Neva

It's been quite a while since I've made any sort of entry here. The delay is due to real life issues though. A move and work becoming more demanding of my time, but things are settling down a bit now. But just before I moved, I met my SL wife's daughter, Neva.

Neva is fun to be around and kind and polite. She also has a very beautiful place she lives at which is decorated wonderfully. So she obviously has great taste too.

After touring her place, I took her on a tour of mine. We made use of the hot air balloon ride and floated around the sim. I also showed her the skybox where her mother and I live. This might have been a mistake as it is now obvious to Neva that her mother is a pervert. Maybe she can justify it by blaming all of the naughty toys in our home on me? Yes, I'm fine with whatever works.

A day or so after that, Neva met up with me at one of our club events at Cherry Street. We danced and had a great time. She told me that she participates in some sort of role play which involves her dressing in period clothes, which she enjoys immensely. I must say, she looks good in them too.

Brox and Esme's Wedding

Esme, Brox with Kaboom

My nephew Broxton and his new queen Esme finally got married last week on the beach at Styll. It was a wonderful, formal demon wedding. I was asked to be the best man and graciously accepted. Darren also stood with Brox along with his brother Usher. Esme had her brides maids there too. My brother Kaboom officiated the ceremony and all went off with nary a hitch (which surprised me as there seemed to be hardly any planning and no rehearsal whatsoever).

The Wedding Party

I love SL weddings because it's a time for a bunch of friends to get together and celebrate relationships. I have friends to are appalled by the mere thought of a virtual wedding and others who embrace them. In SL, you can choose to partner with someone. When you partner with someone, their profile shows up in yours. Most couples who wed in SL have their virtual spouse in their profile. But you can partner with someone without the need for a wedding ceremony. The wedding ceremonies are just the icing in the cake.

Brox and Esme's vows

So Brox and Esme have this wedding planned for 5pm. My wife/sub/partner cat was able to attend which was a very pleasant surprise as the ceremony took place at an odd time of weekday for everyone. My ex wife/partner Ambriel happened to logon as we were getting ready for the ceremony so I invited her to witness. I had pews laid out for 2 dozen people, but nowhere near that amount showed up. I truly wish I could remember all the names of everyone who did attend but I'm terrible with names. That and the fact that your avatar can have a name and also a 2nd name with fonts that are nearly unreadable make keeping track of names nearly futile. But there were a good amount of people there and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Demon Reception

About an hour after the wedding we held a reception party at the new underwater ballroom. I demonstrated to Kaboom and Princess how my swimming shark will devour them if they are not careful. Princess ended up having almost too much fun with that shark in the end, but that's what it's there for. People started showing up one or two at a time over the next hour or so and I took over the stream and played the music that Brox and Esme had requested. It was a mix of country, techno, hip-hop, heavy metal and industrial/trance. Not exactly to everyone's liking but what the hell? It was Brox and Esme's special day.

cat had to leave after the wedding but made it back half way through the reception. She's the best! That really made the rest of the reception enjoyable. Princess was very funny though playing with her pet slave. She has her way of doing things and if he wasn't able to figure that out, she was more than eager to teach him the right way. Brox and Esme pretty much kept to themselves. I was able to toast them over the music stream which felt right. Typing in chat is one thing but being able to convey my congratulations to them via spoken word was special.

So I kept the party going for as long as I could but I eventually grew sleepy as it was quite late in my time zone and had to shut down and logoff. A couple of couples lingered but I don't know for how long. I was resting after the long day of ceremony and celebration. If you ever get a chance to attend an SL wedding ceremony, do it. They are almost never boring and many are filled with lots of great humor. If you ever attend a demon wedding, be ready for anything! You never know what's going to happen at one of those. Hopefully there will be one coming up in the near future.

Friends, Family and Clan?

Clan Meeting by the fire

In Second Life, (SL) every avatar you meet (with very few exceptions) is a real person at a keyboard or microphone. Needless to say, real friendships and relationships form as  you spend more time online. Many new people want to belong to a group or family. There are some advantages to belonging to a group. First of all, you have people to hang out with who usually have similar interests. Some people feel more secure when they are members of a larger family. They feel more like they belong. It's also a great way to make a lot of new friends quickly.

Mostly Demons in the family

Some groups or families are formed around the notion of a clan. These clans are often made up of vampires or werewolves (remember, you can be anything you want in SL), or even furry people. In any case, these clans have several purposes but one of the main ones is growth. Clans want to add more members, the more the merrier. So it's no surprise that lately I've been asked to join a couple of different clans. For various reasons, I joined the one that my woman cat belongs to. It's my 'nephew' Broxton's vampire clan. So he had a meeting for his clan the other day. These clan meetings are a great way to meet others in the group/family/clan. We talked about drama within the group and how to deal with it. We discussed growing the family too, which is a guaranteed topic at any clan meeting.

I'm not at all new to SL so I sort of have my own family or clan if you will in my group of friends. So belonging to a clan, while flattering, it is not all that necessary for me personally. But if you are new to SL or find that it's time to change things up in your virtual life or even if you just want to get to make a whole bunch of new friends, the clan or family is the way to go.

Party Nights

Dancing on the beach

It's about time cat and I got out and had some fun. With Emi, Clancy, Gefter, kasie, Zefer and many more, we were able to go out partying and actually have some fun instead of work for a change. Due to a new feature at Cherry Street Nightclub, I will likely be reopening it very soon, so these Party Nights might be some of the last ones cat and I get a chance to do for a long time to come.

