Tuesday 31 January 2012

Please, LL, I WANT MY TOYS BACK

I was so much hoping to have a jubilant I AM BACK post, complete with photos of a brand new build and some fashion shots.

(You can imagine them if you like).

But, you lucky readers you, here is another whiny rant.

I have no idea why (and once again I have changed NOTHING), I appeared to have stopped crashing on Sunday, having sent in a detailed ticket on Saturday.

Optimism reigned. I even changed clothes. I considered cancelling the ticket but thought OK, let's wait and see.

I went up to my building platform and started just pootling around with a build and was SO SO HAPPY.

Then came yesterday.

Logon took forever. Then one of those 'moved into nearby region' messages where people were showing up one after the other.

I was halfway through typing 'is anyone else having login issues' when I crashed.

Checked grid status - nothing.

Logged in crashed logged in crashed logged in crashed (while checking to see if there was a response to my ticket... of course not).

Saw an SL friend on MSN and said 'is Graces down?' Mind, this seemed unlikely because in the brief moments I was logged in, I got a purchase message from Vent du Sud.

Nope. He logged in to his home location, and crashed. Then got to Graces, and crashed.

He is not in the same country but nothing was working for him on his very smart, very fast machine either.

Meanwhile I logged in, found myself in a sort of underwater environment, attempted to TP and... crashed.

And all this while watching connection speeds (fine), frame rates (fine) and fan / heat levels (fine). And after Yet Another Clear Cache.

So I went and cooked a meal and drank perhaps one too many glasses of wine.

Later on in the evening I managed to log in normally. Nothing on the grid status about earlier, but hey, it worked and the fact that all hell seemed to be let loose in the UK and France was not worthy of a message. 

I walked around. Went up to my building platform and... all was fine.

But, dammit... I am just so behind that every time I do log and disappear and reappear, I get friends checking up on how it's going (badly), the odd client wondering if I'm still in business (believe me, I'm trying), and a group owner grumbling because I'd forgotten to put the inviter up (justifiably: it's now up).

And then... I was so weary of the whole thing I simply... crashed out. In front of the television. Grouchy and miserable and wondering what else to try, or wondering if by some mystery it will clear up, after well over two weeks now.

I am at the point where I am just so sick and tired of all this I feel like screaming. I have studied every possible reason for the crashes / net failures on SL, meaning hours and hours and hours of reading stuff, trying stuff, and... nothing works.

The worst thing is that I am even finding myself reluctant to log on simply because of the sheer and utter frustration of crashing, Net going down, rinse and repeat.

Bah. I really want my toys back, LL.

Wednesday 25 January 2012

With murder in mind, and hey, MUSIC

You know, having fixed my blue screen issue I was lulled into a false sense of 'if I really keep plugging away and reading IT forums and trying stuff, I will find the cause' this time around.

Also, it is a 90-minute round trip to take a sick PC into the store, let alone the calls to see if it has been fixed (via a call centre from hell), followed by another trip to pick it up.

And if the problem is with my Internet connection, then it won't help much.

(I really need a photo here, so let's dig out an old one of me in the days I could actually walk around in SL).

Old hunt gift from ALaFolie, Ari in a snit
This time, I have been reading up masses of stuff on connectivity (including concerning the ADSL box I use). This, at least, has the advantage of being able to grasp the fixes more rapidly as the instructions are for Windows in French (which I have). Other discussions of the issue, in English, require me to go to the control panel and find the equivalent in French, which - even if you are virtually bilingual - is not always obvious.

But then, at some point yesterday, I had another idea  (this after more fun stuff like uninstalling stuff, clearing caches, more flushing (see last post), yet more registry cleans and yet more perusing of event logs and tech forums).

Mr RL, see, subscribes to various music download sites (he assures me they are not the 'dodgy' ones and I am not delving further into this). And although this has never happened before, considering we have a fast connection and lots of bandwidth, I think he has been sucking up all the resources lately because he has been finding 'better' as in 'massive' versions of a lot of stuff I like. Such as this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgv6dKV03dA

(note: at least call this an eclectic blog now because you also get MUSIC, and everybody should hear Fleet Foxes and in his defence, m'lud, he was trying to please me and who bought him a big new external HD for music recently anyway? Moi.).

