Before I start, this is not a Second Life post. Just thinking as I get older.

I’m not usually one to get sentimental on rememberance day, I don’t even wear a poppy. I am completely against war in all it’s forms. But, as I think, I wonder how many of those poor souls lost in wars past and present felt the same way, and yet went anyway? There’s no way I can understand their reasons, no way I can know what was in their minds.

The world wars are what we think of today for the most part and that is fitting of course. They went to defend us all, to fight to protect their country. Some went because they wanted to fight, some went because they thought (or were persuaded) that it was the honourable thing to do, some were drafted. I can only assume they all were scared at some point, and yes, they were all heroes no matter what side they fought on.

This is a poem from the first world war, by Wilfred Owen. It’s not pretty, but it does evoke emotion…

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

A view of the trenches if there ever was one, but fortunately that is no longer the case in war.

I heard on the news yesterday that since the end of the second world war, there has only been one year where no British servicemen have been killed in combat. I suspect most nations have a similar statistic. How can we justify this?

Today’s wars are even worse though, we send our brave men and women out to far places to fight for oil or in the name of some nebulous “war on terror”. But no matter what the war is for, they still go, mostly without complaint. They are still killed or maimed, but now they aren’t defending us the civilians, or their country. Now they are fighting for the reputation of polititians.

This does not sully their sacrifice, but it does speak volumes about those who sent them. And so, completely unlike me…

For The Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

To those who went, for whatever reason, Thank you. You did what I could not do.

… or so we would be lead to believe.

I am not quite blessed with the right words to do this topic as it deserves, so I’m going to link to the blog of someone who can. Please read Peter Stindberg’s words carefully and take them to heart, and vote on the jira.

Next time, it could be your group.

** Linden Lab have seen and acted upon the offending article and have corrected it.

As some of you are already aware, I celebrated the sixth anniversary of my first login to Second Life (Rezday) this week. To all who sent good wishes and thoughts, thank you! Six years in SL though, wow!

I didn’t have a party as such, but Freya was in world and we had such a lovely time together just chatting and listening to music. There will be plenty of time for other stuff later. Having my beloved Freya around is enough for me.

This week also heralds the return of Second Citizen, for good or for bad. For myself, I’m not sure, it was always a pretty lawless place and that at least has not changed. On the other hand, I have mellowed a bit over the last couple of years and the constant sniping and backbiting isn’t as much fun. At least, not to me. Whatever, don’t take my word for it, see for yourselves at http://www.secondcitizen.net, and make up your own minds about the place.

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention the retirement of Trinala, their final set to be aired at 8pm SLT on August 29^th. They have been friends since early on, and the pink dragon has been a feature of my rezdays since the beginning. It will be sad to see them go.

Something I have been giving a little thought to lately is “What if Linden go ahead with this new verification policy? How will it affect me and mine?” The answer is of course that I have no idea. We are given no information beyond that it will happen. I don’t know for a fact that it will affect me, though it is quite likely. I kinda define the term “Not safe for work”.

In our skybox (in a mature sim), Freya and I have a few works of art, included within which are a number of nudes. We have pose-balls on couches, though none of them are overtly sexual in nature. Sometimes, I bring a subbie there to play. Some of this will change, it has to. Personally I have no intention of verifying, which will prevent me accessing a lot, including my furniture business, not that I sell much these days, but it’s beside the point. Of course, as in other times, oldbies may be grandfathered in. I was last time they did something like this, perhaps for having a lifetime account (sometimes refered to as a chartered account). Who knows though? My thoughts are mostly to do with the what if they don’t?

Assuming for the moment that I am left unverified, either through choice as a protest, or because of location or circumstances. My enjoyment of Second Life^TM is going to be curtailed to such a point that it will be a waste of time logging in except to answer questions in Instant Messages. I’ll have no need for clothes since I won’t see anyone who matters. I won’t need a home since I will never entertain. I won’t need land since I won’t have a store. So I tier back down to zero, maybe keep a few m² as an office in case. That way I get my L$500 every week, and cash out every month or so.

At what point does it become a waste to buy clothes, or even to read the fashion feeds? If I go to another grid, I would have to re-buy there, I can’t take my inventory with me as things stand now.

About a month or so ago, I was chatting with Thdast (Thaddy) Schwarzman about her Mistress and lover, Rheta Shan. They’d arranged to meet in SL and Rheta hadn’t showed up. Thaddy was pretty upset and feeling rejected as one does at such times, and as a friend, I did my best to reassure her.

Time went by and last week I asked Thaddy how long it had been. When she answered, I said that I thought it was a bit soon to give up yet, to which she replied that she would never give up waiting. I nodded, it’s a feeling I knew well.

