How’s your Second Life doing on this cold yet sunny Autumn day?  Mine is responding a lot better today than it has been all week and for that I’m grateful because I was really starting to lose my temper with it. I *never* lose my temper in RL so you could say that I’ve been beyond wound-up by the current nonsense impacting the grid at the moment.   It would appear that I’m not the only one who has been experiencing issues either, check out the Linden blog for some of the comments that seriously dischuffed residents have posted.  I’ve never been kicked out of the world as often as I have recently..it’s ridiculous, and many of my friends have said how darn glitchy SL is at the moment for them too, so I’m not being paranoid! When peiople start dissing the grid en masse I  feel my eyes rolling  skywards and exclaim ‘What’s new?’, but that’s far from the point.  Stability should be absolutely paramount to the Lindens at the moment, what with the credit crunch affecting the metaverse now too.  Popular places are starting to disappear.  ‘The Three Lions’ has gone for good with a whimper rather than a bang, and it looks as though the reknowned Jazz establishment ‘Phat Cats’ is also heading toward the dreaded dumper.  People are finding it hard to meet their tier and for what? An infruriatingly buggy experience that is driving people away from Second Life in droves, no matter what the Lindens seem to think.  I know quite a few people who are taking a ‘Second Life break’ now, and I expect that number to rise because I feel we are just are not getting an adequate service for the amount of money that we are pumping in to the grid.  The Lindens need to realise that with people tightening their belts in the real world one of the first things to be impacted will be paying avatars.  We’ve seen land prices plummet and I expect we’ll see many of our favourite virtual stores close if the recession does hit.  Therefore the Lindens’ priority should be to make the grid as stable, and as attractive, to us as possible.  I don’t want any frills or fuss, just a stable experience so that we can retire into the safety of our virtual world without all the hassles of the real one resting upon our shoulders…Second Life is my main source of escapism and we certainly all need some of that at the moment. 

Right-rant over! In other news I’ve had a few pressies land upon me for which I am exceedingly grateful, so here’s a huge thanks going out to Lawra Fredrikson (Nekorifik) Peter Stindberg (Greene Concept) Carrie Tsatsu (Zoobys) and last, but not least, Emeriselle Theas (Orchid Dreams).  I’ll be sharing their bounty with you via the next few posts, so prepare to be impressed….and a final note, *IF* you’ve sent me stuff to review recently and it hasn’t appeared OR you haven’t received a recognition from me PLEASE contact me as my inventory appears to be doing some VERY strange things at the moment which makes me think I’ve lost items.  Put simply, if you send me something I try to always respond, so if you haven’t heard from me chances are I ain’t got the goodies.  My mum brought me up to be polite you see so if I haven’t responded then that’s not a good sign…

Finally, If you look at my Flickr picks you’ll see a few skin shots and I’ll be talking about those too in the very near future…Lots to do this week then, AND my holidays are over-back to the real world again tomorrow.  OH JOY.