just ignore and let this one die

Thanks 3!! It's not hard to produce nice looking pics at AM's installations: they are gorgeous to begin with.

Yes, I knew that "The Refuge and Expansion" were gone ... that shot is, I think, about a year old now. (Does that constitute necro posting?). I confess I have been mildly disappointed by some of his more recent installations, which do "pretty" very well, but don't seem to me to be quite as . . . interesting? Surface is nice though.

Don't despair just yet. I got mine built by a custom place and they were very good about letting me know that my payment was being processed. Then that the payment had been completed on Monday. Then nothing, which wasn't a surprise as they'd stated it could take up to 10 days to deliver. Tues at lunchtime, without any delivery date notice or anything, there the computer was in all its glory. They must have started building it as soon as I ordered it.

/me whispers some of it is blue and glows! It has it's own fan that can be adjusted and makes me cold if I sit in front of it! My simmate cried when I told him my fps on Ultra. Patience.

Need to rant:

So I rezzed a nifty steampunky flying contraption and Craz and I decided to take a jaunt over the Cartel Hangout is, heading west from Allana, for some sight-seeing.
Not a laggy craft and easy to operate.

Well, lemme tell ya. We spent nearly all of our time picking the craft out of ban lines, getting ejected from people's property, and running into empty parcels that nevertheless insisted on age verification. Because of this we crashed, had to relog once or twice, and got stuck in animations/freezing/lag that took some doing to get out of. Because of the lag neither of us had our draw distance set very far, so banlines have a way of suddenly hovering into view.

WTF is the point of all this? Is it really necessary to exercise ones right of land ownership by preventing people to fly over one's house? In the hour or so we spent, we saw one person. So what the heck difference does it make if we dare to lay our eyes on these people's builds? It's not like we can make off with the furniture or the ubiquitous nudes on the wall.

I know this has all come up before but this crap is the work of a few people with entitlement issues ruining the fun for others. I just had to rant, thanks.

I wish LL had created a maximum height allowance per parcel so that the airspace belongs to all.

It's true Brann. Vehicles are pretty much useless these days. (sigh)

FWIW, banlines are only visible from about eight meters away regardless of what your draw distance is set to. You pretty much have to fly higher than 50 meters above the ground to avoid them, if you aren't flying over protected land.

Security orbs wouldn't be so bad if people weren't such jackasses about programming them.

I think general ban lines only go up to 50m, unless you've been specifically banned and then it's 768m. Then again you have to worry about orbs and all that other crap. If you want to try some banline free flying, go to the Blake Sea ... there's some cool stuff to see and secret places to explore. There's also an airport at the Hollywood sim attached to the Blake Sea I believe. Each Blake Sea sim has a small rez zone at the NE corner of each sim so that comes in handy if you crash and don't want to start all over again.

Yeah, I would like to see more new stuff as opposed to variations on a theme. Like the telescopes at Welsh Lakes, they were a complete departure from "The Far Away" style.

Surface is interesting, less for the content than the atmospheric effects I think. It looks very, very good.

Agreed, absolutely. The one that I liked best, insofar as it represented something of a departure, was Beneath the Tree that Died. Smart, eerie, and thought-provoking.

Yay for all of you getting new computers! We are getting...FIOS! This Sunday! The Geek is running around, moving computers and routers and cables and black boxes hither and yon, when he isn't holding some mysterious power brick in his hand, scratching his head, and muttering, "what does THIS one go to?"

Thanks Josh, that map is super. I'll give that a try next time I get a hankering for air travel

We were flying low - cause that's sort of the point of sightseeing if you have a short draw distance - hence the banline PITA.

wait! what am i supposed to be going out to buy again? needing deets. please don't make me scroll. i iz lazy today!

but sweetie, that's why you live roadside.

brrrr...all this cold weather! How about a nice warm lunch?


Warm Farro Salad with Roasted Vegetables and Fontina

Hey! Did you hear about Jesus Christ getting kicked from jury duty?

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/12/post_256.html

JC in this case was a 59-year-old woman.

Yay! New computers for everybody!

For those who cannot afford a major wallet hit, fyi I did something I swore I would never do: bought a used desktop. Had it for a month or two now, running beautifully, have checked every stat I know of and all is well. There were three from various people similar to this for $400:

Asus gaming motherboard
CPU: Intel Core 2 Series E6850 Processor (3005 MHz)
Memory: 3328 MB (actually has 6MB installed)
OS Version: Windows 7 Ultimate
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GS/PCI/SSE2
HD audio (5 speaker home theatre capable)
Built-in wireless
CD/DVD read/write 16x
Keyboard & wireless mouse

All drivers were up to date. Gamers and 3D artists who are moving on to bigger and better machines frequently seem to offer good deals on the rigs they're done with.

The WSJ tackles the sticky issue of who to sue when robots attack.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/12/07/when-the-robots-attack-how-will-we-hold-them-liable/

Of course teenagers were the hypothetical culprits, and the house was destroyed.

Wouldn't it be enough to put stickers on them that say, "Caution: this model robot has been known to destroy buildings. Use at your own risk. Opening the shell or tampering with the software voids warranty."
.

@Brann, I feel your pain. Flying is a nightmare now it seems. I've pretty much grounded my ships. It isn't worth the agita.

just in time!

i am building a functioning robot out of legos as we speak.

chicken.

am i too late for the cookies?

It's never too late!

Welcome, Erik.

yay!!

ya'll seem like a friendlier bunch than the folks from the xstreetsl forums!

Don't be fooled by appearances. Seven SEEMS nice enough at first, but . . .

she's a killer.

hmmm... should i trust the cookies then?