Help Island - Beta

Glorious. Wonderful. Amazing.

Being able to sit down and work through an orientation without interruptions, silly-buggers, people moving vendors into your face, or getting shot in the head, shoved or pushed. Without having your newbie's questions lost in the noise.

To be able to give people the time they deserve. Because they are people deserving of our respect and time and care.

It's mostly quiet there at the moment, but I've already been through a busy patch, and when bedtime hit, it was nice to be able to hand off the last half hour or so of question and answer to a trusted Mentor.

So far, my limited experience there has been great. Of course there's plenty of newbies not getting there, but still. It's just such a nice environment to work in.

Now all we need is a little decor and architecture.

Anything can be Everything

I often like to say "When you have nothing, anything can be everything."

Value given is often much smaller than value received, most particularly when it comes to information.

Everything you know about SL; about gestures, animations, sounds, streaming media, clothes, scripting, building, walking and talking, sims, servers, avatars, attachments and more; All of that is more than most of our new residents do.

They come in, knowing very little, hungry for knowledge of the least little things that we have come to take for-granted. An answer to a simple question might mean very little to you - you already know it, after all - but may be a major revelation for the querent.

A tiny grain of information (to you) can make or break the whole deal for Ima Newbie. You may have saved her hours or days of research and school-of-hard-knocks learning. We all value our help so cheaply, because it is a small thing to us. A quick answer. An item of little moment. To Ima, these are big things. They are the very secrets of the virtual world around her. They are the key to her being effective, happy, successful (by whatever measure she places on that), and adjusted to her Second Life.

If you have ever answered a question for another resident, new or old - given succour or aid or information to one of the many so very human beings in the virtual world we inhabit together - take a moment to be proud of what you have done. You have made a difference to another person. You have changed another person's life.

If it is your self-appointed task to do this daily, or weekly (as an SL volunteer, either official or unofficial) then you honour us all. Your compassion, knowledge, and willingness to exercise both should not ever be overlooked, or undervalued. Least of all by yourself.

Mentor Focus - errr.. Me!

Whee! I've been an official Mentor for a couple of hours now. It's exciting! Yes, alright. I'm doing exactly the same things I was doing before, but it's nice to have that little official recognition to go with it.

When I've been talking about the other folks, I've told you a bit about them. Self-examination is harder. Let me see what I can say about myself.

I'm a geek, with all that that implies. My exposure to pop culture gets a bit thin after the early 80s - so when you make some cultural or film reference, and I don't get it, don't be surprised.

I'm a bit wordy, and prone to polysyllabic verbiage. Mostly because I select my words to convey an exact meaning.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it
means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

- Lewis Carroll -- Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6

I am also prone to sprinkling my speech with fragments of other languages, though either with words so familiar as to be commonly understood, or in ways that are explicated and not confusing. Although, sometimes when I'm chatting with friends, I'll emit bursts of latin. Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. And I'm always looking for people to practice my terrible japanese with. Obviously, I am a total fun machine. Tateru - She's all about the fun.

Umm. There we have it. Geek. Fun machine. Umm. I guess that's about it. :)

It's all about the people

Some days - most days, SL fills me with joy. Makes me want to sing, dance. I am overflowing with effusive feelings and geniality.

Sometimes it makes me want to weep and scream with frustration. Not the technology. Not the platform. Not the server or sim performance. It's all about the people.

Some few people occasionally turn on you, like a rabid dog might. Perhaps out of nowhere, someone you have never met harasses and abuses and insults you. One time it was a person who I had chatted with on and off for days. Weeks. And I never found out why. Not that I'm terribly keen to.

In the former cases though, the question of why seems to yield a common result: This is just some internet thing. It doesn't matter.

I'm sorry, what? You can rake someone over the coals, insult my parentage, ancestry and gender. Say all manner of belittling, insulting and disparaging things. Hurt them, because "It doesn't matter because it's just some internet thing"?

Please. Grow up. If you're already grown up, go back and do it again, because you screwed it up badly the first time around. No, really. Off you go. I'll wait.

