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

Going Live! - June 22, 2003

On June 22nd in the evening we all congregated in the Welcome Area (Ahern or Morris I imagine) for the Going Live party. The Lindens constructed a traveling, glittering ball (a la Times Square New Years ball), we all drank and cheered and waved our sparklers.

Philip Linden addressed the crowd, it was a very exciting evening.

I am the avatar in the lower right with a blue shirt standing next to the fellow with a sparkler in his hand.

AND the biggest news was that 2 days later, June 24th, Garth Fairlight signed into Second Life for the first time. He was a very experienced avatar having been on Cybertown.com for about 2 years, and he had run an Ultima Online shard using Sphereserver for a year and a half in the UK. He had been looking for a virtual world where he could build and script and not have to kill monsters to level up.

He bought a parcel in DeHaro too and built his own tent.


But we never ran into each other there. He lived in London so he waited up all night for scripting classes because there was never anyone online in his daytime. Later he bought land in Varney and built his house, which is still available in our Lighthouse Store!


We didn't meet till the 4th of July, but more about that later

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

The beginnings of Americana......

If you notice in the picture of my land in DeHaro you can see an island in the middle of the little lake. Char Linden used to host triva games in the chat ring there. We had a lot of fun, Kanker Greenacre was one of the fastest to answer! There were a lot of fun Linden hosted events in those days.

I attended quite a few classes too, scripting, building etc etc. I remember that Bob Bunderfield, Chip Midnight and Shadow Weaver were among the teachers. Stampshady Grimm had a great texture palace I used to frequent.

Sometime at the beginning of June the Lindens announced a contest to have full use of a sim for a group venture. It sounded like an amazing experiment so I went looking for a group to join. A group had to have at least 20 members to qualify for inclusion in the contest. I joined a group headed by Candie Apple, we met in her lavish home on the bluff in Clementina just below the Governor's Mansion and facing the endless ocean. Candy was well known for her classes on making wings and other assorted things. But I had a hard time understanding her vision for the group and ended up not staying in it.

I then joined the group Americana founded by George Busch, among the early members in Beta were Ramon Kothari, Tracey Kato, Jon VonLenard, Dionysius Starseeker, CrowCatcher Valen, Sinclair Valen, Fleabite Beach, Sassy Apple, Oda VonLenard, Sinatra Cartier, Bososuko Kato, Fey Brightwillow, Horatio Horn and of course me.




This is a picture of the 'layout' meeting to decide what was going where in the sim. Fleabite Beach is the cat with the wings, next to her on her left is Ramon Kothari. Bonecrusher Slate is the 'Hulk'. I can't tell who the others are. We were granted exclusive rights to the Blue sim for a number of days prior to that section of the continent being stitched to the mainland.

The new sims north of Boardman rose from the sea on or about June 19th of 2003. It was quite a sight as a large crowd gathered in Boardman and DeHaro to see it, and to make the mad dash to buy in the new lands!

chat at you later............Pituca

In the Beginning....

I have wanted to have a photoblog for a long time so let's see how this one works out! I hope I don't get too busy or too lazy to write what I really want to.

Check out this early picture of me right after coming to SL back in May 2003. I was so klutzy and didn't know how to take a picture of myself, not being technically apt I didn't know how turn myself around and face the camera! I am almost too embarrassed to post the pic!

I had been spending my spare time playing canasta on Yahoo and bridge on MSN. I resisted attempts by my new online friends to join them in RPGs. I didn't want to be anything but myself.

The life changing (for me) article appeared in Slate.com . "The game's makers, the tiny San Francisco startup Linden Lab, say the game is surprisingly popular with middle-aged women, who are less inclined to quest-oriented swordplay than to designing each other's dream homes. This may be the start of a new game genre: First person non-shooters for Mom."

I signed up right away and spent at least 3 days on the Orientation Island trying to figure everything out. I only saw one other person in the time I spent, 240z Strutt was his name. I said hi a couple of times but he never answered. He didn't last in SL I think as I never saw him in world.

I wandered around the grid (there were only about 33 sims in those days.). SL was only open a few hours a day, if I remember correctly it was from noon to 10pm by the time I came. I really wanted to buy some land but all I could find was owned by others or 'public land'. Took me over two weeks to figure out that 'public land' was for us to buy and not parkland. I eventually ended up buying a parcel in DeHaro which at the time was restricted to cabins and tents. with lots of space between the parcels.

Joan Nomad and Harald Nomad were my neighbors and they helped me rotate and place my newbie cabin.

That's me finally settled in and with a few pieces of furniture too!

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