I had a challenge in mind, and asked Dolmere if I could be next.  He graciously accepted.  Then, of course, my awesome challenge turned into a long and drawn out essay, so I've got to quickly come up with a challenge to save face.  Luckily, the fates were on my side as something of importance was brought to my attention yesterday.

This week's challenge is to support a cause in SL that is important to you.  This is not to say you have to pay out a ton of  money, or devote a lot of your time to something.  But any help to organizations that rely on donations and volunteers is appreciated.  A lot of the people involved in these challenges do this already, so to you, simply tell a little of what you do to help out.  For the rest of you, though, organizations need your support.

*However*, I want you to think about it before you do so.   Now if your first instinct is to support the Relay for Life effort, that's great.  I am in full support of this.  But, remember that some organizations within SL also need your help.  I'm not trying to take *anything* away from RFL.  But I do want it to be known that there are other organizations within SL that rely on your support to survive.  Call this my cry for help, if you will.  The Shelter, in particular, is running drastically low on funds, and while it is a big supporter of RFL, donations have been very light in recent weeks.  Do not forget about the little ones that also need your help in surviving.  It's markedly difficult to ask for funding when you're going up against cancer, but without funding, places like the Shelter or NCI will not be able to exist.  If you are enjoying the services of places like these, please don't forget about them.

Ok, so my answer to this challenge…

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Our not-a-meme challenge #9 comes from Coal this week. Her challenge is to reveal what it is that SL has brought to our RL. Well, I don't know if I can *really* blame SL for this, but I'm going to anyway. As most of you who know me will know, I am always wearing glasses in SL. Crazy, right? Who needs glasses in SL? I don't know, but it's a part of who I am. Anyway, in RL I have had perfect eyesight until about five years ago. When I finally needed glasses, the prescription was a very low one. So low, in fact, that I could barely tell a difference wearing them versus not. Most of the time the glasses became annoying, not becuase they weren't helping my vision, but because they were hindering my peripheral vision. Not having worn glasses for 30 years, I suppose, has made me very conscious of the frames that I see when looking through. Well in the past couple of months, I've *had* to wear my glasses. I feel blind without them. The prescription hasn't changed, but I swear I can see better with them than without. A fact that wasn't as noticible previously. Sooo, I blame Mera. *That's* what SL has brought to my RL. It's making me go blind!

Here is my response to my own challenge.

Actually, the idea hit me yesterday as I was undergoing some changes. Where was I going to go? Luskwood. I've known about Lusk since I arrived and I'd popped in a time or two, but never actually spent any time there. Here's my big chance.

As you can see to the left, I'm as cute as can be and ready to go. (No, I didn't *have* to go furry, but I like this av.)

I arrived and took a snapshot of the surroundings. Luskwood is a very pretty place. I love the environment, all of the treetop platforms and walkways.

There seemed to be a bit of a party going on. Some days I'm brave enough to jump in and say hey, but today wasn't one of them. I probably should have, but everyone seemed to be having a good time. How do you judge your coolness? Hopefully it's on the tie-fighter scale.

I meandered off and wandered along the walkways in the sky. Now I love the design and feel of Lusk, but considering the number of tiny folks I would suspect wander the place, you'd think the railings would be just a *bit* lower. (Yes I did fall out…twice)

The giant tree that you can wander inside is quite impressive. I couldn't help but think of the Legend of Zelda, which isn't so furry, but hey, I was inside a tree!

More of the prettiness. A sim that's in full style is just great. The fact that it's a mainland sim is quite impressive, too. Then again, they've been around a long time.

I came across this wonderful building for a game called "Artist Ambush". Their set is just wonderful. It's a bit like Building Shelter in that the host announces a theme, but instead of building, the artists draw something and then upload it. Audience members vote for their favorite. I don't know if they're still active, but I'd like to hope so.  Sounds wonderful!

Playground!

Pub Giant eltee Head. Named for eltee Statosky, one of the Luskwood Founders, no doubt. Complete with a spinning eltee head disco ball inside.

Ok, so this is just a wonderful place to explore, but I definitely wish I'd interacted with more people. I'd like to meet more of the community, I think it will be fun.

That's right, I was supposed to have this challenge posted yesterday. Nope, I didn't forget, I just…um…well I forgot what I was going to post, not that I was *supposed* to post. This reminds me why I need to write everything down, even when it's so wonderful an idea that I'm sure I won't need to write it down.

On that note, here's a challenge for you. And for me, too, since I'll actually need to answer this myself eventually.

If you're like me–and judging by the severe lack of purple, that doesn't seem likely–but anyway, if you *were* like me, you'd tend to have a few regular places that you visit. So our challenge today, my dearies, is to go somewhere new and tell us about it. You don't have to pick a random spot, pop in, view the horrific looking yard sale, and post a picture. The challenge isn't to go to a single new place, only to find someplace new and let us know what you thought. So if it takes you a few tries to find a place that you're ready to talk about, that's just ducky. Was it a horrific yard sale? Did you find an amazingly pretty build that you never knew existed? Did you meet some cool new person? Did some random dude silently swing his lightsaber at you before disappearing? The only requirement is that it shouldn't be a place you've visited regularly. The SL world is huge, and I'm sure at this point I'm in the "having seen less than .001%" camp, so now is a reason to expand our horizons!

Jacek has posted the next challenge, Do you consider your avatar an extension of yourself, or a character you can control?