Clairede Live

It's always special going out to listen to Clairede Dirval's live performances. It's been way too long since I've been able to attend one of her one hour shows. So when the opportunity presented itself, cat and I jumped on it. We danced and listened to Clairede sing and play guitar. All of her songs were new to me because it has been so long since I've attended one of her performances. It was a wonderful night and so good to see Clairede again. She played at a nude beach so most of the audience were able to shed their pesky clothes and dance naked.


I threw a party at my nude beach a couple of nights later. For the first half of it, nobody showed up but later on when Emi and cat logged on, Clancy showed up and we had a nice small party. Met a couple of new guys too. Bruce and Oluthus (Olu). Olu is a DJ and I think he's going to hold events at Cherry Street. So there's one more reason to reopen the club. They belong to a vampire clan which has a club that holds regular events, Thursday through Sunday. Fun bunch of people! The event I went to there was Sleepwear on Friday night. Well in the end, nobody was wearing anything and my tasty pet won with the most votes! Great time had by all.

Zef and kasie's 5th anniversary celebration

But the night started out with kasie and Zefer's 5th anniversary. Yes, she has worn his collar for 5 years. That's a very long time and it certainly looks as though another 5 years together are not out of the question. kasie had decorated and setup Zefer's beach for the party. She hired him a "fuck toy" who jumped out of a giant cake. Gefter was there along with my pet and a very good DJ. We danced and listened to some great music. kasie did a wonderful job setting up the place.

Mirri setting up the runway

The Runway

Earlier in the week, cat told me about a friend of hers having a new dancer/escort system for his club. We went and checked it out and it was very unique for SL. It's a runway, not a stage and it does not use poles for the dancers. Instead it makes use of zones and each of those zones interact seamlessly with patron's chairs on either side of the runway. Also, up to 2 of the dancers can interact with the patron at the same time! This is very unique and sure to make it much easier for my girls to make tips during events. For that reason and because I'm missing my friends, I'm reopening the Cherry Street Nightclub. This runway will be a major attraction. It is so unique that the creator (Mirri) had to come and set it up herself. Once setup, the runway cannot be moved without her assistance, but it's in a great location now and I see no need to move it for some time to come. The animations in it are very erotic and unique. This is one of only 4 other runways that I'm aware of in SL. The one at Cherry Street, the one at cat's friends club, one other that Mirri mentioned and the one she has at her shop as a demo. That's it! So if you want to experience something very unique in SL, you should come on down to Cherry Street Nightclub and check this out. secondlife://Styll/58/176/24

So later the next day, cat put on a wonderful show for me on the new runway. I cannot wait until people get a chance to try this thing out.

A Bit About Lag

Lag in SL is just as you would imagine. Things happen slowly when there is lag present. Sometimes text chat can be slowed down. Sometimes frame rates will drop to very low levels making every movement appear jerky. Lag can cause your computer to freeze. It can prevent you from teleporting in or out of a region. It can prevent textures from loading and can prevent avatars from rezzing in completely. Lag is undesirable. But what causes lag and can it be prevented?

Basically, lag is a lack of speed. Your internet connection might be slow and this could cause your experience in SL to slow down. Your computer might be slow. This will manifest itself as lag through your SL viewer. This does not necessarily mean that SL is being laggy. All it means is things need to speed up on your end. On the other hand, you could have a very fast computer and very fast internet throughput yet you are still experiencing lag. This could be the SL server that your avatar is currently occupying. A good way to test this is to try teleporting to another region on another server. If you are still experiencing lag then it's probably slow throughput on your end either due to a slow (or busy) computer or too slow of an internet connection. If changing locations improves your framerates and such then there is a good chance the region you were in is experiencing lag due to the server it resides on being over taxed. In this case, restarting the sim might work. But if it's due to too many running scripts (programs) or too many avatar prims, then restarting the sim will have no effect. I mention this because I've been getting lots of requests lately to restart my sim. It's no trouble restarting it really. I just go there and Debug the land and select Restart. But more often than not, when I arrive at the sim to restart it, I am not experiencing any lag at all.

I recently ran into an ARC counter (Avatar Resource/Rendering Cost) which I have place inside my nightclub at Cherry Street. I've found that my avatar uses a great deal of resources as oposed to most. Therefore I create lag just about wherever I go. I can remove some of my huds and scripted items to bring my ARC down to an acceptable level. And I will do that should there be a great deal of lag where I'm at, but it's not always necessary. If I'm in a location where there are very few people, then it usually is not an issue. But the more avatars there are in a region, the more computations the servers need to make to keep up with them. That's when I need to lower my ARC. I'll remove my radar HUD and dance HUD and such and that usually takes care of it. But I cannot control what others do. If someone else on the sim is wearing a lot of scripted items such as HUDs or weapons or wings and piercings, etc., there's not much I can do about that except to either leave or put up with the lag.

Adjusting your 3D graphics settings can make a huge difference too. I turned my draw distance down from over 200 meters to 100 meters and it more than doubled my frame rates. Things are very smooth now even with my older 3D graphics card. Lots and lots of speed can be found by going in and customizing  your graphics settings. One very important setting to look at is under your Network tab. Set the maximum throughput speed slider all the way up. Why not? I mean, why put a bottleneck in your bandwidth throughput? Just turn it all the way up so there are no restrictions to your internet speed. That right there will make a huge difference for most users.

There are multiple sources for lag, some of which were not even mentioned here. It's not always the sim you are visiting. Many times it can be the person standing next to you, using all of the server's available resources.

Been Away

Cat distracting me

Not much has been going on at Cherry Street this past week or so. At least not that I'm aware of. Who knows? There could have been some epic battles going on, fights to the death, huge orgies or awesome inner tube races. I would not know. I have been sick. I tried logging on a couple of times only to find myself fading away at the keyboard. I'd fall asleep and wake up wondering what the hell I am doing. It was a long achy week but sleeping through it seemed like the best idea at the time. The doc fixed me up with a shot and some pills and now I'm good as new.

