Okay well now I am officially, well and truly pissed off. Livid.

After nearly 2000 Mentors got sacked because they missed a note about renewing, there is no recourse for those people to reapply, or to appeal, under any circumstances whatsoever. There are no plans to take on any new Mentors (and actually now they’ve started the new Greeter programme, I am wondering if the intention is to close down the mentors altogether and find a new and inventive way of sacking the 1500 or so that still remain).

Today I found out this little nugget of information. On October 1st, the deadline for removal of adfarms, Linden labs sent out emails to advertisers still running the farms, to give them an additional warning and opportunity to comply.

WHY THE FUCK DO THEY GIVE THIS COURTESY TO PEOPLE BREAKING THE T.O.S BUT THEY DON’T HAVE THE MANNERS OR DECENCY TO OFFER THIS COURTESY TO PEOPLE WHO WERE, THROUGH DEDICATION, WORKING FOR LINDEN-LABS FOR FREE???

Now they have the gall to ask for more volunteers.

Words. Fail. Me.

… I have decided that even if Linden Labs did start accepting re-applications for mentors, or even reconsidered people who got dropped, I would not do it again. Not if they paid me a million L$.

The number of official mentors dropped from about 3400 to about 1700 in the space of one week. From what I can gather, particularly from reading both the SL Universe forums and the official forums, the majority of mentors that got booted off were ones like myself; quietly doing their job without hassle or flurry, not drawing attention to themselves and just doing what they’d been doing for months or years already. They just never heard about the need to renew.

Nobody actually announced, except in the V-Team blog, that it was necessary to fill in and return a survey to renew. OK apparently they announced it on group chat once, but only people logged-in at the time heard that. Now, had they decided (which they clearly did) that reading the V-Team blog on a weekly/daily basis was a condition of remaining a mentor, they should have said so at induction. It seems to me that reading the V-Team blog is the ONLY condition. Those who read it stayed in. Those who didn’t, didn’t.

So now the Mentor team has lost 50% of their staff involuntarily, because of a condition that approximately 1500 people never heard about. What makes things worse is the quality of staff that has been lost (based on the responses in the forums). Dedicated people like Sarah Nerd. This thins out the quality of the staff that are left behind, then you get reports of Mentors behaving irresponsibly. The group already has an appalling reputation based on the behaviour of a small minority – now that minority just got bigger because so many GOOD Mentors got booted out.

Linden Labs really shot themselves in the foot over this one, and I wouldn’t be seen dead with that official tag on now.

So what next? Well, it seems I have an alternative. There’s a newbie place called GQ Start that Lewis/Salo reccommended me to. I went over there to have a look and introduce myself. Ended up helping a couple of guys, one of whom was very keen to learn to build. So the staff gave me a Helper tag for there and said I’m welcome to hang out whenever I like. They’re also looking for someone to help teach building classes so I might put something together, although I don’t think I can commit to once a week. Its by no means as busy or as big as NCI but it does have classes and the staff are friendly, so I’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

It was nice to be a big blue horse again.

I forgot to renew my Mentor status (deadline was last week) and I’ve been kicked out. And they’re not accepting re-applications at all (until it re-opens which might be months away).

*facepalm*

buggerbuggerbuggerbugger.

So, my boyfriend is officially a sinner – or at least he’s now a member of the 7 Sins dance troupe at Reds. I turned up late for his first day of work but it was a packed place, looks like they were all having fun. I didn’t get a pic but he did, and here it is:

Matty is second from the left, and he’s Greed, alongside Lust, Wrath and Gluttony (Not sure what happened to Pride, Sloth and Envy). They look pretty hot, four red-heads all dancing in synch. And one of them is mine, I am so lucky.

While I was there I was chatting to Rammy Urriah who IMd me to say he liked my blogs. And we got chatting about blogging in general, and blogging in particular for SL. During that conversation it occurred to me that this blog is still called Horse Tales, and yet, it must be nearly a year since I was last a horse in SL. And I actually felt a pang of sadness about that. Most of the places I hang out at now are more about sexy men than sexy furries, so I don’t think being a horse would be too successful, except for the novelty factor. It’s sad though. This time last year, 90% of the friends on my list had never seen me as human. Now, 90% of my friends have never seen me as anything else. And I do miss being a horse, if only for the uniqueness of it, and how it would get people started in conversation.

Maybe I should switch back once in a while.

Or maybe I should find a new title for the blog.

I don’t quite know whether to stick this post in mt SL blog or my RL one, so I’m putting it in both.

Woke up fairly early, then went back to sleep again and had a couple of very strange dreams. In the first, I was a cavalry officer in the Napoleonic war. The horse I’d been allocated was a skittish brown mare who went into reverse gear every time she heard a noise she didn’t like. You know, the head up, ears back, teetering backwards sort of thing. Most of the dream was me getting instruction from the groom and sorting out kit and uniform, and trying to control the horse enough to ride up to the location where the camp was located. Oh and I was on the French side, not the English side.

