SLOOP

A DOZEN SIGNS YOU SHOULD TAKE A COUPLE OF DAYS OFF SL:
(You can always log into SL Newspaper to stay updated)
1) The last time you went to a movie theater in RL, you saw “Jaws”.
2) You are paying someone to go to work in RL in your place. You have instructed that person to tell your boss not to worry, because he/she is really your alt.
3) When it snows in SL you wear a sweater even if you are in the Bahamas.
4) You lost your keyboard. You found it underneath three empty pizza boxes, smudged with ketchup and ice cream. Keys are glued together with Coca Cola .
5) You finally got up and went to the Gym. It had moved six months ago.
6) The hand you use to drag the mouse looks like a claw.
7) The dog –or cat- has decided to sleep in your bed, since you are hardly ever there.
8)Your friends –that hate games on line- have logged into SL just to send you IM’s to make you answer the phone.
19) The only bill you never forget to pay is the broadband connection.
10) When you change your clothes you go to the closet and look for the menu to click “Replace outfit”.
11)You fall asleep on your desk. You wake up, go to the bathroom, and look at yourself in the mirror: the letters from your keyboard have transferred to your forehead. You can read “QWERTYUIOP” backwards.
12) You were invited to a RL black tie party. You showed up in your pajamas, wearing football socks, your headphones, a can of beer in one hand and a wireless mouse in the other. “Hey, gang! –you said-. Where do I click?”
So… if this, or something like this is the case… take a couple of days off. Go out there. Walk in the rain. Get wet. Get your finger caught in a door. Take the trouble of going somewhere without taking a TP. Stop and smell the roses. Feel the palpable beat resulting from the injection of RL into your veins.And hurry back here. It’s always good to check for yourself that “out there” still sucks. ROFL.
Covadonga Writer

Amazing Grace

Have you wondered why people come to second life? I have wondered often, when I meet an avatar, what is this person doing here?? Why did they come? Game playing? Curiosity?? I think that is the most common answer. It was my reason.

Then , by accident I met an avatar who told me a story that really touched my heart , and perhaps will touch your heart too and cause you to think and to wonder more, why we are all here in this place together? What stories do we share??
Since I am a Guardian Angel for newbies I offered help to this new avatar . The Calling Card says that we met. November 25,2007 . In January we had an amazing conversation and I have been waiting a long time to tell this story.

Yifan Brandenberg came to second life to meet his brother , his real life brother! Yifan’s mother brought him to a new life in the USA while he was a small child. When she came she had no intention of returning to Brazil. He always remembered his older brothers and sisters and his father. Many years later and still a child, Yifan asked his mother to tell him his father's name. It was then that Yifan learned the first name of a man who he only remembered as "pai". About this time his mother also told him that he had a younger brother who had been adopted by another family.

Approximately 10 years ago as an adult, Yifan searched the Internet for his father's name and found him in some genealogical records with the status of deceased. However, at that time he could not be certain it was really his father. It turns out his father really did pass away 12 years ago.

Last fall Yifan's uncle died, the oldest of his mother's brothers. The grief and sadness created an opportunity to talk with his mother again about family and together the two set out to find family in another country. While doing a google search of the family last name, his mother spotted a name that Yifan never knew that she knew. It was the name of his younger brother, born three years after him. Yifan sent him an email telling him who their father was. The brother, Bart, we will call him answered the e-mail that Yifan sent and a correspondence began. Bart was already in SL and invited Yifan to come here and meet him.

At their first very emotional meeting at a church in SL a female avatar appeared and who should it turn out to be but Yifan's older sister, Callie, who was also lost to Ethan until that moment. Amazingly, Callie had found Bart and had already told him of his relationship to her. But Bart was skeptical until a month later he received Yifan's email with the same story. So now Yifan is in contact with all his brothers, the older and the younger ones. Yifan and his sister meet several times a week in SL to talk about many things. They must use a translator to talk because he speaks English and Callie and Bart

speak Portuguese. Yifan is learning Portuguese though so they can communicate more easily. Bart, with a busy RL as a husband, father, working student and employed does not usually make it to SL at the same time Yifan is on, but they keep in touch.