This is easy, as I've gone through my own identity crisis, which has been talked about on this blog muchly…and I'm not going to link to it either.  What it comes down to, though, is that Mera is very much *me*.  I am actually much more comfortable in my SL shoes (spiked heels though they often be) than in my RL ones.  That has troubled me a lot at times, but I've also learned a lot from it.  I can safely say that it took a while, but I've come to terms with my SL identity being a more natural extension of my RL identity.  So yes, I do feel that Mera is an extension of the personality that I house inside of my RL existence.  Only Mera doesn't have many of the hang-ups that RL has imposed upon me.  This has given me the ability to excel in a world that's otherwise been keeping me down.

Now to go back to hammering out my response to Challenge #5!

Dolmere posted up the not-a-meme challenge #5 last Sunday.  Has it been that long already?  This one calls for us to write a howto article that a new Second Life user would find useful.  That, unfortunately, means thought will have to go into it.  I thought about cheating and posting my Basic Building class script.  But hey, you gotta come to my class if you want the wonderfulness that is, uh, my class.

So I've been trying to think of other ideas that'll work.  And I have a couple, and I will answer this challenge.  However, this has not been the best week for blog postings from me, which you'll find evident from my lack of posting anything at all.  Perhaps this weekend I can give it a shot, though.  I think it'd be fun, I just need the time to do it.

Starr-ving Artist: Challenge #4 – Not-A-MeMe – SL Circa 2009

Dixie posted the next challenge, "What will be Second Life's biggest positive change and biggest negative change in two years (circa 2009)?".

This is a toughie.  I tend to side with Dolmere on this with the "I don't know or I don't care" bit.  I also expect SL to go off in a direction we don't quite expect.  What I do think we'll see are more businesses moving their presence into SL, much like they did on the Web.  That trend is already happening, so that's an easy one, really.  I think people will find new uses for SL outside of what we're currently seeing.  My *very* first idea prior to even knowing SL existed was to make a world very SL-like that could be sold to companies.  Workers could then do their work within this alternate world, from any place in the physical world.  It would be a true virtual office, but in a more work-focused environment.  I considered it more of a visual IM.  But my plan was to be able to embed work type things within this world so that folks could easily wander the halls, interact with each other, view each other's computer screens to provide the same level of support as we do physically, etc.  I think SL will become the basis for this sort of thing in the future.  Or it ought to.

For bad stuff?  Who knows.  I know griefing will increase, but that's just the nature of the beast.  Open world = abuse the world.  I can live with it (means BanLink will need more work, but yay!)  I imagine LL will throw a few other wrinkles into the mix that will piss off the loud majority (typically the minority).  Mostly I'm in it for the ride.  I've not found LL to do many things that I've really disagreed with on a large scale.  I'm a pretty big supporter, so what can I do?  I imagine the integration of voice into SL is what will kill it mostly for me.  Not because I don't want to talk to my friends, but because in text, your thoughts aren't lost in the mix by being talked over by someone that's more excited or louder.  That's why I liked SL from the start, and I've said it plenty of times, "In SL, my 'voice' is heard."  Adding voice, while fun, will also hinder many good people from showing their true potential.

Oh yeah, we'll get Mono by 2009.

This challenge comes from Jacek.  This is a little tougher than I first thought when I saw the post.  My first instinct was to say "Absolutely".  But that's not completely true.  I've burned out of aspects of Second Life, but not so much Second Life as a whole.  You'd think my burnout would be because I took on too many tasks, but honestly that's not true.  This despite a bunch of people warning me to stop volunteering for more lest I burn myself out.

What I have burned out on, though, is volunteering for Linden Lab.  Not volunteering as a whole, mind you.  I just worked real hard to help Linden Lab out by becoming a Greeter/Mentor/Instructor/Live Helper.  And I was dang good at it as well.  But things went sour and I'll not go into it once again.  I've focused my efforts in other directions since then.  I don't really care about money or fame or bling.  All I want is a little appreciation for my efforts, so I focus my energies where I know my small contributions will be appreciated.

Aside from that, my only other close to burnout comes from the intense drama that Second Life seems to enjoy.  Again, it's not been enough to keep me out of SL, but enough to keep me away from parts of SL that I once enjoyed.  The trick is to just find something else to do until things die down.

Ok, so now it's my turn to post a challenge. I promised myself I'd have something planned ahead of time, but we all know that none of my plans ever work out, so no great loss.

Alright, so our challenge, my friends, is:

Name two Newbie Locations

No, wait. I mean:

Name your most favorite color!

Eh, too easy. Alright, this one for sure:

Name your top two optimization techniques when dealing with a transactional database receiving commands from second life at a rate of about two commands per second.

What? No?

Fine!

Tell us what you like most about Second Life.

There, that should be a good one. A lot has changed since I arrived, not to mention the population double triple quadruple uh, thirtyipling. But let's take a step back and define that statement just a bit. We want to exclude the all encompassing 'people' category from this topic. That's the easy answer. What we want to know here is what it was *before* you had all of these friends that kept you interested enough to make said friends. There had to be some promise to the world that kept bringing you back for more. Sure, the prospect of meeting like-minded people is allowed as a response, just not "all the friends I've made so far." However, "Mera" is always a valid answer.

Inquiring Minds Want To Know
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We've got a new thing going with some friends here. Twice a week one of us will post a challenge and we'll each respond. This week's challenge is provided courtesy of Dolmere Talamasca (who is the creator of this idea). The challenge this week, Name Two Newbie Locations. Easy enough. I'll not mention The Shelter in Isabel or Swinside, since I think each of us encounters newbies primarily in those locations. So let's go with the only slightly less obvious.
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