Personal space

Last week, I started uprooting some of the Linden plants on my parcels in Aglia and Zeuzera and replaced them with prim plants and trees from Organica and Botanical. I've been reluctant to make too many changes in Aglia because I want to preserve that parcel's history. Well, at least its history as it pertains to me. :)

For now, I've set down autumn trees which will change in a few months. Or maybe not, depending how I feel. And I'll probably reroute the stream and switch to better sculpts for the water. In any case, the re-landscaping is not quite done. And I won't be touching the main structures, like the glass house, the deck, and the gazebo. At least, not yet. I feel some pride in the fact that they've withstood time.

My neighbors in Zeuzera saw the changes I made to that parcel and noticed that I've updated the dividing wall. I met them when they first moved in, when they asked if I would smooth the dip in the terrain at the border of our parcels. Later, they purchased the parcel I had a bit north when I needed room in my tier. They wanted to purchase the rest of my parcel in Zeuzera but I refused. It is my buffer, in a sense, protecting the main parcel which is the first land I bought. When my neighbors saw the updated wall, they asked if I could remove it instead. I had made the walls transparent on their side, so I didn't see a reason why I should remove them.

To their credit, they've done a wonderful job with their parcels. There are layers of landscaping areas and lovely hidden nooks among the foliage of the trees and rocks. But the sculpted cliffs that surrounded their paradise was transparent from my side yet showed strips of some of the faces perpendicular to the border. And it looked ugly from the wrong side. I explained this and they agreed. Instead, they offered to landscape my parcel as well.

I'm sure they meant well with that offer. And I thanked them but declined. Besides the issue of choosing between opening up my parcel so anybody could rez on it (so I would have to waste my time checking if newbies had left junk on the parcel) or adding strangers to my private group (which would reveal some alts that I don't want revealed), I felt insulted by the offer.

I have never said anything about their trees overlapping at least a meter into my land, which makes me feel like they were invading my personal space. It's not as though my parcels look awful. One of the things they said when they moved next door was that they liked the fact that I built a garden. And for them to build right on my land and impose their idea of a garden on me feels insulting.

I'm sure that's not their intent. They were probably just trying to be nice. But that makes assumptions about what people want out of SL. They probably assumed I just want a pretty place to live in. But it's more than that.

The end result doesn't matter as much as the process itself. I don't just want a pretty place. I want a pretty place that *I* built and put together, using pieces that *I* choose, placing them where *I* want. Only then can it feel as though the space were really mine. This is not a public parcel, although I allow people to spend time in it. It is there for *my* pleasure, not for anyone else's. And, therefore, it should be just the way *I* want it to be.

In fact, I don't spend much time in that parcel anymore, because I had moved my workloft to another sim, and the pavilion I set up for me and my lover is in yet another sim. But I keep Aglia and Zeuzera because they have personal meaning for me. And, because of that, those spaces are more *personal*.

It's not the space or the object or the avatar that matters, but the meaning we associate to them, the emotions that get attached to them. A virtual shrub of gardenias is just another pretty thing until a lover gives it to his beloved. A gazebo is just another nice place to sit in, until friends gather in it and share wonderful conversations in it. A song is just another pleasant sound, until a man dedicates it to a woman because it reminds him of her.

It is the same with these parcels.

Isn't it roman... Please turn off your hair...

Imagine you're on a romantic date in a beautiful sim. You and your lover have your settings on midnight. Other couples have found their own little nooks all over the sim. Then suddenly, someone teleports nearby with glowing hair.

What on earth?!?

:D No, that didn't happen to me. What really happened was that I set to midnight and realized that *I* was the glowingest creature around. Yes, glowing hair is nice. But only if the sun is up! When set to midnight, I look like a clown sans the red nose!

I mean I *love* the hair styles made by this particular merchant, but it's a pain to turn off full bright, especially since SL tends to miss a number of prims in an object that has about a hundred prims. And I'm sure you know how big a pain it is to edit a specific prim hidden behind several alpha prims. Click,... ooops, no, not that one... click,... ooops, no, not that one... click,.... And if you turn on transparencies, you can't see which one is glowing.