The second dream was a little less comprehensible. There was a big house, like a modern millionaires mansion kind of thing, all fancy architecture, and set in a massive area of English countryside, with woods, a park, a lake, and something called “The Oasis” which was a little secluded pond with places to sit around it. Then there was a TV quiz-type show, in which I was a contestant. It was a sort of treasure hunt thing, set in this fancy house and grounds. During this hunt I met the residents of the house who turned out to be Celty and Jamie from Second Life (which would explain the fabulous furnishings). Celty was involved in the show as an antagonist, trying to thwart the treasure-hunters. However he was upset and angry because the land was being subdivided and more houses built, and the Oasis was going to get built-over, and that was his favourite place. I won the treasure hunt in the end (though I can’t remember what it was that I found) and the end of the dream was me having to go, and promising Celty that I would come back next year. And then there was some workmen come in with JCBs and started tearing stuff up, and I got into an argument with them, in the middle of which I woke up again. (And if I find out that Celty’s real name is Ashton, I’ll freak).

When I arrived at Boots’ beach today, Dan was there with his VKC German Shepherd, Holly, and so I got Rosie out to play too.  It was funny watching them interact with each other. Rosie had her red ball and Holly had a squeaky toy – Rosie decided she liked Holly’s toy better and kept stealing it, and bringing it to me – I never cease to be amazed by how good the AI is in these things, not only do they learn tricks but they will also start performing those tricks of their own accord as well. I have to say I think the VKC dogs are the most incredible things available in SL – okay they’re expensive but I think they’re worth every linden.

I didn’t take any pics of Rosie with Holly, but here’s a couple I took earlier.

In case you’re wondering, she’s an Aussie Shepherd, which is the closest I could get to a collie-cross I used to have.

It’s also occurred to me that I still have a horse in my inventory. I ought to go riding again one day.

So, here are some pics of my new home. This is Bluff House VI, or at least the parts of it that I’ve got around to furnishing so far. I’m pleased with the little terrace at the back, complete with vines hanging off the arches, and the new patio table and chairs (made by yours truly, with a texture made from a cast-iron trivet).

And Russ has rather unexpectedly gone and got a new alt, and is going to ditch “Russ Kanno” in favour of the new one, so I have to get used to calling him Matty now (which is nearly his real name anyway so not that hard to remember).

Today he said that he’d like to officially partner me, with his new alt.  I said yes, but in order to do that I’ve had to terminate the official partnership with Viggo. Damn, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in SL. Not that he’ll ever notice anyway, seeing as he never logs in there any more.  I should feel happy that I have Russ Matty here, but I can’t help feeling totally depressed by the whole thing.

Remember my lovely beachfront house?  Well it’s not on a beach any more, it’s in a field. I logged in yesterday to find that the estate manager had turned all the sand to grass. I actually caught her on the island and spoke to her about it, asked her if it was permanent. She said yes. So, my rent is due in 2 weeks and I’ll not be staying.

I already have a place lined up instead. In fact it’s so good, I may not even wait, and it’s L$800 a month cheaper.  The only disadvantage in comparison is that the new place is a single sim with no openspace water like there is in Agrestic. So there’s nowhere to sail anf surf (but given that Havok 4 wrecked all my boat and surfboard scripts anyway, I guess that doesn’t matter).

Seems like living in SL, you’re caught between two evils. On the one hand mainland. Which you have absolute control over your own parcel but none over your neighbours, which means odds are you’ll end up living next door to an ad-farm within two months.  On the other hand you can go estate, where you can pick a sim that looks nice, but then you have to hope the estate manager doesn’t change it. Or quit SL. Or run off with all your money. At least renting on an estate, if it all goes belly-up then at worst you lose a couple weeks rent (depending how far ahead you pay). On mainland you could be stuck with a parcel you paid a lot for and be unable to sell it, as was what happened with my plot in Gavello, which I ended up selling to a land-bot for silly-cheap money.  I figure if I’m going to lose money I’d rather it was L$1500 than L$15000.

So this will be… what… Bluff House VI.

Well its been a while.  I won’t bore you by repeating all the details of whats going on in my First Life, you can read all about that here, but it seems that I haven’t had much time to be online in SL so much, and when I am it’s usually on as my alt, freebie-hunting.

I have a suspicion that once Russ and I are living together in RL, we’ll both be online less.

I’ve not been hanging round Manifesto so much because it’s changed, and meh, I don’t like the changes so much. The place is full of campers and none of the real people actually hang out there at all any more. The cafe tables are always empty now, and the only reason for that is they’re out of range of the camp-master machine.

So I desperately need new places to hang out. Meanwhile I’ve been mentoring more, which is fun, although I’ve gone off the Help Islands because they’re all so damn quiet all the time. I find one with, maybe as many as five dots on it, so I’ll tp in and three of them will be mentors already. And I really hate doing the OIs. I’d much rather help people who’ve seen a little bit of the potential of what SL has to offer, so their question isn’t “what can I do here?” but “how can I do that?”  I think maybe I’ll try hanging out at the NCI instead.

I had a message to say that BadPuppy, one of the new gay sims, is now attached to New Pridelands, partof the same group that Mission Beach is attached to. Maybe I’ll start hanging out there instead. I went to one of their parties (on the old sim) and it was great.

There’s only one Tarshigon in the whole of Second Life (or at least, thats always been his claim and it’s true so far), and he’s one of my favourite people I’ve met in-world. Well, when I logged in today he was online, for the first time in months. I IM’d him, we chatted, and he ended up coming over to Boots Beach and DJ-ing for an hour.

Then, even more unexpected, I saw Vig in Yahoo and he said he was downloading SL again. Ten minutes later he was back in-world too. I showed him our new home, thats been waiting for him. So here we are, sunbathing in front of the house, that’s Bluff House V. The fifth incarnation of our home in-world. The only pity is that Vig wasn’t around at the same time as Tarshy.

So… yeah. Been quite a day for being reunited with old friends.