That last post sounds kind of silly, and to be honest, now I am taking a little bit of a step back from Second Life and my media overload to take care of some things in the real world that really need to be dealt with.

I get mixed up in craziness so easily.

So, I’ve been given an opportunity, I’ve had this for a while, but somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice is telling me to make up my mind. You see, in Second Life I have an opportunity, for experience I’ve not exactly had before. See, I have the chance at a girlfriend in the virtual world. She’s willing to go with whatever I chose, see, but being the indecisive guy in the real world, and always afraid of missed chances, do I take this one?

I have other female friends, that I enjoy spending time with, one of them, who occasionally is still around, will always have a place in my heart. We spent a lot of time together, as good friends, until she found herself a boyfriend and I ran. The funny thing is, this one lives just over the state line, and I still have hopes we could meet someday, no expectations, just wanting to see a friend. This one I’ve even spoken to on the phone, yeah, and she’s not the only one.  One I met on IMVU from Texas I did the same, and another on Second Life offered, shocker huh, Mr shy guy that doesn’t like the phone. Then there’s the cheeky Aussie I met recently that likes to dance, she and the one I first spoke of (the one that gave me the option) crossed paths recently, it was all good, they both were willing to share.

I don’t know, see I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings if I take this leap, even if it is ONLY SL and can’t lead to anything but friendship in the meatspace. She says it is entirely up to me, I am leaning in that direction, and there’s always a way out if neccessary, but I don’t know, knowing of recent events other people have dealt with, a broken heart, however virtually caused, is still a broken heart.

Then there’s the thing my mom brought up, are they really female? Well, to answer this question, I’ve spoken to two of them, and one wants to, but hasn’t gotten it to work yet., and they do not sound like fakers, if you know what  I mean.

Ultimately though, I still hope in my heart, for the special person in the real world, I know that, the one I have wished for probably isn’t real.

Ah, the choices, these moments in my life I am stuck….at a virtual, or real….crossroads.

Recently on New World Notes (a blog I’ve been following for a while)  Hamlet posted an article titled “For Virtual Worlds to Grow, Avatars Must Become More Like Halloween Costumes Where Faces Can Still Be Seen” phew, long title, the post can be found  here. It was not specifically about Second Life, but I will respond from that perspective.

To summarize, the post is about Halloween costumes, and the fact that some people who wear costumes that also cover their face don’t seem to get the same kind of responses or attention as people who do not have their faces covered. I understand this completely from personal experience, you see, I don’t like clowns, because their faces are covered in makeup, and their attitudes are fake, and I have an aversion to people who are fake, though, SL is warming me up to role playing, but that is another post for another day.

Besides clowns, I also have an issue with people in full costume, once I went to the grand opening of a Parisian store at a mall here that at the time was fairly new, for some reason there were people there, that had these really freaky and out of place costumes, like they were monsters, and some of them were even carrying their own monster heads, this had nothing at all to do with the store, and it majorly freaked me out, and I could not at all stay in the store that long, I had to leave, I begged to leave.

However, when it comes to virtual worlds like Second Life, I do not have that aversion, in fact, in some situations I am much more comfortable than in my everyday real life. You’d think maybe it’s because I wind up in virtual “places” where there is common ground, such as the wonderful club called Fire Escape.  I did consider that as I was thinking about how to word this post, but then it hit me, if that was the case, then I would not be shy in the same situations in real life, but I still am.

When having a discussion about this idea with a coworker, she said maybe it’s because there are still human representations of people in Second Life, I would go more along the lines of human-ish or humanoid, because a cute human-sized faerie with hair that reminds me of Sailor Moon, still isn’t human, even if the person behind the avatar is.

I’m not saying I am completely comfortable in Second Life, no, I still get shy, just ask that faerie Suki Paulino sometime, Giant Maelstrom has a little trouble expressing his feelings. Though I’d say I warm up a little faster maybe than in reality, maybe it’s because of that separation, which is an issue in real life, or maybe it is because I am sitting on my couch, in front of my Toshiba, watching the Late Late show with Craig Fergusen on the DVR out of the side of my eye laughing at Geoff Peterson, where I AM comfortable, so the social interactions are easier. Maybe it’s because  a lot of the discussions are in text, where I’ve always found it easy to express myself, or maybe it’s because I’ve warmed up to virtual worlds, having had plenty of time to experience these things, from as far back as the predecessor to Active Worlds, World’s Chat, or even beta tested There, I miss There .  Maybe all these things are right, maybe none of them are, maybe it’s a deeper psychological thing that I won’t be able to figure out.

Maybe, I should just shut up and enjoy it.

No beer yesterday, didn’t feel like it, today on the other hand, well, I think I could use two. So I pulled out two (not in the dark this time) with foil over the caps, both were brewed in Canada. The first one was Ephemere Apple flavored Ale (apparently they also have Raspberry). You can smell the green apple flavor when you open the bottle, and it’s kind of  light, but it has some sweetness to it which is nice. The other one was Blanche De Chambly, the bottle says “White beer on lees”, there is  something different about it I can’t quite figure out how to describe, I also quite liked this one too.