Exploring a deserted island

I took cat out on a few short and quick 'dates' as time allowed. Those are always fun. A quick cruise through the sea to a secluded island and some laying out on the beach. She always manages to distract me in the most wonderful of ways. And a new/old friend of mine, Pearline has returned to SL. She used to make dresses and shoes so I have provided her with a shop and we'll see how that goes. She's been gone over 6 months so it's both odd and wonderful to have her back. I'm hoping she's here to stay. She is my SL sister.

I have not said a word to anyone just yet but I'm already thinking of holding Friday night events at Cherry Street again. I miss our get-togethers and Fridays seemed to work out best for everyone. I know I told Brox I'd try to do Friday nights for his Krimson Moon, but he now has 2 DJs which is 2 more than I have and I'm going to play the selfish card here. I miss our Friday night parties.

Get Together

It seems it's getting tougher for my friends and I to get together lately. That's probably my fault for shutting down the Tuesday and Friday night events at the Cherry Street Nightclub. Friday nights on a regular basis might work out for everyone, but I did promise those nights to Broxton's Krimson Moon. But because he has not held any other events there since last Friday, I'm doubting he will be able to keep the place open. In any case, Emi, Gefter, Darren, Zuri and I all got together Saturday night and had a great time!

First, Darren IMd me to show me a gadget he picked up which makes configurable weather over the entire sim. For a demonstration, he and Zuri chose flaming rain. I've seen these devices before and they sure are impressive, but they also create a great deal of lag. Darren offered to leave the control device on the land for me but I had to decline due to the lag considerations. It's important that I keep the lag at Cherry Street down to a minimum. But I did suggest that we have a party soon where we have bizarre weather while we party on the beach. It would still be very laggy, but it's only a temporary thing and it sounds like it would be fun.

About that time, I wanted to show them my new sim-border crossing boat. I warned them that it was not pretty but that it was elegantly scripted. Because my sim, Styll, does not border on any other sims, I was unable to demonstrate the boundary crossing feature of the boat. At first, Zuri took the helm but she did not understand the controls. She held down the accelerate button until we hit the edge of the sim. Then she turned it around and raced across the sim to the other edge, hitting it hard and placing us in limbo so to speak. I was stuck underwater but eventually made it out and was able to meet up with them at yet another corner of the sim. Hitting a sim border at high speed has unpredictable results. But it's never a good thing. So I thought I'd demonstrate a nice leisurely cruise to them. I took them on a short tour of the waterways on the sim.

All together now

About that time, Emi contacted me in IM and wanted to know "where's the party?" So I figured we should all get together and go boating out on Blake Sea where I could demonstrate the boat's awesome boundary crossing feature. I did not know at the time that Gefter was with Emi so that means there would be five of us and my boat only seats four. But I planned on rezzing a second boat for Gefter or Darren to pilot. As it turned out, we were able to get everyone on board but one person (Gef I think?) had to 'sit' on the boat and not in an animated pose. It seemed like this was going to work out just fine. We crossed one border and while it was a bit rough and laggy, we all made it across together. But it was the second border that turned out to be a real problem. We were all left behind and deep underwater. The boat was nowhere to be found. This is not unusual with the old scripted vehicles when crossing sim borders, but I had expected better out of this new scripting. But I reasoned that it must be due to the fact that the boat had one more person on it than it was intended for. So I suggested we head back to the marina (which had an area where you can rez things) and try two boats.

Sinking Yacht

Darren informed me that Zuri had a large yacht and that it seated 12. Well, I would imagine it did not have the new sim crossing scripting that my boat did but I thought, why not? At least we'd all stay together. But the yacht proved too large for Zuri to handle. Because she is the owner, she is the only person allowed to pilot it. With the new boat I have, they allow for multiple copies of it to be piloted by anyone with the same group membership that the boat was rezzed under. A very nice and handy feature. So if the yacht was not going to work out, I was going to rez a second boat under the Cherry Street group name. And as it turned out, when Zuri tried to move the yacht to a decent starting position, it sank. It didn't happen very fast though. It was a slow, torturous submersion. Oh, the humanity! But we all managed to survive and that's when I rezzed first one boat and started to rez a second when Darren informed us that Zuri had a small sailboat. Well, that will work too, but I had to wonder if it had these new updated sim-crossing scripts. As it turned out, it did not.

Zuri floating behind us

Darren and Zuri took off to the east so Gefter, Emi and I followed in the boat. We saw a couple of very cool islands and the border crossings were good. As I suspected, Darren and Zuri did not fare so well. On our third sim crossing, Gefter and I ended up in the sky. So that newly scripted boat of mine did not fare so well after all! But as Darren figured out, it was the same sim that we had trouble with earlier when we all ended up underwater, standing there bewildered, laughing as Gef donned his scuba gear. He's got a great sense of humor! Anyway, we decided to take off in the other direction, north and west. We regrouped and rezzed our boats again, took off on a slow cruise and this time, everything worked satisfactorily. Darren was able to impliment a 'follow' command with some sort of gadget he has so instead of sitting on the boat, Zuri floated behind us, but we were all together that way. So we explored for a little bit until we crossed an as yet uncrossed sim border. It went badly. I was so disappointed with my new boat after that. So we all decided it was time to play a game of hot tub Greedy. Gefter agreed to play too, but he was to be allowed to win this time. He had me in stitches all night

We all met back at Cherry Street and hopped into the hot tub Greedy game that Emi and Gefter got cat and I for our wedding gift. The game went very well because I won! But that sim crossing boat of mine was bothering me all the rest of the night. It should have performed better than it did. It always worked great for me!

