What does AFK mean? Other terms?

What does AFK mean? HUD? Is there any glossary where I can look up things like this?

AFK = Away From Keyboard
BRB = Be Right Back
HUD = Heads-Up Display something clickable appearing on your screen to help in executing specific commands quickly and easily
LOL = Laughing Out Loud, or sometimes, I really don't know what to say, but I feel like I ought to type something in here...

HUD Heads up display. (Also Housing and Urban Development)

ROFL = Rolling On the Floor Laughing
LMAO = Laughing My Ass Off
LMFAO = Laughing My F*cking Ass Off
OMG = Oh My God

HUD = Heads Up Display - describes an interface that is on your computer screen that you can use instead of typing commands in the chat line

HUD = Heads Up Display

As for where to look them up, try Google. (A search for "internet abbreviations" brought back a manageable 28 hits).


Grace

Many of these terms used in Second Life are general internet, computer or scifi fandom terms. The wikipedia is a good place to look things up.

http://www.wikipedia.org/

The two that threw me when I first came in-world:

-ffs: for f*ck's sake (expression of exasperation)
-kk: OK (as in, "brb" "kk," never "How are you?" "kk"

What does rez mean? I am trying to figure out how I can read something in my inventory in my objects folder that I got for free, such as the Second Opinion newsletter. I have tried dragging it onto the land I'm on, but I often get a blue message that says that I cannot "create" an object on that land. However, I don't want to create something, I want to read or otherwise use an object I have.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Dragging something onto the ground is how you rez, but if 'Build' is turned off on the land you're on, you can't pull anything out of inventory unless you're wearing it. Check the icons at the top of your screen; 'No Build' looks sort of like a box with a circle and slash.

For some common specific SL terms: http://secondlife.com/app/help/commonterms.php

Do a search for "sandbox" and TP there! Sandboxes are public areas designated for building that self clean every few hours. You can "REZ" there. Also, see the bottom of your screen where it says "build"? You click that to go into build mode to create prims.
If the build section isn't highlighted, you're in a no build area (as you are now. lol).

I suugest you go to "The Ivory Tower" (another search) and do the building tutorials there. There's also a sandbox in the SIM. You can build to your heart's content!

Good Luck~

Regarding building and rezzing;

Sometimes you might be on a piece of land that lets you rez something, but then for some bizarre reason, your object disappears or gets returned to you!

This is because the owner of the land has decided that it's okay for people to temporarily set stuff down, but he/she doesn't want a bunch of extra objects from other people laying around. This is called "autoreturn" and you can see it in the world/about land/objects tab. If that option is set to 0, that means that the object will stay there forever until you take it back, or the landowner comes along and returns it manually. If that option is set to a number, like 5, that means your object will stay there for 5 minutes before being returned to your Lost and Found folder in your inventory.

Thanks for the link, Kitty!

I learned that "prim" means "primitive." I see a lot of advertisements talking about how many "prims" something has. Is that good? What's the opposite of "prim." Like I've seem "prim hair" What do you call hair that's not prim? And what makes prim hair better?

To wear prim hair is a purely cosmetic choice. It is not "better" but most people like the looks of it better. The alternative is the hair you can edit using the appearence sliders that you use to adjust your avatar.

Land has a set number of prims and since all things are built of prims the prims per parcel determines how much stuff you can have on a particular plot of land.

If you buy the 512m of land we discussed elsewhere, you can only have 117 prims out on it at any time, so it's important to know how many prims your objects have. If it's not listed, you can right-click on the item, choose Edit, click the 'More' button and go to the General tab. Prim count is shown about midway down.

Non-prim hair is what you come in-world with and it's fugly. Prim hair is meant to be more attractive and realistic. On a side note, prims you wear do not count towards the limits on land parcels, but they can contribute to lag and teleport failures, if you're wearing a large number.

Rez -- short for "resolve"?

What are "particles"?

Yep, and borrowed from the classic disney film "Tron" where the terms rez and de-rez are used throughout the movie.

Not to chastise you for asking questions, but a little searching will yield a lot of information. or you may want to buy the Sl Guide book, which is available in a bookstore near you. In anycase Welcome to Second Life. may the Lindens have mercy on your soul.

They're sort of like visual effects...sometimes useful, sometimes pretty, sometimes annoying as hell. The simplest ones I can think of are when you right-click an object and get the little white dots coming from your hand.

Is it possible to give objects or L$ to people who aren't present or logged in?

Is it possible to IM someone if you only know his or her name and have not met him or put him on your friends list?

Yes, although it's probably safer to pass money and inventory when people are actually online. And yes again...if you know the name, you can go to Search>People to find their profile. Among other things, there's an option to IM them from there.

You can give someone stuff through their profile. you can type someones first name in Search and get all the residents with that first name, then you can choose whichever one you want to IM.

Now a question for you. If a train leaves Chicago, heading west at 70 miles per hour, how long will it go before it hits a sim barrier and crashes?

There are now a million landmarks in the drop down menu in my Map view, and many of them are duplicates? How do I trim this list? I went to my inventory, but the list of landmarks there doesn't seem to match the menu in my Map view.