The Gang’s All Here

So I’ve been getting back into Second Life a bit – got a few things going on, and catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. And this evening when I logged on is the first time in awhile that more friends of mine were online than offline. Many of them were in the same general area, so I went to visit, and we all sat down and chatted for a bit. Was nice to catch up with people and see they’re all doing well :>

old_gang.jpg

Clockwise from the bottom is me, Theodora Duke, Ipenda Keynes, Felanis Soyer, Compulov Weeks, and Asaria Winnfield.

No More Teazing

Well, since First and Dragon sold TeaZers University in Second Life, where I sorta worked, I’ve seen a lot of changes going back and forth.  A lot of good people are leaving the university, either because they don’t believe in the changes or because they don’t believe in the leadership going on.  I joined those ranks, though mostly because there’s been so many changes there that I’d need to go through all the orientation and such as if I were a new instructor again anyway just to get caught up.  I also don’t care for the style of one of the admins, but I’m not going into that – I’d been thinking of leaving before this happened, and if not for First’s insistance that I stick around I probably would’ve left right around when we moved into the house.  Just haven’t had time to get in there and do anything.

On another note, the other day was the first time that WordPress sent me an email to tell me of a new user registering.  I was all set to click ‘delete’, since most of the mail I get from WordPress is about spammers trying to post their spammy comments here (“I have much experience on this topic!” with a URL to some pill selling website) when I noticed that it’s my mother who signed up.  So I’ve got my first real subscriber – my wife didn’t even sign up for an account here 😛

Flashback

Since it’s been a few days since the last post, a quick re-cap of what’s gone on since then.  We fired up the new gas grill, and cooked a rotisserie chicken on it the other night.  As Stephanie said, “I’ll never again pick up one at the store if I can cook it at home just as easily (and it’s even better tasting).”  We love it.  Well, Stephanie loves it.  I still like my charcoal and hardwoods :>

We got office furniture, and got it assembled.  I like my new desk – now I need a nice comfy chair to put there.  But I need a nice comfy chair for the shack too, so I’ll be in need of a couple chairs.  Got blinds hung in the master bedroom, and Stephanie got the room painted (just a few touch ups here and there to do).  Soon we can move in the dressers and have a fully functional bedroom again.  I’m most concerned about moving the bed back against the wall; twice now I’ve lost pillows overboard since there’s no headboard either.

Haven’t done anything with the antenna at home yet, still waiting on Leon to have free time enough to swing by and drop it off.  But he’s been pretty busy lately, and I also haven’t bugged him about it – when he’s got the time, I’ll worry about it.  Not going to be a pest.

As for why it’s been a little while since posting, my web provider (Dreamhost) has had one problem after another for just about the whole weekend.  File servers crashing, network switches melting.. they’ve had a rough few days.  So I’ve had some trouble getting on here to post things (and anyone who might be reading this has had trouble getting on to read it too).  I’m also having some issues with DNS – apparently, since my home computer was formerly the authoritative name server for two domains, its A record has been (or is being) cached by some of the root nameservers.  So although I changed its IP with Dreamhost’s DNS editor, and it propagated out just fine for a couple days, it’s now being overridden by other root servers.  Hopefully that’ll either sort itself out after the second domain is transferred, or Dreamhost can help me sort it out with the roots.  In the mean time, I’m starting to learn my home IP address, ’cause anything I want to do to connect there I need to use it.

Last, but not least, I’ve been away from Second Life for quite a while now.  I hop on now and then and try to spend a few minutes catching up with things that have happened, but I’ve found it difficult to get on after work like I used to (and while at work, I’ve actually had work to do).  A lot of things have changed with the university where I work there, and a couple friends of mine have left the university due to some of those changes.  I hope to see them around somewhere, even if they come and hang out in the lounge (formerly the lobby) like how I met them.  But I guess time will tell – as well will it tell if I can even get back in there and back to what I was doing, or if I too will have to depart the university and just visit on occasion.

Second Life, First Post

So I’ve been playing in the game Second Life for a while now, and enjoying it a bit. First got interested because of the TWiT podcast when it was mentioned there, and I thought a 3D realm where you could build stuff and play around seemed interesting. I was right, it can be a lot of fun. As Stephanie pointed out, my last job was at a university, my current job is at a university.. and what do I do in SL? Find the largest university in the game and hang out there. And end up getting a job there as an instructor. Kinda funny actually.

I hang out with quite a few folks there, including Leigh (Keith doesn’t stop by because he doesn’t like what it does to his computer, namely makes it slow), and many I know only by their SL usernames. Asaria, Ipenda, Molten, Theodora, Felanis, Dragon, First, Rini, Jace, Norton, Charlie, Gizmo, Kerhop… the list goes on and on, and if you’re not on that one don’t be offended – it’s late, I’m tired, and this is a flashback :>

Anyway, I’ve been taking snapshots of things going on in SL for a bit now, and would like to share some of them with you. I was about to post them here, when I realized that they’re all bitmap images, and average 1.3MB each. So I thought, there has to be a good way to change them all at once, and I realized there is.. it’s called the gallery that I already setup. So once I get that up and running completely, I’ll post a link to them instead. Yeah, not as cool as some of the others I know who post their pixtures right on their webpages, but it’s how I feel like doing it. So there. *pthbthbthbtht*

EDIT 2006/06/21 11:04EDT – Oh, and those of you whom I have links to, bonus points if you can explain to me how the whole linkback-pingback-trackback BS works.  Would be nice to reference each other, but I’m so stuck in “Web 1.0” that until recently I used Pine for email and tin for Usenet.  And yes, I *read* Usenet too.  That should tell you something :>