Once again, I was perusing around at Barnes and Noble when I came upon The Unofficial Tourists’ Guide to Second Life. Being bored as I was I picked it up and flipped through it a bit.

However, I did not have much time to actually read through a good portion of the book, but it seemed like it covered most of the major in-world bases pretty well. There were a few locals that grabbed my eye, but the majority were places that have already been publicized.

I did take a quick look to find out if the Shelter was listed in there and, unsurprisingly, it was. What was surprising was that it was listed under the name, The Shelter In Exile! Okay, I can see how that could have been mistaken considering the book was probably final-drafted around the time that Exile was still steaming along. But then I turn the page and see a photo of the Isabel Shelter, labeled, still, the Shelter In Exile. It made me wonder how they got the photo while still getting the name wrong.

Aside, from the Shelter beef, my verdict of the book is the same as the Official Guide, good if you are very new, but pretty useless for regulars.

I don’t know how many of you all regularly check the Shelter forum board over at Secondlifes.com, but Travis has recently posted about the future of the two Shelters and wants to hear some opinions about what to do. He has laid out four options which I’ll repost here:

*****Option #1****
-Leave both the Original Shelter and Shelter in Exile intact, functioning similar to the way NCI is doing NCI & NCI North.
-We work out of one unified budget – all donations go to a common place
-Consolidate the groups back into “The Shelter” and “Shelter Infrastructure”, disbanding the exile groups
-Merge all the land into Shelter Infrastructure, and work off one
unified tier bill; soliciting tier donations to cover what we’re short
*****Option #2****
-Close the Shelter in Exile, and merge all back into the Original Shelter
-Events currently being held at Shelter in Exile will move back to the Original Shelter
-Consolidate the groups back into “The Shelter” and “Shelter Infrastructure”, disbanding the exile groups
-Turn the Shelter in Exile Land over to those who purchased it (I believe that’s Coal Nelson)

*****Option #3****
-Original Shelter and Shelter in Exile go Autonomous, in a
cooperative way, similar to the relationship between NCI & Shelter
-Groups remain seperate
-Events ran by those who wish to remain at Shelter in Exile will stay there
-Budget and donations are seperate
-Someone will need to lead Shelter in Exile

*****Option #4*****
NOTE: I really dont want to entertain this option, unless there’s
overwhelming support for it. Noting it here regardless to cover all the
bases.

-Close the Original Shelter
-Shelter in Exile will henceforth be referred to as “The Shelter”
-Consolidate the groups back into “The Shelter” and “Shelter Infrastructure”, disbanding the exile groups
-Merge all the land into Shelter Infrastructure, and work off one
unified tier bill; soliciting tier donations to cover what we’re short
-Travis will sell off the Shelter land in Isabel, Wingo & Galinas, and throw the proceeds into our general budget
-Events currently held at the Shelter will move over to Shelter in Exile

So head on over there and make your opinion known. Here’s the link to the topic:

The Shelter Forum: Plans for the Future

On a small side note, I didn’t know that the Shelter had land in Galinas. Anyone know what that is being used for?

Reina has now joined the blogging ranks! Now you can check out the blogs of Dol, Coal, Pati, Jay, Jacek, Eric, Akela, Bay, Erbo, and Mera to get your complete Shelterite serving for the day! All of the forementioned people’s blogs can be found in the side bar.

Ok, continuing on….

Saturday, started with a friendly chat with two of my neighbors, Talia and Scenic. I found myself once again invited to look a home. Once I was TPed in, my jaw dropped and resulted in my saying, “3v9b85a,” to the wonderment of the ladies. This house was huge! It was a Dreamland home that was selling for L$99999. Talia and Scenic discussed renting it out for a party or two while I took a bunch of photos for them. (Which I need to send off to you guys. Put that on my SL to-do list.)

Anyway, after that Skye finally took me up on my offer to photograph her house. (At this rate, I’ll have to open up shop.) During the shoot, she introduced me to a RL friend of hers, Ash Lalonde, who happened to be visiting Skye that day. Why SL alone when you can SL with a friend? Anyway, part way through, Skye asked for me to TP Reina in to see the house. So, I let the ladies chat it up while I still kept on searching for new angles and taking shot after shot.

