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Featuring...
    You might have heard that I retired from NCI (New Citizens Incorporated) earlier in the week. Yes, it’s true. I had intended to keep that relatively quiet to avoid influencing anyone else’s choices, but word has this way of getting around. It’s been a good long run and I’ve been active in NCI longer than any other single person, I believe. There’s some handover stuff to do, but maybe now I’ll have the time to work on some of those big creative projects that I’ve had on hold for so long. At approximately 7pm SLT, a resident with officer permissions invited several other people to the New Citizens Inc group, and proceeded to eject all non-member residents in the group, and change the group insignia to an inappropriate image – presumably for the sake of a couple of cheap laughs. The resident had not been invited into NCI as an officer, but joined using a group invite exploit several weeks ago. Linden Lab stepped in quickly to correct matters, and the rogue residents were handled swiftly and professionally. At no time were NCI’s funds or land assets in any jeopardy. If you have been ejected as a member of the group, please do not take it personally. 655 residents were ejected from the group, and this was not – apparently a discriminatory process. Every non-officer member was ejected. We invite you to rejoin. NCI is an open enrollement group; you may rejoin anytime by using SEARCH > GROUPS > NEW CITIZENS INC > (SEARCH) and selecting JOIN NOW. We do not anticipate any further problems with the group, and I apologise on behalf of the group officers for any inconvenience, disturbance or distress that this incident may have caused you. This year so far has given me a wonderful treat – New Residents.
Specifically, about 13 thousand of them give or take. The core group of volunteers on Help Island has expended to a regular cardre. Focused, helpful, diverse individuals who are now spending so much time there, that I’m never alone on the Island. The new folks just keep coming, and we’re there for them. The usual things happen. Some of them go poof really quickly. Either SL is not for them, they think, or their hardware system has voted it down. A few are there to cause trouble. More yet stay awhile. Some few stay longer. The ones that vanish quickly, we’ll talk about another time. Troublemakers? They come and go. Let’s talk about the last two groups. The Quick and the Slow. Quick Sometimes Quick does very well, following a landmark to a useful or attractive place (The Shelter, the Ivory Tower, the NCI, Stillman Bazaar, Grignano) or zapping off to someplace she found in the Find menu. Other times she does rather less well. Slow Slow’s biggest problem on the mainland is being put off by the societal jump. She knows the slang. Looks, sounds and has the skills you’d normally associate with a one year oldbie. What she needs now, is friends. If she can’t make some on the mainland fairly quickly, she may toss it all and be gone. She’s had fun learning in a friendly environment on Help Island. Without friends on the mainland, half the equation is gone. She needs a niche. A group of like-minded individuals she can get on with, who understand her. Quick or Slow? We get more of the former than the latter. What can we do to help Quick without bogging her down? She won’t stand for it. She wants to dive in, but can’t determine the depth. What about Slow? You can’t just plug in friendliness and hope for the best. SL doesn’t really have a functional dating service let alone an easy means to fall in with a peer group. Like RL, most of our best social contacts are by chance…or missed chance. Last week I lined up Yumi Murakami to run an off-hours Newbie Show and Tell at the NCI, to cover for those folks who couldn’t make it to Osgeld’s timeslot. Of course there will always be some folks who can’t make either timeslot, but I’m glad I picked Yumi. She handled the whole event with enthusiasm and aplomb. The whole thing went off like a charm, especially for her first time hosting it. We had some great entries, and Yumi handled it all very well! Great job, Yumi! Looking forward to the next one already! SuezanneC Baskerville, Carl Metropolitan, Linda Coffee (I do so hope I got the name right) and I clubbed together on a little project. The result: a small plot set aside at the entrance to the park by the New Citizens Incorporated Plaza in Kuula, where anyone can join the NCI Homeowners’ Association group and set their home there. Mostly the praise goes to the others, for actual implementation and logistics. All I really did was test that baby and make a temporary sign for it. If you don’t want one of the Welcome Areas as your in-world home location, come on down and use the spot at the NCI plaza! Check out newbie Show and Tell, and the Social Salsa sessions! GunshyBy: Tateru NinoWell, logging on this-morning in the Waterhead rez area, I discovered that I was being machine-gunned before the loading screen even went away. Choice. Obviously, that’s just the sort of thing to brighten my day after last night’s effort. Immediately reached for the Help menu about to reach for AR, then paused. Took a sip of coffee and thought, “Now, now, Tat. He probably just didn’t read any of the info that he’d agreed to.” and: Me: Please don’t do that. Shooter: y not it dont hurt u Me: HELP BASIC HELP COMMUNITY STANDARDS – Item 3, if that helps. It’s really irritating. I don’t come here to have automatic weapons fired at my head. There are places for that sort of thing. To his credit, he took a moment or two to read it. Then asked me where he could go to do his shooting. I sent him on to Rausch. About every two minutes he respawned back in Waterhead, attached yet more guns to his person and TP’ed back to the landmark I’d given him (thanks for the LM, Data!) On the whole, combat didn’t seem to treat him very well. I think he ran someone down with a car later. I was sitting and IMing with a newbie, so my attention was diverted. Then there was another shooting war in Waterhead. After that, he felt unwelcome and left. Probably because most of the things he did either drew complaints, or were unsatisfying or both. I’m wondering if he’ll be back. I suspect not. After the NCI Salsa dance session, Lethe and I met an explorer by the name of Forcet Duport. A well-spoken, but gunshy furry. Seems he has been ejected from quite a number of plots and parcels for – apparently – being a fur. He was polite, and cautious asking carefully if he was permitted to stop awhile. He didn’t stay too long, but we had a good chat, and he was pleasant company. It seems hard to imagine what fault other folks might have found with him that warranted ejecting such a polite person from their premises. Very civil. Very welcome. I left for work minutes later. I believe the grid was shut down urgently minutes after that. Taught my newbie building class at the NCI today. Only the one participant this time, but attendance is highly variable. It’s a very basic lesson. Camera controls, and nothing you can’t really learn yourself at the Ivory Tower of Primitives. Some folks like to get that personal touch, plus I often get some people come back for a refresher, two or three times, before they feel comfortable that they’ve absorbed the basics. kk Mechanique popped by for a bit afterwards (as did another person) and at the end of a spirited and wide-ranging discussion that started on (and occasionally passed back through) Education in SL, I had promisories for three more for next week. I’m kind of hoping not to TP in and see a class of 30 again, though. That happened to me in the third week I was running the class, and it freaked me out a little. I’m more comfortable with five or so. 30 is like teaching a sea of mannequins. Lethe got me a huggy Cthulhu doll! Yay! Just the sort of dose of cutesy madness and horror I need Still processing newbies at Waterhead. It’s certainly slowed down there some, but there’s almost always someone new there looking for aid, either the basics, or building, scripting, clothes-making, vehicle-building or whatever. Some of them are just in need of someone to talk to. And we’re there to provide. Well, things could be better. Looks like there’s a nasty cache-invalidation bug dealing with textures (and apparently also geometry). Things go into the cache and then they get removed. All in all pretty ugly. It’s not something that appeared to happen on the preview grid. Apparently LL are hammering on another update, which suggests they’ve either found the cause of the problem, or have figured out some sort of workaround. Taught my rudiments-of-building class today. I do so love passing on the basics. Nothing will eliminate the need for persistence and practice, but the important thing is to have a foundation for it. Not sure how the Osgeld’s all-new NCI Show&Tell worked out. It’s in the old time-slot, which means I generally have to be on the move to work right around the time it starts. Hope it went well. Osgeld seems to be a good egg. 
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