Lewies Blog

Second Life looks like it is really starting to pay off. After a year of experimenting, playing around, building stuff, and meeting new people, I appear to have an impressive cash flow income. I’ve recently started to sell off my lindens each day. I used to store them all into a ginko bank account, but the interest was getting pretty low that it really wasn’t worth the risk. I pulled my lindens out and sold them all off at once (about 800 US$ worth). Now mind you, I’m still buying lots of junk in-world as well as renting stores, sponsoring classes, and paying for advertising. I’ve made 260.11 US$ since the 23rd of last month. 15 days with an average of 17.34 per day. I believe that I’m getting roughly 500 US$ per month from a game. A GAME!

My success has encouraged my family to start paying a little more attention to this game as well. A few of them have already been playing, but this latest trend of me selling rather then hoarding L$ has really opened there eyes to what this game is capable of.

Well, If you want to see more of what second life is about, I have another blog with lots of pictures almost every day. Or you can just go ahead and sign up for a free account.

Order Id	Order Type	Quantity Ordered	Quantity Filled	Limit Rate	Time Opened	Time Closed	Closure Method	Gross US$	Net US$
177####	Limit Sell	L$1,225	L$1,225	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-07 22:50:34	2007-03-08 04:11:54	fill	US$4.61	US$4.44
177####	Limit Sell	L$4,500	L$4,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-07 06:20:21	2007-03-07 07:09:45	fill	US$16.92	US$16.32
176####	Limit Sell	L$1,500	L$1,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-06 21:54:14	2007-03-07 02:50:31	fill	US$5.64	US$5.43
176####	Limit Sell	L$5,500	L$5,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-06 05:55:35	2007-03-06 12:37:33	fill	US$20.69	US$19.94
175####	Limit Sell	L$1,750	L$1,750	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-04 23:24:02	2007-03-05 08:26:55	fill	US$6.58	US$6.34
174####	Limit Sell	L$1,500	L$1,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-04 18:08:42	2007-03-05 05:01:15	fill	US$5.64	US$5.44
174####	Limit Sell	L$3,500	L$3,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-04 00:22:25	2007-03-04 08:52:15	fill	US$13.17	US$12.70
173####	Limit Sell	L$4,000	L$4,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-03 09:28:36	2007-03-03 10:40:48	fill	US$15.04	US$14.51
171####	Limit Sell	L$2,500	L$2,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-01 22:26:22	2007-03-02 01:07:24	fill	US$9.40	US$9.07
171####	Limit Sell	L$7,000	L$7,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-03-01 06:11:49	2007-03-01 10:37:43	fill	US$26.32	US$25.39
170####	Limit Sell	L$1,750	L$1,750	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-28 06:29:39	2007-02-28 12:58:07	fill	US$6.58	US$6.34
169####	Limit Sell	L$3,000	L$3,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-27 17:16:50	2007-02-27 18:31:10	fill	US$11.28	US$10.88
169####	Limit Sell	L$2,000	L$2,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-27 06:21:01	2007-02-27 12:59:58	fill	US$7.52	US$7.25
168####	Limit Sell	L$3,000	L$3,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-26 21:12:32	2007-02-27 09:10:51	fill	US$11.28	US$10.87
168####	Limit Sell	L$2,500	L$2,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-26 16:14:41	2007-02-27 06:00:14	fill	US$9.40	US$9.06
168####	Limit Sell	L$1,000	L$1,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-26 06:25:35	2007-02-26 15:12:17	fill	US$3.76	US$3.62
167####	Limit Sell	L$6,000	L$6,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-25 18:11:37	2007-02-26 09:38:19	fill	US$22.57	US$21.77
166####	Limit Sell	L$1,500	L$1,500	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-24 15:26:07	2007-02-24 15:33:11	fill	US$5.64	US$5.44
166####	Limit Sell	L$9,000	L$9,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-24 14:27:01	2007-02-24 14:55:17	fill	US$33.85	US$32.65
165####	Limit Sell	L$2,000	L$2,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-23 15:09:34	2007-02-23 18:14:34	fill	US$7.52	US$7.25
165####	Limit Sell	L$7,000	L$7,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-23 10:49:16	2007-02-23 12:22:31	fill	US$26.33	US$25.40
165####	Limit Sell	L$220,000	L$220,000	L$266 / US$1.00	2007-02-23 05:24:34	2007-02-23 08:52:25	fill	US$827.18	US$798.08

I’ve been having probs with my iPod for such a long time now. The white head-phones died out pretty quick. Speakers don’t work in either bud. Click wheel seems not to work, but is easily solved by rebooting the iPods operating system.

