Black splash screen on RC viewer

I have both the latest official viewer on my system as well as the latest RC client. I tend to always use the RC version but I just started the official viewer now and noticed the pretty splash screen*. It's been so long since I've used the official main client, that I now recall not having seen a splash screen image on the RC for quite some time. It's the 11th version of the RC now I think !

Everything else works fine on the RC and shows my log-in boxes, online stats in the upper right, and yellow caution box on the upper left - just no pretty picture. I do realize it sometimes takes a minute for the splash picture to show up but this is not the case ... I can leave it for half an hour and only have a completely black space where the splash image should be. It's really not that big of a deal since it's completely functional otherwise but was just curious if anyone else was having this problem. I believe it's been happening throughout this entire series of RC clients for me.

*oh and btw, i don't understand this trout slut rating thing as referenced in a previous post about splash screens. anyone care to explain lol

The splash screen thing is normal, the images show if you fake up the channel to be "Second Life Release" instead of "Second Life Release Candidate".

The Trout slut rating thing is, well it just *is*.

I'm also on RC10, and also notice that sometimes there's a picture on the start screen, sometimes there isn't. More often than not, I'm simply too impatient to wait for it to load.

I've seen a splash screen about once in the last four months. Usually it's just black for me, no matter what viewer I'm using.