Sometimes our lives are blessed by knowing that rare person who can see through our problems, feel our hurt and understand us without even seeming to try. It’s as if they have a natural gift for seeing into us and knowing. They tend to show up unannounced, surprising us with the quick and deep connection they forge.

Montserrat Snakeankle was that kind of a person. I met her in 2005 at a roundtable discussion when she worked for the old SL Herald, and I remember being enchanted by her intelligence and humor right away. We were instant friends and continued to share our lives with each other through the medium of Second Life, almost to the moment when she was no longer with us.

Montie passed away last Friday, Aug. 8, 2008, of heart failure.

When last I spoke with her, she was her usual worried, intense self. Always immersing herself in wondering about the future, needing to feel loved and needing to share the bottomless love she carried within her and over time it had become my job – one I embraced with care and love – to calm her and counsel her and assure her that she was loved and always would be.

It wasn’t all one way, however. She gave back to me things on which I can put no value. One thing in particular happened when I found myself falling in love with someone unexpectedly, against my better judgment, complicating my complex life and simultaneously enthralling me and frightening me.

Montie told me that, in every life, there comes a Singer – someone who she said “sings to your blood”. When a Singer finds us, it’s a rare thing and something to be cherished and embraced because we don’t know how long they will stay or whether they will ever come again.

I took her advice and embarked on a journey with my Singer that touched me more deeply than anything I can remember. The memories of that journey are enshrined in my heart forever, even today after that journey has long ago ended. What I failed to see, however, was that Montie was a Singer too. And today, as much as I know I loved her and adored her wit and brilliance and intensity, I’m afraid I never told her that. And that may be my biggest regret today as I remember who Montserrat Snakeankle really was. I should have let her know how much she meant to me.

Her name will remain on my friends list, forever grey. I am proud to see it there. I cannot send her any more messages and expect an answer, but if I could I would tell her: “Montie, thank you for the gifts you gave me. Thank you for insiring me and brightening my life. But most of all, thank you for being a Singer to me.”

In an interview she gave back in 2005, she named William B. Yeats as one of her favorite poets. In memory of my dear beloved Montie, I offer this, from “The Countess Cathleen in Paradise”:

ALL the heavy days are over;

Leave the body’s coloured pride

Underneath the grass and clover,

With the feet laid side by side.

One with her are mirth and duty;

Bear the gold-embroidered dress,

For she needs not her sad beauty,

To the scented oaken press.

Hers the kiss of Mother Mary,

The long hair is on her face;

Still she goes with footsteps wary

Full of earth’s old timid grace.

‘Mong the feet of angels seven

Her white feet go glimmering;

All the heavens bow down to Heaven,

Flame on flame, and wing on wing

Have you heard? Grid Grind was infested with malware, spyware, badware, whathehelleverware, and we’re sending it all at you as you’re reading this. Muwahahahha!

Ok not really. But that’s what a certain conspiracy theory obsessed blogger would like to believe.

But yes, the truth is that we were hacked. There was ugly junk plunked down into our code and poor Jamie had the oh so fun job of finding it and getting rid of it all. The poor guy has been dealing with this headache for weeks now. But not to worry folks, all is fine now. You’re safe. We are not recording your key strokes or stealing your amateur pr0n pics.

I’m not the technical expert here, I know absolutely nothing about how all this stuff works. I know how to write a blog post and that’s about it. So all I can give you is what little I personally understand about what happened.

Jamie rents servers. On one server he hosts about a dozen or so websites, only a few of which are related to Second Life. The server was hacked by spammers. The spammers dropped invisible pop ups and spyware in affecting this site. Jamie has had to go through the server removing it all and removing the spammer’s access so it can’t happen again.

Google sends out a warning to people when they perform a search, letting them know when a website is potentially dangerous. This warning is like a form letter popping up on your screen. It doesn’t give details as to what exactly is dangerous, or how dangerous, or how it happened. Since working on cleaning out the server, google has done several reviews of the sites. Each time they do a review, they tell us basically, “nope, something is still there” and Jamie has to go in and search some more.

As of right now, there is no risk in accessing our website. Our own spyware scanners are telling us it is safe. The only problem remaining is still in removing any backdoors and links to the spammers themselves. If a hacker still has a link embedded in the server, leaving themselves basically an open backdoor, google will still send out the warning. We believe we have now removed the last link and are waiting only for google to do another review.

