Treasure

Today as I was rummaging around in my inventory I struck gold when I found this mounted photography of my Ars. I had completely forgotten I had it.

The picture shows Ars exactly like he looked when I first saw him and fell in love. Beautiful isn't he?

He used to wear that silly - or should I say cool? - little hat all the time for a few months during the summer of 2007. It made him very easy to spot, which I was grateful for at the time!

I am sorry to say I don´t have the texture itself, so I took a picture of the mounted photo instead. I couldn't get it completely straight so it has a very slight slant.

Just Floating

After a few weeks of almost total focus on first life I have again slowly started to immerse myself back into my second life.

This time I am feeling a certain resistance; I am not sure why really. A possible reason could of course be that the ones that have been closest to me for a long time have for the time being more or less dropped out of Secondlife, some due to personal priorities and others due to actions taken by Linden Lab. Nevertheless I miss them all badly sometimes.

I have also recently accepted a proposal to take part in a mediation between myself and "the opposition", as I call them, or "the innocents", as they prefer to call themselves in this Swedish Civil War in SecondLife. We will in time see what comes out of this, in the mean time I am refraining as much as possible to read most Swedish SecondLife blogs except PetGirl´s, Apmel´s, Vanadis´s and a provocative newcomer (well, so he says and for now I accept it) who calls his blog Znapscrap.

To take part in the mediation I have set up a few conditions.

Primarily I have asked that we actually talk in voice. My experience is that otherwise some participants do not actually read what is written but start typing halfway into what anyone says because they assume they know what the other person is actually going to say. This only results in intentional or unintentional misinterpretations, with voice this can be corrected swiftly.

My second condition is that at least one or two of the "first-liners" take part, not only some of their followers.

Although some time has now elapsed since I accepted the proposal of mediation nothing more has come of it yet, I do not want to speculate in why.

Meanwhile I am taking it very easy and slow, mostly relaxing and trying not to worry about anyone or anything at all. I am just floating around, but luckily facing upwards.

What's In A Name?

I am Bock McMillan and Bock is I. We are the same person in almost every aspect of our joint personality.

Psychologically, intellectually and emotionally Bock and I are one and the same. We have the same communication skills - or lack thereof, we share the same knowledge and have the same professional or personal skills. Our self-confidence, personal qualities and interests are the same.

The only aspects where we are different is in parts of our physical appearances, in which world we manifest ourselves to others and some superficial activities like dancing, flying and teleporting.

Bock is taller and somewhat better looking than myself, he is only seen by others in the virtual world of SecondLife (and sometimes elsewhere). I am shorter and do not look as stunning as Bock and I am only perceived by others in first life, what some call real life.

Nonetheless I am always myself in both worlds and Bock is always with me in both worlds too.

I was Bock before I came to SecondLife, the only thing that was added when I joined SecondLife was the surname and I chose it with great care. I will remain Bock even if SecondLife - God forbid - should one day cease to exist.

The word "bock" in Swedish can mean many things. Google translates it to the following words in English; Buck, goat, trestle, stud, duck, tick, cross, billy-goat, fault and howler. The word holds even more meanings, although they are rarer.

Swedes - or most other speakers of a Germanic language - who first see it and do not know me often at first interpret it in the meaning "horny man".

I will not lie, the double entendre did not escape me when I once chose it, but the name was originally derived from the Swedish word "Stenbock" which is the Swedish form of the astrological sign of Capricorn.(No, I do not believe in it!)

It always infuriates me to see SecondLife called "a game", because it was never ever that for me. If it had been just a game I would not have stayed on as long as I have, I get easily bored with games and game playing. I do respect if other use it in that way for their war-games, vampire-games or role plays, but those scenes never held any attraction for me.

To me SecondLife is my +1 existence. I am there for the other real people and the community, the players can go play with themselves or others like them.

Payment Issues

My former credit card expired in September and my bank sent me a new card for the coming three years well before the expiration date.

As the conscientious customer I am I immediately wanted to update my billing information with Linden Lab so that I wouldn't run into any problems with money in-world or tier payments for Southern Charm.

