Today is a momentous day in my second life, today is the day I start trying to earn serious cash, and I think I might be in trouble.....Bad Body Day
I’m having a series of disagreements with my body at the moment. Yesterday I started the seemingly innocuous task of trying to take a snapshot of myself. What should have been a two second click of the camera, turned into a battle of wills. For reasons best known to my body each time I took a photo I randomly shoved my arm or (more worryingly) my leg straight up in the air and would not take it down until the camera was switched off. I have a photo of sorts, only because I discovered the alt button, (hold it and rotate yourself) works almost like magic. As a beginner the snapshot is not always the easiest to control, be prepared to get a lot of photos of scenery and the side of your face.
By the way I’d like to pass on a message to my fellow second lifers, if you do encounter a newbie with the aforementioned limb control problems, can you and your friends not choose that moment to start conversations with them via instant messenger? It is hard to be sociable when your foot is repeatedly kicking your head.
After making a bit of a show of myself, I did what any self respecting Newbie should do, I straightened myself out and teleported immediately out of there to anywhere. At random I ended up having another look at the Freebie warehouse. Absent mindedly stroking a dog turned my body against me for a second time. I stalked the dog's every move at breakneck pace, very much against my will. Wherever the dog ran, I followed; in fact I am very lucky not to be digging up bones as we speak. Of course normality eventually resumed but my stroking pet days are over.
Just before I started on the path to earn an honest crust, I teleported into a club for a few moves. It seemed to be staffed by ex prison guards. Not only did I get shoved off the stage (just because I wasn’t staff and was scaring the customers with a loosely controlled shimmy) but one of the guards took my hair off and put it in my inventory, twice. Apparently you can slow a club down with too many extras and they get very stroppy if you don’t take off what they say, when they say it. Obviously in a state of shock (being bald in a public place doesn't agree with me), I panicked and took off my shoes, then I left the club backwards leaving my shoes behind. I feel like a learner driver at the moment, at the first sign of something unusual I automatically press the nearest thing, generally the detach button...
Camping out
The phenomenon of camping abounds in Second Life. It’s a way of doing nothing and earning a few Lindens every few minutes. Generally this idleness is paired with gambling on games, the longer you gamble the more you get allegedly. A couple of nights this didn’t work out so well for me and I lost 20 Lindens in a matter of seconds, you need to watch out for that. Yesterday evening I discovered a place where they pay you to sunbathe, unfortunately it is only 2 Lindens per ten minutes. I’m not the most patient person and kept standing up, which overrode the money making animation and set my camping clock back to zero. So after half an hour of much twitching I made 2 Lindens, it didn’t even cover the money I lost in the seaside arcades. But you shouldn’t just take my word for it, the man next to me made 120 Linden dollars and it only took him ten hours to do it – I mean, really, who has that kind of time?
Pyramid and other investments
After a bit of soul searching, I have now realised that I will have to wait at least another week before I can expect to be taken seriously when applying for jobs. So I have resorted, initially at least, to get rich quick schemes. I have finally got my hands on a pyramid, apparently if you hand over 20 Lindens, it's a license to print money. Well, I am sure it said something like that in the instructions. Since I got a bit carried away in the gambling hall I am hoping someone clicks on my pyramid soon. I wouldn't want you to think that I am a foolish investor, I also bought a lottery ticket (at least I think that's what I did) so fingers crossed it could be me.
Tomorrow I think that I am going to buy a new skin, nothing too blue or foxlike, but I need a new shape to stretch around in. I'm hoping it will make all the difference in landing that dream job, just in case my current investments don't yield enough to support me for the next month.
Tip for the day
When you join a group, sometimes an “amusing” catch phrase appears over your head. These things can say a lot more about you than you may wish them to. Just purchasing some hair, meant that I had “tickle me” over my head for three days. Most people seemed a lot more forward with those words as an encouragement. Now that I have “I love learning” following me around, people are giving me a bit of space on the dance floor. I guess that's because, unless I buy a Newbie placard and return to my nose kicking antics, I couldn’t proclaim my Newbieness any louder.