Anyway, if some of my wording here is a bit off, forgive me, as I said I’m not the expert. But just letting you know we are aware of the problem and we are working on it. There is no conspiracy. We’re not out to get you. All will be well eventually.

Thank you,
Allana Dion

“When the US President crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in for a rescue”…компютри This is the tag line for one of my favorite films, Escape From New York … (see video at bottom of article)

Snake Plissken, one of the most badass, awesome, “hell yeah, I’d hit that!”, heroes of the 80’s. I was 11 years old when that movie came out and not allowed to watch it. I didn’t get to see it until a few years later, but when I did, I was mesmerized. Snake Plissken was the consummate bad guy/good guy, always more bad than good, but just good enough to get away with being bad.

Bob Hauk: You going to kill me, Snake?
Snake Plissken: Not now, I’m too tired.
[pause]
Snake Plissken: Maybe later.

Today I found Snake all over again. Ok well not Snake Plissken himself exactly, but a close second. I found Rick Anaconda, one of the owners of the new Escape From New York roleplay sim. This place is fantastic! The build is really well done, complete with underground tunnels and well known demolished landmarks. I got so lost in the tunnels, I wound up cheating and scrolling my cam view around to find a way out. Don’t do that, totally spoils the immersion. It’s more fun to stay lost I think.

I am at a loss as to the legal ramifications to all this but £inden £ab put out a web page claiming that a lot of what we type and have is verboten, illegal and a copyright infringement. They feel that sluniverse.com needs to change their name as it is using their letters S and L. This is going to pose an expensive and hard issue. Many I am sure will slink away and close their site or possibly rename it. Worried that the long arm of US law will reach out and make their life hell.

This is a form of intimidation and is shameful. We are all motivated to better $econd £ife, yet time and time again the goal posts are shifted, changed and every now and then removed. According to them we can not use the following in any display format.
Second life, second life, sl, Second-Life, SecondLife, 2nd Life, 2Life, Second Lifers, Linden Labs, Lindex, slurl, Lindenism
(Would love to know why they are so worried that “£indenism” gets out into general useage.)

Could this be part of the ongoing attempt to remove all mention of problems and issues with $econd £ife? First we all used “$econd £ife Forum” but they got too hot and full of issues and problems so we were moved to the “$econd £ife Bog” so that we would all be on the same page. The blog postings are few and far between with £indens turning off comments or limiting them and filling them up with fluff. Now because the amount of grid and network issues any mention of grid/network/server problems have been removed from the blog as they are unsightly and no comments are allowed on these at all.

Because of this need to sweep anything bad under the carpet there came the rise of outside forums where the Residents could vent and talk to others about their issues and possibly get support. Are those outside forums making £indens look bad? Is this an attempt like the makers of the taser to silence all dissent?
Judge Orders Removal of TASER Electronic Control Device Reference From Three Death Certificates in Akron, OH
Now according to £inden £ab the letters S and L are not allowed to be used together in any web site as the all mighty £inden £ab owns them. This is going to be particularly hard on Sierra Leone who own the country domain .sl. Then there is slrecords.net who have been about longer than £inden £ab. Microsoft who have “Microsoft Dynamics SL Home Page” are in real trouble as they are competition to £inden £ab. God knows how many others slip.com sleep.com slang.com.

Now as most of this applies to web sites the users would think that they can say what ever they want. Ummm. Once again according to £inden £ab that is not so. We have to mind out english at all times in all places.

3. Generic Nouns. Always follow a Linden Lab brand name with an appropriate generic noun for at least your first reference to the brand name. A “generic noun” is a common noun and not a proper noun, trademark, or brand name. Here are some accepted generic nouns for our brand names. This list is not exhaustive, and other generic nouns may be appropriate. After the first reference, use an appropriate generic noun after the Linden Lab brand name as often as possible. Never use the brand name as a generic noun or verb, and never use it in the plural or possessive form. For example:

This is OK:
the Second Life^® virtual world
the Second Life^® world
Second Life^® residents
the SL™ community
an SL™ account
Linden™ dollars
the LindeX™ exchange
a SLurl™ link

This is NOT OK:
a Second Life
my Second Life
your Second Life
Second Life’s
Second Lives
Second Lifing
Linden Labs
(didn’t know that lifing is a real word.)

