The Voices in My Head

Last night I had a dream. A bit like most nights, I suppose, but I sort of remembered this one.

I was back in college again, and on some kind of field trip somewhere lasting a week. Me and a bunch of other girls were sharing a house for the duration. the kitchen was bizarre. There were no work surfaces at all, but plenty of gas-powered hotplates for cooking on - at least twenty! the kitchen was also very spacious.

Oh, and it was the group’s tutor’s birthday. Why that was relevant, I have no idea.

I don’t normally talk about religion in much. it tends to be an efficient way to break friendships when you discover that your long-time friends hold diametrically opposed religious views. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

But, for the record, here is what I believe.

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Having to be present at a family get-together at a restaurant, when you are half-asleep ffrom a late night the day before, the food is terrible, and al in hearing range are speaking a language that you do not understand.

Not a lot is happening today. Earlier in the week, I made a trip down to London to do some networking, which resulted in a little techie work. Back in the real world, I’m slowly terraforming my new sim and adding some prefab houses for new tenants. Unfortunately, thanks to LL apparently glutting the land market, the market is moving slowly. As in all things, it will pick up again, of course. The key, as always, is not to try running before you can walk.

This is to announce that I am entering the land-baroning business in ever-larger steps. I now have a second island, named Fabled Legend. It is still undergoing terraforming and preparation for renting out. Some of it is already either rented out or available to rent out, and the rest will be made available as it is finished.

The northern half is designated as desert, and the southern half as grasslands, with a mountain ridge dividing the two main areas.

This division is achieved by judicious use of the ground texture tools, and setting the altitudes at which each texture is used. One consequence of this is that the desert areas must be kept very close to sea-level, and the grasslands must be kept at medium-high altitude, or at least, not as lowlands.

Rental enquiries go to the usual places.

As a former English teacher, one thing that bugs me is poor use of the English language. I realise that not everyone has perfect English. I realise there are different national varieties of English. I realise that there are times and communication methods in which misunderstandings can be double-checked. I even realise that almost any complaint about language use will invariably contain a mistake of its own. Skitt’s Law, some call that one.

So today I had the dubious honour of coming in contact with a government organ. Government organs are somewhat icky things, and have a tendency to screw you if you aren’t careful to protect yourself. I always use protection; I take care to read their rules and regulations whenever they are presented to me. But since this is not Playboy, but a mere blog, I will stop with the innuendo for now.

The administratum drone I was talking with said i hadn’t followed the rules properly, then pointed to a certain line in the paperwork. I read it over, then immediately explained to her that it was badly written and unclear, and as written, it implied  the course of action I had undertaken was in line with their requirements.

Her response made me want to hug her out of pity. She said it had passed muster with all the spelling and grammar checkers on their word processors, and was therefore good English.

LL recently announced a drop in the price of new private island servers. This makes me very happy that I did not go out and buy one, even second-hand, last month. It will be interesting to see what the new market rate for second-hand sims will be.

At this moment, SL is currently closed for maintenance, and access is restricted to employees only. Fair enough. Stuff happens.

The login screens says there are currently 17,889 avatars currently logged in. LL must have an awful lot of employees. I had no idea they were so big.

So there I was, having just read a short essay about some dead Greek Philosopher Dude. And then an old friend of mine came in the room.

“Who are you?” I said.

“You’re kidding, right? you know who I am.”

“Humour me, please.”

“Ok, I’m Steve. But you knew that already, right?”

“‘Steve’ is just a label. Who are you, really?”

“I’m not sure I get what you mean here.” (more…)

Once upon a time, in the Land of Zendra, there lived three blind mice. The mice lived in the pantry of the royal palace. they lived very well there, for the royal chef was careless, and often left crumbs of food where they could eat them. In time, the three mice grew quite comfortable from all this food. Indeed, one could almost call them the nobility of the mouse population within the kingdom. (more…)