These are all people here. Really real people. I might have failed the Turing Test more times than Video Linden, but I'm really real too. I don't get any laughs out of sitting comfortably at my PC and telling people how much they suck, or about how the Internet is no place for women, or how they are personally to blame for anything I don't like.

Just imagine yourself, standing with the other person. Able to see their face, and see their tears, and think twice about what you're about to say and why.

The rest of you? *hugs* You make the occasional bad day a small price to pay for the blessings of your companionship.

Lesson over now. Go have some fun.

Home for the homeless

SuezanneC Baskerville, Carl Metropolitan, Linda Coffee (I do so hope I got the name right) and I clubbed together on a little project. The result: a small plot set aside at the entrance to the park by the New Citizens Incorporated Plaza in Kuula, where anyone can join the NCI Homeowners' Association group and set their home there.

Mostly the praise goes to the others, for actual implementation and logistics. All I really did was test that baby and make a temporary sign for it.

If you don't want one of the Welcome Areas as your in-world home location, come on down and use the spot at the NCI plaza! Check out newbie Show and Tell, and the Social Salsa sessions!

Gains and Losses

Cruz Control is back! Forced offline for weeks by RL circumstance, our huggy, well-dressed, well-mannered friend has returned! Cruz, we have missed you!

Alas, his partner Sarah Graff loses her connection for some weeks just before he does. :( We will miss her until her return.

"God is an Iron" -- Spider Robinson

Walking Through Shadow

Either the world is much, much smaller than I had ever imagined, or probability and coincidence are experiencing some undue distortions in my immediate vicinity once again.

I sat down with one of my newbies (who has been busy IRL a little while) and we caught up, danced a little, listened to some music and exchanged idle chit-chat. I'd done his orientation when he first came in. A particularly enjoyable experience.

Turns out we have a number of rather suprising RL things in common. The odds against those things are pretty high, but probability gives you a bump now and again.

Then I get the utter wig. About 10 or 11 years ago. AmberMUSH. He and I Role-Played together for 2 years. The memories, the personality, the characters just came flooding back as if they had never gone. I still have one log, and we had a chance to reminisce about one of the major incidents for both of us.

Had he come in at a different time. Had I been busy with someone else, it's possible that we might have spent the rest of our time in SL and never crossed paths. The odds are astronomical.

My dear, dangerous, and much-missed Prince of Chaos. Welcome to SL!

Aith Faulkland - She's to blame

I bumped into some fellow newbies on my first day, and answered what questions I could. I learned the answers to the ones I couldn't, and kept bumping into newbies. Rinse and repeat.

I explored a bit, looked at a lot of stores. Spent a little time with the person who had convinced me to give SL a go, but our timezones don't have a lot of overlap.

Late on my second day inworld, I was feeling a bit excluded, and disenfranchised. I was too shy to try to be social with anyone. Some of you may remember me sort of hovering around the fringes of things, dressed like an english teacher, or a librarian.

And you know what you do when you're feeling like that, right? You get some new clothes! Specifically, I'd discovered YadNI's. I toddled along and looked through the various boxes.

I selected a big box of clothing and did the L$0 buy, and didn't untick that teensy little wear-immediately box. Instant wardrobe malfunction! Horror!

Suddenly, I felt awfully chilly.

Then Aith was there. Aith reassured me while I was struggling to get some clothing back on (or at least any combination of articles that totalled more than 16 square inches of covering, altogether) She continued to reassure me, and agreed that I needed a change of wardrobe, once I'd actually managed to recover my original wardrobe.

We swapped clothing items backwards and forwards, sharing, comparing, choosing one thing or discarding another. I'd suddenly made a friend. Aith took me in as an excluded wolf-child, and socialised me to SL. Clothes, hugs, hug attachment(!), introductions, chatter and companionship. Got me comfortable talking to people, when I would rather hide myself away, and gave the original wallflower a chance to blossom. Nowadays, Aith and I are both pretty busy, and our times don't coincide as well as they did, but...

Aith Faulkland, I owe you a debt that I can never hope to repay. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I keep trying to find ways to do it :)

doumo arigatou gozaimasu!