Anyway, I'm just griping. I really do love these styles, even though I have to do a bit more work on them. Thankfully, they're Mod.

Persona non grata

Okay, this blog entry is a long gripe. You've been warned.

<gripe>

If you look in your Friends List and you notice that Opal Lei is not there, no, I did not take you out. If you go to Search and look for Opal Lei, she's not there either, that's why.

And here's why she's not there.

On September 4, I got a notice from Linden Lab, saying that they cannot charge my Paypal account for the $72 annual premium membership renewal. It sounded like the same issue they had in March. So I looked in the KnowledgeBase for the instructions about deleting the payment agreement inside Paypal and creating it again. Then I tried adding credit to my SL account. It didn't work. It didn't work in March either because it was an issue between LL and Paypal. So, I created a support ticket to let them know that the same situation that happened in March seems to be happening again.

The Customer Support rep who responded to my ticket merely skimmed over my ticket and resolved it with the reply: "it looks like you do not have a verified paypal account." I reopened the ticket and asked him exactly what he meant by "verified" and what I had to do manually. If I could get into Paypal and change payment agreements, doesn't that imply that my Paypal account was verified?

Two days later, on September 6, he marked the ticket resolved again, "You will need to access your paypal account and make sure that it has a verified source."

And I had a lengthy reply to that:

John,

I have been using Paypal since February 2000 with my checking account as primary source and two credit cards as back-ups.

I used Paypal to pay Linden Labs for the following transactions:
2006 Sept 3 - $72 for annual account dues
2006 Dec 15 - $50 cash transfer to SL
2006 Jan 12 - $9.95 for an alt
2007 Jan 15 - $9.95 for another alt
2007 Apr 8 - $50 cash transfer to SL

My last Paypal transaction was a cash transfer to my sister on August 15, 2007. I hope that proves that I have a verified source of funds, if that's what you meant.

In March 2007, I was unable to transfer cash to SL from Paypal and I found the instructions in https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/security.asp, but those instructions did not fix it. A blog entry later said that it was an issue with Paypal not accepting any charges from LL and that LL was working on the issue with Paypal. By April, I was able to transfer money again.

I tried to simply transfer USD from Paypal to SL and I am unable to do that. It looks exactly like it did in March.

Now, my account is at risk of being shut down in a few days (7 days from the original notice) because you are unable to charge Paypal. Now, is it fair to refuse me access because Customer Service will not properly investigate this issue?

All I ask is that you speak with someone who knows about that issue with Paypal in March/April and check if that is happening again. And make sure that my account is not shut down until you resolve that issue.

And if you cannot do that, please forward this case to someone who can as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Four days later, on September 10, still no reply, so I added another comment which, I admit, is extra bitchy: "Am I purposely being ignored until my grace period expires?"

On September 12, I was locked out of my account.

On September 13 (yesterday), I called their 800 number and argued with a very sweet young man in the UK named Nabeel. Poor Nabeel. Well, all he could do is escalate my ticket to the billing department in San Francisco. And he assured me that I should get a response by email the following day because the queue for that department is short.

Now, here's my argument. I can't get into my account because I owe LL $72 for the new year. I want to pay by Paypal, but LL and Paypal have issues that prevent me from paying by Paypal. I can sell Linden $s to cover the charges, but I'm not allowed to exchange currency because my account is on hold. And they won't let me downgrade back to the *free* basic account, unless I pay $72 for a year's worth of premium membership. My only recourse is to give them my credit card number (so what's the point of using Paypal then?) and then downgrade my account and apply for a refund by opening up a new support ticket, in spite of the fact that the reason I'm in this bind is *precisely because they largely ignore support tickets!*

I dunno what Linden Lab calls it, but I call it "extortion."

Today, no email. I called again just before they closed down at 6pm. Poor Nabeel had the bad luck to pick up my call a second time. He added a note to the ticket with a request to have someone send me email tomorrow (Saturday). I guess we'll see.

So that's why Opal Lei is persona non grata.

</gripe>