description: When I buy, donate or tip my payment is repeated either immediately or within 60 seconds afterwards. This means I make two purchases and receive two deliveries of everything I buy or that I donate or tip twice the amount I had intended.

Suggested causes: Lag (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this)

Problem 4: HUD's are turned on or off involuntarily

Frequency: Daily

Description: If I have a HUD turned on it turns itself off and if I have it turned off it turns itself on.

Suggested causes: Lag. (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this.)

Problem 5: Involuntary movement

Frequency: Weekly

Description: When I am standing around or dancing at a venue my avatar starts moving around until it ends up in a corner from where it cannot be moved.

Suggested causes: Lag. (See Problem 1 c and my additional information about this.)

Measures I have already taken to try to solve the issues, to no avail so far.

1. I have cleared my caches 984,367 times (Well, no less than 100 times if that is more believable)

2. I have restarted  my modem no less than 25 times, on occasions leaving it off more than an hour.

3. I have re-installed the SecondLife viewer more than 20 times, making certain that I did a fresh install every time.

4. Switched to Linden Lab´s viewer 3 and then back again to Firestorm and then back again to Linden viewer 3, making sure every time that I did a fresh install.

5. I have talked with a sweet Linden on the labs Live-Chat support. She made the same suggestions that I have listed above (1-2), checked my avatar for corruption and told me it was low but she was going to run a cleaning procedure anyway, which she did. 

6. I have taken off all my attachments and HUDs and reset the HUDs.

7. I have run several virus and malware scans on my computer, both online and offline.

Today, after yet another fresh install, I took the drastic measure to delete everything in my Inventory that was younger than sixty days. Luckily I have not been purchasing much lately, but unluckily all your holiday greetings had to go I am afraid. Results of this drastic measure are still pending. This measure did not help at all!

(The information in this post was later turned into the support ticket #01587329 I sent to Linden Lab)

Rage Against Technology

I live with the not unreasonable expectation that every time I do a certain thing to a machine or with software programs I should and can expect the same results.

This expectation has more often than not been proven to be false, which absolutely stuns me every time. I think of myself as a human being with some emotional weaknesses but on the whole mostly rational. The fact that machines and software programs have the audacity to act up against me and take on a will of their own totally and completely pisses me off!

What has made the otherwise meek, happy-go-lucky and ever so humble Bock so angry you wonder? Well, this is what happened.

Yesterday I read about the new Linden Lab Beta Viewer 3.2 on Sven Idyll´s blog. He was very convincing so I uninstalled my Firestorm viewer, cleaned up my computer from anything SecondLife and downloaded and installed the new viewer.

I was totally enchanted by the exceptional usability of the new user interface and by the fact that my personal and group IM´s were vertically stacked (see picture).

It´s an awesome feature that prevents you from missing any IM´s and also keeps them collected in the same space instead of spreading out all over ones screen.

Well today I did the mistake of reading Sven Idylls blog again and seeing his praise for Starlight I decided to try that feature too. I shouldn't have done that! Because when I had installed the Starlight my vertically stacked IMs disappeared and seem to be lost forever.

In an effort to try to retrace my earlier steps I have uninstalled Starlight. uninstalled  Beta Viewer 3.2, cleaned up my computer completely from SecondLife, re-installed Firestorm and chosen the vertical tabs, uninstalled Firestorm, cleaned up my computer, re-installed Beta Viewer 3.2.

Nothing helps and my vertically stacked IM´s are gone and instead I end up with this (see picture).

Thinking about this I realize that I am mostly angry with myself. When the f**k will I learn not to mess with something that is good!

P.S. Finally I must emphasize that this was none of Sven´s doing he only got me excited when I read his blog. If I in any way have given you that impression I apologize to Sven Idyll!