SecondLife Declared Doomed

On the evening of the day that SecondLife had been declared to be doomed by a Swedish journalist in the country´s largest morning paper (the article in Swedish "In the Company of Dead Avatars") the Much Honored Bock McMillan, laird of Southern Charm and prince of Cascade Falls, decided to go dancing as a neko at Club OrmDricka.

"If my world is dying, I sure the hell haven't noticed it yet. Why would I take the condescending declaration of my worlds impending death from the visiting snobbish Swedish journalist Ms. Hanna Fahl of Dagens Nyheter as the truth? She knows nothing!

On the contrary, now that we are doing away with the outdated technology that has been holding us back for the last couple of years due to an extremely loudmouthed and vocal minority of residents. We have a wonderful future waiting and I am happy, thrilled and excited to remain here and see the amazing things that are to come and to be part of the wonderful and vibrant SecondLife community, my people!"

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)

One Down...

Today I had a long conversation with my stepson Guyke. We discussed several things that were good to get out of the way.

As I told Guyke, "It is at least good for me to know, that I have two wonderful men who love me, care for me and look out for me even if the two of you should never see eye to eye on anything else again."

However, I still believe and hope that this tiff can be laid behind us soon, when I have spoken to the other party involved.

Cease and Desist

I am receiving a shitload of offline messages from two of my loved ones in SecondLife.

As I understand it the two are at each others throats for some reason that I do not yet know or understand. I am not feeling up to getting involved in this today, but I am feeling better and will be in-world tomorrow again to speak with you both in turn. I am convinced we will work this out.

Meanwhile I would like to tell and kindly request the following.

• I love you both very much and refuse to imagine a SecondLife without either of you in it.
• Please, cease and desist from any further direct or indirect communication with each other for the time being.
• No one moves anywhere or leaves anything before I have had the possibility to talk with the party concerned.

See you both tomorrow!

I ask that some responsible person that knows what I am talking about in this strange post please does me the favor of directing my two loved ones attention to this post. Thank you, I am much obliged!

Setback

I´m not quite sure what happened, but suddenly and quite unexpectedly - for me at least - I am back in the dumps. The medication I am on have now so limited the scope and depths of my feelings that everything seems connected with "tired". "Happy and tired", "doing fine and tired", "sad and tired", "bored and tired" and sometimes even "tired and tired".

Even I get bored with myself, its no wonder that others do too.

Photography by Peter Marlow

The way I know if I am feeling better or worse is if I wish contact with others or not. Right now I just avoid contact, I can easily do that in first life by turning off the cellphone or simply by refusing to answer, in SecondLife it´s not that easy, so I am staying away until my mood changes.

Just A Beautiful Picture

Photography by W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978)

This picture somehow reminds me of a western movie I once saw, cannot remember which. The picture is said to be taken during WWII and show a soldier washing up after coming home.

The Doomsday Survivors

On Sunday I met up with Dej before going to the commemoration party for Circe Broom.

We were both feeling like shit but for various reasons. I had my "bad-flu-masquerading-as-an-uncommon-cold-with-the-head- and- body-aches-not-turning-up-until-much-later" while Dej had some ugly first life issues unfolding. We decided that we sure as hell were N-O-T going to get properly dressed for the whole holiday instead we would just slouch around in our pajamas and curlers looking at the decorated Christmas tree!

Photo by Dejerrity Mycron

Yesterday - which was the big Christmas event in Sweden - my parents sent me some Christmas food and my Christmas presents with my first life brother in-law, so that I would not totally miss out on the festivities. I stowed it all into the fridge and haven´t felt any inclination to even look at it. If I even think of food I just want to throw up. They also sent some medications though and those were helpful, both the expectorant cough-medication and the Serevent^® Diskus^®. I can actually breathe again without much problem.

Dej and I have decided to blame it all - everything - on the damned Mayans and their latter day doomsday prophets/con men.