Coal's Notes

Wow. L$253 in the last month. I *am* a stellar businesswoman, if I can manage that without actually putting out any new products or doing much promotion (besides displaying my creations on myself). That's, what, almost a dollar US? ;)

I finally delivered Dan's neon sign today. It's not perfect, but it's better than a kick in the head. To coin a phrase. :)

I've set up display cases for my most recent merchandise and have loaded them into the SL Exchange system - I've only listed the martini so far, though. I think a lot of folks watch the "newest items" section, so if I space my stuff out, I'm more likely to have someone notice it. Makes a great theory anyhow. :D Plus, the martini's the only one I had pictures for already.

And now I've pictures of the other stuff. :D And it's time to wrap things up for the night.

For the record, if you didn't already know it, it's hard to use a keyboard tray when there's a cat on your lap. Who will not move. Even when nudged (pushed) with said keyboard tray. And her whiskers keep tickling my right arm.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The last couple of days have been a real change for me - instead of having little things spinning around my head, I feel like it's my head that's been doing the spinning! I started my new job and have been going through a whirlwind of training. So much to learn! But nice folks, so I have no doubt that I made the right decision in taking the position. I've been writing this blog posting for... 10 days. Pretty sad considering it's not a long one. I'll make a better attempt in the next week to plop my thoughts up here for your perusal.

But it means I've neglected this blog for a bit! ("Oh no!") I've made a couple new head spinners (I know, it's not the best term - cranial orbiters would be more appropriate, I guess) but I haven't set them for sale or anything. And I need to finish work on my nifty temp-on-rez display unit. :) I've also yet to finish the sign I was making for Dan. Whoops. Hopefully I'll get that done in the next couple of days. I realized tonight, that I may have been selling things without realizing it - if I'm offline when the sale goes through, I don't know about it. So that's kinda neat. Going to have to go back using the Account tool on the webpage to see what kind of sales I've done. I'm all excited!

In other news: Akela's new weblog had a nifty keen profile thingie of me. :D I feel all famous now!

Posted by Coal Nelson at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Did you ever have one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right? Welcome to my week. :P The Fedex guy tried to deliver my swanky new computer to the neighbour's house (showed in the tracking system as a delivery exception - no one home, and since I was sitting in the front room (not looking out the window, obviously, or I would've hauled him over to my door), I was not impressed).

Got that straightened out, and Mr Fedex guy came back... but the new system doesn't fit well on my old desk at all - the monitor has to sit off to my left, and the cords are so short that the case can't sit tucked nicely out of the way, but instead is in my way when I go to get up. :P I suspected this might happen, plus, I'm bored with my old desk - it doesn't suit my current needs. I picked out one in the Ikea catalog, hated it in the store, found one that I could live with, but it wasn't in stock, of course. Looked on craigslist... have you ever noticed how many desks look exactly the same? It's spooky, really. Jury's still out on the desk situation.

There was a delay in the paperwork for my new RL job - both in them sending and me receiving it. So my start date's on hold until Fedex can find my house again.

Family medical emergency meant I spent an evening at the hospital... then discovered at 1am that my car wouldn't start in the parking lot (and no, I didn't leave the lights on!). AAA membership just paid for itself. :) Hooray AAA tow truck person, who confided in me that the trick with Volkswagens is not to own one. Gee, thanks. :P I was not eager to drive around for ages at 1am after a stressful evening, so I suspect the reason the engine won't turn over now is that the battery just didn't charge long enough. Once the medical stuff gets squared away, I'll jump the battery again and take the scenic route (provided I have enough gas) to the VW dealer,where I'll turn off the car and see if it will restart. If it doesn't... I'm conveniently located near the service department. :D If it does, great, I'll pull back out and go home and write it off as one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Whine whine whine. :) I feel much better now.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Busy busy busy. For once, I'm busy in SL and RL at the same time. I'm in the process of rearranging my RL office, but it's super humid out, so I'm taking the work in sweaty (not to mention irritable) stages.