So the next morning, I logged on and went out to the place we were at last night, rezzed a boat and started heading for the sim borders that we had issues with the night before. It was as smooth as ever, crossing those sims. So it must have had something to do with the number of people we were trying to force across the borders all at once. So with renewed confidence in my boat, I went out exploring, crossing countless sim borders without a hitch. I found a wonderful island to explore but I'll wait until cat or a friend can come along with me.

K Moon Opening

Finally, after a month or more of planning, my nephew Broxton has opened his nightclub, Krimson Moon. There were several reasons for it taking so long to open. Mostly due to personnel changes with the staff, but it's finally in operation. So he held a Ears & Tails event last night. I was the DJ, Brox hosted and we had three pole dancers, at least one of whom was an escort. Even though escort services were not in demand that night, the ladies did a great job on the dance polls.

Broxton and his new squeeze

I had a terrible time with lag which kept cutting off my music stream. I had restarted the sim just an hour before the event, so that all scripts were cleared out but once people started showing up, the lag surfaced with a vengeance and I was tasked with cutting down the throughput of my stream. The music would cut out and I would drop the stream's speed every time. Finally, it became stable enough to play without interruption. The only problem was that the quality of the music was horrible. Emi showed up just after the event ended and complained that the music sounded almost like pure static, it was that bad. I've played countless events on that sim without that much trouble in the past so I can only assume something has recently changed. The OS upgrade performed by Linden Labs might have something to do with that. We have been having trouble with the sim ever since that upgrade. Another factor could have been the avatars. I checked my avatar lag monitor just before the event and saw that Broxton was running over 300 scripts alone. In comparison, I'm usually running 190 scripts and I get warnings about that being too high quite often. Or it could have been a combination of the two. Whatever the case, something will need to change before I DJ there again.

Girls On The Dance Polls

Ken showed up with his new GF and they had a great time dancing. Not all of the dances in the couple's controller are straight dances though. I've put in some sex animations so that sex can be had anywhere on the sim for convenience. I was pleasantly surprised when cat showed up. I didn't really expect her but it was so nice having her there. I played with her naughty tail and she played with mine. We danced together the rest of the night until she had to leave at the end of the event. At one point, there were eleven people in attendance, which is pretty good for a grand opening. Hopefully Brox can get his group member base built up and he can have many more busy events.

Testing The Waters

The Second Life grid is made up of thousands of regions called sims. They are 256x256 meters square and can stand alone or be connected side by side, end to end. These sims exist on computer servers so when you cross over a sim border to another sim, you are moving your avatar, and all its attachments, clothing, skin, eyes, shape, etc., over to another computer in real time. While walking across sim borders causes brief but strange disruptions in your forward motion, driving or flying across the borders can cause all sorts of strange things to happen including losing your vehicle or viewer freezup or worse. I actually quit driving my motorcycle and powerboat because of this problem. But recently, Lark told me about a boat which had newer scripting which helped to make sim crossing smoother.

So I went out and tried a jetski and catamaran demo containing these new scripts. Sure enough, the sim crossings were fairly smooth! The first thing I'm thinking of is being able to tour the Blake Sea. The Blake Sea is a cluster of sims which are mostly water all grouped together to form a sort of virtual ocean. Many of these sims are decorated with seaweed and coral under the water, but some have small islands popping up out of the water with decorations and even some pose animations. I recall exploring the Blake Sea in my old powerboat, finding some interesting places to visit but becoming frustrated, and in the end, fed up with the sim crossing problems. I kept losing my passengers or boat. I would end up at a sim's 0,0,0 coordinates unable to move or teleport. While the appeal of exploring vast sections of the sea was quite strong, the sim crossing issues ruined it.

So the first thing I'm thinking of is that I can go exploring, but I would need to purchase one of these newly scripted boats. So I shopped around frantically, motivated by the thought of my boat traversing the open sea surrounded by bikini-clad babes, searching for islets to check out. I had to buy a boat that night! There are plenty of sailboats out there with this sim-crossing feature, but I wanted a powerboat. Sailboats in SL are for the most part, quite realistic and for me, too complicated. I'd rather not have to wear a HUD as I navigate and control the vessel as that would take away from my flirting with the bikini babes. The powerboats that I did find worked quite well and were reasonably priced, but I did not like the looks of them. The textures and prims were not very appealing. So I quit searching when cat logged on and went to spend time with her.

Exploring the Blake Sea

I told cat about the sim-crossing scripts and my vision of exploring with her. She immediately wanted to go shopping for them, so I took her to the place Lark showed me with demos to try out. I got her on the catamaran and did a short demonstration as we crossed a couple of sim borders. She's had bad experiences of sim crossings too and was as amazed as I was. Finally, I decided to get a boat from the demo place we were at because none of the other places we checked seemed to have any demos, and the ones that did, were unable to cross sim borders without problems. So cat wisely suggested we get a boat large enough to accommodate several friends. I was also able to find a boat which was capable of allowing friends to pilot it so that if we ended up with too many people for one 4-seater, we could rez a second boat and have up to eight friends come along. So we got the boat and headed home to unpack it and rez it.

Cat had to leave at that time so we said our goodbyes and afterwards, I took the boat to the Blake Sea. I had a terrible time finding a place to rez it. Most sim owners understandably do not want to enable rezzing on their land. People leave their stuff laying around and it takes up prims which should be available to the sim owner. However, there is a feature called Auto-Return which returns objects after a certain period of time to the owner's inventory. I finally found one of those places and rezzed my boat. The region had an indirect connection to the Blake Sea so I was able to head south for a bit until reaching open waters. On the way, I crossed many a sim border without any trouble. It was wonderful! It was exactly as I imagined it could be (onley without the bikini chicks). So I explored for a while, practiced navigating teh boat (which was a bit tricky due to its touchy controls) and logged off with thoughts of a smooth sim-crossing helicopter in my mind.

