Yes, I'm That Obsessed

The new CEO for Linden Lab is from EA.com and used to work on the Sims. Yay! I'm basically a Sim, so I am very comfortable with this decision. I'm a refugee from the Sims Online, and I've always missed certain things we had in the Sims which we don't have in SL (like easy animations and easy socializing and jobs).

Second Life is like the Sims on free will without the bathroom motives (actually, there are bathrooms and people peeing in SL, too, oddly enough). So he should do fine. I couldn't be more happy. When all is said and done, Second Life is a series of rote routines. Whether we are on free will or not, we still collapse to a series of mechanisms. (Remember, Philip is going to make a Big Brain out of all this!) But in a more mundane sense, these mechanisms involve: crossing a sim seam, walking across the floor, teleporting, sending a gift, etc. And the point is to make all those things run smoothly.

The good news is that Philip surfaced long enough to comment on the new guy AND mention that LL made at least $75 million in profits.  Now there's a piece of news!

I did wonder if Rod Humble (yes, his name sounds like it's already a Second Life name) would take the name Humble Linden. (Checks: he didn't. Also no "Humble Resident' or "Rod Humble" anywhere).

So it seems like he didn't make an account yet, something that made Robot Crap completely go into a rage fit.

(BTW, I predict Mr. Robot will go off his diet big-time in the new year because he will start a new stressful job. I can't believe this idiot is still writing nasty shit about me. I haven't bothered to read him for months, but apparently he's had a system where everytime he doesn't like something I write, which is inevitably "vitriol" and "spewing" (sigh), he puts a dollar in a jar. That was enough for him to buy a ticket for his sister come for the holidays, the famous musician Beth Odets. However, as Beth explained, the ticket was only...$54 or something lol -- lest you think he got mad 600 times and bought a round trip ticket cross country for $600 lol. Even so, 54 times getting annoyed at my blog...er, Problems? Forever Alone? etc. That reminds me: Crap mentioned recently he has Aspberger's. I think I knew that and forgot. And that explains a lot. So many in SL do.)

So I went on the list of Lindens and saw that the 250 plus still has a lot of fake accounts like "Removals Linden".

I paged through each one. Yes, I'm that obsessed. No, I don't have Aspberger's.

I couldn't find a single one with the title "El Presidente" or "El Chefe" or whatever they used to call Philip and then M, remember?

Most Lindens just have "Linden Lab Employee" in their name slot. Philip has a strange word: "Exordium". I don't know what that means. Yes, I looked it up. It still doesn't make sense.

Three Lindens are coders and show-offs who let you know that they've hacked into the usual naming convention for Linden Lab employees and given themselves special vanity titles:

Soft Linden (why are we not surprised) who added the slogan "UNIX=Sexy" (Sigh).

Don Linden, who gave himself the title "Prim Stormer"

and Kelly Linden who gave himself the title "Bling Master". (More sighs).

Just because they can.

I'm glad Doug Linden is gone. He was the one who nastily said that most players' computers were "ready for Kindergarten," i.e. were 5 years old, and that's why SL didn't work. I had a computer that hadn't even started solids yet, and SL wouldn't work. He was a total dick.

Speaking of total dicks, Crap's New Year's wish list was that Wallace Linden would be fired. I find that awful, actively wishing that someone would lose their job. I don't know what Wallace does all day and he doesn't seem to engage anybody in "The Conversation," but maybe he ghost-writes for other Lindens so they are happy.

I have been rather unemotional about Lindens getting fired, even ones that I liked, because I guess I've taken my ration of shit from them. I can't imagine actively wanting any of them fired, though.

Oh wait! Yes, there's one I have come to believe *should* be fired, although I don't wish hell on my enemies or that they be without employment, that's wrong.

That would be Soft Linden.

Good Lord, what an ass. This year on Twitter, he harassed and heckled me because I called him out over his despotism on the JIRA and his opensource shilling.

He started in with this idea that I was "a plagiarist." Whenever I hear that old chestnut, perpetrated by Maxx Monde and other old forums denizens for a time based on a case of mistaken identity (somebody else with a similar name in another city, a journalist charged with plagiarism), I figure they are just recycling old FIC gossip.

But Soft persisted and persisted. First, he said that I plagiarized Jaron Lanier. Huh? Whenever I've written about him, I've attributed his quotes. Soft apparently thinks that because I share some of the same assessments, I'm "a plagiarist". Of course, that's how little furry nerds think. Look at this awful thread where the Nerd Supremacists are out in full force. And be sure to read Lanier's original piece, which is wonderful.

I think it would be impossible for me to "plagiarize Lanier" and somehow get away with it (that would mean copying his work and trying to pass it fof as my own, which would be easy to expose, um, using the Internet). But that's the charge this Linden Lab Employee Unix-Sexy nerd makes. After awhile, he dropped that, then he had a new claim:

I was still plagiarizing...Gogol.