So there I am at the Ahern WA, parked in my usual spot there (right under the Need Help? sign in the Bonifacio pavilion). One or two newbies being attended to. Then three. Then five. Then eight. Odd for such a normally quiet time of night. I sweep my camera around the WA looking for mentors. No such luck.

Then two more newbies appear. One new entry, and one brought by another player looking for a volunteer to assist her friend. Ten at once exceeds my handling capacity unless they're all of an age - if they are, we're all on the same page, but we had quite an assortement of folks there, and I could no longer deal on my lonesome. Lethe was off sleeping. Time to holler for a Linden. I figure if I can get one mentor down on the ground, I'll be alright, and having a liason do it means I don't have to IM known Mentors individually and go through the whole "Are you busy at the moment?" thing which can eat up so much of a newbie's valuable patience.

Well, Nicole Linden put out the call, and - well...I don't know just what she said, but I can vouch for the results.

Ginny was on the scene literally within seconds, ReallyRick was right behind her, just another ten seconds behind. Then they started popping out everywhere. Like the Santas in the City of Lost Children, only without the tones of creepy horror.

Hip-deep in wonderful, competent, assistance. Pretty soon, everyone had more or less paired off, the excess mentors hovered for a bit to see if there would be any more folks to help, and then returned to what they had been about. I just wanted to hug everyone thanks. One of the new folks who had been in at the beginning stayed a little while with a few more questions and some conversation. Then I send her off to check out Merrow's L$1 clothes. More than worth it for a girl with an industrial/urban fashion bent.

I didn't get to thank all of you individually, folks, and some of you I have thanked more than once. More than twice. Thank you all again. All of you handled your charges with care and respect, and with commendable promptness. You did us all proud.

Live Helper - Doug Donovan

Doug's something special. Quietly parked in the Ahern WA far too many hours per day. Sometimes he's chatty, sometimes he's up for a bit of fun and hijinx. Mostly though, he's quiet. One eye on the WA, and another four or five on his IMs.

Doug exudes cool. You could chill your beer with him. He's calm, collected and patient. I remarked once that he had no life. That's not so. He certainly does have one, and he gives it to us! Witty, calm, professional, friendly, zany and cool. Doug is an appealing set of dichotomies in tension. Always willing to lend an ear, a hand, a shoulder or dip into his big bag of advice and answers for you, for me, for anyone.

Doug has mastered coolness. What lofty pinnacles are left for him to aspire to now?

Mentor Focus - Ginny Gremlin

pas·sion
n.

1. A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.
2. 1. Ardent love.
   2. Strong sexual desire; lust.
   3. The object of such love or desire.
3. 1. Boundless enthusiasm: His skills as a player don't quite match his passion for the game.
   2. The object of such enthusiasm: Soccer is her passion.
4. An abandoned display of emotion, especially of anger: He's been known to fly into a passion without warning.

Ginny has a passion. A burning passion for mentoring.

You may not see as much of her about. She likes to take newbies to a quiet, well-equipped place where she can assist them with few distractions, and little noise. She's there alright. Fetching newbie after newbie. She answers their questions and she passes on some of her passion for SL. You can feel the fire in her, and when people interfere with SL or with the newbies - to their detriment, she will turn that boundless blaze on them.

In contrast to Katiahnya, Ginny is a fiery redhead who knows her own mind, and isn't afraid to say her piece. She won't dissemble, or beat about the bush. If she backs you, she backs you all the way - as she does with her newbie charges. Attract her ire, and she'll burn you. Where Katiahnya instills a certain ethereal wonder in the possibilities of SL, Ginny sets the imaginations of the newbies aflame.

Police Blotter - Theft of the Ahern WA

Note to self. Stop stealing the Ahern WA.

One day, I floated up to help a newbie who was hovering above the WA, and had some dressing problems. I was quickly joined by another newbie, then another couple, then one of the WA regulars. It wasn't long before there wasn't a toe on the ground there. The whole WA was still up in the air hours later when I left.