Chatting with cat

The next day, cat and I had a little free time from RL, so we got together. I told her all about the boat and even sent her some pictures of my brief travels from the night before. We had a nice long "chat session" then setup a date for later that night. It was worth the wait.

Our Getaway Date

I found a place to rez the boat near the Blake Sea and teleported cat over and we were off on our journey. We did not find much at first, but I did see a sort of long channel/waterway on the world map so I went for it. It was very long and crossed countless sims without much trouble. We were going quite slow in order to smooth out the already mild sim border crossings and to allow the surrounding scenery to rez in properly. It took a while but we finally found the end of the waterway which emptied out into a huge circular lake surrounded by very high brick and mortar walls. I certainly didn't feel like scaling impossible walls just to get a look at what might be up there. Besides, we had not found an islet to explore yet and time was running out. So I turned the boat around (I should give the boat a name...) and I gunned it heading back out to the east. The sim crossings were not too bad and before we knew it, we were back out in open water. I set a course for south and west and finally found a small island.

We made landfall and surprisingly, our boat did not get returned to my inventory. So we checked out the island, found a campfire and some sitting logs. That was nice for a while but I wanted to wrap my arms around my girl so I activated a dance from my couple's hud and we danced and talked until cat had to leave. It was a wonderful evening and inspired me to go out briefly before logging off to look at some aircraft which might contain this sim-crossing scripting. I did find one but decided to wait until the next day to look closer at its features as the cost was a bit on the high side. Besides, it was getting late. There will be plenty of time for exploring with cat and friends soon enough.

Prims

Four table legs = four prims

Prims, which is short for Primatives, are the basic building block of SL objects. By default they start out as a 0.5 meter square cube when you use your SL viewer's Build function. But they can become just about any shape you can imagine. Think of a basic dining room table. It has a flat surface with four legs. You can create a prim (rez a prim) and stretch it to the table top's size then create four prims stretched to the proper dimensions to represent the table legs. Move them into position so that everything looks right and there you go, a dining room table! This is a very simplified example of object creation in SL but it's to help illustrate the meaning of prims in SL and how they affect your virtual 'life' there.

Plus top = five prims

In the above example, our dining room table requires 5 prims to create. One for each leg and one for the table's surface. It is very important to know the number of prims an object is made up of. Because SL exists on computer servers, each location (region/sim) or parcel has a limit to the number of prims it can process. The more prims a piece of virtual land can process, the higher the tier (rent) cost.

Full region sims can contain up to 15,000 prims. The sim owner can divide his land into smaller sections called parcels. Each parcel will have a limit on the number of prims it can contain usually based on the parcel size. For example, if the sim owner divides his land into quarters, each quarter could contain up to 3750 prims or one quarter of the full sim's 15,000 prim limit. Once that prim limit is reached, the parcel or land can contain no more prims. If you try to rez an item or build something, you will receive an error message telling you that the region is full and no other prims can be created. This is why it is very important that land owners perform what I refer to as Prim Management.

I could go right ahead and fill my Homestead Sim (3750 prims) right up but there would be all sorts of problems with that. First off, I have devices on my land which create prims as you use them. If there were no free prims available, then that device would not function. The first thing that comes to mind are the palm trees I have on the nude beach. Those are capable of rezzing pillows for cuddling, a master's chair for spanking and a rope swing for two among other items. Without the free prims this device requires, it is useless. Therefore, a free reserve of prims must be maintained at all times.

The magic number of free prims for me is between 500 and 600. This ensures that my friends can rez their items and use them. It also ensures that devices such as palm trees, beds, board games and the like will function properly. I also have a rezzing vendor which allows potential customers to walk through my buildings so that they have a good idea of what they might be purchasing. They simply browse through the pictures in the vendor and click on a Rez button once they see something they are interested in. The vendor rezzes the building and the customer can walk through it to check it out before purchase. Some of these buildings can be hundreds of prims, so it's a good idea to have hundreds of free prims available on the land.

If my friends want to rez their vehicles, such as cars, boats, cycles or aircraft, then there must be enough free prims for them to do so. On the other end of the spectrum I have had friends rez their toys and actually just leave them there for me to return to their inventories later. This is just plain rude. We should all be responsible for the 'messes' we create. Go ahead and rez your stuff, but clean up after yourself when you are done with it. It's just common courtesy.

While a region or parcel has a limited number on the prims that it can contain, there is an exception. Any devices or objects attached to an avatar do not count against the prim limit. For example, I have some leather bracelets which are studded. They are 250 prims each and when I wear them, I wear both of them. When I attach them to my wrists, their prims do not count against my sim's prim limit. But they do create lag (which I'll deal with more in a future posting). Lag is undesirable and it is basically the effect perceived when  computer server is slowing down due to over processing. So while the number of prims on a necklace or skirt or head of hair do not count against the land's prim limits, it they do require extra processing. If I were to rez those bracelets onto the ground though, the prims that make them up would count against the land's prim limit.

In future posts, I'll go into more detail concerning other types of prims and also the causes of lag and what it does to dampen the SL experience.

Adventures And Socializing

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Oh No You Didn't!

Oh yes I did! I went and got married. I swore to myself and others that I would never do that again. But that was before I met and fell in love with cat. Never thought I'd ever run into anyone remotely like her. She of course earned my collar and shortly after the collaring ceremony - which was private - I realized she will never be able to experience marriage in SL so long as she was with me (which will be forever). She deserves to experience the craziness of an SL wedding so we setup an altar outdoors at our skybox and invited a bunch of friends.

