Sarra’s Second Life

When I came into Second Life I was like a kid fresh out of college with dreams and ideas. I was going to take the virtual world by storm, make my living working for myself sitting at home playing a game.  Two years later I still dream of the day when I do not have to punch the clock any more but my Slife has been a long series of failed business ventures and wonderful friends.  I wanted to be a club owner and a model and a professional blogger.   In 2007 I signed on with an agency run by the woman who owned the club I worked at.  I busted my butt to help out and rehearsed with the other girls but I never made it to the runway.  The agency soon changed hands, and it was time for me to move on.

I continued to work as a dancer until my friends and I decided we knew enough to move on and open our own place.  Club Decadance was born, and it never took off. A good night for us was when we could get three of four people to come in and hang out for a bit.  We hung on for six months with me pulling as much overtime as I could in real life to keep the second life dream alive.  We were forced to close down once I lost my job.

From here I moved on and began modeling for a store called Cyanide.  I again worked my butt off, volunteered for every photo shoot, and spent alot of time modeling in store.  I then had a baby  prematurely in real life, and my second life time dropped dramatically.  I was let go because “my look really hadn’t been updated”  No Shit…

This is where the Pro blogging “dream” started.  I met a girl who makes her living in first life as a blogger.  She works on her sites for a few hours a day and travels the world.  Sounds nice doesn’t it?  Well she showed me a few things and I got to writing.  This blog and Avatarweekly.net came from her inspiration.  Neither one of them has yet made me enough money to go out to dinner with let alone quit my job.

With a long series of failures in my second past, I find it harder and harder to log in.  My second life has lost direction and has become nothing more than me sitting on the wall in my skybox.  While I can never fully leave behind the friends I have made, I am lost on where to go.  I wish I could be young and naive and full of hopes and dreams once more, instead of that bitter old avatar who tells the noobs about the good old days.

Today I heard about the public beta of the new Linden Lab viewer Second Life 2.0.  Being the second life addict that I am, I rushed home from work to try it out.  I got logged in and everything was different.  It sort of felt like the user interface of an x-box game and reminded me of the Google Chrome web browser.  It looked very promising. I decided to start playing around with it, figured out how to change my preferences, change my windlight settings, and open my inventory.

Then..I looked at plurk and people were talking about web on a prim. Now this was something I had to check out for myself. I rezed my prim, set my url and went ahead and started plurking.  A quick lesson before I get back to the action..to set up web on a prim, rez whatever shape you want to work with, and then when you are in the build menu, select the texture tab.  At the bottom of the menu there is now an option that says media and a plus sign.  Click on the plus sign, add the url to the site you want to visit, and bam..you have web on a prim.

This is where things went down hill for me.  The camera controls were wild. I move a little bit and all of a sudden I was looking in my neighbors window.  Now as I am just starting to get into photography, stable camera controls are a must.  I had a hard time using ctrl alt click, and my scroll wheel sent my eyes flying.  I could not center up on my prim.

The loss of the pie menu in 2.0 was another kick in the butt for me.  I have been on Second Life for over two years, and I am used to the pie menu.  I could just right click and boom, all of my options were there.  I do like the drop down, but it is going to take alot of getting used to for me.

Another bad point for me is the fact that when I logged in, the music was on full volume, and voice was by default on.  I was able to get the music down rather quickly, but it took me about fifteen minutes to figure out how to disable the voice option.  I would prefer that voice and music default to the off position when you log in.  Usually I come in world when my child is asleep, and I am sure the sound of Metallica coming from Mommies speakers would ruin nap time.

Over all I like where the Lindens are going with this viewer.  It has some very exciting new features.  I personally will not give it a positive or negative rating until I spend more time playing with it, but for right now, I just wanted to throw my observations out there and see what others thought about it.