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There in Style
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Happy Anniversary!
Tuesday, 17 August 2004
by JoeyG
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY?
It doesn’t seem possible but I have been in world for almost a year now. In
less than a week JoeyG will celebrate his first year in There (August 29).
Through happy and griefed times, through all the beta and patches and Client
updates, I have bitched, moaned, smiled, laughed and shared many wonderful
and some very harsh times with a group of pixilated pixies that I have come
to love. There probably isn’t a day spent in There where my budding Turrets
has not been encouraged and cultivated. There also hasn’t been an end of
day, good or bad, that I have not grown even a little bit more because of
There and its Thereians.
Here is where I should turn on my "Little Mary Sunshine" mode but recent
attacks of severe serveritis prevent me from kick starting the good ship
JoeyG-pop! For as much fun and productive as last week proved, it was also,
personally, the worst time I have spent in There.
There are a great many impending corrections promised to make our There
lives more stable and enjoyable (what the list includes is beyond me). If I
sound bitter it’s simply due to the horrors my avatar has been experiencing
more and more on a daily basis. Serious, torturous lag and chronic voice
deterioration have been the two prevalent problems that have plagued a lot
of my friends and me for most of this summer. I have jokingly renamed my
character Job. I just cannot imagine how much more difficult the Goddess
Nada or There could make my game play. Give me all the encouragement and
coddling and promises you want There. Seeing is believing!
I applaud all the administrative changes and promises of late. There’s
management has certainly taken a turn towards better understanding customer
service. Just take a look at the newly introduced There Care FAQs. Thanks to
wonderful, committed people like Brett, Hula, Mackie, Vash, Alex, Nilla and
not forgetting the hard working members of MAB and DAB et al. I am still
confident that things on the archipelago will eventually return to the sunny
days we all knew when we first emigrated to Caldera those many months ago.
What new ills have stalled my good spirits this week? Forget about missing
inventory and favorite places! Forget about fetching TBux and one’s
inventory! Forget about the literal highs and lows of voice! You may now add
ridiculous rubber banding and persistent avatar crashes to the list (as well
as some very, very bizarre new behavior).
Over the weekend JoeyG disappeared three times while on line. I was gone but
continued to hear and see what was happening and being said around me. To
everyone else it seemed that I had crashed but I never got the relief of a
Client error (did I just say that?). The game was stuck so I had to CTL-ALT-DEL
in order to restart.
On one occasion, I returned holding a drink I had previously put back,
dressed in a different outfit and I was in my playful "rotund" skin. I guess
that is bizarre behavior number one.
Monday night for no reason I was automatically thrown back to the log in
screen twice within ten minutes. This was not the usual re-log that occurs
when trying to view pages after having been in game for a while. I was There
one minute and then at the sign in screen the next, logged off. I had no
Client error. This had not happened since the days after the last new Client
update many months ago. It was inventory related then but now? I had spent
the last few days selling and giving away a large part of my item stock.
(more about this later in the column).
Hazzy was redoing our Frontier Zone with a new layout for an upcoming event.
I decided to ride over to the zone on my Bacio. While I was walking, lagging
miserably I might add, bizarre behavior number two occurred. Suddenly I was
seeing a circle above my head asking me if I wanted to drop, take out or put
back two items (both of which I did not own, mind you). When I got to Zone
QE4 I told Hazzy about it and he said that those had been two of the items
in his inventory that he had been looking at. Okay, I know that he is my boy
friend and I do spend most of my waking moments in There with him but this
was just too freaky for words! I was not in the Zone when he had taken these
items out. I had never experienced this before in game. Avatar ESP? Holy
Nada!
But enough about me! I am ready to turn on the "Mary Mode!" Remember, There
may get me down but There still has so much to offer that I will remain
cautiously optimistic (xThor, the Prozac must have kicked in).
Queer Eye for the There Guy is pleased to announce the winners of its QE4
Summer Choice Awards; for Fashion Design: Geea, for Transportation Design:
ZachC, for Home Design: Ashy. Congratulations to you and your incredible
fellow nominees. The true winners here are the Thereians whose daily
existence is enhanced by your amazing talent and imagination.
The award presentation will take place at our QE4 Summer Choice Awards Gala
at summer’s end on September 18 from 10 PM to midnight EDT in Zone QE4. The
evening will be dedicated to the spirit and resilience of New York City.
Zone QE4 will be redesigned to resemble NYC’s own Central Park with the
Metropolitan Museum of Art at center stage hosting the first exhibit of
western themed art inspired by the upcoming Wild West mega event looming
large in October. Lady Liberty will raise her golden lamp in Pirate Cove off
the coast of Zone QE4. We plan to end the evening showering the our beloved
symbol of freedom with a grand fireworks spectacular by TheChaz. There will
also be our traditional silent auction benefiting both NMSS and QE4. The
true stars of the silent auction promise to be the buggies ZMW designed
especially for this event. You have heard me ramble on about these
magnificent NYC buggies ad nausea. Now to whet your appetite here they are
in print for the first time.
Take note, the Fall QE4 Choice Designer Gala will take place in December in
Zone QE4. Nominees will be announced in early November.
More exciting news! Welcome to the University of There or UOT! Her Royal
Tikiness Hula continues to amaze us with her caring, philanthropic ways.
