And now for a complete change of pace....

 The project update

Well, the update is that there is no update. The bot has been on vacation for a while... well, ever since I got the issue of the bot attempting to re-enter the same parcel repeatedly after being evicted.  It's not that it's  a hard to fix problem, it's that I didn't really have time to look into it.   That's ok, it will get there when the time is right. 

Survey

I have sent out a small survey to some people I've encountered in SL. It's a short thing, 20 questions or so. It's free text, so I wouldn't put all the results verbatim anywhere, but I might put a compiled version of the answers, paraphrasing as needed.   I just need to wait for the results to come in. There was no timeline with that, so it could be quick, or it could take a while, or answers might never come.  It's mostly behavioral types of questions.  I'll post the questions when I start getting some answers back. 

New look

I'm still learning or in some cases, re-learning, some skills in SL. One of them being, how to not look like a noob after 15 years.  I am getting help, from the same friend who helped me with the bot's look.  So I'm a more handsome version of the same guy! LOL!

Let's talk addictions

Addictions come in many twisted shapes.  But they all have something in common: they are insidious, sneaky and hard to get rid of.  And it's no different in SL.  It could be simply being addicted to being online and seeing all things, and people.. that's more of an obsession, but regardless.  It could be addicted to virtual shopping, to  buying/renting things you'll never use.  It could be addicted to a specific environment.  No matter what it is, even identifying something as an addiction/obsession as opposed to just something you really enjoy, can be a fine line.

I found myself having a self-talk recently about some of the habits I have, or the things I do.  And I realized that for some of that, there's a price to pay, and it can be expensive. And I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about an emotional cost as well.  For instance, I tend to attach myself to very few people at the same time. I do the same thing in RL.  I would give my life for my friends. But I have very few friends. And it is by choice.  I would rather have a few great friends than a lot of acquaintances.  The problem with that is multi faceted.  

It's unpleasant for me because my few SL friends might be busy with their own activities, or their own other friends, and I ended up staring blankly into virtual space instead of doing activities.  It's also unpleasant for the few friends, because in a way, I'm expecting them to drop what they're doing to be with me.  And that's not right, nor fair to them. Of course, I have never expressed those emotions to these people. That's just things I've noticed about myself, so I'm being careful about it.

What made me realize this was in part the bot's work. I've manually read a lot of profile in the course of developing the bot. Not so much because I was curious about the profiles themselves, but I was trying to find information, patterns that could be used by the bot to identify certain things.   So I had to read profiles.  And I've come across one that basically said the above. So I'm not alone. Except that he was dealing with this in a different way. He was basically putting the blame on his handful of friends that would rather hang out with "insignificant people" rather than spend time with him.  So that got me asking myself, do I have the same expectations, or see it in the same angle? No.  I'm not gonna say I haven't signed out in frustrations when my handful of online friends are busy and respond to my messages every half hour whereas I respond right away.  But it's on me, not them.

So on that note, go outside, play in the dirt, then come back to your SL with a clear head and dirty hands. It's more fun that way.