Reina had to dart, so Skye, Ash, and I popped up to the Skyehouse for the last part of the shoot. Once I was finished obsessing over her dance pad, I was finished with the shoot. I quickly panned out and rezzed my new blimp on top of the skyhouse and we all loaded up for a quick jaunt that soon turned into a nightmare, at least for me.

During the flight, I crossed a sim border without knowing it and promptly found myself on the ground going, “WTF?!” Seconds later, I was getting IMs from both Ash and Skye, who were still traveling in the blimp, wondering why I was gone. They tried TPing me, but to no avail. After a few crashes, I was freaking out! I finally got into the sim they had drifted into and rezzed a rescue blimp. I got in and quickly accelerated to 10 knots. (Talk about high speed chases!) After doing some laundry and having a slice or two of pizza, I saw my endangered craft and passengers. Half a second later, I was back in the pilot’s seat. What I gathered then was that while I was freaking out, Skye and Ash were dying of laughter. My only wish would have been to be in the house with them to hear what they were saying in RL. I can’t fathom how crazy that conversation had to be.

Moving on, after an attempted dragon ride, I noticed that it was time for the U2inSL concert! The three of us got there a bit early and shed ourselves of our beloved prim attachments. To summarize quickly, the concert was amazing! I’ve never been the biggest fan of U2, enjoying a song or two here and there, but I loved the entire thing. It’s something you have to experience yourself and I’ll definitely be looking to go to the next RL U2 concert near me. Oh, we were also joined by Erbo and Sumar Morgan during the concert.

I ended ducking out a tad early to catch Second Fortune. I guess this was my lucky weekend because I ended up getting second or third (don’t recall :P) in the last round. Afterwards, it was time for Reina to announce the winners of the Shelter Personalities Auction. The most special winner though was an anonymous bidder who put a L$70,000ish bid on FireEyes in memory of a daughter who had died. My sincerest thanks and sorrow goes out to them and if they ever happen upon this post I’d like to say,

“Thank you. Thank you for giving to the wonderful organism that is the Shelter. You can rest assured that your generous donation will be well used. Also, my heart goes out to you. I cannot say that I know the feeling of losing a child. I can only vaguely imagine the pain and sorrow upon your heart(s). I wish to express my condolences to you and hope that, even though the pain will never fully heal, some good comes out of this tragic event.”

You may wonder why I used the word, organism, to describe the Shelter above. I believe that the Shelter is not just building that we come and have fun at. I believe that it is everyone of us that frequents it. We all help to make it the wonderful place that we love. Special thanks though to Travis, Sumar, Lars, etc… All of you have been invaluable in creating the place we know and love. Thank you.

Ok, back to the going ons of the weekend. After the auction, the pool party began. After hanging out there for a bit, taking my classic seat on the tube guard, I ran off to go visit with Skye, Ash, and Bott. We chatted and Phoenix fixed some of Skye’s land. All of a sudden, I noticed that my AV had gone into afk mode. “What?” I thought, “Why did that happen?” Then Skye said, “Oh, you’re awake.” Wait. I asked how long I had been afk and she said about 45 minutes. Woah. That’s weird. I figured I needed to log off for the night and headed to bed.

Onto Sunday….

Sunday started off, well, interestingly.

I walked into the Shelter and was hit with a shockwave of purple. At the urging of Reina, I headed off to Blaze to grab a purple shirt. After coming back and line dancing a bit, I still felt incomplete. So, I headed off to ETD to find some women’s hair that would look ok on me. I say women’s hair because the male designs at ETD don’t have a purple option. After a few minutes of rezzing, I happened upon a style called Chaos that looked exactly like the Chaotic male style I’d bought Friday night. Boom. I had purple hair. Back to the Shelter to celebrate Reina/Mera/Purple Appreciation Day. Mera ended up showing up and I got some pics of the cascade of purple that danced across my screen.

Now, yesterday, Skye, Ash, and I had discussed the possibility of me teaching them to skydive. So, I figured why just them? Why not throw a class together for it? And I did.

At about 12pm SLT, I teleported the most of the people who were coming along. (Although, first I had given them all a LM that took them to the nearest telehub instead. :P) The class ended up consisting of Skye, Ash, Simon, Keeva, Woodie, and Dutchy. There were also two other people who had been wandering around who decided to join in.