I don’t know if it was iTunes via upgrades, or the iPod, but i’ve lost 66% of my music collection some how.

Lately, the iPod has been corrupted. It gives me errors complaining that it can’t write to disk, or that it can’t read. It prompts me to revert back to factory settings. Even then, it has trouble reading and asks me to revert again.

I am starting to have doubts about getting another iPod. For the price, it just isn’t worth 1 1/2 years of service. Would you pay 16 $US per month for a device that plays music, but gives you such problems until it finally goes bad? I’m just glad I didn’t pay for the thing to begin with.

On top of all this, a coworker had problems with his click wheel on a different model iPod. Rebooting didn’t help and he ended up getting it replaced free since he had only purchased it a few months before it started happening. He also had the same problems with the ear buds too.

Just heard about a game comming out called Spore. Perhaps one of the most ultimate sim games to come out. Check out this spore gameplay video to see what I’m talking about. Here is a spore demonstration video from E3.  Game comes out in about a year.

I started up brighterworlds.com a few years ago as a place to play around with the hopes of making some kind of web-based game.  Eventually I let it go because I stopped using it.  Today it is back with a like-minded purpose.  I’m going to use the website to support my second life projects.  It’s hosted with ASP.Net 2.0 and an SQL 2005 database.  Angel likes the idea that it is comming back and that it goes well with second life.

I’ve been learning quite a bit lately about restoring databases from a complete database failure.  Although rite now, I’m am working with a test to verify we can restore from one.  I’m not involved in all the steps such as tape restoration, but I am involved in one of the most critical parts.  The restoration of the Master database.

It turns out that you can’t just restore a master database in SQL Servers normal operation mode (multi-user).  I had to start the service in single-user mode from the command line.  From there on out, you can go into enterprise manager and restore the master database.

Why is the master database so important that it needs single-user mode?  Because it contains all the data that the server itself uses for its own operation.  Everything from maintenance plans, other databases in the ssystem, user accounts, etcetera.

Just make sure if you restore a master database, that the version of SQL server is the same that it was backed up from.  This includes having the same service pack installed as well.  SQL Server SP3 master database can not be restored on SQL Server SP4.

I was watching my favorite show on the DVR tonight and saw a commercial for the second season of Dr. Who.  Wow.  I kinda got really excited over that.  I had to pause the tv, jump up and find my wife to tell her the news.  We purchased the first season back in July.  We had ordered it just as the season ended.

The funny thing is, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of the second season from a podcast I listen to from the UK - DarkCompass.  Today DarkCompass came out with some kind of game called Trumps.  Lost of Dr. Who. stuff today here and there.

What do you know.  It seems that I now have a way to blog from within SecondLife.  I created a seperate account for my avatar “Dedric Mauriac” to post to this website.  So be on the lookout for SecondLife information from him for now.

Bean bag chairs, it seems, are expensive.  Who would have guessed that a new one starts at about $150 US.  It has me wondering how much it would cost to build one from scratch.  It seems I would only save 33% and be left with something small that wasn’t professionally made.  Ugh!

What a day.  I got much further on Oblivion today.  I went through a gate and visited what appeared to be hell.  In one tower, the walls were just slimey.  I was on another quest helping these two brothers fend off a few creatures from there farm.  I played it over about twenty times before both of them survived.  I returned to town and there pop was just happy.

I ended up dragging the couch closer to my television and angleing it so my neck wouldn’t have to feel cramped.  I’ve got to figure out a better solution then this.  Maybe I should look into one of those bean-bag chairs that you can toss anywhere.

In SecondLife, I saw that I sold a particle lab for 3999 L$ on SL Exchange, and also a victorian dunking booth for over 700 L$.  I estimate that I made about $15 in US currency on those two sales alone.  That should pay up for my next two months of land fees.  I need to make some improvements for that particle lab to gain more attention soon.

So I’ve been playing on my XBox tonight.  I have a nice HDTV connected to it.  I’v noticed myself moving forward closer to the television a lot.  It seems that the small writing is just too much of a strain to read on all the menus and such.  It probably turns out that I need to get my glasses to play.

I finally made it out of the sewers an into the world.  Man … it’s amazing to see the power of a kick-ass gaming console and HDTV at work.  The hills just went on in such a large distance.  I was able to see trees pretty far away and eventually walk up to them.  Water had nice waves and watching the sunset was just breathtaking.

Of course, by next week I’ll probably be bored of it. For some reason, I get bored of games pretty quick.  I don’t know why.  It seems as soon as i’ve figured out the basics of them, they just seem repetitive and nothing new happens.  Well, we shall see.