In SL, I'm working on a prim-saving vendor for head_space (yes, I know there are vendors out there that are low prim, but I want to do this the hard way!). And Dan Gerstort has asked me to make a couple neon signs for him, so I get to play with texture animation. :) Hooray for educational fun! Can you tell that I was the kind of child who watched a lot of educational television? Still do, when I bother to turn off the computer and sit in front of the TV.

I've done a beta test of my first attempt on the sign and it's not bad. Not great, but I get how it works, now I just need to get the design where I want it and make sure it doesn't jump one pixel up for half the frames. Yes, I am that anal, thank you for asking. :D

This weird not-really-but-kinda long weekend (Independence Day here in the States), has me confused about what day it is. I seriously did not realize yesterday was Sunday until I logged in and idly tried to figure out which game show had been on that night. Whoops. Missed Building Shelter completely. Happily, Sumar was able to grab entries for Dolmere instead. She and her purple cast rock. Must remember to thank her next time I see her.

Unfortunately, the humid weather has me disinclined to sit around with the laptop exhausting heat onto me (I turned it off earlier today and it was still warm to the touch two hours later... that can't be good!). But fear not! There is a solution! ...yes, central air would fix the problem... but there's a better solution! A new desktop! So that the machine can... kick heated air out at my feet... um, wait. I sense a fatal flaw in the plan. Okay, how about a window air conditioner and a new desktop? Sign me up! The new desktop arrives later this week, and whenever I can haul the behemoth out of the basement and wrestle it into the window, there will be a/c. Or, more correctly, whenever I can coerce some poor brave soul to do it for me. :)

In the meantime, I'm doing short spurts of online time, short spurts of swearing that I own too much crap and sneezing at dust, and short spurts of eating ice cream. Hey, what do you want? Oh, some ice cream. Right. Sorry, let me get another bowl.

Posted by Coal Nelson at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

*Sigh.* I started this post... 3 days ago. :P I can't edit pictures while I have SL open, and I kept forgetting to do it when SL wasn't open! As a result, it's kinda long and random. Even for me. :D

It's always fun to see the comments roll in from various posts - it tells me people actually read this. The startling ones are those from folks that I don't know! That read this of their own free will! My god! What's wrong with you?!?! ;)

Stressing over nomenclature has been keeping me busy, but not too busy to be up until all hours rebuilding my store on Dan's land. :D And I still don't think I'm done yet - I keep having new ideas. :) (And for the record, I'm done stressing. About naming things, anyway.)

Note: Since the picture was taken, I've made more changes. :) You'll have to check it out yourself to see!

I was also able to give Dan a scaled-down copy of my dance floor to use at the new Lazy Duck Garage.

I've also had a few more suggestions and inspirations for head spinners. :D I'm hoping to start work on them at some point in the next couple of days.

Friday night, after hearing Frogg and Jaycatt play at "The Gathering", Dolmere suggested I let him stream some music on my land. Oh oh, twist my arm! :) So a handful of folks wound up hanging in my under-used skybox. Towards the end of the evening (or maybe I ought to say "near dawn!"), people started telling jokes, some of which were very funny. I warned everyone that I have a horrible memory for punchlines - so really, the only one I remember is Jacek's penguin joke (sorry guys!).

Dolmere always plays a good mix of music, and he was really trying to play songs that fit with what we were talking about. Yes, that's poor Molyenka dangling off Torley's shoulder! :D It was really such a good time, that I wound up staying up... until four in the morning. The scary thing is that more than half of the other folks hanging out were also in the same time zone. Thank goodness this is kind of a long weekend (some people have to 'work' Monday, although how much work they'll get done remains to be seen).

Saturday (afternoon!), I spent some time poking around various places I'd never been. I didn't take any photos, because I've been comparison shopping for a new desktop, and realized that my draw distance is... well... crap. Landscape shots don't turn out very well at all. Anyway, I wandered around a bit and found all sorts of interesting places to add to my landmarks. Now there's a list that's becoming unmanageable. I should divide it into folders or something. I think my favourite place of those I visited was Foo Island. Very neat aesthetic going on there. The retro-space-age feel is the hot new thing, I suspect. Look at me all trend-spotting. Heh. Not what you'd expect from someone who spends both RL and SL mostly in jeans!

Posted by Coal Nelson at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)