I asked how has this experience spilled over into RL and Yifan said, “Actually it is the other way around, and my first life is spilling into SL. I have reacquainted my maternal cousins with my sister and introduced them to my brother. We have even shared some moments in SL together.”
If you would like to talk to him about his experience, feel free to contact him.

Yifan intends to write a book about his whole life experience ,including the part that SL is playing in keeping close contact with families on two continents I wonder how many other wonderful stories of RL and SL there are out here to tell.

By Gemma Cleanslate

What Second Life means to me.

By Reporter Yonsay Gontineac

Ok, so this might sound a bit like the title for a high school essay, but if you are prepared to put that side for one minute it's just that I have a story I want to tell.
There is a lot of talk lately about what is wrong with Second Life, and I am not saying any of that is wrong, but I just want to point out something I have found to be very good about it, apart from the usual bring the world together stuff.
I think second life is fantastic because for some people it is the only life they have, maybe permanently or for the lucky few temporarily, but the only life they have all the same.
I, myself in Real Life, am a carer. I have a wife who has become victim to an industrial ailment, whom the courts have failed for one reason or another, some of which is because we are not important enough, I'm sure, then my son Jacob, has just recently been diagnosed as on the Autistic Spectrum. Ahhhh, you might say, but frankly I'm not after sympathy. It's been a while now and I'm used to it. The point is I don't have a life as such. I can't leave them for a minute, and even when everybody is a sleep I still have to be around. Second life has stopped me from going cabin crazy, has perhaps saved my life. But you know I'm actually one of the lucky ones. My wife, is little by little, getting better and Jacobs autism isn't all that bad and he may even lead something resembling a normal (whatever that means) life. There are others for which Second Life is even more of a lifesaver.
I will only mention one person, anonymously, as I think she does not wish this knowledge to affect her Second Life. Oh, it is a she, but I won't say any more than that about her. She is also autistic, quite severely, to the point that she can only understand spoken conversation with extreme effort. Not only that, she also has another condition that means she looks like a child even though she isn't. In real life conversation's with her are a trial as she needs to speak through written text, but her uniqueness often so confuses so called normal others that they are unable to talk with her. This is not the case in Second Life. Here as she uses text her speech difficulties are unnoticeable, and she looks like, well, how she wants to look.
My avatar has blue hair, is young, good looking, and a bit effeminate, but in RL I'm bald, fat, broken nosed and old, and....Who cares! She, she, ahhh, your not getting me that easy!
I have used these two examples to make the point, that in these times of knee jerk reactions from Linden Labs where they are shutting down avenue after avenue of expression within second life, Second Life is still an object of value and not just frivolously, at that. That I think Linden is being a little slap dash with this fantastic commodity to the world, this a shared self created universe, it should protect itself. Second Life should have it's own laws, decided by the citizens of Second Life.
Ok Yah, it's a dictatorship, theoretically, and virtually, but what's that got to do with what's right! Also, and more pertinently, Second life should be based in more than one country, it should be a distributed system with appropriate fail safes. It should, in short sell itself, whilst there is still something left to sell! Let other companies run the sim, parts of it, nationally. There should be built into this overhauled design the ability for these sims to run alone, or in conjunction with others to avoid crashes or attacks from real world governments.
Sure, Linden could keep the copyright and perhaps charge ridiculous fee's for updates to prospective buyers, but then any one country on some whim couldn't close it down.
Could you close down the Internet?
Maybe once upon a time, but now?
I know companies can buy the code and can choose to link it to the sim but this is not the same. These companies are running it for themselves, as platforms for their expression. Areas could and should be run independently. Issues of who you pay could be worked out on a percentage system, and if one node is closed down, fail safe financial issues could be planned for in advance. It isn't an impossible task, just one that requires intelligent planning.
All that I am waiting for, dreading, is some politician, looking for some publicity ticket, to focus on Second Life, and that would be it, the end. Because they could do it.
The USA Government could shut down Second Life tomorrow, but not if it was a distributed system run in various countries. Even a UK politician could do it. They could raise issue about VAT or purchase tax on transactions within Second Life. Sure, a lot of us pay purchase tax to buy L$, but since when does that matter to the tax departments of the world. There are a lot of ways they could do it.
All I'm saying is; Linden Labs, protect your own interests, and ours. You bring something of value to the world, with or without realising it and don't let it go down the pan trying to milk it of the last possible dollar.