Yesterday came the bombshell. Not one, but two young lives snuffed out. Rheta and her soon to be born child, hit by a van while crossing the road. Death perhaps not instant, but from what I understand, unconsciousness probably was, so any pain was limited. My heart goes out – as so many others have also said – to her family and friends both in RL and in SL, but mostly to Thaddy. I cried in work when I heard yesterday. I can barely conceive what Thdast is going through now – at least her RL friends had a funeral.

So if you see her on the grid, spare a thought for Thdast Schwarzman and say hi. Offer her a hug, but don’t ask how she’s feeling.

I hope there will be a memorial.

Thaddy, we are all here for you and I know you have a new bright shining guardian angel watching over you from Heaven.

Rheta Shan/Valérie M, and her unborn son, died April 3rd 2009. May they rest in peace.

Photograph Self Portrait by Rheta Shan

Last night I was sitting at my PC, when I noticed a nagging pain on the bridge of my nose. Since I wear glasses, I assumed they were just rubbing, and took them off for a moment. It was then that I noticed that one of the pads had snapped off – who knows where. So, I swapped out for my old reserve pair which were twisted a couple of years back when I broke my leg – but which are still usable, just – and am wearing them now.

Two things come to mind. One is that these are men’s glasses, which feel and look (to me at least) a bit weird after all this time, and two, that I no longer have a backup pair.

So the plan is to head down to Specsavers at lunchtime for an eye test. I’ve seen some on the website I like, but invite those of you who’d like to, to make recommendations. My photo is on this blog a few posts ago if you’ve not seen it yet.

Thanks

Sitting at my desk drinking a mug of slowly cooling coffee. Outside, the air is clear, the sky is bright and pale blue. A few birds pass the window, but otherwise, all is quiet. Even the city is quiet at 7:30

By 8:00 it’s changed. Traffic is almost constant outside and the noise level is a lot higher. The idiots in the office are starting to arrive too, and moaning about the heat (it’s almost warm enough to be comfortable) and have opened windows and turned the noisy portable aircon on. It’s about 10°C outside so it’s getting cold here.

Still, as days go, it started well – at least once I was awake – and that’s a good start. Let’s just hope it stays that way for at least a few hours. I finish at 3:30 so a nice long evening awaits.

What a week! At work we’ve had loads of computer issues since early on Monday – which I can’t go into for obvious reasons – and which still, as I write, have not been resolved completely. It’s chaos here at the moment.

And then, I got home Monday evening, turned on the laptop and saw a message saying there were corrupt boot files and gave a repair proceedure. As you are aware if you follow my plurks, or can probably guess if not… it was not that simple by a long way.

It ended up reimaging the disc. Ok, a pain but not the end of the world. Most of what was lost is backed up, well data anyway. There’s another PC with much of it, and some is on my phone, my external drives and online.

Software’s not so simple, so as well as OS patching, there were a lot of updates there – and of course Steam. (I’ve not started iTunes yet).

Late yesterday afternoon, an email from my ISP told me I’d used up my entire download limit for April – from less than 50% on Sunday. I had to buy an extra 10GB just to get back online.

On the positive side, a lot of the crud I’d collected over the last 6 months is gone and I have in theory at least, a cleaner, leaner machine. I have a few things left to do, then it’s down to – as they say in Windowsland – plug and pray.

I don’t know why, but blogging for me comes in fits and starts. I know I’ll never be one of those who writes a novella every day about their life – mine is just too boring – or have a lot of insight into what’s going on behind the scenes of Second Life™. I suppose that my life is just boring. Sometimes though, I wish I had more to say. I mean I get up, I go to work, I come home and sit in Second Life™ or EVE-Online™, I plurk and I go to bed.

The thing is, of course that it’s not quite that simple. If I were a better writer, then I could talk about my journey, or how my day went. I could talk about what I cooked, things I saw, even clothes. I could talk about what I did in world. But, it’s mostly boring stuff. Only occasionally do I do something that would grab someone’s interest and run with it. And worse, when I do, I forget to take photos.

Recently in EVE, for instance, I’ve met and tried to help fellow Second Lifer and Plurker, Ramonna, showing her the ropes as it were, and offering advice when it’s needed. Mostly though it’s been mining – and however you paint it, shooting lumps of rock isn’t exciting. Last night I did a couple of missions with the corp. That was more fun, but I wasn’t making notes and again, no screenshots. To bee honest though, they were missions any of us could have done alone. With three of us in big ships, they were almost over before we knew what was happening. Hardly worth the time to write.

So anyway, I woke this morning to a delivery of books. One from the series I have been reading, Look to Windward by Iain M Banks is one of the couple of Culture novels I’ve never read, and will be fun. The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is one I’ve been recommended many times, and The Dreaming Void just looked cool. Once I’ve read them, perhaps I’ll blog them or something. No idea yet.

If you buy from Amazon, then read this page from Violet Blue.  Then, go sign the petition below.  Thanks.

In protest at Amazon’s new “adult” policy – The Petition Site