So...some days when the lag and audio spam is at it's worst, I'll park in one of the WA's radial pavilions, and handle the newbies there. Then the crowd starts to grow, and the WA starts to empty. There's some sort of critical mass thing, involved. Curious people come down just to see what's going on....which really isn't anything more interesting than me mentoring some newbies or a mentor (or both).

But the more folks who turn up, even out of idle curiosity, the more that come.

We forestalled that somewhat last night, by taking our party on the road.

A quick trip to the Morris build area, some prefabricated flooring that I have handy, and everyone contributing some toys and decorations, and we had ourselves a decent party going on.



Quite a few newbies rolled in during the couple hours we were going. There was much chatting, demonstrations, and general socialising and fun.

Bombed

Well, interesting. The two worlds won't be kept apart. And the bridge is people.

The grid and it's supporting subsystems were griefbombed. Apparently not by any particularly tricky exploitation of the system, but by exploitation of the people.

Social Engineering 101, as they say.

"I send this to you for to have your opinion"

"Send this to everyone you know, and Bill Gates will send you some of his millions"

"I find naked pictures of you on net. Is this you??"

"Click me and win $$$$$"

No need to exploit the technical systems when you can exploit the people who use them.

Maybe it's time to replace the reputation system with a web-of-trust.

Gunshy

Well, logging on this-morning in the Waterhead rez area, I discovered that I was being machine-gunned before the loading screen even went away. Choice. Obviously, that's just the sort of thing to brighten my day after last night's effort.

Immediately reached for the Help menu about to reach for AR, then paused. Took a sip of coffee and thought, "Now, now, Tat. He probably just didn't read any of the info that he'd agreed to." and:

Me: Please don't do that.

Shooter: y not it dont hurt u

Me: HELP BASIC HELP COMMUNITY STANDARDS - Item 3, if that helps. It's really irritating. I don't come here to have automatic weapons fired at my head. There are places for that sort of thing.

To his credit, he took a moment or two to read it. Then asked me where he could go to do his shooting. I sent him on to Rausch. About every two minutes he respawned back in Waterhead, attached yet more guns to his person and TP'ed back to the landmark I'd given him (thanks for the LM, Data!)

On the whole, combat didn't seem to treat him very well. I think he ran someone down with a car later. I was sitting and IMing with a newbie, so my attention was diverted. Then there was another shooting war in Waterhead. After that, he felt unwelcome and left. Probably because most of the things he did either drew complaints, or were unsatisfying or both. I'm wondering if he'll be back. I suspect not.

After the NCI Salsa dance session, Lethe and I met an explorer by the name of Forcet Duport. A well-spoken, but gunshy furry. Seems he has been ejected from quite a number of plots and parcels for - apparently - being a fur. He was polite, and cautious asking carefully if he was permitted to stop awhile. He didn't stay too long, but we had a good chat, and he was pleasant company. It seems hard to imagine what fault other folks might have found with him that warranted ejecting such a polite person from their premises. Very civil. Very welcome.

I left for work minutes later. I believe the grid was shut down urgently minutes after that.

Ugh

Looks like we have a group of euro students in. I'm sure they're mostly quite nice. The first one though came in with a deformed av, and a griefer-style name, shoved the other newbies under tutelage around, and proceeded to become insulting, bigoted, sexist and generally embarassing to be in the same species with.

Then, after two full minutes of that, things started to get unpleasant.

Had a word with his professor, which earned me one(1) insincere apology from the student and more verbal abuse. Muted him, passed it on, made my apologies and left.

Not the sort of crap I need at 1am. Got a much better apology from the professor who was naturally quite embarassed. Bedtime. Tomorrow is another day...or at least it would be, if it wasn't today already.

Integration

It's not just enough to answer a newbie's questions, and help them learn their way around the UI/HUD and give them freebies and be their friend. They need to feel something of a sense of opportunity too, I'm thinking. Otherwise they still feel disadvantaged.