I also watched Watchmen, hot dang, some of the violence was a bit much for my taste, but over all pretty darn awesome movie. I needed an escape after some weird crap today. I’m going to run this one back to the Redbox before I forget. I have two other movies to watch this week.

A social reality game. Imagine being able to play a “Hug Someone!” Card you printed out on a co-worker at work and actually getting points for it. This game is Akoha! The tagline is “Play it Forward” I did just that today, played the “Hug Someone!” member created card on a co-worker. You can see the mission here.  When I had told her about Akoha a week ago after I heard about it on net@nite episode #85, she thought it was pretty cool too! Imagine haveing an excuse to do something nice for someone, even something as simple as giving them a compact flourescent lightbulb, yes, there’s a card for that.

It’s not officially launched yet, so you either have to have someone play a card on you, or buy a deck of your own, which is cheap, they’re only charging shipping just so they can get the cards circulating.

I just switched to using the Cool viewer for Second Life, which is just a drop-in replacement for the official viewer.  The Hippo viewer was crashing on me everytime I tried to open a web link from within Second Life which was just causing me frustration. I like that the Cool viewer is just a drop in, so it works mostly like the official one, but it has better support for OpenSim. I want to give OpenLife Grid another look, I’ve checked it out before, but didn’t spend enough time there to really figure it out much.

I think I was upset about a purchase for some free to play game when I made my original post. I still don’t quite get Second Life, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t tried, and am trying again. I wanted to see what SellaBand Island was all about. So I jerry rigged Firefox to send Secondlife:// links to the Hippo OpenSim Viewer. Hippo OpenSim Viewer is a modified version of the official Second Life client for use with OpenSim servers. OpenSim is essentially an Open Source version of Second Life.  I figured, since Hippo is merely a modified verion of the official client, maybe it could open SURLS (Secondlife:// links) Sure enough, it can. How I did it, was simple. When you setup a protocol handler in Firefox, Firefox will ask you what application you want to use. In this case I had Second Life create the protocol handler, but told Firefox to send it to Hippo instead. It’s really very easy especially if you have the Second Life client already installed, and have not yet made it the default to open  SURLS.

When I said I would NEVER playe MMORPGS, I hadn’t considered how cheap Dungeon Runners is. I have it now, problem is, I discovered I had to get a new video card to play it.

I will never play a game that costs me monthly to play, sorry, but I don’t play games that consistently for it to be worth it to me. I put things aside, I just can not be that dedicated. I don’t understand the motivation behind wanting to buy a game, and then pay for it, and pay for it, and pay for it. Now I do like some of the free to play games, but I think that it is throwing money away, to buy a new head, that only lasts a year, or a gun that only has 20 uses. Again, what’s the point? Why do people feel motivated to just throw away money like that. It is such a waste!

I like in Second Life when you buy something, it’s yours, but at the same time, I don’t get what people see in that either, my first life gets boring enough, sorry but flying or walking around doing nothing isn’t exactly what I call fun. I guess i just don’t get it.

Funny how Valve and Stardock fit together like that. Brad Wardell of Stardock even said “You would have to pry Steam out of my cold dead hands.” Good to know, and I agree.

Steam in my opinion isn’t perfect, but it does it’s job well, with Steam, for the most part, I don’t have to burn gas going to the store, sure I can’t resell anything on there right now, but honestly I could care less. Being the kid who’s mom made him get rid of Doom and Doom 2 because they gave him nightmares, and regretted it ever since, I have atleast two licenses for each game now, one of which is on Steam, just for the convienience of download and install without thinking about it.

Impulse does that too, like Stardock Central did, it includes everything Object Desktop, Thinkdesk, and Total Gaming, but they are opening it up, imagine one click download and install even Firefox when you switch to a new PC or reinstall Windows, they plan on it! I especially like the fact that Impulse doesn’t have to open itself everytime you open an app I downloaded on it, will I dump Steam? No, never, I’d still probably buy a game on Steam first if it was on both, mostly that’s just habit.  I still call Steam a “steaming pile”, but I like the convienence nonetheless.

the biggest advantage Impulse will have, that tempts me, is the possibility of REFUNDS!

Most stores carry crap for PC games now. So many don’t even make it to stores.

It’s still hard to say if I am a real gamer or not, I like to play sure, but as my current experience shows, at some single player games, I am just not that good. Don’t get me wrong, Portal  (part of The Orange Box) is an interesting concept, but to be honest, since I’m just not that good, I made it to like test 15 or whatever and am having all kinds of trouble, walkthrough’s confuse me. The stress it is causing me is just way too much. Kameo is also fun, but I’ve gotten to a boss battle where I have to use Deep Blue,  Deep Blue is just too hard for me to control in the water. Can’t I just have a simple fun mindless game that I can actually win? Even Spyglass board games is driving me up the wall, I can play Reversi, Checkers and Mancala, but I’m not even good enough to beet the AI. Chess, don’t even go there, no idea how to play Chess.