Trial 1.1 in September 2003

In September the Linden's made a copy of several sims and we were invited to go and try out our stuff for the launching of 1.1.  That's when vehicle scripting came in.

Our good friend Neferon Kuroda rezzed in next to me in one of the testing areas.

I was there when Loki Pico arrived and caught this picture of him still unrezzed.

They had a copy of Prelude there also.  That was what Orientation Island was called back then.  It was interesting seeing a copy of where I had arrived in SL four months earlier.

Following are some of my pictures of residents testing in Test 1.1.  A couple of the residents are wearing clothing that says 'No Texture'  haha

I ran into Linkin Slate testing out one of his vehicles.


A shot of the copy of Bonefacio.  That big tree is a creation of Fleabite Beach.  A few years later she gave us a copy.  We put it out every year at Christmas time.  It is super primmy!  You can also see one that is out all year round in FairChang Expo.

Another shot of the testing in Bonefacio.

I love this shot of Garth and me in Dore admiring the moon.

Chat to you later!  Sorry I left off the blogging the last nine months,  I kinda lost heart after Garth died in September. 

Of Show and Tell

Show and Tell was one of the popular Mentor held events on the old Stage 4, which was on the corners of Ahern, Dore, Morris and Bonefacio. I dug though my HD for pictures from the summer and fall of 2003.

We were given L$1,000 for each Show and Tell, L$500 to divide amongst the winners at the Show and Tell and the other L$500 for ourselves. We would write up a plug on a notecard and pass it on to the Linden on duty, be it Char, Jeff, Michael or Lee and they would put out a grid wide announcement.


Here I am on the top row of Stage 4 with Linkin and Nyna Slate, standing is Jeff Linden who often was an imposing presence at Mentor events.

An impressive Dragon, I wish I had noted who brought it to Show and Tell. I think the Mentor hostess was Alexis Fairchild.


Soren Romulus showing off his new Avatar and outfit.


One evening Washu Zebrastrip showed up to share this Avatar she had made.


Valfaroth Grimm, a very talented resident, brought this huge skeleton to Show and Tell.




Hiro Yamamoto brought his Globe of the world for all of us to admire. As you can see it is immense, and long before megaprims and sculpties.


Devlin Gallent made an Android Avatar and passed it out at the event. Several of us put in on and joined him on the stage. I am the one with the gold hair.

More later about Show and Tell and other events on the old Stage 4.

Chat at you later

Moving to Clyde

SEPTEMBER 2003

I was flying around Clyde one day and found a great island that had 'gone public'.

Remember in those days one more often than not just released land no longer wanted. It went back to the Lindens and could be purchased again for a L$1 a 16mX16m square. There was no currency exchange back then either. We lived on stipends, bonuses and what ever sales we were able to generate.

I took Garth over to see it and we thought it a great place to put our new house and plenty of room for him to put up a hangar and runway. So I bought it for us. It was on the northern edge of Clyde.


A newly minted Avatar came up to us on the new island, Trent Hedges, he ended up buying a parcel not far from us and set about making the most fabulous scripted motorcycles. Also sometime after that another newcomer, Cubey Terra, bought the land right behind Trent.

Garth got busy right away moving our house and adapting it to our new surroundings. Our new bedroom went under the runway.





Our bedroom backed onto the edge of the sim.

A funny aside, back then when a sim went down when you logged back in you rezzed into the next sim over. Although Clyde was PG next to us was Hawthorne an M sim. Very often we would see half naked and/or naked Avatars rez right out of our bedroom window. They would hurriedly put on clothing while they were waiting for Hawthorne to pop back up again. I might add that as small as SL was in those days most were friends or acquaintances. hehe

I wasted no time bringing over my lighthouse to our new island in Clyde and then I set to the landscaping of our new home and building the marina.




I love making ponds and landscaping around them. I even have a little deer grazing.

Chat at you later.

September 2003

I didn't realize how long it has been since I blogged here. After I moved into Garth's flat in the Blue region that the Americana group owned I made a roof garden on top of his apartment building. We sat up there a lot and chatted with friends.



Here we are on the roof garden with CrowCatcher Valen and Fleabite Beach.

They both would stand up for us in our SL wedding and 3½ years after in our RL nuptuals. Flea is still my dear friend.

In September Garth decided he wanted to build a house for us on my property in Shipley. I told him I liked California ranch with lots of windows. Also I needed 5 meter ceilings, as I dislike being in a building where I can't move and see easily.

I sent him some pictures off the internet and he did his own research and came up with what I consider a fabulous build.






It basically was only a large living room with dining ell. To this day we still use that house. Of course it has been modified a lot over the years, but the bones are still the same.

This is the finished product in Shipley. You can see today's version in FairChang Village



Char Linden asked us to come up with some new games to play,, so Garth and I brainstormed and finally came up with 'Jeopardy' and 'Limericks'. In those days the Mentors were paid L$500 to host events such as Show and Tell, Trivias, puzzle games etc.

Limericks was fun, people had to come up with an original Limerick to recite and at the end everyone would vote for the best, we had L$500 given us by the Lindens to hand out as prizes.