I'm not just talking about economic opportunity. I've talked about that a lot elsewhere. I'm talking about things that people don't seem to normally notice. Here's one:

LANGUAGE

Prim, Rez (three separate meanings), Newbie, Oldbie, Linden (two meanings), sim, server, av/avatar, agent, script, object, linkset, gesture, sim-border, lag, texture, mesh, asset-server.

“In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accepts power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding–symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation of those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.”
—Lecture to the Arrakeen War College

No, I'm not suggesting that there's any conspiracy or power-grabbing going on by the use of specialised descriptive nouns. SL's fragmented sublanguage does indeed indicate the accumulation of some power. The power to understand and discuss SL's underlying framework, apparent behaviour without unneccessary confusion or complication. These are words with power, and we bandy them about as we do because they are the useful tools that allow us to understand how what we are experiencing is occuring, and that knowledge gives us leverage over the experience, allowing us to better enjoy, create and experience.

"Some of their rules can be bent, Others can be broken"
(Morpheus, in the movie "The Matrix")

Problem is, we are all used to the sublanguage that we use within SL. A newbie arrives, and doesn't know what ^^ means, or XD. Sim, Rez, Server, Av. If they don't know the meaning of the words they feel excluded. While we have the experience in common with them, we have the words and definitions that demystify it for us...and they don't. If they don't get lucky enough to have the terms explained to them unambiguously, then the sub-language fractures again, terms are learned or misunderstood by context and experience, and some percentage become a linguistically/socially impoverished subclass within SL. Have-nots, who lack the basic terms to communicate their experience of the SL reality with those around them.

"It's all about the words." - Bob Dylan

Thus, in order to integrate new players more effectively, into our culture (or to allow them to create their own viable subcultures within SL) we have to make sure they know the words, rather than just humming awkwardly along to the anthem. If all you can do is hum or mumble in tune while everyone else is belting out the words, you feel excluded, disadvantaged, and not a part of things.

Teach them to fish

Taught my newbie building class at the NCI today. Only the one participant this time, but attendance is highly variable. It's a very basic lesson. Camera controls, and nothing you can't really learn yourself at the Ivory Tower of Primitives. Some folks like to get that personal touch, plus I often get some people come back for a refresher, two or three times, before they feel comfortable that they've absorbed the basics.

kk Mechanique popped by for a bit afterwards (as did another person) and at the end of a spirited and wide-ranging discussion that started on (and occasionally passed back through) Education in SL, I had promisories for three more for next week. I'm kind of hoping not to TP in and see a class of 30 again, though. That happened to me in the third week I was running the class, and it freaked me out a little. I'm more comfortable with five or so. 30 is like teaching a sea of mannequins.

Lethe got me a huggy Cthulhu doll! Yay! Just the sort of dose of cutesy madness and horror I need :)

Still processing newbies at Waterhead. It's certainly slowed down there some, but there's almost always someone new there looking for aid, either the basics, or building, scripting, clothes-making, vehicle-building or whatever. Some of them are just in need of someone to talk to. And we're there to provide.

Masters and Apprentices

Lethe is more or less my constant companion at the moment. We're both working the newbies at Waterhead. I'm not sure what the intake process is, but newbies are still appearing there regularly. Either just after OI or after a little stumbling about.

Lethe is something like a friend and apprentice. As we do our thing in SL, I'm also trying to introduce her to a larger segment of my friends-list. That, conceivably, could take rather a while, considering it's size. Some of them she will take to well. Others, of course, she won't. People are people.

Of course, once I teach her enough of the Dark Side of the Force, she will doubtless try to strike me down, and declare herself the Master. In the meantime, she forms a pleasant constant in my newbie-oriented work in SL. Just having her there means I can grab a coffee, or a snack, have a cat-related disaster, or get stuck talking to my in-laws on the phone, or any one of the many RL things that can pull me away for a minute or five or ten, without having any of my charges feel neglected. Lethe's always there to back me up, or to let me vent via IM, when I feel a need to.

Mentor Focus - The Katiahnya Channel - All Katiahnya, All The Time

I said a few positive things about Katiahnya Muromachi the other day. Well, I'm hardly done yet. She's patient and poised. Communicative and clear. Her appearance, particularly is striking. She really wows the newcomers, yet somehow without making them feel like ugly crows, or underpriveleged or disadvantaged.

