Flying and Barrie Visit

Day six was a great day! The HQ is in place and we started furnishing it with Identity's creations and a few freebies we had around. The building still needs minor adjustments. It's a really hard building to get tightened up.

Flying and Barrie came to visit and stayed long enough to talk a while. We got to meet Rodney, Flying's dog! VSTE Headquarters is starting to feel like home.

Out with the Old In with the New

Anibal has moved off of Channel Island onto his own brand new sim. This was taken his last day there. He had me remove parts of my Japanese house until there was very little left and added a lot of multimedia tools for his role play with psychotherapy sessions.

This is how the island looked while Skipper was terraforming for me so I could start over. I'm thinking of trying to come up with a colony of teachers who want to have small homes, share the space, and split the tier. Any takers? It is really nice to have a place to call your own and change your clothes in.

VSTE Island Day 4

Day four we rezzed the VSTE Headquarters building. It was too close to the edge of the island, about two meters too high, and turned the wrong way. Normally that is not a problem. Buildings come with "rez boxes," devices that are small, attached to the front of the building and are easily moved with the edit function. You move the rez box in any direction and the entire building follows. Sadly, VSTE HQ came without a rez box.

We tried to move the building into place. It was in several pieces. Some pieces were single prims: railings and a beam or two. It was impossible to gather all the pieces in one edit and move them together. We moved pieces. It was a mess.

Later on the same day Elijah contacted me to tell me that he was working on the Powhatan bits. After I expressed dismay over our building problem he came to help. We rezzed another copy of the building for him to refer to as he was putting ours together.

There remained some tiny spaces between prims. At about 11 PM we all gave up and went to bed!

On a positive note, the furniture and meeting house are nearly ready and the ships were also rezzed. Mandie made room for them by terraforming the edge of the sim. They are a work of art!

Got Google?

Today I got invited via TP to a meeting place to join a group that I know very little about. It has something to do with Google creating a presense in Second Life and Maggie Marat is involved. Jade Lily and Emanna Romano, who I don't know, seemed to also be doing a bit of the talking and sharing. I believe these three are Google Certified teachers which they earned by attending a one day Google Teacher Academy at Google Headquarters. They have aparently convinced Google that people really are using Second Life for educational purposes and that if Google teaches in SL they can reach a lot of teachers who will in turn reach a lot of students. One can apply to attend the academy. The requirements include a one minute video and answers to questions about using technology. You can go to Youtube and search for Google Teacher Academy and see a bunch of different GTA videos. I think I will have to attend some future meetings to really understand what I've gotten into now but I must say I'm very happy to be someone that someone else teleports to a place where something educational is happening. This happens to me more and more now, and it is not the same person. It's been KJ, Bonbon, Massinimo, and others. I love that something starts and somoene thinks, "Thunder would like to be here!" They are SO right!

VSTE Island Day 3 Elijah Shows Up

Day three! Elijah sent me a note via SL notecard. What a treat! He still wants to help with the Powhatan village. We had not heard from him in months, not much at all since he lost his home and business in the hurricane that his Houston this summer. He had offered to do a lot of building for us for the joy of doing it! We don't even know him well. I was sure we were going to have to make do with the Native American stuff we could find in SL as is, but no, Elijah is back and he is going to build based on our photos of the Powhatan village in Jamestown. What a relief! Flying Story (Danny Arkin RL) and Mandie (Marie RL) had a long chat about the VSTE Conference and VSTE island. Now we have a clearer understanding of what we are to do. I can't wait to start!

DEN Dog Sled Race

DEN always has the most fun and the best prizes. I got my first pair of boots after doing pretty well at an Academy Awards trivia contest DEN held in 2008! This time we were celebrating the Iditerad I guess or the new year or just the return to school after a long break. :-) DEN took us to a dog sled race. We had one hour to sled as many times as possible and get our best time. There were prizes for first, second, and third place. I think Riptide actually won, but was ineligible for prizes. Though I really came in second I took first place! I won this lovely snow queen outfit, 1000 Lindens, and a DVD which I will receve in the mail. :-) Queen for a day!

http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/secondlife/2009/01/07/a-night-at-the-races-dog-sled-races/

VSTE Island Delivered

Photo caption: Marie, Jaz, Thunder, our builder, Identity Euler, met Danny on VSTE Island. It's here and not without birthing pains. Thunder first noticed the e-mail from Danny and entered Second Life. Danny tried in vain several times to TP her to the new island. She called Marie onthe phone who was on her way home. As soon as possible Marie came to SL. Marie and Danny were on the phone while Danny frantically tried to follow directions for what he had to do in the first 90 minutes. Marie and Danny used Identity's advice to set up the basics so we could access the island without Danny being there. Now it begins. http://slurl.com/secondlife/VSTE%20Island/83/103/28 The tiny dot in the center of the sky is Mandie. She is terraforming! She removed the hill before dinner on the second day. Later that night, while everyone else was resting, she flattened the island and recovered as much land as she could from the water, leaving space for canoers to circle the island later. The second morning the island looks like this.