Really, Fleet Foxes are gorgeous. But they don't replace being able to log on for more than two minutes. 

Now, if I was to plead 'my SL building is more important than you downloading music', this would not go well. Much as strangling him seemed like an option (yesterday, he didn't download anything and yesterday, I could actually walk around in SL again), who would do the cats' litter boxes?

I jest. Well, mostly.

Since the connection has been dropping on work-related Googling also, however, I have at least asked him, politely, to tell me when he is downloading some gigantic file to see if we can - ahem - co-ordinate better.

Have another photo (this suddenly seems to be popular, so go buy it for 9L with all the stuff inside / outside) and the greenhouse itself only 3 prims, bench 1.  Or it's on the markeplace also

Who knows, I might actually get back now. And make stuff.

I've been missing building and friends and Vent du Sud so damned much.  



Roll on spring, when his gardening and less bandwidth-sucking leisure activities should take the upper hand.

As long, of course, as it *is* a bandwidth issue. If it isn't, I think I shall just quietly go insane.

OK, more insane.

Saturday 21 January 2012

Did you flush? Tales of a not-geek

Yes, I did.

I am sitting here with half an eye on those little bars that show the internet connection. The ones that have been intermittently coming up with the yellow exclamation mark on and off all week, whatever I've been doing but particularly so with SL.

At the moment, it looks good.

Because I flushed my DNA cache, having read eleventy million articles on what might be wrong and finally came up with that as the last in a long line of attempts to fix it.

Ah, IT-speak. Dontcha love it?

I am praying it has worked, after perusing event logs, cleaning the registry, cleaning the fans, kicking the laundry basket (I had to kick something), forcing myself not to strangle Mr RL when he said the inevitable "well my machine is fine, so it has to be SL"... 

... and generally, y'know, getting weepy and sleepless because I had to WORK with all this going on (sociology, medicated animal feeds and a contract, if you are remotely interested). All of which required much Googling (connecting... connecting... yellow sign, swear and curse, ah it's back, no it's gone again, rinse and repeat). 

At this moment, I am too tired and too scared even to try and log into SL.

What a coward.


But I'm all flushed now.

No little yellow 'limited access' signs for half an hour. I feel almost giddy.

IMAGINE A PHOTO HERE PLEASE

because by the time I found the 'snapshot' button on the new viewer I installed as one potential solution (and crashed, and restarted, and waited for the little yellow sign to go away) my eyelids gave up on me until 7 this morning when I resumed my IT adventures.

So if flushing was the solution, I may actually get to build something in 2012.

Fingers crossed?  

(With apologies to anyone who was hoping for a post about building, decor, or SL fashion).

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Blue, blue...

I don't know whether to direct my rage and frustration at French telecom, my SL viewer, my husband or the PC.



Well, I don't think it's my PC that is making my Net connection blink out every time I log on to SL. Nor do I think my husband is taking up our entire bandwidth playing Angry Birds.

Viewer? OK I need to upload another one to try but it's the one I've been using for ages without a hitch.

However, I suspect it is something to do with the little box with blinky lights that provides our ADSL, called a "Livebox". Which tends to play Deadbox in high wind, thunderstorms, hot weather, cold weather, or really any time at all. This is France, after all.

Am I boring you?

You can say, really. I don't mind (and I can, after all, monitor comments although with the exception of one in Russian, one that was rude and one that was down and out vulgar, I don't usually).

So anyway. The idea, you see, was to catch up on 52 weeks of colour (version the first) that I hadn't done. Including the first two (blue, and grey).

OK gray if you're across the pond.

So in the approximately three minutes of non-crashing time last night I dragged out a blue bikini and had great ideas of arty, whimsical photos taken on my sim with water and dusk and shades of blue... plus some blue Vent du Sud stuff because a girl needs to plug, particularly when a girl is up to her eyes in translating sociology as written by some guy who has, I think, the most tortuous way of phrasing I've ever seen.

