Ahern Welcome Area

1,800 meters over the Life Spirit sim, a Scottish lass named Heathergt Brave- heart runs a place called Heather’s Christian Sanctuary for Weary Travelers. She is not called Braveheart for nothing, for she will willingly go to a place called a Welcome Area, where new Second Life residents begin their virtual existence, and tell them about her secondary welcome area.

A secondary welcome area is very necessary in SL. This is because what typically goes on in a primary Welcome Area will make you cringe.

New residents will download their SL viewer, log on for the first time, and the first people they see on their computer screen are griefers who will treat them like raw sewage.

In a typical “Welcome Area”, you’re going to see:

• Burping contests
• Cussing contests
• Racial slur contests
• Call everything they see “gay” contests
• Huge comical head on their avatar contests
• Myriads of other forms of honking people off

I kid you not! It’s all some kind of contest to see who can do the grossest thing possible!

Why do griefers do this? Because nobody can punish them. Nobody can trace griefers back to their home addresses, and that is their license to be as disgusting as they can possibly be. It’s your typical bully thing. I can destroy you at will. You can’t lay a glove on me. I’ll do what I damn well please.

Whoever called the Welcome Areas Welcome Areas is a baldfaced liar. They should be called “Treat You Like Garbage Areas”.

I love Second Life, and I’d like to see as many of you try it out as possible, but these Welcome Areas are a strong area of concern for me. The less time you spend there being called “pathetic” and having your heritage and sexual orientation belittled, the better. Let me pass along some advice to help you get the heck outta there and into a more friendly place to learn how to move about and function in SL.

At the bottom of your Second Life viewer, click the Search button. The Search window will come up. At the top of the window, click the All tab. In the Search field at the top left hand corner, type in the name “Oxbridge University”. The search window will show you a link to information on Oxbridge University. Click on that link, and you will be offered a Teleport button that will take you there.

Caledon Oxbridge University

Oxbridge University is located in a steampunk-themed region of Second Life called Caledon. The people there are far more civil than whom you’ll likely find in your typical Welcome Area. There is usually one or more “professors” there in the courtyard to provide tech support, keep everybody else there civil, and nip any griefing activities in the bud. Oxbridge University is also where you will find six buildings full of self-paced tutorial that you can go through to learn how to properly use your new powers.

As a Second Life resident, please accept my apology for any bad experiences you may have experienced in a Welcome Area. I would exhort you to not let it scare you away from the whole of SL, and feel free to explore the virtual world to your heart’s content.

Back in the 1990’s, when I lived in Carrollton, OH, and attended the Carrollton Assembly of God, they had Sunday evening services there at 7:00 PM.

The Super Bowl was a time when the vast majority of American “Christians” would be guilty of disloyalty to God, foregoing their Sunday evening services to worship an American-made sport. And it still is so today.

The Bible says that the Son of God would come back for a Church “without spot or wrinkle.” (Ephesians 5:27) I take this to mean that this Church would be perfect in its devotion to Him, loving Him supremely, holding nothing higher or more sacred than Him.

That doesn’t sound like America during the Super Bowl.

I believed at the time that Jesus would be very selective in whom He takes to Heaven with Him. After all, in a certain parable, His bridegroom had no second thoughts about leaving 50% of the ten virgins on the outside looking in (Matthew 25:1-12). His bridegroom even goes as far as to say, “I know you not. (verse 12)” The 50% ratio also holds true in Matthew 24:36-42, where Jesus says, “One will be taken, and the other left.”

I figured that if I were God, and I wanted a really loyal Church for my Son, I’d send Him back for His bride at such a time as to catch the maximum number of professing Christians with their pants down—during the Super Bowl! Now this is by no means an attempt to predict the date of the Rapture; I still hold to the truth that not even Jesus knows when it’s coming. I’m just trying to explain my thinking. Not wanting to be among the poor losers who will get beheaded as enemies of the state by the Antichrist, I naturally wanted to be among the 50% that made the cut. I had to be at a church service during the Super Bowl.

