Pretty over the..
1 day ago
Socially Mundane Turns Commonly Sensible
I have been a bad writer, writing a bad blog for almost a year now. Well, two blogs: This and 'Common Sensible".
I remember researching the blog services and I am fully feature-knowledgable about WordPress software, WordPress.com, Blogger, TypePad, LifeJournal, and a truckload of others.
This blog: Socially Mindane is currently hosted on Google's Blogger.com and Common Sensible was (until this morning) hosted on WordPress.com
I also maintain and host my own copies of WordPress blogging software for the company I work for. It can be some real maintenance. Constant updates to plug-ins and the WordPress software itself, trouble-shooting and proving education and customer support for the users... but the features are second to none.
I don't go with TypePad or LiveJournal or any of the pay sites because I wouldn't even dare hope to try to make any money at this. How many ads would generate revenue when I have only five readers?
Anyway, the one single thing I hate about WordPress.com is the inability to fully customize the look of my blog. I do it for my own entertainment, hence the option to go wit a free-hosted service.
Even if I pay the $15 a year to have access to the CSS file - to change most of the look, I don't have access to the XHTML file. And that's what bothers me.
I'm a tinkerer. I like to break things and then fix them again.
So, between my two active, (I have dozens of,) blogs, I find I enjoy playing with Socially Mundane more. After a few months of looking at it all, I've come to realize a few things: it's easier for me to go hog-wild on the look. I already have other Google accounts - mail, Google Apps and so on.
It's just easier.
For me.
Blogger is way better than WordPress, but WordPress is way better than Blogger. They all are awesome. I just need to go with the one that is the mostest awesomenest for me. And I want a cleaner, classier, easier-to-read look, too.
The problem with all this is... I like the Common Sensible domain name better. "Socially Mundane" was an impulse buy. Hell, I have the domain for the next 10-years! Anyway - long-story-made-short: Moving 'Common Sensible" to Blogger. And will merge this blog, Socially Mundane into that one. Then, it's just one blog with more frequent posts.
I have been tweaking my 'theme' for the last week. I'm happy with it. It has whiz-bang features I like and I would say it has moxie and style, but four of my five readers will likely just call it "foo-foo-fluffy" and 'unbecoming' of such a jerk as myself.
But that's the draw, isn't it? In the movies, when they play classical music during a bloody combat scene, they call it "contrast". So, that's what I am doing. I am adding 'contrast'.
I have been slowly reposting everything from the WordPress version of Common Sensible to the new Common Sensible on Blogger. I also will be grabbing the previous posts that were made only here, to there as well. Same post dates, just a big old consolidation.
This blog will remain.
So, as I continue to repost old stories to the new Blogger version of Common Sensible, I will intentionally repost one old story as new - though it will clearly state it is a year-old story.
That story is called "If you get to know me, then you'll know me."
It's probably among the few stories where I think I actually did good. I certainly am not a professional writer and I can get pretty darned passionate about things. Though I always try to apply common sense into my perspective, hence the blog title I love. But I really am proud of that one. Probably because it hits close to home.
So, if you are reading this blog via newsfeeds (RSS) - you will want to pop-over to the new location and re-subscribe. I use FeedBurner and have even added an email subscription in case any of you might prefer that.
This is the last post here. all new posts will be over there at the official address: http://commonsensible.net.
So, hopefully my writing will get better and more interesting the second year in and I might make the leap from five readers to...six!.
Sim Owners Are Masochist At heart
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
So, according to my totally unscientific poll, owning a sim in Second Life does sometimes suck. Probably a lot more often that even sim owners realize. The majority of people who voted either have a sim and agree it can be a pretty sucky proposition sometimes or they don't have a sim, don't want a sim, and have no intention of ever having a sim.
Fair enough.
There is a lot to owning a sim. But, as with many things, it a work of passion, though sometimes that passion tends to fizzle quite dramatically. So, for all of you who don't own a sim, but would like to, or have no interest in it, allow me to shed a little light...
First, the results:
Do you own a private region...or not? (Any type - Full Sim, Void (Openspace), Mainland Sim)
There is a nervous thrill when you first plunk down the big bucks for your own region. Even a void region. In the old days, it was an average two-week wait and the anxiousness eats away at you. Terraforming and layout ideas dance in your head, visions of splendor that your sim will be better than all others.
Your whole shopping habits change: now you're a sim-owner. You discover the massive market of products and gadgets all aimed directly at you. You shop and plan and do all the things you can before the sim arrives.
Now with the new land store a sim is delivered and ready to go by the time you complete your purchase, it just isn't on the map yet. That takes a couple days, but you can login directly into your brand-shiny-new sim.
Funny how it always defaults to the oblong island shape, even though you specified a different shape or completely flat. It doesn't matter. You are excited and you're going to terraform like crazy over the next eight-hours anyway.
So you spend a few days at least, sometimes a week or more getting everything just right. You open house. If the news of your coming was being spread before-hand, you'll have many visitors early-on.
If your sim is a themed sim for role-playing or other imaginative activity-based purposes, (other than just to be pretty or for marketing or other business purposes,) then there eventually will be the other additional things that get you. Starting with buyers remorse. That queasy feeling in your gut that asks you "what the hell did I just do?"
Tier fear is ever-present, so you'll put in a market. But merchants always make traffic stats too high a priority, so you need to bump those up and it's difficult to avoid the temptation of throwing camper-bots all over the place, camping chairs, treasure hunt gimicks and games and whatever else you can think of to get people to come and stay.
So then the market fills-up, and then there are those inexperienced merchants who rent two weeks then bail because they haven't made a sale, thinking it's the market, when it's really more likely their product or marketing or both and not realizing mall booths are really a marketing effort than a point of sale anyway.
Then when the warm pixel-bodies arrive and the traffic stats are respectable and the merchants present, there is the being pulled in 10 or more different directions simultaneously, constant IMs for information; assistance; moderation; complaints about market; complaints about product; complaints about sim this or that... the list goes on.
Oh, and if your sim is a role play sim, expect to be the one forced into moderating huge drama, rumors spread by disgruntled idiots who huff-out (rather than keeping it personal, one person pisses them off so your whole sim is crap according to the begrudged,) and so on.
And don't even try to make any kind of profit. There is likely no way in hell you'll ever even break even with your initial investment of at least $1500 real life money (as of this writing) and all the blood, sweat and real life tears that goes into getting it all set up, not to mention keeping it going and maintenance.
All for whatever dream you had when you first made the decision to take the plunge. Even when you are fed-up and ready to either wipe the place out and just start completely over or even, heaven forbid, abandon the place back to the Lindens... there is just too much invested in it and you just can't bring yourself to do it.
So for those of you even thinking to have your own private sim someday and would do it in a heartbeat if you had the funds, you now know what to expect in it.
The next question is pretty hard to answer.
Does owning a sim suck more often than not, or is it the other way around? I don't have that answer. It seems that whenever a sucky scenario is finally fizzling-out, another is hot on its heels.
But it's a labor of love, right?
I am convinced all sim-owners must have definite masochist tendencies.
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