4. Contact Information. When providing your Second Life contact information, use an appropriate generic noun after the Second Life or SL brand names unless the media that you’re using has space constraints that don’t allow inclusion of the generic noun. For example, on your website, in your email footer, or in the author information on your book jacket,

This is OK:
Second Life contact
SL contact
Second Life name
SL name
Second Life avatar
SL avatar
Second Life resident
SL resident
Second Life user
SL user

Didn’t they just go on about how we are to have the little  ^® ™ after  any mention of their names? Now they seem to feel that it is ok.

I am so confused and saddened by all this.
Ironic that the trademarked tag line they use is..”Your World. Your Imagination.™“

[1:44] A number of our asset servers have gone down and we are in the process of bringing them back online. This may take a while. In the meantime please do not rez or transfer valuable (no-copy) assets until we give the all-clear.

For the past 8 weeks $econd £ife has been experiencing serious network and hardware issues that have brought the system to it’s knees multiple times. Blame has been thrown upon an un-named primary network provider - “who delayed, botched, and again delayed the fix, extending what should have been a relatively brief outage for many hours”. The posting goes on to say how hardware failed, they loss power and all the other calamities a system can go through. “It’s not our fault.” Katt £inden Says: I’m sorry any of you have experienced downtime and problems.
Seriously.

The £indenFans were quick to proclaim their undying love and laugh loudly at any thought of compensation to the residents.  “The key word here is ‘entitlement’, which is a sickness in our society.” My mobile phone provider sends me SMS’s a minute or so after a call is dropped, apologizing and redeaming the charge of that call. I didn’t need to ask.

Two or so months ago $econd £ife lost our cornerstone and architect, Corey £inden departed. Since then it appears that the walls have started crumbling at a far greater rate just as we loose more and more old £indens. Now those who post in the blog are all under a year old save Torley who makes the tutatorial videos. So to save the day.

It’s £inden,….  M. £inden.

Yes M. is coming to $econd £ife. It was announced by the one who got us to where we are at, ex CEO, Philip £inden, that Mark Kingdon is going to be taking over the controls of £inden £ab and its virtual world $econd £ife as of today. He comes to £inden £ab from a online marketing company called Organic which he feels that he graduated from.

With training in economics and marketing we hope that care for the system and the residents will come back to £inden £ab. We wait and see.  As far as the asset servers they still seem to be off line two hours later. So much for the average downtime of 30 minutes per day.

Currently SecondLife is based out of the US and priced in US$. The separation of the dollar and reality are making life in SL cheap for those in Europe, Asia and rest of the world. Today the US$ hit yet another record low against the Euro loosing 3.75% of its value in the past 30 days alone and 25% in the past year. So non US residents are now getting a 25% price discount from a year ago (covers the VAT charges LindenLab charged europeans). Continue Reading �

Starting Friday evening SL time the grid started faltering. Over past few days the stability has been up and down. Now it is down. This is most fustrating as I just found the time wasting joys of Tiny Empires. A game to be played with in SL it allows users to gather gold and land (Not real and numbers only, sorry) and most importantly other players of TE to be their subjects. User with the most wins……a title. Very smart concept. Maker gives away the game to let ppls get addicted. Now want to progress higher then pay 499 for the “Full Client” and build your way to being king or queen. Credit where credit due. It is sharp, well built, simple and ADDICTIVE.  There are no real prizes, gold or land but we all want to rule.

What is going on in Linden Labs as far as fixing the issue is a mystery. There is a vague posting every 2 hours or so that point to a problem with one of their ISP’s and routing. I be glad that I am not the admin in charge. With the departure of the company CTO and Philip leaving the position of CEO for Chairman of the Board looks like the officers jumping ship or taking a desk job. Who is steering the ship right now is a total mystery.  We do put a lot of trust in a lot of folk that we have no idea of who they are.