My attempt at faithful church attendance was compounded by another thing. Publishers Clearing House began to advertise that they would surprise the winners of their multi-million dollar giveaways on national TV at the end of the game. Yet another powerful incentive to stay home that night. Funny what a powerful argument can be the question, “What if it’s me?”

Now that I found a church in Second Life that worships at 6:30 PM SLT, when the Super Bowl is not likely to be over, I wonder if I will now hold myself to that high standard of loyalty. It’s easy to be distracted. All I have to do is turn my head 90° to the right, and I’m looking at my TV.

For quite some time now, I’ve been wanting to record and edit “home movies” of my misadventures in Second Life, most specifically my comedy routines that out-worlders want to see posted to YouTube. The one thing that keep me from doing that is the original equipment video card that my Dell GX280 came with. My computer is literally not up to specs for running Second Life. It will run it, but poorly, the animation frame rate at times going down to as slow as one frame per second in a crowded sim.

Well, Alan Neurocam (his SL name) asked me to take him to Micro Center on Bethel road for a new CD burner and some other things. Since he was the guy who diagnosed that my GeForce 9500 graphics card that I bought last year would not work with the 210 watts my Dell puts out, he’d be the perfect brain to pick for my upcoming upgrade project.

While I was talking to the Alan and the salesman there at Micro Center, the thought struck me that it might be better to install a more powerful power supply into my Dell, one that can handle the 350 watts that my existing GeForce 9500 GT wants. A low-profile power supply costs $35, as opposed to paying roughly $40 for a new graphics card, the GeForce card doesn’t go to waste, and I’d get far better graphics speed than anything powered by a 210 watt supply can give me. The computer would no longer have to struggle with the twin tasks of running Second Life and recording from it.

I’ll talk more on this when I have my tax refund in a couple of weeks.

Birthday present

I woke up late today, but feeling good. I am not nagging myself. I guess my Hyperconscience, when it does the thing it likes to do of racing ahead of me into the third day of next month, can’t find when I have so assuredly gotten myself evicted from my apartment.

Let me elaborate on this a moment. Yesterday, I wrapped up my four-day temp job at the Ohio Educational Technology Conference downtown at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, and despite being shanghaied into a trip to the Insight Cable office in the afternoon by my neighbor Dale, I went on to do my taxes online. The refund will be enough to put the payments on my car back on track.

Assuming my unemployment benefits only stop for those four days I worked, I should be able to make the March rent. Maybe that explains why I am not criticizing myself to death today.

I’m getting that graphics card for my Dell. I don’t care how much trouble it puts me in down the line. The LCD flat screen I wanted earlier is pretty much off the table, because I need my refund money to pay for my car, but I am so getting that graphics card! I want to be able to make good videos for YouTube of my Second Life misadventures.

My 50th birthday is coming up at the end of March, and I think I might have come upon a decent birthday present we can work on giving me. on March 30, which falls on a Tuesday and is the day after my birthday, I would like to perform at the Columbus Comedy Showcase at the Funny Bone Comedy Club in the Easton Town Center in Columbus, OH.

According to the Funny Bone site, I have to come up with a minimum 5 paying customers who are willing to watch me perform. So, who’s with me in helping me to make this dream come true, eh?

I am doing a very risky thing right now. I have Ooo Shinee parked at Goodale Park, where one of my supervisors said I could park for free.

Free? Naww! Prime piece of parking real estate this close to the Greater Columbus Convention Center that by some miracle didn’t turn into office buildings or condos? Free?

If it is, it has probably had legions of idiots abusing the privilege of parking there and making it necessary for tow trucks to patrol it. I will have to check on my car come lunchtime, maybe move it to a different space.

I wanted to take the bus downtown today, but paying the rent for February, a month so short it ought not to be called a proper month, left me not much in my combined bank accounts. (Sorry, talking amounts violates this blog’s Security Policy.) I meticulously tried to provide for my food for the coming few days, only to find myself kicking myself in the buttocks for failure to provide for two begging neighbors from the next building over as well.

Unemployment be damned. I am still the rich man, and I’m still responsible for Lazarus.