I held the Limerick contest on the roof deck of our house. Garth participated one evening with his limerick:

There is a young lass I call Hunny
Who loves to build but it's funny
whenever she does
you should see such a fuss
I get doubles of things except, Hunny

Those contests were lots of fun except that because we lived in an 'M' region some got a little racy and in the end I suspended the Limerick evening.

Enough for today, chat at you later.

August 2003 Brings Big Changes in My Life

I went to a lot of Trivia events hosted by various Mentors. This picture is of Cal Rogers (he was a newbie) and me at at Disney trivia in the old Clara Amphitheater.






Fey Brightwillow and Tinker Bell at the same Clara Amphitheater.








Garth joined the mentors in August also, he mostly mentored helping people with scripting but occasionally hosted a Show & Tell on Stage 4.







I expanded my holdings in Shipley by buying a large tract of land to my north and proceeded to spend a lot of time making my fishing dock and a Marina. I built a boardwalk around the hill with the intention of it going to my garden/pool spot, but it didn't quite get there due to the height difference. I struggled with all the different angles. A great and fast builder I never was! I had great fun landscaping it also.

I didn't know how to terraform but the land had a couple of depressions and I filled them with prim water and had my ponds!





Hamlet Linden (who is now Hamlet Au or Wagner James Au) used my Marina for an interview for his New World Notes.








I also spent a lot of my time cruising around Second Life looking at the sights,here is a picture of Chip Slates's Lighthouse.












And a view of Bonecrusher Slate's Fanway Park in Blue. You can see a recreation of Bone's ballpark on FairChang Vista NE. Garth built it for Americana Redux some time ago.








A pics of me and Sinatra Cartier (as a Hot Dog) chatting.



















The first Burning Man.















Jack Orlowski who was Jessie's Warlord for a while.














Tweake Underhill's Lighthouse in Welsh (which is now a Treehouse).















My RL birthday is August 22nd and Garth gave me a copy of his first Helicopter. Not being very nimble in SL it took me quite a while to learn to fly it. A few days later I actually flew it across Second Life, from the Blue sim through to Morris and Ahern then to Shipley.



Coincidently the evening of the 22nd was the grand opening of Bonecrusher Slate's Chinese Theater in Americana (Blue Sim). It was a very gala event planned by the inimitable Baccara Rhodes. I think that was her first event in Second Life.

It was also Garth's and my first date. We ended up leaving the Gala early to allow more visitors into the region to attend the opening. A group of us went to Ramon Kothari's place in Shipley.




Garth and me on Ramon's deck.














Garth began IMing me after that first date and coming to visit me in Shipley. Then on the 31st he came to visit and we hung out with Oda and Sinatra on the beach, Sinatra at one point expessed concern that I didn't have a house and offered to let me live in his Hotel in Americana. Frankly I was quite happy with just hanging our on my Fishing Dock! Then Garth added, "Come be my flatmate"! Fatal words, hehe. He had an Apartment House in Americana that some of the people in the group lived in. I remember Jai Nomad was one of the residents.

Well not being shy, I said 'okey'. We made plans for me to move the next day.
He IMed me in the morning just to double check, and I said 'Sure, I am already to move."

I had told him I had furniture, cause his apartment (or flat as he called it) was empty except for a couple of pictures, But in reality all I possesed was a round table with 4 attached chairs.

When We First Met - July 2003

The gang at Americana (Blue region) threw a Fourth of July party,there was a hot dog cart, picnic tables, sparklers and American Flags to wave.

That is when that self described 'Cheeky Brit' came and stood next to me. I thought he was cute but he didn't say much. I found out much later that he chose to stand next to me as he thought I was the most 'comfortable' looking. What a fateful meeting that turned out to be!




That is Garth and me in the lower left of the picture. Bonecrusher Slate took this picture, he is the one in the baseball uniform. Fleabite Beach is the winged cat to the rear. Oda VonLenard is manning the Hot Dog cart.

I didn't see much of him till the middle of August, he was busy building and scripting for Americana and developing his first helicopter. He had excavated in Americana and made what he called "Area 51", and covered it with a prim lake top. He spent a lot of time down there working. He would come up when he heard me come to the sim, but he rarely said anything. He claims I made him tounge tied!

I am posting here some pictures of that era, I apologize again as I didn't know to take pictures to my hard drive and they are all in that old squashed .tga that I have since converted to ,jpg.

This is a picture of my land in Shipley. I planted some trees and made myself a lake bordered with rocks. Cristiano Midnight, who was a neighbor from Federal the next sim to the south, helped me with the pond textures. I think I ended up with a cool peaceful spot.

My neighbors in Shipley to the front were Sinatra Cartier and Catherine Omega, to one side was Oda VonLenard and to the other side was Johnathan VonLenard, Kathy Yamamoto and Sabre Titan.



Twins at the Pond!

A friend of mine and I donned my Avatar. It was really kind of spooky.

I decided to make an Asian Avatar in light of the fact that my SL surname was Chang. This is me flying around in Shipley, that is Catherine Omega's house in the background. Shipley in those days was one of the regions at the end of SL to the east. Our view was of the vast Linden ocean.









The world as we knew it then, the Linden's had added the 'Color' regions mid June. Shipley is the NE region in pink. Regions with the hatch marks are 'Mature' all the rest are rated 'PG'

Chat at you all later......Pituca