Ahern

Ahern is the name of one of four regions that meet in one big welcome area in Second Life. The other three are Dore, Morris, and Bonifacio (let me check the spelling before you send a nasty comment). Each one has a large pavilion where residents like to sit and talk.

The Morris pavilion is the one in the background of the photo. To the left you see the "Pit" as we call it. It's a low square area with a wall all around where the four regions converge. Between the walls and the benches there is plenty of room to sit, but most folks stand. Usually there is lots of local chat to read and voice chat to listen to.

I've always liked this place. Most of the friends I've made, I made here. Most of the avatars you see here are human, but that doesn't mean you won't see an occasional furry, neko, robot*, mech warrior, demon, pixie, elf, or anything else. I've seen a few avatars that I'll be darned if I know what they were. It's as a diverse a place as you can imagine.

The people who inhabit those avatars are diverse too, and that's the fun of meeting people and making friends here. Over the year and a half I have been in SL I have listened to a lot of different opinions about nearly every topic from global warming, economics, government and politics, sex and religion. I don't always agree with what I hear, but it is fun to share perspectives with people from all over the earth.

The debates are usually entertaining. Sometimes they get hot as one person tries to shout other opinions down. They often lose in the end, because unreasonable behavior will usually get them muted by the majority who become tired of their rants. I never debated in school, but it seems to me that there are rules that are common sense. Make logical arguments. Provide facts or evidence to back up your statements. Respect the other side's opinions and give them the same fair hearing that you want for your opinions.

Anyhow back to the main topic. I needed to leave Morris for awhile. Too crowded, you might say. I haven't gone far though. If I am not in Waterhead, you might see me in Dore or Bonifacio. I might even be (shutter) in the "pit". If you see me say hello.

* Robot avatars are one thing. "Bots" are another. Bots can be any kind of avatar, but they are not people. They have been programmed by their owners to walk around, speak and respond to others in very simple sentences. Sometimes they are there just to spy on the area, or sometimes send out spam to people.

Long Time... No See

I haven't written in quite awhile. Part of the time I was busy and happy and there was no need to write about what was happening. Then a lot of things went downhill fast.

• SL girlfriend and I had a misunderstanding, me jumping to conclusions because a friend said something about her.
• SL girlfriend got sick again.
• SL girlfriend had computer/internet service problems.
• SL friend (the one I thought I was very close to, like BFF) turned against me.

All of a sudden my SL world was crashing all around me. I couldn't be with the girl I wanted to be with. I couldn't turn to the person I trusted the most. Everything I was working towards in my relationships was gone or falling apart.

My SL gf and I are doing ok now. We cleared up our misunderstanding and have created alternative ways of communicating without Second Life. We are friends in real life and I want to keep her as a friend no matter what. She feels the same way. I am still worried about her health and she is fighting to recover.

My former friend... I don't know. I won't go into details. She would not like that. She has a right to her privacy. All I know is that I did something that by all appearances was harmless. I immediately apologized and tried to correct my mistake. I was screamed at and immediately de-friended. My action did not deserve the response I got. I think it was the trigger that set off something else that had been festering inside her for a long while. This former friend now hates me and I can only imagine why.

I still have some friends. One is an author who used to be friends with the same person that de-friended me. At the time I tried real hard to reconcile them. They both are strong, opinionated women and I tried to get them back together. I pushed both of them and they both told me to back off or lose their friendship. I had to admit defeat.

It's awkward in Morris now. The rest of my friends are friends of my ex-friend. Being around them means coming in contact, or at least close proximity, with her. At first I tried going to other sims, but there were few people I know outside of Morris and I wasn't upbeat enough to start conversations and make a new batch of friends.

So I went back to Morris and tried to stay a proper distance away from her while being close enough to my other friends to talk. Then I said "to Hell with this" and got closer to talk to my other friends, the whole time wanting to shout "please be my friend again!" to her.

I know that she feels like I have grieved her badly in some way. She doesn't do things without a reason. I know I have made mistakes in the past. That's why I apologize so often. I make mistakes! I am sorry!