Oh, excuse me, did I say “supervisors”? It turns out that I am working at the on-site registration desk at the 2010 Ohio Education Technology Conference. The early morning hours were mad with long lines of people coming up to get registered. It’s that way for any kind of convention. But in the afternoon hours the people are gone and time drags, just like it did for me in the late hours at the Ohio Department of Health. During break I took a walk around the exhibition hall and saw all kinds of mouth-watering technological toys there. I saw dry-erase boards that sense where your body is for a computer that projects graphics onto it. I saw a kind of table with a touch-sensitive screen built into it that ran programs that teach kids to count money and other objects.

What a good time to be a pupil. And I’ve never been so in love with technology as I am now. Tomorrow I must wear a bib. You’d drool too if you saw all those teaching gadgets.

A new congregation that caters to Brazilian, Portuguese-speaking parishioners has become a member of the House of Prayer family of ministries in the Life Spirit sim.

Pastor Fabinho’s church has a beautiful church building, although heavy in sculpted prims, and one wall to the left with respect to facing the pulpit entirely gone so that attendees can enjoy a great view of the ocean.

But this church still had the same problem the House of Prayer once had, they only occupied a fraction of the Isle of Ballymore sim, and their services made them a poor neighbor to the other three regions. I have not attended many services in this building, so I do not know if they had the same problem with attracting griefers that House of Prayer had, but they did have to contend with stray vulgar text chat from lovers making love in the next parcel over.

Believe me, I know what that is like. I’ve had to mute several neighbors whose vivid descriptions of the sex act came through the walls.

So a couple days back, this building was moved to the Life Spirit region where the House of Prayer now sits, and occupies a spot at the base of the lighthouse.

Darrien Lightworker took us on an aerial tour of the Life Spirit sim. There were about seven to eight passengers in his hot air balloon, and during the flight, Pastors Fabinho33 Aeon and Sid Lamilton kept talking back and forth about the rapid moves toward growth they were taking. It’s fun to watch these two think big.

One of these moves is toward video podcasts of Pastor Sid Lamilton’s sermons. Darrien, once I showed him how to use the Angrybeth’s Multi-Cam Machinima Switcher, got one himself and set up the camera angles for the next sermon. Video podcasts have a tendency to ravenously eat up your hard drive space. They need a server for these podcasts, so they’re going to have to talk to Fuzzy and Galactic Voom about that.

Personally, I am unaccustomed to thinking big. My grandmother, and the ten years I spent in Columbus, OH have well beaten into my head that I have to do things the smallest and the safest way possible. I fear that, before the Lord can properly use me, He’s going to have to take a pickaxe to this paranoid way of thinking and get me ready to take a few risks on His behalf.

Lord, if this is what You want to do with me, then please do it.

I was supposed to open up for Elron Priestman in a brand new comedy club last night. Five or six griefers wearing huge comical heads on their avatars show up there and made mincemeat out of that affair.

I got to admit, it honks me off the natural advantage griefers and trolls have over the common man anywhere on the Internet. Anywhere they show up, they automatically win, so natural and chiseled in stone is their superiority over everybody. Their very presence in your chatroom or SL sim is a statement that whatever you got going on there doesn’t deserve to live. Flush it down the toilet right now like the dung that it is and give up.

The griefers said things like, “When does the comedy show start?”, or “Did I miss the comedy?” They point they’re putting across of course is nothing anybody is doing here is worthy to be called comedy.

Crap, crap, all is crap.

What a miserable life the griefer must lead, trying to make himself the lone good thing in the world everywhere he goes. His entire life is invested in judging the guy in front of him and finding him miserably wanting. His entire life is in calling the guy in front of him pathetic and retarded. The griefer has to view himself as the one thing in the entire sim that doesn’t deserve to die a painful, humiliating death.

He is literally afraid to find anything enjoyable. No comedian is ever allowed to be funny, no public speaker allowed to have anything good to say, no musician allowed to sing or play well. God forbid the griefer finds anything good anywhere. The moment that happens, he is no longer the coolest, baddest thing in the world. His life would lose all validity.

Such a fragile life. It goes down in flames the moment he calls anything enjoyable. Why would anyone want to live like that?