The first part of the class took place in the Skydiving Center of Abbotts Aerodrome, so my pupils could stock up on the best skydiving equipment around. After we were all gadgeted up and ready to go, we headed over to my place where my neighbor Scenic had allowed me to use some of the land she’d bought that surrounded mine. After a few instructions, we were on our way up to the skies.

Everyone did wonderfully, except that Woodie said he had died on the way down. Still trying to figure that out. Anyway, after a couple jumps the class had boiled down to Skye, Ash, Simon, and myself. Mentioning that Simon hadn’t experienced the blimp yet, I had a rather interestingly crazy idea pop into my head. Do a jump from the blimp!

So we all crowded in and off we went. Several minutes later and after a couple bouts of airsickness, we were at a decent altitude. I typed, “eject,” and we all careened towards my roof, which I made a good landing on, if I do say so myself.

After that, I took the three of them on a little house tour and showed them some pics. Simon ended up having to go, but Dutchy showed up again, so I rezzed some of those PP egg chairs and we all settled in for an afternoon of borderline crazy discussion.

So, once the massive game of bird-naming and the occasional comment from the Travster, most of us had to duck out and I headed on over to the Shelter (surprise, surprise) to catch Building Shelter.

Though I played, I didn’t fare too well with my creations. It always seems to happen that I’ll get finished with mine and look over and then see someone doing an extension of mine, i.e., I made a rain/tear drop for the theme wet and I look at Postmark’s and he’s got the little puddle with the splash drops coming up. Guess my mind isn’t fantastical enough yet. Maybe after a few more games of it. Though I do have to say that I thought the Olympic rings I did on my bronze medal were pretty good.

Anyway, BS ended and after standing around Wingo for 20 minutes going, “Meh,” Payment Podium began. It was cool because we got quite a few newer people up there to play. I also did get selected and ended up walking away with L$400 in my pocket. Not bad after my Second Fortune winnings.

Well, after going on in great detail about this and that, I’m finally through and, oh hell, it’s Thursday already. I gotta learn to crank these out faster. Ta Ta for now.

Oh and in case you were wondering, here’s purple me. Which I actually kinda like…….

Updated: See bottom of post

Ok, sorry about that delay.

*Warning!* Excessive use of parenthesis follows!

Anyway, as a few of you know, lately I’ve been unable to be in-world very often. However, this past Sunday I was able to pop into the Shelter for a couple hours and join the birthday festivities. I got there just in time to see most of Building Shelter. During the game, Dolmere sent me an IM asking if I could throw together a script that would identify the wearer of a touched Trav Hat. After asking if the user’s initials could be shown and being the scripting newb that I am, I popped a copy of the Trav Hat’s script off to Dol. (After some permissions problems. :P) A few minutes later, he sent the script back to me and I threw it into the hat and attached it. One click later and I saw, “Trav Hat: (AL) I founded the Shelter…..”

Wonderful. Now one could identify who’s hat it was. (At least, anyone would hasn’t already got a hat.)

The funny thing was was that Dol thought the Hat’s saying was being put in by the people who had owned it. He didn’t realize that it was what I had put in.
Ok that wasn’t nearly as funny as I thought it would sound, but oh well.

Anyway, towards the end of BS, Tateru Nino showed up! Once BS ended, I got some interesting pics of both her and Mera, who seems to have gone red and black now.

It was really interesting meeting Tateru for the first time. I was IMing her for a bit and she seemed really glad that the people there at the Shelter didn’t plague her to death. (Props to you guys!) Plus, we also got into a friendly debate on morals and a person’s view of what is right that ending with me falling into my own bog of debating for a perfect world. (I gotta stop doing that. :P)

The rest of the evening was rather uneventful. Watched the dancing and all  until it came time for Payment Podium. Interestingly enough, Carl Metropolitan, host of Trival Obssesion at the Shelter, was the first contestant. Anywho, I had to duck out of there before the end of the game, but I did snap a quick shot of Tippy Fizz’s little purple rabbit who I believe is named Bonnie. (Correct me if I’m wrong Tippy. :))

Anyway, Happy Belated Birthday to you, Shelter!

Update: Ack! I forgot to mention that I was able to stop by and visit Dani and Erbo’s new location for their store Don’t Panic!. The new building looks fantastic as does the water feature they put in the centre of the store. Plus, a wonderful piece of poseball art, that was made by none other than the amazing Torley Linden, is on display there. Erbo and Dani were also graced with a visit by Torley herself!