I got as far as two. Neither of which are up to much because the composition of the one above is all off-kilter somehow (head and rock rather on top of each other), and in the other one I look frankly gormless.

You may need to be a Brit to understand the word gormless. Look it up, if not.


I'm tetchy. Does it show?

Now, I would have sung the praises of AND given the references for this bikini if I had been inworld long enough, but I'm not and you can't see much of it anyway. It is a nice one. I suspect it is my only one, in fact (I need shopping time and building time rather badly).

So with that (and yes I know this is a post about very little but whining), I am off to attack sociology again.

However, if you really want to be bored, get this...
"Sociology is both pluralised and integrative within the framework of this research.  It is a question of understanding the relations between work, social culture, economic and institutional context, as well as the evolution of sciences and techniques. In this perspective, sociologies of labour, professions, sciences, organisations and institutions can be mobilised."

(I have 12 pages of this, in font 7. Deadline? "Well, sort of yesterday").

Wednesday 4 January 2012

New year, things off chests, and a request.

OK I got around to actually starting 2012 (mentally at least) a little late because of an RL work emergency or three... but started it I have. Finally.

And that includes SL, where I am about to take up my virtual trowel and hard hat again. Also, I am giving something away... read on (cackles to self about marketing ploys).

Chests? Well, I threw a hissy fit over SL recently and need to get something off mine, so here goes.


Now, I am usually good about checking Marketplace deliveries, and always good at checking SL notecards and IMs (which I receive by mail if I'm offline). In fact I check SL mail every single day including when in odd parts of the planet, because I believe very much in customer service. 

I am not good at checking reviews on the Marketplace as I rarely get them. I also, naively, presume that if somebody didn't receive something or have something they want fixed, they would get in touch with me rather than send crap reviews.

However, I got two lately.

One was my own fault as I forgot to make some parts of a set modifiable (as in I slid the wrong version into the box). And got an outraged review about wasting money (6L) because she couldn't put extra anims in it, so it had to be trashed.

Uh-huh.

Did she contact me, though?

Nope. I just went through my  mail and notecards again.

One-star review.

OK. I would gladly have sent her a new set AND removed the landmark giver out of the box holding the set that she disliked (I thought I took it out of everything), but nope. Negative review. Nice.

The second, however, was the typical OUTRAGE ONE STAR BECAUSE NOT DELIVERED review (of the woodland retreat, shown above).

Did this person send a notecard or IM me, either?

Nope.

Did this person PAY for it? (50L).

Nope (confirmed on the order: "not paid").

But, of course, it warranted a one-star review. Because the delightful person decided it was my fault. I re-sent it with apologies, meaning she (he?) got it for free.

No comment but apparently the person is, I quote "not often around". Uh-huh.



And this... this sort of thing is why I am trying not to get disgusted with SL and why, I confess, I have been around less. 

The bitchy, judgemental, unpleasant pettiness.

However, it is a new year. And I still love building, negative reviews and all. And Vent du Sud... is part of me.

Sooooooooooo... if anyone wants a Woodland Retreat then please yell and I will send you one for free. In fact, if anyone wants to review ANYTHING of mine on the Marketplace I will send it for free because money is not what drives me.

It doesn't have to be glowing, just honest), but it would be really, really welcome.

(Lots of pics of the Woodland Retreat) on the Marketplace page, but basically 51 prims and ... well... one star HURTS).

And with that, I am going to take a deep breath and try and get to grips with SL.

EDIT: I sent the person the Retreat AND another house and got this...

"first and foremost..it is up to you to know when your deliveries take place...ppl always inevitably "place blame" somewhere else and "apologize" afterward..(read your note)..I really don't care who is at fault anddon't care that you  aplogize..(the timing is all wrong)..i have better things to do than try and locate information on how to contact YOU..btw..i bought another house because the holidays were upon us (me and my fiance)..and we needed a location to celebrate with fam and friends....WO!..so your apologize could have been saved along with the little nasty tinge of  attitude..the review (it seems to me) was on spot!"

How hard IS it to look up my profile and see that problems can be raised either by IM or notecard? Too hard, obviously.