I am experienced in filling out forms of all sorts and foresaw no problems with doing this. It was easy enough to remove the old credit card, but when I got to the point where I wanted to plug in my new card there was no option to do that. The only option that was apparent seemed to be the PayPal. I did not want to use that option as I am at war with PayPal at the moment for their support of certain hate-groups.

Being a Premium Customer in SecondLife, I contacted the live support chat and was soon taken care of by a charming person with an exotic name that I cannot remember. I described my problem to him/her and together we tried to figure out a solution by looking at the form. Neither of us could find an easy or obvious way to add a new credit card to my account.

After a few minutes my support-person came up with the brilliant idea that I should log into SecondLife and try to buy L$ (the currency used in-world). When I followed the advice a form came up that allowed me to submit my new credit card information and get new L$. Mission accomplished both of us thought.

However, a few days later I received an e-mail from Linden Lab informing me with the following content. (Click to enlarge)

The e-mail is very friendly and understanding but obviously the information I had supplied once before was not enough it seems. 

Following the instructions I had soon added the new information and could authorize payment of the  tier I was due the next day. I also got an immediate confirmation that my debt had been payed in full and that my account status should now be active.

For some reason I cannot understand, it appears you must supply the same information for different uses with Linden Lab, one for buying currency in-world and another for paying tier. I don't know yet if Linden Lab needs the same information again for the yearly payment of my Premium Account.

It seems to me that Linden Lab should make it easier for the customers who are willing to pay for their services to do so without having to contact support or getting an e-mail about being late with payment.

P.S. And now I have started thinking I must have done something wrong when I removed the old credit card, but I cannot remember - and if the user makes mistakes wouldn't the payment system make allowances for that and let us easily correct the mistakes we make?

All Is Well In Both Worlds

"The Artists Mother" by Edouard Manet

Today mother is finally back home again.

My mother is tired and happy and has her oxygen plugged in while she rest in her own bed without lumps and with her own soft pillows and with her old companion pampering and fussing over her.

My father is happy and tired because he didn't sleep at all last night from was worrying that something would happen to prevent mother from coming home. (So now you know where I get my worrying from.)

I am just happy that they are both happy. What the future holds we do not know, but we will deal with it when it comes.

Coming Out

Tomorrow is the National Coming Out Day.

"The National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an internationally observed civil awareness day for coming out and discussion about people that are gay, lesbian, bisexual,transgender (LGBT), etc. It is observed by members of the LGBT communities and their supporters (often referred to as "allies") on October 11 every year (or October 12 in the United Kingdom).

Despite its name, National Coming Out Day (so called because it originated as an event in the United States) is in fact observed in many countries, including Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (in the UK it is celebrated on October 12)."

All the above is excerpts from an article about the event on Wikipedia.

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I am one of the few fortunate - or perhaps unfortunate - gay men I know who never had to deal with a coming out process. Both my parents and my older sibling actually seemed to be aware of the fact before I even knew what the word meant.

There was a short period in Kindergarten that I sometimes would fall in love with women also, other than that I have almost exclusively had boys or men as objects of my affection or desire. To be quite honest there was a period between the ages of 12 to 17 that I sometimes could get sexually aroused by women also, but hell I was turned on by just about anything with a temperature and a pulse then so I am not sure that really counts.

The last phase was cured when I saw the movie "Amacord" by Federico Fellini at a film club. Do any of you remember the scene where the young Federico meets an older woman in a blue or green Angora sweater with humongous bouncing boobs that she presses against his face? Well, that scene permanently turned me off boobs forever and crushed any hopes my father my have had for my inclinations changing at puberty.

So as I was accepted and loved for what I was by my immediate family there was never anything dramatic about it, much the same as it is for most heterosexuals I believe. Of course I have also encountered bigotry but never in a way that made me question my self-worth. 

The only thing that I was sad about when I accepted my own sexuality was that I would never have children, but even that has changed nowadays.

Sour Grapes

Hilarious, someone takes himself very seriously.

Of course one can say that I am pretending not to care for something I do not or cannot have, but I feel strangely honored in being singled out for this treatment.