New Home

The future home of The Blacklist.

"Cataclysm".

o.O

*shrugs*

It's how I feel.

-SK-

Marking time...

I've been neglecting my blog, lately.

Sometimes, Real Life gets you down. Sometimes, it really sucks. In the last month, I lost a real life friend... suddenly and unexpectedly. The stress from that caused a mild relapse of an ongoing health issue of my own. The grief and disappointment of real life carries into the virtual world, and it affects your perceptions and interactions there.

I went into SL to escape, and found another set of stressors. Some real, some imagined. During this time, I've been working with Alysa on tearing down Blacklist, making models with Alysa and Lianna, selling land, making plans....

I'm feeling less stressed now, on the grid... quite happy and relieved at recent revelations and self-discoveries, and taking things as easily and naturally as one should, after bending the ear of one who cares here in SL.

My real life stress has gone from an 8.5 to about a 3... and I am feeling remarkably better... so its all good!

We're making serious progress on the Blacklist move. Stay tuned for an announcement this week.

-SK-

I'm still here!

I haven't posted for a while.

Real life has been busy and stressful. My hours in Second Life are a bit reduced, and split between enjoying time with my SL Friends and planning an All New Blacklist.

It's been 9 months since the birth of Blacklist, Shaitan. We're moving on... but in a good way. We're dismantling parts of the city and putting land up for sale in Shaitan as we prepare to purchase an island.

We've brought back the original builders of Blacklist, Shaitan - we're building scale models of our visions of Blacklist's future. The builders will choose the best aspects from each model, then a new, final scale model will be built for the new island. We've had lots of great ideas, and we're all getting excited about a big, new build for Blacklist. I have no snapshots of the models to post, here. Look for them in Shaitan. As I write this, one model is on the roof of the Blacklist bar, the rest are on the ground in NE Shaitan.

These are exciting times. I wish I could give an ETA on the island build - but I can't. With some luck, we'll have a new home in the next couple of months.

Cheers.

-Shye

Exploring with Alysa

Alysa and I spent almost two hours exploring the final frontier..... Privateer Space.

This is one of the most incredible sims I've been to. I discovered it a while back, but held off exploring until Alysa and I could do it together.

We had a lot of fun together, exploring the lunar surface and mines in moonbuggies, flying together in a spacebug, and separately in other spacecraft as we explored the almost boundless reaches of the privateer sim's asteroid fields, planetary landscapes, space stations, pirate ships, and its clever nods to space films, television shows and literature from past decades. Check it out! You won't be disappointed!

-Shye

Missing Friends

There are a few people who I've connected with in Second Life so closely, that I take thoughts of them outside the grid and into Real Life. For the ones who remain in-world, I still have that almost tangible connection. For the ones who have left the game, the close ones, the connection is not ephemeral. I mourn the loss of their presence, in a way.

We all have friends come and go. Some of them are special. They are missed.

Lisa, Elum and Hirundo... I'm thinking of you, and hope first life is treating you well.

Take care. Love you all.

Downtime, failures, and #$*%^#: An Open Letter to Linden Labs

Lindens:

I have to laugh, every time I get that Quality Survey popping up when I log in to Second Life (tm). Really, you should know the answer. Besides buggy viewers, lack of response in the Support Portal (urgent tickets left unanswered for days or longer), it only takes a few moments going through the SL (tm) blog to get an idea of why people might not feel that their SL (tm) experience is improving.

Mined from the SL (tm) blog since April 1:

Apr 1 Phone Support Issues - unavailable
Apr 1 Various Inworld Issues - TP, transactions, logins failing
Apr 2 Various Issues - transactions, logins, TP
Apr 5 Various Inworld Issues - region down, login, TP and transaction failures
Apr 5 SL Down
Apr 6 Intermittent Region Issues (TP, rezzing, appearance, inventory, transactions)
Apr 6 SL Load mitigating begins
Apr 7 Logins and transactions intermittent
Apr 7 Gray Profiles
Apr 8 300 regions down
Apr 9 Support Portal "501" errors
Apr 10 Non-English character display error
Apr 10 700 Regions Offline
Apr 10 slow/stalled logins and transactions
Apr 11 login failures, stuck presence, group and search failures
Apr 11 load mitigation
Apr 11 Obj-Obj e-mails failing in-world
Apr 11 Failed TP and region crossings
Apr 11 Database failures affect logins, transactions, rezzing
Apr 13 Support Live Chat unavailable
Apr 13 Database failure: login timeouts, failed TP, failed rezzing
Apr 14 Logins, transactions and rezzing failures

Linden Labs really needs to get on the ball. Stop adding eye-candy like the pointless UI redesign. Fix the grid and patch the viewer.

The entire month of April has been an extended April Fools Joke. Make Second Life whole again.