Now that beats all. I couldn't figure out what the hell he was talking about. Finally he explained that the quotation on my Twitter account was without attribution and it was Gogol.

Now how did this nerd know that this quote was even from Gogol? Well, because it had listed Gogol as the author for some time, likely. First, I had a photograph on my profile that contained the quote in full right in the photograph, from a website about the play "The Inspector General." Then I didn't like the way that tiled, I can never figure out how to make pictures come out on Twitter, so I dumped it, put in something else, and made a short form of the quote. I remember playing with it 10 times trying to make it fit. Somehow, in this process, the "Gogol" fell off. Of course, Russians know it's Gogol. And of course I wouldn't have any reason to plagiarize a quote from Gogol (!) that is readily identifiable as a Russian playwright, that's stupid. There's no reason to do that.

But Soft, literalist nerd-pack that he is, seized on this and kept making hay over this. He claimed that I "put back the Gogol" when I saw him complain. I don't recall that, I recall simply putting it back because I saw it was missing. Duh. Again, I'd *have no reason in hell* to try to plagiarize Gogol. That would be like writing 'The play's the thing/Wherein the catch the conscience of a king" and signing it "Prokofy". Stupid.

But this asshole Linden kept harrying and bullying and harassing me over this "plagiarism of Lanier and Gogol" just because he can.

Finally I IM"d Joe Miller/Joe Linden. I said, could you reign in the script kiddie Lindens please?

Now Joe has left, and the last adult is gone from the building. I found that VERY depressing. I'm happy about the new guy, but I really do worry when the grownups are gone who were there for a long time.

Thankfully, my old enemy Andrew Linden, employee no. 2, is still there (he was Philip's college roomie or something). It's been like 7 years. He knows where all the code bodies are buried. They better not fire him. He happens to be working on this new idea the Lindens are rolling out. Which is a system that will detect when prims encroach, and return them, so you never have to file tickets or go nuts with no-show neighbours who can't return rooted grief prims and hedges and such. That seems like something very worth while and very much part of the Mainland Beautification Project.

I was happy about this until I fell to thinking that if it was a master switch in the code, all the bridges I've commissioned built over Linden Land will return. Yikes. I must have like four or six of those, plus other builds that are a tad encroaching, usually when there is some weird cut on the bias.

However, I contacted Andrew about this, and he got right back to me, even on a holiday weekend, and said that it would be done manually, and that Lindens who already could return such prims anyway would then manually have to make a decision (and I understood this to mean that likely they wouldn't return stuff that was on water for 6 years).

It won't be an automatic, but an option.

Then there's Michael Linden, working OT, God bless him. I finall got fed up with this grief-prim situation across the way, where there is a garbage dump that has attracted griefing on a no-autoreturn lot.

I've had Torley Friendly Greetings bleating for months on end, and that parcel never rents. Once a friend rented it who figured out to put the thing on mute, but not everybody does that. So the parcels there never rent and I finally called Michael Linden, who burns through tickets very quickly. He instantly got rid of the Torley.

You don't know how blessed silence is until the Torley Friendly Greetings that has been bleating non stop for a half year finally is silenced.

Silent Night, Holy Night.

I then got a Linden on the Concierge help line. *Pinches self*. The Ontynyes are gone, thank God, and the Scouts are better, but fortunately real Lindens come on, too.

Maybe this game will work better next year.

 

 

 

Comments

[melponeme_k]

Exordium...probably means the introductory plan he had in mind of using all our spare brain cells to create his beloved "Modern Prometheus".

Which means like Darth Vader, everyone now thinks Dr. Frankenstein is some kind of hero.

Not to mention all the disturbing notes that they were fascinated by the Terminator Skynet.

[brinda allen]

Oh Dear...I'm having a tuff time typing thru the tears Prok. LMAO,
My God... you should do a post like this more often. Well maybe not untill I get a new supply of "Depends".
I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only one that finds, "FRIENDLY GREETINGS", like fingernails on a blackboard.

Well said. Yes, it's scary that so many of the old guard have left, but from the resume Mr. Humble presents... maybe there is hope.

[Amanda Dallin]

It might be good that so many of the old guard left. Many of them don't seem suited to running a company. They were good for starting it up but that's a different personality and skill set than they need to run it day to day.

When the computers take over the world (SkyNet), they will come after us chanting "FRIENDLY GREETINGS" in Torley's voice over and over and we'll be glad to be deleted.

[cube inada]

computers have no such need to be polite.:)

thats the real "killer app"..the none that the pro religious techie geeks dont seem to really get...

from asimovs 3 laws...too... assimilate.. to eradicate all biologital infestations aboard enterprise.... one day the obvious will hit em in their bucky balls....;)

anyhow...wouldnt be the first time faith alone screwed us over.