With the generous mandate of There she has created the UOT. In her own
inspired words the UOT was established "to coordinate and facilitate the
offering of experimental options that embrace, educate and empower fellow
members in an entertaining venue within the There community. (The) UOT
instructors have organized their knowledge, skill set experience and passion
in order to author and instruct a variety of class events that the entire
There community can benefit from and enjoy. On behalf of There, UOT and our
entire voluntary staff of wonderful instructors I invite you to experience
the richness and vibrancy of There." Oddly enough, I was recruited to
instruct a class in shopping Shopping 101.
Anyone can take UOT classes and experience the fun through learning,
sharing, and discussions in There. You can also look up the schedule at the
calendar posted at http://www.thereevents.com/
I share my one year anniversary with some of the best Thereians this week!
.In a little more than a week the Caldera Sun-Times will reach it’s first
birthday. It is an honor, privilege and pleasure to be part of such a
positive influence in all things There. Writing for the CST has been become
my personal therapy. I rant, I rave, I mumble, I grumble, I sigh and (as you
notice) CST let’s me air it all here. What could be better?
Last Thursday night, August 12, 2004, QE4 celebrated Nep’s un-birthday at
our clubhouse in Sutter’s Camp on Ootay. We had a great time. The place was
really pulsing to the music orchestrated by (who else?) K-There Radio, Nep’s
very own, incredibly popular KTHR. The evening’s best moment came when our
Blue Haired Wonder blew out the candles on his cake and made his wish. Wow!
At that very moment his dream man, ZachC popped out of the cake. All I could
hear was Marie Antoinette whispering in my ear (or was that Hazzy?), "Let
him eat cake! Let him eat cake!" Happy Birthday, Neption!
The party continued into the wee hours of the morning. The remaining crowd,
in a moment of mayhem and madness, decided to redecorate the purple majesty
of the QE4 clubhouse. Oh my, I think you should all be very frightened of
Jake_Summers, xThor and, most especially the tasty Savory and her evil
Christmas Grinch Simatt. Well, at least, you should consider hiding a good
time from them if they are about. I will say that their trashing design
showed great thought and originality. What they did with fire is to be
admired. Now even QE4’s straight metrosexuals, xThor and Jake_Summers (two
of many, I might add), can be called flamers without blushin
The next day, Friday afternoon, Thereians were given the opportunity to chat
and play with many of There’s staff at Hula’s Aloha Friday in Sharlee and
Tollermike’s (spectacular) Pad It was a lazy, friendly and incredibly
positive afternoon. If you ever wanted to shoot a There employee this was
the place to be. The paint guns were out and the targets were everywhere.
Alex, Vash, and Nilla were among the many There staff who good naturedly
allowed themselves to be target practice. They were a bunch of There care
bears (pun intended)! Good going guys!
Friday night QE4 had the chance to honor one of our most prominent members,
the ab fab Mudpup. It was Spades Shark Muddy’s first anniversary party and
our very first racing event aptly named The Mudpup Cup. The racing and
partying took place at the always exciting Triangle Girrls Raceway operated
by QE4, EEP and TGC’s sporting genius Karythe. Congratulations to Vaughn_2,
the winner of the first ever Mudpup Cup.
The weekend ended with a celebration dedicated to the first There
anniversary of ZMW and its creator ZachC. Zone QE4 was done up in grand
Roman style for the event by Hazzy. The very newest ZMW were on display for
all to see and admire as well as a special section devoted to the limited
anniversary release of the Silver Flame, the buggy that could. ZMW recently
released a limited edition of four Silver Flame designs, the original, its
first update, a version by JBalla and the newly minted commemorative. The
four were available for a limited time as a set and now there is but one
left. The newest additons to the ZMW collection included the first two in
the new intoxicating collection, the Tequilla Sunrise and Jose Kuervo as
well as the red hot, mouth watering lipstick red Typhoon.
QE4 also set up its first very own racetrack PAZ. Savory and I donned our
racing gear and at her patient prompting we put together a killer track
(literally). Unfortunately (and you will please pardon my putting on my
crash helmet here again), I could not race because of what we eventually
found out was my seriously overstocked item inventory. I lagged so much that
I would freeze and then hit any pole within reach. I even took a lap with
Hazzy, riding shotgun, only to have my screen remain stuck while he breezily
tooled around the track.
Oh gee, let’s just get the ranting out of the way once and for all (for, at
least, this week)! Now we can add to the list of my woes the discovery that
shopping KILLS anew! The lag I experienced when we set up the raceway PAZ
was relentless. As an experiment, I was encouraged to take my other avatar
Clifton out of the closet (well, not literally; you can’t do what’s already
done) to see if he would have the same lag. I did and, lo and behold, he did
not! The little Bronze Pass boy sailed around the track in his one buggy
(only one buggy?). He was able to run about as if there was no gravity at
all to keep him down. Obviously my manic shopping sprees needed to be
curtailed. I must set off alarms when JoeyG shows up on the servers. We are
all certain now that the weight of my inventory is simply too heavy for
There to handle (uh, why?). Off I go to Betty Ford Tiki for some renewed
therapy with my beloved shrink Dr. Anastasia Beaverhausen (who writes The
Litter Box column for CST under her real name, Kitteee). I am confident that
she will end our first session with her mellifluous words telling me, "Okay,
motor mouth, if you have too much just give it all to me and then get out!"
Oh, how I adore her tough love approach to counseling!
Well, I had a lot more to say before finishing this column but I am afraid
that's all she wrote for now folks. I am leaving CST and will be taking a
respite (caused mainly by spite) for for about a month. I hope to be back
soon in another venue with many of my fellow CSTers. Until then,
MAY THE PAZ BE WITH YOU!
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