Cat had lots of fun shopping for the items we would need to pull this off. Animations, pews, decorations, clothes, rings, etc. Women love to shop! I'll admit, so do I sometimes. She got just as much enjoyment out of decorating the setting for the ceremony too. For her wedding ring we chose an Earthstones design. I have an issue with the creator at Earthstones due to a past request for customer support, which was ignored, but she sure does make some great looking stuff. My ring is a Master's ring from the same shop. Darren, Zuri, Emi and Gefter all agreed to being in the wedding party. Cat picked out the ladies gowns and because Darren and Gefter's tuxes were too different looking, Emi made sure Gefter's matched Darren's. Broxton officiated the ceremony. He was sporting his demon form.

Not as many people showed up as I anticipated. But because the total number of avatars the region can process is 20, the 14 total we had at the ceremony and the 6 others at various locations on the ground worked out just right. Emi would not let me up to the skybox before the ceremony so I hung out at Gef's place for a bit then he and I went to the Cherry Street club to wait some more. Finally, a few minutes after the ceremony was to start, I was given the official okey-dokey to arrive and take my place at the altar. And setup the music stream and tend to the exposed poseballs, get my vows out and in a handy location and same thing with my ring. All of this needs to be ready before hand because the last thing one wants to do is fumble through inventory looking for the items/information that you need.

The Kiss

So the door opened on the house which was my cue to play the bride's march. Well, there was a 45 second delay so that song was cut off before it started because cat was well on her way to the altar in her stunning and sexy wedding day gown. I do not get to see her in such fine clothes very often as she dresses according to my rules which requires her to dress in the barest of minimum, and sometimes with even less clothing than that. So this was a breathtaking treat for me. I suddenly felt the urge to take her out to formal dances more often. She took my breath away.

We stood together at the altar as Brox began the ceremony in traditional and fine fashion. Cat's vows to me were very moving, honest and deeply heart felt. Mine to her were pretty much the same except that I had to force myself to not ramble on and on, as I have a tendency to do from time to time. After exchanging vows, we exchanged rings. Then there was the kiss and finally, I tossed her over my shoulder and carried her across the threshold of our home. Cat calls this the "caveman carry" but I like to think of it as just one more way of my owning her ass. 

Unfortunately, I had to leave right after the ceremony as real life work was not leaving me alone. But I knew I could finish my work up quickly and return to my blushing bride's arms. Just as I said my goodbyes, one of the brides maids mentioned something about a male stripper. I had to smile as it seemed odd they would have a bachelorette party AFTER the wedding ceremony? So I thought it was just a joke at the time. By the time I finished my work and logged back in, sure enough, they were throwing a bachelorette party for cat! She was so wound up and excited as I teleported her to me that I had to tell her to take a breath and tell me all about it. You know how strippers can work up a crowd!

Realizing we did not have much time to spend together due to her RL responsibilities, we danced for a little bit and just talked about our future together. Later that night was the reception. That was one of the best parties I've been to in a very long time. Cat was radiant in her gown as we danced the whole night away. I danced with Princess Rose and Emi and Ambriel as well, but most of the night was spent with cat in my arms. There was supposed to be a DJ there playing tunes for us but he never showed so I setup a playlist of some of the songs cat requested and some of my usual stuff mixed in and away we went, dancing and partying with friends all night long.

Archer showed up and had made a gift of pictures from the ceremony for us which we gladly accepted. There was too much going on for me to be taking many pics. Clancy was there too and so was Brox and his new pet. Darren and Zuri made a few videos of the ceremony for us to keep and watch which was very thoughtful. We also played trivia and as usual, Darren got most of the answers really fast. Ambriel showed up toward the end of the reception. Unfortunately her arrival coincided with some unexpected drama which was dealt with as quickly as possible. We also knocked around the idea of holding an orgy there but Brox protested stating that there was no nudity in his club. So rather than upset anyone, we simply let it go and called it a night.

As with any wedding, there were unexpected miscues and mistakes, but nothing major and it was a fun time had by all.

Cherry Street - Things To Do

There are many things to do and places to visit at Cherry Street that many people are not aware of. One of the first things to look for once you arrive is the teleporter system. There are several of the scattered about the region. Simply click on a destination and  you are instantly there. Also, the hot air balloon ride will give you a quick tour of the place as well.

jaynee2

 

One popular location is the club dungeon. There are two dungeons at Cherry Street. One in the castle and the other next to the club. At the club dungeon you will find all sorts of nasty and fun BDSM devices. You may also run into Jaynee2 there "hanging around". She is the group slave and will often times be found trapped and bound to some sort of wicked device. She is there for everyone's entertainment and enjoyment. The castle dungeon is equipped with a full prison and jail cell, bondage cross and a few other "toys" which are RLV enabled. Just trap your favorite victim and enjoy some rich RP. Upstairs in the castle you will find a bondage bed with all sorts of wonderful surprises available in it.

Another popular attraction is the nude beach. While clothing is optional, it is best to enjoy yourself here completely nude. After all, it cuts down on the lag, right? There you will find palm trees with hidden sex and BDSM menus which are also RLV active. There are jet skis for group use, inner tubes and swimming. You can sunbathe there as well. Be sure to check out the beach loungers with your special someone(s) too. Across the lagoon is the infinity pool with some very special hidden surprises.

Party at the nude beach

The undersea ballroom is our latest addition. In it you will find some romantic and sexy couples dances. Watch out for the large shark. It tends to feed on unsuspecting visitors. Adjacent to the undersea ballroom is the shopping mall. There are two nightclubs there; Krimson Moon and Cherry Street Nightclub. Also there are shops featuring Whispering Peace Jewels and Nada's Fashions. Be sure to join the group for event announcements. We are a non-spamming group so no need to worry about being annoyed. Our events mostly consist of beach parties and dances. There are also a few Spin The Bottle games scattered about. This is a very good group sex ice-breaker.

