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Unstick your clogged internet tubes

Here’s a Second Life trick that shouldn’t work, but it does. If a sim loads extremely slowly for you after you teleport, open Preferences (CTRL P), go to Network, and kind of jiggle the Maximum Bandwidth slider.

The result is that it seems to unstick everything. Things load much faster afterwards. It’s as if all those prims and textures were clogging up the internet tubes and jiggling that handle kind of loosens them up enough to make them flow again. (I know that’s not actually what’s happening, but it’s an amusing image.)

I’d guess that this is a bug. Two bugs maybe. First, options in Preferences seem to apply themselves as soon as you click them, instead of waiting for OK or Apply. Second, things should load at top speed anyway, without the need to monkey with bandwidth.

Give it a try. It really works!

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I’m not ignoring you!

Logging into Second Life today, I looked at my notecard folder for the first time in months. I was surprised to find a pile of notecarded messages from other SLers. I suppose they dropped a note on my profile while I was offline and expected me to see it when I logged in.

There was a whole pile of them — personal notes, special requests from customers, invitations, general questions about Abbotts — dating back to July.

I don’t understand why someone would try to use a Notecard as a message. If you have something important to say to someone who’s offline, do not send a notecard. The recipient is not notified, and the note is silently saved to the Notecards folder. It’s kind of like the top-secret government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark — things sent there are never seen again.

If you want to send me a message, please use IM, especially if I’m offline. If you want to send a long message, email me at cubeyterra@cavers.ca. If you absolutely MUST send a notecard, let me know in IM that you sent it. If I don’t see it, I certainly can’t respond to it.

As an aside, another minor gripe I have is people who send me an offline IM saying “HELLO???”, as if I’ve already offended them by not being there. If you have something to say, just say it. My IMs go to email, which I check daily.

Now I wonder how many of these senders I mortally offended that I apparently ignored them.

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Renovations on the way!

Keep your eye on Abbotts Aerodrome. Over the coming weeks, Jillian Callhan and her crack team of builders — Mary Edison and Memir Quinn — will move in with the wrecking ball and take it all down to the dirt. Then, out of the wreckage, something new will emerge. Something bigger and even more airporty than ever before. I don’t want to give away the surprise, but expect a radical change in style.

Drop by and watch the creative process in action. We’ll try to keep everything running throughout the renovations, including skydiving, free flights, and aircraft sales.

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No perusing for me

Like most guys, I think, I really hate to shop. When I need something, I compile a list either in my head or on paper, and make a military-precision, surgical strike. I get in, grab what I need, and get out. There will be no meandering, no browsing, and absolutely no perusing. If I’m not going to buy it, what’s the point of looking at it?

Bookstores are the worst. On countless occasions, I found myself dragged into a bookstore to “see what there is”. This behaviour completely baffles me. What possible enjoyment can you get by looking at books on a shelf? It’s a small recangular object with a picture on it. Unless you actually sit down for several hours to read it, you’re not going to discover anything significant about it by looking at it on the shelf.

In fact, if I can impress you with my pedantry, isn’t the common wisdom that you can’t judge a book by its cover? Seriously, you can’t. If it has a pretty cover, that’s the product of a graphic artist and a marketing team. Even if it has a plot summary and reviews, that’s pretty shallow criteria on which to base a literary purchase.

It seems to me that the entire concept of browsing a book store is based on the premise that you can judge a book by its cover. There are entire shops full of people violating a very fundamental rule against prejudice, and judging willy-nilly.

So really, my dislike of bookstores isn’t just an aversion to shopping. I’m standing up for my principles. I refuse to judge a book by its cover. Except those silly books that litter the fantasy section that are adorned with unicorns, pixies, fairies, and glowing swords. I think I can go ahead and judge those. Oh and the pink-spined novels with a ridiculously muscle-bound man leans over a woman whose ample bosom is virtually bursting out of a partly unlaced corset. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to see what’s inside the cover.

Alright, fine. I judge books by their cover too. But bookstores are still silly. I’ll pick mine up online, thanks. And I’ll have a list.

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Bi-directional pizza

I’m glad I tried Panago’s new “steak and blue cheese” pizza last night. Now I know where to find pizza that tastes the same going down as it does coming back up!