Time Capsule

If you are reading this long after the forums close in February 2010, you will find herein a repository chronicling the birth of Second Life. A mutable virtual reality, streaming data to users as they wander the grid, Second Life has made enormous leaps in the time I've been here, and I'm sure will change much more in its future.

Your World. Your Imagination.
Starting with a small group of early adopting pioneers, Second Life has grown in ways that were unpredictable. It began with great freedom, which helped us learn (for instance, when I began you could see an object's textures in Edit, so I'd look at everything to see how it was done). As time went on people wanted protections in place, and so some freedom was sacrificed.

For me, personally, Second Life drew me from the moment I heard of it, but I had dial-up (!) at the time so didn't even attempt to join. I watched the trailer a million times, and was incredibly impressed by - a duck. I remember saying (imagine hushed tones and wide-eyed wonder) in Second Life you can BE A DUCK.
http://www.stabslock.com/video/SecondLife_Trailer-medium.wmv

The forum has been a part of my life, and I've learned a great deal here and been able to help people (often just going in-world to do it). The sense of community has been sustaining, and has enhanced my SL experience. I hope we switch to functioning forum software and things continue.

Or maybe I'll just hide in the storeroom and wait until they archive me. I can run around in the dark and drag sentences from one post to another. I could try to use sharp letters to scratch messages on the inside of monitors, and maybe even tunnel through to the Wayback Machine.

/me waves.

It all started with ducks, for me, and the ducks keep on coming:

Quack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeIEKdnEASs

I landed at the Ahern welcome area my first day (Feb 12, 2004... my 6th rez day is just 6 days away!) and somehow wandered into the Minna region where I stumbled across Shantilly Lily's Aspen Gallery. After talking with her she told me about some land she had in the Rodeo region that she was looking to sell. I ended up buying her small 320 sq. m. parcel on the bluff over Rodeo Bay and settled in. Met Loki Pico a few days later when he stopped by the Lookout. He was my second Calling Card. Ming Chen was the third person I met who showed me the region to the west of Rodeo called Abbotts where the remains of the pre-Erase Abbots Aerodrome still stand. The more recent Aerodrome build has gone through a few redesigns. And the rest is history...

/108/0c/25531/1.html

We like staying in one spot, don't we! After all the moving around I've done in my life it's nice to stay in one place in SL. I still am in the same place I bought mid-2004 - my "Land for the Landless" land in Bodega (but expanded).

Congratulations!

I too took my first baby steps out of the Ahern Welcome Area within my first day (Feb. 22, 2006, Two years and ten days after Mr Salazar). I found the place confusing and a bit chaotic. Like many new folks, I was busy discovering my own avatar's body, let alone the world around me. With the handful of Lindens I received on signing up and putting payment info on file, I sought out a pair of glasses at a long-forgotten store - yes, the glasses I still wear today were my first purchase in Second Life - and a necklace in the Serenite sim.

While checking out the necklaces, I noticed some art by Robin Wood, a friend of a friend as well as an artist I'd respected for a good, long time. I was of half a mind to let her know someone was stealing her art and putting it in this "game." Some further reading let me know that she was the one putting it there. Some months later her and my paths would cross again, some time after she started making skins, and when I was seeing a decent skin designed with kids in mind.

I have followed three RL friends of mine in world, and sought them out. One was a anthropomorphic mouse living in a "family" of furs, and the other two were playing kids. While one tended to switch about from time to time, sometimes taking a dragon form, or some furry looks of her own, the other was in this whole family group. The notion fascinated me, but also seemed more than a little, well, odd at first. I spent some time poking around near her home, trying to puzzle it out. Little did I know then that the first couple years of my SL experience would be spent on that very land, living in one of the homes on that property in the southeast corner of Sansara.

I only meant to be here for about two weeks.

I seem to recall that I initially came into the forums sometime in my first couple weeks. I was looking for, I don't know, something. Likely trying to figure out how to set a home location (Ahern was too busy, and I discovered the long-gone Sami infohub), or understand why my avatar would sometimes be invisible (a long, lost bug in the viewer). That post seems to be history. The oldest I could find was in animation tips, as I tried to figure out how to animate my fingers. I wanted three fingers up, as in "I am three years old." Four years later and I still can't do that -- but now I'd need seven fingers up, and could do it with five and two.

It wasn't until some time later that I began to post about in General Discussion....

Speaking of ducks, celebrations for Nova Albion's anniversary are coming up:



There's going to be a reenactment of an event from Nova Albion's history on 20 March at 2pm! (Meet in Southern Grignano).

In 1887 a large number of wild migrating ducks lost their way and came down in the middle of an important municipal gathering, then ran amok through the city. The mayor cried, "Fowl!" but the city fathers attempted to whitewash the situation.

Join the flock of confused ducks as they struggle to find their migratory route! I believe the Bay City Children's Blurtophone Band is going to attempt to chase them out of the city.

I remember landing at Ahern, then finding NCI....ooh all those lovely boxes with free stuff in them. Getting myself all dolled up and going dancing, only to be told I looked good except for my hair....getting given a LM to ETD and since then spending thousands of L$ on different styles all pretty much at ETD.

I remember buying my first plot, and then second, 3rd fourth, all in the same sim so I could build a nicer garden, only to discover I'd actually bought plots in two sims next to each other.

I actually popped back there a few weeks back, some of my old land was forsale, I was so temped to buy it.