An interesting personal mystery as far as LindenLab was involving my being able to post on the SL Blog. January I noticed that my comments to the blog were not going up.  I asked concierge to look into the issue and was told that I was banned by Torley Linden due to comments I had made on the blog as had been explained to me… HUH??? I asked for copies of this supposed correspondence… waited… asked again. Was then told that the issue was now in the hands of the “Compliance Board” or some group with a name like that and I would be contacted shortly…. wait… ask again…. wait…and then with out a peep I can now post comments again. 3 months of mystery…

LindenLab will be paid a HEFTY penalty for interruption of service by their ISP if it is the ISP’s fault. One wonders will there be a refund for all those who have lost financially? Advertising that was paid for that was not shown. Rent on land and the like? May seem like pennies but when added up for some of the larger land owners it is real money. For me that would be 12.90 $USD just in tier.

As always so many mysteries and questions and nothing flowing out of LindenLab. Users sit frustrated and wondering what to do. Where were was the redundancy? Not a spokesperson in sight.

“As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter.”

In a blog entry posted this morning by Ken Linden, Linden Lab has officially put the word out, no more banking in Second Life. This is hardly surprising given the recent problems nearly every single “bank” in Second Life has been having, from shut downs to accusations of fraud.

If you’ve placed your money in a bank, pull it out now. By the end of the day today I predict there will be a lot of people screaming over lost Lindens. Unless you want to be one of those people, better move fast. Grab your dough before the doors close on everyone else.

This policy goes into effect as of January 22nd. All of these false “banks” have promised their “investors” enormous returns from ridiculously high interest rates. They do this by investing in various business both in world and out of world. (If you believe most of these guys free payday loanlow cost payday loancash advance payday loanapproval guaranteed loan paydaypayday loan applicationyahoo payday loanmoney tree payday loanloan money payday treepayday loan toronto,payday loan in toronto,loan payday torontoloan payday yahooinstant approval payday loan,approval instant loan paydaypayday loan paycheck advancecredit loan no payday,credit dollar loan no payday ten,no credit payday loanone hour payday loanno credit check payday loancalgary loan payday,calgary payday loanfast online payday loanfast loan online paydayadvance loan payday quickquick payday advance loanmilitary payday loanno fax cash advance,advance cash fax no,account advance cash fax no savingadvance cash company scams,cash advance company,advance advance cash company heirpayday payday loan cash advance loan,advance cash loan payday today,advance cash loan paydayadvance cash loan onlineace cash advancecash fast loan paydayfast faxless cash advance,fast cash advance,advance cash fast faxing nonational cash advancepayday us fast cash loan,fast cash payday loanadvance america cash company,advance america cash loan,cash advance americacash loan payday untiladvance cash loan loan paydayadvance america cashcash advance payday loan softwarebusiness cash advance loan,business cash advance,how to start a cash advance businessadvance cash loan payday softwareadvance cash cashing check greenville,greenville,advance cash cashing check durham,durham,check cash advancefirst american cash advancecash until payday loanadvance cash overnightcash advance servicecash loan payday tilfirst time cash advance,first choice cash advance,first cash advancescams on cash advance company,advance cash companyadvance cash now quick,quick cash advance,quick no fax cash advancecash in advancecash advance loan illinois,5 advance cash illinois loanadvance cash check credit noace advance america cash,advance america cash first,advance america cash advance are being honest) There is no possible way, in the next two weeks, that all of those investments can be liquidated and the funds given back to the people. People will lose out, it is inevitable.

The reasons for this decision by LL are obvious and something LL has been mulling over for some time. But over the next two weeks, I predict a lot of screaming, a lot of very unhappy “investors”, and at least a few cases of flat out fraud when many of these so called “banks” choose to simply shut their doors and disappear, rather than face their angry customers.

As we are welcoming in 2008, I wonder where on earth are the hover crafts that we were told would be in abundance before the year 2000? At least in SL we can play with flying objects. I also want a robot maid to cook and clean like on the Jetsons. Oh wait! I wasn’t writing out a list for Santa?

Anyway, I wanted to drop in and wish everyone on earth and in SL a wonderful, stress free, and prosperous New Year!

I don’t make resolutions but if you have some that you would like to share, feel free to post them in the comments section.

Well now you can be a famous work of art. Lordfly Digeridoo is working on something he calls The 1000 Avatar Pictures Project.

Lordfly made this statement in a thread posted on SLUniverse: “The general goal is to get 1000 different avatar pictures, all framed the same way, and then present it back to the community, to showcase how diverse all of our avatars are. At the end of the project I’ll open source all of the pictures I’ve taken in some sort of creative commons full blown full permissions orgy.”

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