She inspires them to work on and refine their dress and appearance, without making them feel like poor cousins, and all just by being there. So self-effacing that she could just about efface herself across a sim border by sheer power of humility.

She deals with the newbies with respect, geniality, and compassion, remembering that though they are all, as yet, unskilled, they are our equals. Can we all tell ourselves honestly that we do that?

That Was the Weekend that Was

It's nice to see Katiahnya Muromachi wearing her nice shiny new Mentor tag. She takes Mentoring as seriously as it deserves to be taken, and is a more than fitting representative of SL for the new folks to treat with. It's just so great seeing her do her thing.

Sent Torley a little present. She was impressed with the original one hanging over my store, and I jiggered up a watermelonised version as an attachment for her. She's pleased. I'm pleased that she's pleased.

Had a bit of a shooting incident in Waterhead. A newbie Clone Trooper got a bit out of control. Took some stern words to restore order, and I'm not sure it sunk in. All the uninvolved newbies who were present at the time (about a half-dozen) logged off during the shooting. I'd hope that we see them again, but I'm not confident. *sigh*

And then there's Karmmann Ghia. All of Sean's boisterousness, without his edgy confrontationalness. Don't get me wrong though. I like Sean's edgy, confronting, creepy, disturbing ways. He makes me smile, and is like an embodiment of social satire. Karmmann is all the energy, channelled in different ways. Sometimes I can't tell if I'm laughing with him, or laughing at him, but he's certainly having a great time! :) He's so hung up on Katiahnya that she could form a personality cult out of him and turn him into a Dark Army, if she wanted to. I'm sure he'd be game as long as there were drinks, nibblies, and trampolines.

Had a great time with Lethe, Ginny, Alienbear and Fairge, generally during the quiet time of early, early Sunday SLT. All in all, very satisfying, while we waiting for the next group of newbies to arrive.

(24 days)

Touched

It seems odd, somehow. Our avatars lack true body language. Our gestures are limited. Often our avs don't look at each-other, but sit or stand back to back. We lack so much subtlety of expression, tone, gesture.

Yet somehow it is easier to touch people here. Friends are made so very quickly, and hurt can be so sudden and so deep. Is it that our avs are our inner selves, bereft of protective layers of meat, walls of expression, and the thousand subtle physical movements of social expression. Are these things then barriers rather than communications channels? Yes, and no.

Forced to express ourselves in words, plain textual words, we speak in a different voice to the one our fleshy selves regularly use. Most of us hardly notice the difference, I think. We seem like ourselves to ourselves. The opportunity for misunderstanding is greater, because of the lack of subtle expression, but being largely confined to the world of words, with gestures becoming mere emphasis seems to bring our feelings and our thoughts closer to those to whom we are speaking.

You can see the inner heart of some people. Look at Miles05, in The Forest. It's not just that he has his heart on his sleeve. His heart is in everything he does. Builds, gestures, jokes. You look at it and see the artist's feelings and thoughts looking back at you.

And Nova Linden. Look at her forum av and her postings. And on the rare occasions you are in the right place at the right time to see her in-world, rushing from one job to the next. In everthing she does, you can see herself shining through. Nova always makes me smile.

Ginny Gremlin. Uncertain, caring, but fiery. Passionate about what she does. Patient, sometimes beyond patience with those who are deserving. Rather less so with those who are not.

Every day I meet new people. Some fleetingly, as we move about our seperate courses. Some I feel genuinely touched by. Too many to list. Too many to see as often as I'd like. And, ultimately, I don't necessarily agree with everyone about everything. That doesn't matter. If I did, we'd hardly have anything to talk about. :)

(26 days)

The Childe Goddess

Got a visit from Torley last night. Got home from work then tried to build up enough enthuse to head out to take some more loads of stuff from the old house to the new. In that window, Torley appeared, and I was thus renewed.