I’m going to go to Snippets to see some of this so-called crap. I hear it’s pretty good.

I am seriously of the opinion that I belong to too many Christian groups on Second Life. I need to cut away a few of these groups and deny some people on my friend list the privilege of sending me group teleports.

A Bible study at Chain of Love Outreach headed by Katrinaceleste Bravin was scheduled for 6:00 PM against a service of the Overcomers Worldwide Church run by Pastor Samuele Shepherd. At 7:00 PM, an Eagle Starship worship music concert put on at Eternal Creations by Sonic Rang conflicted with a LinkUp encounter group run at Vine Community Church by Grace Cuthbertsson.

And all are announced by the loud clanging of a bell and an appearance of the events on my Snowglobe screen. I really must replace that bell. It’s giving me whiplash from jerking my head around to look at the lower left-hand corner of my screen.

What the heck is this, Sweeps Week? Is everybody out gunning against one another to get the most viewers for their programs? I would expect this kind of scheduling battle to happen between Treet TV and Metaverse TV. This does not look good on the Christian community to be found in Second Life.

There are only so many Christians to go around in SL. All we’re doing is trying to woo them away from the other ministries. Instead of doing that, why aren’t we converting more Christians?

What happens when the fun stuff gets scheduled against the serious stuff? When presented with a church service at the Vine Community Church and a Christian dance party at the Fire Escape Club in the same time slot, which one would you choose? These scheduling battles, in my opinion, are the best case I have found yet against Christian dance clubs and vacation resorts in Second Life.

Seriously. Do we need all these manifold activities? Did you pray to God and ask Him if he needs them? If we were really as united in the Lord as we say we are, nobody would have to make such hard time slot decisions.

That’s going to be my challenge to you. Get down on your knees and ask God if He really needs what you’re trying to do for Him. I know, it’s hard. I faced squarely the fact that church services in SL don’t need security guards against griefers because that activity clashes with actually enjoying His presence and allowing Him to move in me the way He wants.

Are you doing something that clashes with what He really wants?

The Fand region immediately to the north of where my avatar lives has been changing and evolving more rapidly than I can tell in this haphazardly updated blog. It was only last Friday night that I noticed a blank plywood wall out one of my windows and decided to investigate it. Just after I had explored the new building to my satisfaction and was winging my flight back to the apartment, Mahala Bing, the wife of Pastor Samuele Shepherd, began instant messaging me. She wanted to know how I learned of the church’s new building. It was to be a secret until it was fully built.

That … was what I was looking at? Looks like we’re going to be neighbors.

Since then, textures have been applied to it, the Scruples dance club and the surrounding palm trees have been brought in from the former Luna Paradise sim. A new apartment building was built to house the less well-to-do of our church members.

I better hurry this post to publication before even this discription of the place gets outdated.

I have to confess that I have an attitude during church services that hurts my enjoyment of them.

I would have to call myself paranoid and overly protective. While the other avatars are positioned on their pose balls in an attitude of prayer, I am scouring the assembled crowd for names and faces that I do not recognize, and when I find one, I pull up the avatar’s profile. I look for those telltale signs of a throwaway alt, today’s date in the born field and an avatar no real newbie would be aware of, much less buy.

But what if I do if I find such a suspect? I am constrained to do nothing. Ordering such a resident out before (s)he has done anything is counterproductive. The object of the game is to expose him/her to God’s word, to let God speak for Himself. To make the potential perp feel unwelcome in the SL church sim automatically loses.

There is no advantage to knowing in advance who would disrupt the church service. So why do I seek advance warning?

But still, the guard part of me is on high alert. Protect! Protect the church! Can’t let the griefers get it!

This is clearly the wrong attitude for me to have in any church service in SL, be it House of Prayer, the Vine, Overcomers Worldwide, or what have you. It distracts me. It keeps me from enjoying the presence of the Lord for myself. It keeps God from moving in me as He sees fit.

I have a hard time convincing myself that church services in Second Life don’t need a security officer. I really would like to know of a verse that reassures me that God can and will stand up for Himself and that His work needs no protection.