Pretty much anything goes at Cherry Street on Styll. Just be sure to be civil to everyone and NO child avatars, thank you.

Cherry Street Changes and Some Other Stuff

I have decided to stop holding contests at Cherry Street Nightclub and Nude Beach. There are actually several reasons for this move but the main one would be expense. I include a moderate cash prize in the contest board for the contest winner, but it all adds up over time and time is money too. By the end of a typical contest event I am usually out from L$700 to L$1000. Without tips to offset the expense, it's not worth it. The whole idea behind holding the contests is to introduce the sim to people who would not normally check it out. Because the same people seem to be winning week after week, and after having done this for many months, common sense tells me it's time to take a different approach.

There will still be events at Cherry Street but no contests. The dancers will still receive 100% of their tips but that is all. My nephew Broxton has opened a nightclub of his own at the mall called Krimson Moon. So there will still be contests held on the region, but not paid for by me. I wish the very best of luck to he and Memory and intend to support him in any other way. I'm anxious to see what sort of parties he will be having. I will continue to hold parties on Friday nights and still plan to DJ. Due to the end of Nakie Friday's once held by Stroker'z, I will hold a naked Friday dance of my own on the nude beach. Last Friday nights event did not go so well in so far as attendance, but Emi and her Gefter generously gifted me and cat a greedy table with hot tub add-on for the nude beach. We had a wonderful time with it! Kitty also showed up and tried bringing in a couple of friends but the guys did not stay long. I guess some people are still not comfortable with being nude on a nude beach. I suppose I need a greeter or something letting people know that they can wear clothes if they want to without feeling out of place. Last Friday night was the first of the nakkie dances at the nude beach so I'm not worried that hardly anyone showed up. I'll be posting the party regularly to the Community Calendar and that ought to bring more new partyers in. I did DJ for that party and intend to do so for the foreseeable future.

While decorations may be scarce, the underwater ballroom is ready to use. I intend to hold a grand opening there sometime this week. Be warned, the large shark will eat you up and it's a bloody mess! Nugget has put in place a revised teleport system. Simply click on one of the destinations listed on a map kiosk of the sim and away you go. And the hot air balloon ride is in need of updating but short of omitting the existence of the new ballroom, it's still accurate and informative. It will be updated to include the addition of the ballroom in the near future. Thank you Nim for all your help on that project!

Archer, Emi, Darren

After seeing Emi in her mermaid outfit, cat suggested a mermaid based dance location too. As it turns out, the roof of the underwater ballroom will be perfect for that. I have everything in place except for the mermaid dance animations. So I will be out looking for those soon too. I know they have them around SL somewhere. I've seen them before.

My soon to be adopted son, Loki was able to provide some interesting entertainment the other day. He brought in some respawning zombies for us to kill. He, and a few of his friends were there to pump lead into the hard-to-kill walking dead. While it may have taken many shots from high powered rifles and machine guns, they do eventually explode with very satisfying sound and effects. But the lag and the crossfire did tend to make things tricky. I believe I was killed 5 times. But when you 'die' in SL, you are simply sent to your home location to start over again. All in all, it was a very exciting and fun time had by all participants. But I had to end it shortly due to the upcoming naked Friday dance.

Loki spraying lead

As I mentioned, there is a new Greedy table on the nude beach thanks to the generosity of Emi and Gefter who gave it to cat and I as early wedding gift. Be sure to come down and play that thing. The beach is the perfect setting for that thing. So now that there are two Greedy tables at Cherry Street, I'm thinking of making one of them a tournament table. That way we can have competitions. If we do, I'll be sure and post about it here.

Meeting

My slut was unable to make it online tonight so I decided to catch up on some unfinished projects and business. Let's just say that the underwater ballroom is finally ready to be used and abused. But when I finished with that project, a distraction came up. I belong to the ACE group. Adult Community Education. It's a BDSM group dedicated to teaching and informing of all aspects of BDSM. A very open, intellectual and dedicated group. The moderator was to be using SL voice chat (which is horrible) but they were also allowing text chat which I figured I could handle.

The D/s meeting at Bound, listening to Eric

There were lots of beautiful people there when I arrived. The topic was "Should a sub argue with his/her Dom/me if they are commanded to do something they know is wrong?"

As you can imagine, there were a myriad of opinions. There were both submissive and Dom/mes in attendance. It was a wonderful meeting and opened my eyes to a rainbow of diverse opinions. All the while, I was thinking of my relationship with my tulsym. It was indescribably refreshing to meet with people of a like mind. It's been way too long since I've attended group meetings such as this. These people took the act of collaring more seriously than slipping a gold band on a finger and saying some vows. That's the way it should be. The acceptance of a collar is true submission from a woman/man. It means much more than a marriage which you can easily get out of by law.

But at the end, my precious cat was able to logon briefly to say goodnight to me as her RL allowed. She goes to extreme lengths to be with me and that never goes unoticed.

So after my brief goodnight with cat, after a glorious daytime, I shine up the black leather of her strapped outfits and cuffs, awaiting her return to me so that she may be ravished by me. And keeping in mind all the scenarios I learned from this meeting and it's given me ideas. Ideas that will excite and astound my tulsym.

What a woman! I am so lucky.

Very Social Night

Tonight was wonderful. First off, I was able to visit with my brother Kaboom. It's been quite a while since we were able to hang out and when he sent a TP (teleport) offer to me I just had to take it seriously. Turns out he was watching a new pole dancer of his strip and she was doing a wonderful job of it. Nice body, nice ass. And we spent some time talking about TV series and catching up in general. My brother had altered his avatar and was looking quite fearsome! His horns glowed in my viewer though as you can see in the pics I've included and that's probably due to the weak graphics card in my new computer which I need to update soon.