Torley's gold :) Witty and wise, bright and cheerful, disarmingly direct, and exuding seductive chaos. Everybody loves Torley. She touches you and you immediately buy into her unique and enjoyable brand of madness (and I mean that in the best way).

Tired and worn down, a few minutes with Torley renewed my spirits and I got plenty of moving done in the evening. She wrote spiffy stuff about me in her blog...and five minutes later I discover that I'm on the front page of the Metaverse Messenger. Yow!

Suddenly I want to hide under a desk. Perhaps I can make one to hide under. Still a steady flow of new folks through Waterhead, though it's not nearly so much as it was. Lethe and I are working through them as we can, and ReallyRick is generally only a holler away when we need another virtual body.

It's Dodgeball Time!

Didn't get around too much this-morning. Answered a few questions, debugged and partially rewrote a script for someone who was having trouble. Finally saw Char Linden inworld. Another thoroughly likeable Linden.

Helped Deevyde Maelstrom debug a new dodgeball game. Still a little lumpy, but it turned out to be quite a bit of fun! Nice to take an hour or so off from the hurley-burley and do something a little different.

Alas, I couldn't make the Community-Team Roundtable. That nasty Daylight Saving shift. 4PM Wednesday, SLT is now 11AM Thursday. Not a naturally tenable time for a working girl, even though my job starts late and finishes late, at about 11AM, I need to be out the door.

Went to make my apologies and slammed up against the edge of Ambleside. Full. Spent a few minutes with the gathering throng at the edge. A lot decided to go elsewhere, but it looked like we had a hundred or more would-be attendees. Someone needs a bigger venue.

SL is smoother and swifter again for me every time I log on. For me, it's already quite an improvement over 1.6. For some other folks, I know it's not.

You CAN do it!

If you're one of my newbies, you've heard this. If you've been standing in earshot when I've been doing orientations, you've heard this. But it bears repeating.

There is nothing that SL allows, that you cannot do, if only you are willing to learn, and persistent enough not to let inevitable screw-ups and mistakes dissuade you.

You want to be a builder? A scripter? Design clothes? Help newbies? Be a land baron? Run a club? Anything. You can damn-well do it, if you are committed enough.

Sure it looks hard. So did riding a bicycle the first time. Or driving a car. Surviving your wedding. Buying a house. Filling out your tax forms. Anything you don't already know how to do looks hard.....because you don't already know how to do it!

Every skill in SL or RL, however hard it looks, involves a bunch of small steps. Tiny pieces of knowledge, or skill that individually are not difficult to acquire. If you wind up stonewalled, look for the missing piece or step. Something you skipped over that will make it all make sense. Back up to where you do understand and move forward again. When you find the missing piece, what comes after will make sense.

We only make things hard for ourselves, by expecting things to be hard, or by trying to skip steps in our (understandable) impatience to reach our goal.

Be all that you can be. Here endeth the lesson.

Looking for Gold

When I'm greeting newbies, and answering questions, chatting with them, and teaching them things, I'm looking for gold. I don't mean that I'm looking for that one golden newbie in a hundred who comes in, and turns out to be choice-pickings from the outset. They're easy to find. They shine bright from the outset, and they will do well, whatever happens.

I mean I'm looking for gold inside each and every one of them. Everyone's different, everyone's an individual, everyone has worthy (and unworthy) qualities. Generally that gold is hidden away. Hidden beneath a layer of unfamiliarity with online environments, unfamiliarity with SL's interface, with SL's slang and it's subcultures, mores and manners.

Sometimes it's hidden behind silence. Sometimes it's hidden behind jokes or boisterousness. Whatever it is, and whatever conceals it, every new person who rezzes in brings something unique to SL. Not every one of them will become a resident. SL is not to everyone's tastes.

When you see a newbie; When you answer their questions; When you give them advice; When you just see them stumbling around, trapped in a box, or accidentally naked, or lagged and walking into people; remember that you were once them. Everything you know about SL is more than they know about SL. Remember that there's a real person at a keyboard somewhere in the world. Someone worth knowing. Someone who might change your world. Someone who has something that we have not had in SL yet...their own self.