To me it's still home, I remember sitting there under a tree eagerly listening to my Linden Radio that was transmitting the messages from the Town Hall meetings...

Listening to a Town Hall in Rodeo at the Kahruvel Forest lookout.

Linden Lab Town Hall on May 26, 2004. I believe that's Haney Linden getting ready to speak. And could that be... why yes I think it might... IS THAT Madame Creme Caramel just to the right of me in the back row?!?!?

My rez day is coming up as well Feb 28, 2003. 7 years, wow doesn't seem that long ago i was rezzed in a sim called Prelude. It was simular to the old orientation island where you start on a hill and walk down thru tutorials along a path and talk to the parrot ect then did the physical ball test.

The 1st thing i did was plung into the water and try to change my avatar. I changed my clothing and shape to something simular to an anime character i liked. As i was down there i was approached by a Linden. He traded his card with me and i had no idea what it was so i turned it down. Then when i was done changing my av, i found him at the surface and he taught me to fly. The showed me the way to the welcome area.

When i arrived at the welcome area it was a very small place. I don't quite remember the sim it was in but ahern, morris, ect did not exist yet. There was a stone floor under me with a small path leading to the right and a small events sign in front of me with a small dome over my head.

I'll see if i can find some old pictures to post here.

Oh, please do!

omg i can't figure out how to add a pic D:

its been too long or something. what do i do? i used to just upload it.

Enclose it in img tags. If you quote this post, you should see what those look like.

(and for demonstration purposes only, me as a relative noob, nearly four years ago!)

Copy the url into your post with tags around it.

Pep (Like this)

oooo many thanks!

i'll have to try later, its time for bed for me. good night!

Here is a picture of me just four days after I first rezzed at Ahern. This was before the biochemical exposure at the Medici Warehouse in Miramare, Nova Albion.

This is an old photo of the Rodeo region a few days after I purchased the Lookout's land from Shantilly Lily. You can see the parcel outlines as the Lindens' prepped the land for the first land auctions. Shantilly had originally obtained the land that she sold me as part of a Linden Land Rush. A few parcels in Rodeo went in the land rush and the remaining parcels were auctioned off. I was barely aware of the impending auctions until they were almost upon me and I managed to keep my wits about me as the first auctioned commenced. I managed to secure quite a few Rodeo parcels in those first auctions which led to the discover of the ruins in Rodeo and the beginnings of the Forest of Kahruvel. That's the base of Derek Jones’ LOTR Tower you see behind the Lookout up on the bluff. (p.s. note the older Linden user interface and the HUGE Linden balance due to to L$500 weekly stipend which I still get to this day! Wahoo!)

I was bummed when a section of forum threads were lost long ago in a forgotten forum upgrade. One of those threads chronicled the celebration of the rebuilding of the Brownstone West in Grignano, Nova Albion. During the celebration my mom ran into Cafe Jack, where I was speaking to a group of folks about the Brownstone's restoration, and had told us about losing her locket earlier that day while walking in Rodeo. We all decided to head over to the forest and look for it. It was quite a sight porting into the Noyo Telehub area and then watching everyone fly north over the ridge into Rodeo. I didn't realize until tonight that I actually had some photos from that day!



Here I am with Loki Pico and some others looking for my mom’s locket.



Loki found it underneath one of the fallen pillars. Many of the folks who were there that day had posted their thoughts and impressions into that thread and it was a treasured record. But lesson learned. Now I back up valued Lab forum threads on my own hard drive as a precaution.

2005 to 2010

Closure of these forums got me, like others here, on a trip down memory lane. Once upon a time way back when in another life I came to SL and bought a tiny plot of mainland next to a couple who had made a nice home with a garden and a stream.

It was kinda fun, learning how to terraform, how to build and stuff like that while also trying to fit what I was doing with what they had done. Then like others, before and since, I got bored with it all and sold my plot to them and quit SL for quite some time.

Earlier today, I went back there for the first time since. And they're still there, as is their home and garden. The land I had terraformed to fit their configuration is still as I left it way back when. They have simply planted a few trees and bushes on what was once my side of the stream. I had a sense of homecoming, a sense of peace even sitting on the grass beside that stream today. Its good they're still there.

Noobs, the lot of ya!

I hope i see you on other forums or in world.

My first photo - taken Dec 7, 2004. I had been in SL approx 10 days. I don't think prim hair had even made it's debut yet.




My very first build! February 17, 2005 Damn, was that thing ugly. I still have it inventory in case I ever need a laugh.




The entry point to the First SL Botanical Gardens in Federal May 2005. It was as I was building this area one day, Fallingwater Cellardoor dropped by (Seacliff was right next door) and taught me how to adjust the textures on the sides of my prims. Laukosargas Svarog created my big waterfall in the corner.

This is me eight days after I rezzed. I was in a sandbox. I don't think I knew about quiet, academic sandboxes then. I probably learned soon after.



This shirt was my first or second uploaded texture. I wanted a polka-dot shirt. The shirt worked out really well and I still sometimes wear it.



and this midi blouse worked out well as well. I was just using the paint bucket and sliders to make pants.

And this is me last month....



I fell on to a board in the sky on my way back from ice skating and needed to put on summer clothes again. I really haven't come all that far from that first polka dot shirt. The spirit is still there.

I also wanted a bit more than just one drop so the skin is mine as well. My rezz date was 5/14/08. I'm in world for a bit six days a week.