Gridlocked

Yesterday was my third rez day… sob. I spent it mostly alone, unable to teleport anywhere, unable to teleport anyone to me, and unable to rez as much as a party hat out of my inventory.

“Happy rez day to me… hic. Happy rez day to me…sob. Happy rez day…Happy…” collapses in tear-stained heap.

I spent the day waiting to be able to get to the build job I am working on, and being teased by the Myst Online Uru sim people. I’d arrived in the morning to an invitation to join a group and get a sneak preview of the island, then found that it was still closed. Teleportation was generally erratic yesterday. It wouldn’t tp, wouldn’t tp, wouldn’t tp, surprise! Teleported you. And now you’re stuck here.

I chatted on the group channel and discovered that I had a few days to wait before I could go explore what appears to be the old Telador sim revived. Oclee and I abandoned building when it got bad, which was quickly, and at one point went to explore Emerce sim with a potential client. She had to leave, and we then participated on a group chat on the Concierge channel which had me in fits of laughter.

One of the sim owners reported that he had 30 zombies on his island. Something borked presence rather badly, which meant that people logging out remained zombied in world, and then couldn’t get back in. Other sim owners chimed in that they had many zombies also. One asked whether restarting would work to clear them off the sim.

Oclee suggested that it might work but you could have fun first, and I suggested my favourite activity with zombies - to push them into the water, or into a pile, and take photographs. One quickly reported 16 avatars in the canal.

This seemed to appeal to the bored sim owners generally, and so then we had running reports of their attempts to “pile up” their zombie avatars. They promised to post pictures to Snapzilla, but I could only find one posted by Heart Wishbringer of the zombies on San Francisco sim. Possibly snapshots weren’t working by then. Pretty eerie though….

Incidentally, Heart is a shoe maker of considerable talent, recently returned to SL. Check out her shoes here... if the SLURL isn’t working it’s at Urbane 78/240/22, Heart’s Desire. I went and bought myself a Jelly Bean shoe in pink, which isn’t me at all, but I couldn’t resist.

There were repeated requests not to rez anything from inventory or return anything to inventory during the day, and then I received a group notice saying that Myst Online Uru was open for exploring. I tried to get there but couldn’t tell whether it was a mistake, the general borkedness of teleporting was preventing me or the bug which has been preventing teleports to private island sims. Couldn’t tell. Wanted to go see if the sim is just Teledor back or something more.

Telador, for those who don’t remember the history, was a sim set up by refugees from Uru Online, which was closed down when the prospect of getting Uru properly back online became reality. Now Cyan and Game Tap, producers of Uru Online, seem to have adopted Telador, which was built with permission, by a group of enthusiasts in SL, as their own. Can’t tell without getting there whether it has been improved in any way, but the amateurs did a pretty good job of making Uru come alive in SL. Initially I thought that’s what I wanted too, I was homesick for Uru for a while after I joined SL. But quickly the amazing possibilities for making something original grasped me.

I notice that the Linden blog blames a faulty piece of networking equipment for all the problems, and promises improvement. I also notice that they have pulled the updater for the First Look viewer as there is a nasty bug in the most recent version. Can you hear me at the back there? A NASTY BUG IN FIRST LOOK. So I would stop using that, if I were you.