Excellent Service, Linden Lab

Today I got the weekly newsletter from the Calas Galadhon group in SecondLife. In it my friend Ty Tenk, owner of the Calas Galadhon Park sims together with his partner Truck Meredith and gardener extraordinaire, tells us about the how the excellent customer services of Linden Lab came through for them after a recent mishap.

Ty tells us he was cleaning up at the wonderful Misty Mountains sim, and was returning stuff that visitors had carelessly left there, when he by a mistaken click on the mouse ended up sending back all of the beautiful sim to his own inventory. The woods, streams, grasses, flowers, animals - in short everything!

Ty called the customer service at Linden Lab and within thirty (30) minutes of his call for help the sim was rolled back and everything was restored to it´s former pristine condition.

In spite of the constant badmouthing of the customer services at Linden Lab going on among some residents, I have always maintained that they do a great job and handle the issues presented to them with as much speed and empathy as possible in the given circumstances. This just - once again - proves my point.

...and guess what, Ty didn't even have to tweet Rod Humble once!

Due Dates

Recently I have been thinking about a classic definition of a bohemian I heard a long time ago from my maternal grandfather. He used to tell me that a bohemian is someone who regards paying taxes and rent as unexpected and totally unforeseeable expenses.


I have always had difficulty remembering all the different dates of payments both in real life and in SecondLife. In real life Internet banking has saved me by allowing me to just add a bill when I get it so that I then can forget all about it, payment is made automatically on the day I decide on. I have the same problem with birthdays, rezdays and anniversaries.


In the beginning when I first started renting land in SecondLife I used to have huge problems remembering due dates. I had post-it stickers all over my computer and on the refrigerator to remind me, but they usually got to be so many of them that they either covered each other or I did not seem them because of the sheer amount of stickers everywhere.


Ars had the same problem, so when we moved to Southern Charm we made an arrangement with the landlady. Instead of paying our monthly tier on the 17th or 19th, whatever it was, we made an additional payment so that the due date always came at the end of each month, which is much easier to remember.


Today my payment of sim-tier to Linden Lab is handled by my credit card, which is also a relief. The correct amount is charged to my card monthly whenever it is due and I just pay the card bill.


I sometimes tell people that the invention of Internet-banking, the Global Positioning System and the electronic calenders have improved my quality of life with at least 15 %, just because my bills get payed on time and I can show up where I am expected to be at the correct time.

Real Life Hunk - Koji

My friend Eddi Haskell does a post about "a real life hunk" on his blog Eddi Haskell´s Second Life every week. I have done one earlier about Tom Ford, but when my attention was directed towards this handsome Japanese athlete by an Anonymous reader (who is a sports-geek) I felt the need to share. 


It´s strange how this person could know my taste in men, isn't it?

Dr.Koji Alexander Murofushi (室伏 アレクサンダー 広治 Murofushi Arekusandā Kōji, born October 8, 1974, in Numazu, Shizuoka Prefecture) is a Japanese hammer thrower. He has been among the world elite since the 2001 World Championships, where he won the silver medal, and he also won the gold medal in Athens Olympics.

Koji Murofushi comes from a hammer throwing family, as his father Shigenobu Murofushi is a former Olympian and held the Japanese record for 23 years until his son broke it, and his sister, Yuka Murofushi, throws both hammer and discus. Murofushi's Romanian-born mother, Serafina Moritz, was a javelin thrower for Romania, European Junior champion in 1968, and Romanian senior champion in 1970. She is now a glass painter, and lives in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture. 


All the information above is from the article about Koji on Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia.

Fashionable?

copyranter today informs us about this detestable ad on his blog; Canadian hair salon promotes itself. I left the following comment (with a minor correction of the spelling):


"This is absolutely sickening, horrific and shameful!


How anyone can even consider this to be a "cool" way to promote anything at all except spousal abuse is a sad statement on how men´s violence against women is still viewed in many parts of society.


Thanks for exposing these douche bags, copyranter!"


Another commenter gives us the address to the salons website where you can tell them what you think about their fashion sense. 

BREAKING NEWS: Firestorm Viewer Impregnates Avatar

It is rumored that The Much Honored Bock McMillan, Laird of Southern Charm and Prince of Cascade Falls, has been taken to hospital in a state of shock due to suddenly believing himself to have been impregnated by the Firestorm viewer.

According to what has been pieced together from interviews with the lairds primatar (name withheld) and members of the McMillan household this is what seems to have happened.

The laird had been having an extremely enjoyable - although very crashy - evening at the 4th Anniversary of DJ World. When he got back in-world after his last crash of the evening, he landed on his back-porch where he has set "home".

You cannot believe his amazement when he saw the red clouds disappearing and he suddenly found himself looking like this.

"I was in total shock", the laird revealed to his spokesman Wild Zepp, "I couldn´t understand how this happened. I have been celibate for the past year and a half - I swear!"

The laird told Wild that as soon as he came to his senses he took a look at the bulge growing out of his belly in "Edit". "The edit told me that the bulge was not a baby, but a "Medium sized building block type rock" or something like that. It disappeared mysteriously seconds afterwards, but I better get this checked. It could still be growing inside me."

After the laird McMillan had been rushed to his private physician for a check-up he was sent to The Royal McMillan Hospital (a part of the BMcM Corporation) for surgery to remove the block from him.

Wild Zepp also told the assembled SecondLife media that he expects that the laird will want to pursue this event with litigation against the Firestorm-team. "After all we oldtimers are used to having our hairs moved to our crotches and our boots stuck up our asses should we now also accept the indignity of being pregnant with rocks also, I ask you? No way, I say, we cannot have primatars traumatized like this by sloppy technicians. The laird will naturally file his suit in the United States and is expecting it to result in damages in the range over and above what that stupid woman with coffee got from the McDonald´s fast food restaurant.* The laird is after all nobility, whereas she was only a commoner. His feelings are deeper hurt than hers could ever be. Before the household decides whether to sue or not, we will of course welcome any reasonable offer from Miss Jessica Lyon or any other representative of the Firestorm-team." 


*) Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, also known as the McDonald's coffee case and the hot coffee lawsuit, is a 1994 product liability lawsuit that became a flashpoint in the debate in the U.S. after a jury awarded $2.86 million to a woman who was heavily burned by hot coffee purchased from fast food restaurant McDonald's. The trial judge reduced the total award to $640,000, and the parties settled for a confidential amount before an appeal was decided. 

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 !

Following Hurricane Irene

The last few day I have been busy keeping track of hurricane Irene as she closes in on New York City, which apart from Boston further to the north and parts of Canada, is where I know i have friends and loved ones in the hurricanes predicted trajectory.

The good news is that it keeps losing speed, the bad news is that it can still cause a lot of damage! I am hoping and wishing for them all to be safe. Love you all, guys and girls!

Courtesy of New York Times: Hurricane Irene Tracking Map