The new pole dancer. Corset and no bra. Priceless

Brother and me clillin'

Kaboom had to leave shortly after I arrived but Memory And Emilie were there and provided some great conversation. Memory and I discussed my nephew Broxton's new club about to open on my mall. Hopefully he will have it ready soon. He has everything in place for it so I'm anxious for him to dive in and have lots of events on Styll. Hopefully he will fare well. Tips are not what they used to be in SL. Just like the world economy suffers, so too does the SL economy. But that's a subject for another post.

After leaving Kaboom's palace, I shopped around a bit for some demon parts. Yes, I intend to create another demon avatar that I'm more comfortable with than my Elemental avatar. I'll use this avatar for when Hell's Angels has group meetings and such. Basically I'll need hooves, wings, a tail and some horns, then I'll need to modify my skin to look more demonic. Oh yes, the eyes. I think I already have some hell fire eyes. This will be a fun undertaking and I cannot wait to get started.

Even though I didn't find anything useful at the demon shops I visited, I knew I had to get back to Styll to work on some prim management. I packed away several texture and sculpty rezzers and that freed up over 100 prims so I had a total of well over 500 prims which is where I need to be. After all, I still have a ballroom and mermaid dance area to complete. I met up with Emi and she helped me pick out a gift for my submissive, cat. I can't say much more about the gift(s) here as it will spoil the surprise and I suspect that cat reads these posts. *waves and smiles* Hi cat!

Then it was off to a couple of games of greedy greedy with Emi and she kicked my ass. Oww... Then I was off to help Broxton with his club setup. I IM visited with Ambriel, Emi, Lark and even Dylan. Dylan has not been online for over a week and it was so wonderful to hear from her and hear that things were going well for her. Ex lovers can make the very best and intimate of friends.

More changes in store for Cherry Street and the sim! Be sure to check here often for the details!

BDSM Night

Another Friday night event at Cherry Street Nightclub resulted in a BDSM night. I was so very wound up and ready to throw a huge party! So I was talking with my sub during the day and decided that a nice, wholesome but kinky BDSM party was the way to go. "Wholesome" and "BDSM" used in the same sentence? Well let me tell you, there is lots to be said for BDSM couples and their kinks, especially in SL. But that's topic for a future post. It just seemed to make sense. Arrive in your best BDSM outfit or use your best BDSM device. Just an FYI, BDSM is dervied from Bondage, Discipline, Sadism and Masochism. It's not as bad as it sounds. If done correctly, it's a consensual use of restraint, intense sensory stimulation and fantasy power role-play (RP). So if you've never tried it, don't judge.

My cat, Darren and Kitty at BDSM Night

The initial crowd was huge. Because my hostess Emi was forced to leave for 30 minutes or so, I was overwhelmed by the turnout crowd! I was getting music requests, which require tons of attention, plus there were oodles of people teleporting in to join in the festivities. People wearing silks, leather, floggers, basic signs (like Darren) and simple, strategically places leather straps as was my pride and joy, tulsym. It was a large crowd and I was so proud to show of my sub, cat. She fills me with such warmth and pride when I'm with her, no matter what we are doing. I was very nearly overwhelmed to say the least. We danced and I did my damnedest to play my son's requests for ICP and other bands but the mp3s I found were all corrupted, just like him. So no surprise there. But I did finally land him a tune of his liking, although he never expressed his appreciation... Typical of kids...

Kitty working the pole

Emi was a hugely welcome sight when she returned. She takes about 90% of the stress of hosting an event off of my shoulders. I don't know what I'd ever do without her. Regardless, lots of the attendees left early even before the contest ended which is probably a wonderful thing. We all worked ourselves up during the event and I suspect the couples all left to finish what my event started, and that's a good thing! The contest was aborted due to the fact that only my tulsym and Darren were left as contestants. My kitten would not have even been a contestant had I not insisted and I had to insist twice (which she will be punished for) before she would join the competition. I'm suspecting that she's beginning to enjoy my punishments which prompts me to dream up some more severe disciplinary actions for her.

In any case, it was a great event and I was so happy so see so many new people there. I cannot wait until people realize that Cherry Street is the place to be. To hang out and relax and enjoy all of the fun stuff there to experience. To quote the Stones, "Time Is On My Side".

All three Doms, Helios, me and Emi had our floggers out for the event. I was playfully dragging mine against cat's tender flesh and she abhors that. She has been so sassy lately (which turns me on) that I think I need to use the flogger to help her see the right path for us. I think I need to have her name, "tulsym" branded onto the handle of the flogger as it owns her sexy ass. She is such a wonderful submissive, but her protests only egg me on and make me more determined to totally own her.

Afterwards, my dear friend Nezzy logged on with some very good RL news. It's not my place to share that here with anyone, but suffice to say, we had cause for celebration. I spent the next hour dancing with her on the beach and playing catch-up with our RL and SL lives. Nezzy DJ's on a web site called fubar.com. Be sure and check it out.

After all that, I met with Darren and Clancy and Emi in the club to attend the weekly Nakkie Dance at Stroker'z sim. Unfortunately, this was one of those weeks that they seem to randomly skip. Hopefully they will hold one on next Friday. I so badly want my friends to experience the event there.

All in all a very enjoyable evening. I was able to play some requests, dress my slut up in scandalous clothes and show her off, pumping my ego, and enjoying the company of like-minded BDSM people. I think I'll keep repeating this event with enhancements every Tuesday and Friday.