Maybe she never was a friend. A real friend would have understood that.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I like voice chat. I used to never use it, because it seems a little rude to be talking on my computer while other people (in RL) are watching TV in the same room. That was one reason. The other was that I was so used to doing text chats and IMs that it didn't really cross my mind to use voice.

That's not true now. Most of my friends use voice and you can tell a lot about people from the inflection of their voices as they talk.

Stephan, our resident scotsman, has a great accent, and although we kid him about it, we really can understand what he says. Well most of the time.

Valerie has the voice of an angel. Sweet and light, she laughs easily and can bring me out of a bad mood in an instant.

Dana is a southern belle with a voice to match. When she is laughing, I can hear the mischief she is planning in her head.

Kharma is an Australian lady I just met last night. She sounds prim and proper, but like all good Aussies, she can sling a good zinger of a comment out there to get everyone laughing.

James - I also met him last night. This Alabama country boy's voice should be bottled. It is as smooth and sharp as a good twelve year-old bourbon.

Someone else will have to provide an opinion of what my voice sounds like. I hope I sound pleasant. I only have a southern accent when I try and I think about it. But I really need to find a decent USB headset. I tend to shout at the mic built into my computer.

Who have I left out? I have a lot more friends, but not all of them use voice. Yesterday voice was working well. The lag in the sim was less that it had been in days, but you couldn't sit down. Some of us looked normal to ourselves and some people, but looked "Ruthed" to others.

We chatted about computers, clothes, skins and shapes, and how to build using flexible, sculpted prims. If that sounds boring, we also talked about how many pounds are in a stone, how many stones are in a ton, and what people look like without tops on. LOL.

You May Be Experiencing Lag!

Lag is a fact of Second Life for all of us. There is always a little lag in every sim. So many things affect it, the number of avatars, avatar rendering costs, the number of prims, among other factors. From time to time, the servers just slow down for reasons only known by Lord Linden himself. Jeff Foxworthy made a fortune with his "You may be a redneck" jokes. Let's look at the ways you know you are experiencing lag in Second Life.

1. If your friends ask why are you naked, you may be experiencing lag.


2. If you are in _______ (fill in the name of your favorite welcome area), you may be experiencing lag.


3. If you are always sinking into the terrain when you are in Nova Albion, you're having a normal day there, LOL.


4. If you can't stop walking through buildings, walls, and other people, you may be experiencing lag.


5. If your rezzed with a female shape and you have a male avatar, you may be experiencing lag.


6. If you rezzed without your hair, you may be experiencing lag.


7. If you can't control your movements and keep bumping into people, you may be experiencing lag, or you are a newbie.


8. If a friend leaves and your "CU L8R" text shows up in chat five minutes later, you may be experiencing lag.


9. If you can't sit on the wall at Morris, you may be experiencing lag.


10. If you can only get one shoe to rez, you may be experiencing lag.


11. If you can't teleport, you may be experiencing lag.


12. If you can't adjust your appearance without re-logging, you may be experiencing lag.


13. If your boyfriend leaves you for another girl and you don't find out for a week, you may... no wait, that's not lag. That's just life!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Sandbox

This isn't exactly PG, but I've cleaned it up as best as I could.

One night in Morris I was explaining to a newbie about how pose balls were used to be... ah, intimate with another avatar. Myself and another resident were also telling him how, although girl avatars didn't need any attachments, for the sake of realism he needed an anatomical 'attachment' which he did not presently own.

There was a female newbie standing nearby who was taking an interest in all this and made it plain that she was willing to try out the poses with him in another, more mature, sim. Here's the funny part. When she heard that he needed the 'attachment' she began running around shouting "Can anyone help me? My boyfriend needs a c**k so he can f**k me!" "Please help me... my boyfriend needs a c**k!"

All the residents in chat range burst out laughing. I was laughing so hard, I couldn't even type LOL, LMAO, or ROFLMAO so others knew I was laughing. The bottom line is someone else gave him a freebie to use and I lead them to a sim where they could be alone and left them there to experiment.