First Day?

There have been so many things written about Newbie's, and there are so many help tips out there to help make things easier for your Second life. I don't want to do a repeat of what has already been done, but I will probably repeat some of the advice that experienced avatars have given you or will give you. I suppose I will start with giving some personal experience with my first days in this virtual world of Second Life and then I hope to give a weekly update as to what you can do as a newbie. I started coming to Second Life when I first heard about the launching of it in 2003. I tried desperately to get in to the world, but couldn't because of my computer capabilities. I was living in Italy at the time and needless to say our connection was really slow. I tried again as few months later, but still there was nothing there. I think through out 2003 I kept trying because I really was interested in the idea and thought what a great concept! I was in chat rooms all the time, and loved the way you could meet new people from all walks of life. There was a problem with the chat world though because so many bots were online that it caused such a disruption of conversations and I became increasingly more frustrated everyday. Finally the last draw was when MSN chats went from being free to charging, and then finally altogether stopping the chat rooms that I went to. I think it had to do with this one annoying chatter who used to just do different sized O 's in the room non-stop and then proclaimed that he was crashing the room, about 10 times a day. I stopped going to chat rooms in 2003, and it wasn't until 2007 that I checked out Second Life again. I had moved back to the states, had a better graphics card, and a faster connection. I thought that now I could finally find out what it was all about, and hoped that it would be what I had imagined it could be. I logged on, picked a last name and created a first name. Whew! That was easy! Okay now I had to decide what type of account, free or premium. I was thinking why would anyone pay for virtual things? That just sounds crazy to me. You don't actually have anything for you payment, except pixels. They aren't real and there is no way I am paying for that, so I picked the free account. Okay next step; create my avatar. I could be anything that is animal, vegetable, or mineral. I chose the animal human. It was the basic woman avatar with the silly hair, pinkish shirt, and the infamous duck walk. Cool, I thought. Not really reading much about the progress that second life has made until then I thought I was cool! I logged in as Christina Munro, and was on my way. I landed in a main hud. At that exact time someone else did too! Wow, my first encounter with another avatar. We looked at each other and started typing. Our hands were moving as we talked and it was really exciting. What a great experience! I am talking and moving at the same time. Okay we walked around a bit taking whatever tutorials there were and then we were teleported to the main area for newbie interaction. There were so many cool looking avatars, how did they get that way? Why was I walking like a duck when there was this incredible looking woman sliding across the screen in a very sexual way wearing practically nothing, and did she actually have nipples? Wow, this is amazing, I thought. I so want to explore everything. So I said "hello" to her. She said "hello". I asked her where she got her hair first thing, because I had to get this thing off of my head, and fast
She then passed me an item. A blue screen popped up and I accepted the offer. Cool a box of 250 hair styles. Sweet! I clicked on it in my inventory and wore it. Well, that was a mistake, because now I had a box on my head! Okay, so it took me awhile but I got it off by right clicking on it and detaching it. I kind of got mad at her because I thought she had tricked me and tried to make me look stupid. I may have said something along the lines of, "what a ****!" lol She was very confused and then promptly told me to f*** off newbie. This other avatar sent me an im and said just rez the box on the ground and open it, copy it to your inventory and then pick one to wear. Okay, rez? Huh? First new word I learned was rez. Rez is when you bring something into the world and it becomes an object that you can see. It was a word that was inspired by the movie Tron.
What does "rez" mean in Second Life? Watch this video tutorial:

Pasted from <http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Rez>


So, now I had hair on top of my ridiculous mullet looking newbie hair. I did it the hard way and went into appearances by right clicking on my avatar and then choosing appearances. I found out how to change my shape, skin, and my hair. As well as clicking on the clothes sections. I must have played around with that for hours. I figured out that I had to make my original avatar hair go away before wearing the ones that the incredibly nice woman, whom I ignorantly insulted, gave me. I could change my breast size, even the gravity level on them. This was too cool. So I was in the main land area, somewhere alone changing my appearance but I still couldn't get realistic looking features. I did look a lot better though, which was great. Still had the stupid duck walk, but I didn't want to make the same mistake as before with the first lady who gave my first makeover equipment. I will always keep that hair in my inventory, even if it isn't prim or flexible. I still love it, because it created a new beginning in Second Life for me, which made me feel anything was possible. I will never remember that avatar's name, maybe Hedy something or other, but I will always remember that it was the start of something I hope will never end. This was the end of my first day, but not the end of my Second Life! The next day I logged on, popped up in the same spot and began again with my exploration of the virtual universe. I met so many nice people, and I also learned so many things. I hope to be able to share some of that with you and help you continue to learn and love Second Life as much as I do. I want to help you go from the duck walk to the coolest animations you can imagine! I want to see you go from the original avatar to whatever you want to be, animal, vegetable, or mineral!
You can be literally anything!