The New Product….. HYPE!

I’ve been working on a new product this past couple of days, well….. experimenting, tweaking, toying with features, trying to decide what should stay and what should go. Well, I shouldn’t say it’s a new product….. it’s more like an evolution of a current, moderately successful product…. pushing it beyond its current, limited state into something far more interesting. This new one…. will usurp all others in its line. In other words, once I release this version…. all previous versions will be destroyed in the fires from which they were forged, ringing in a new era….. and a new bar will be set for products of its kind!

I expect, that this one product…. will in one leap and one bound, outsell every other product I currently have…. combined….

Okay, is this enough hype, or did I ramp it up a little too much?

MEN!!!

To start this blog….. let me just paste this:

20:02]  Lillani Lowell: Why are males so frustrating?
[20:03]  Jessica Lindsay: Hmmm.  Cause…  best case scenario most are good for.. 30 minutes.
[20:03]  Lillani Lowell: LOL
[20:03]  Jessica Lindsay: The thing about it is…  Women are like little kids.  You give a woman a little sex…  she wants more sex.
[20:03]  Jessica Lindsay: You give a man a little sex…
[20:03]  Jessica Lindsay: He is done for the night
[20:04]  Lillani Lowell: LOL
[20:04]  Lillani Lowell: You rock…..
[20:04]  Jessica Lindsay: Little kids with sugar, that is
[20:04]  Lillani Lowell: Can I copy and paste this to people?
[20:04]  Jessica Lindsay:
[20:04]  Jessica Lindsay: If you want

Okay…. and well, just as one issue with one man (sort of, maybe, kind of) clears up, and you try to address an issue with another man things which should be simple sort of start taking on a complicated twist. Of course…. I’m not saying women are better….. most of the women I know are just as complicated as the men I know, but they’re less straightforwardly stubborn about things. And while…. Jessica’s faboo quote applies to men and sex…. I think it really should be applied to men for almost every given situation. No more than 30 minutes max of attention at *any* given time…. why? Because if you spend more than that…. you’re going to end up frustrated and wanting….. and not only in the sexual sense of word. At the end of 30 minutes, any conversations, activities, or other related things you may be doing with a male should “stop”. Then you walk away, wait 30 minutes, then go back and see if the first 30 minutes has taken hold yet.

So, I’ll say it again…. MEN!

Ghosts of People Past(?)

So, I can’t do any work because of the grid issues…. so, I *finally* managed to teleport out of the sim…. and wow. Second Life is like a horror movie of some sort. There are people…. everywhere, but…. just bodies. There’s nobody really there. Just empty shells of people who were there…..

…..surreal.

Grid Issues….. Ugh!

It’s the last day of this build I’ve been working on, and Second Life is not at all co-operating. There’s been grid issues, inventory issues, building issues, and teleporting issues all night…. making the task of actually building anything a bit of a difficulty, but….. I’m getting through it, despite the technical issues. And well, just a few finishing touches! The boss likes the design…. so, it’s all cool!

I’ve been working quite a bit these past three weeks…. I have to say! It’s like…. aside from a few brief moments with Emma here and there…. I’ve been almost non-stop! That’s good for me though. I can be a major workaholic when I get focused…. and I like being focused on things. Though…. I do like a bit of break every now and then!

But, I’ve also been planning new products for the Dictatorshop….. so, even when I’m done with the sim builds, I still have some other work left to do.

Building + Seeing the Light…..

It’s been an interesting day or two, of building….. unbuilding, re-arranging, rebuilding, building again, just trying to get this one building to become what I want it to be. It can be said…. building is harder than scripting. Scripting isn’t hard…. you set a goal, and use logical pathways to accomplish your goal. Building…. building is something entirely different. You have an image in your mind…. and you need to somehow translate that into something which resembles your thoughts in 3D. All the more difficult when its someone else’s thoughts you have to translate. I’ve been having a tiny bit of trouble translating this last build from someone else’s head to 3D…. especially because some of the concepts they wanted just won’t work “cleanly”. So, I’m trying to offer an alternative solution which will satisfy everyone.

The Damsel sim is doing well for me. I don’t need *any* gimmicks what-so-ever to gain traffic….. the overflow from Bondage Ranch is keeping a steady flow of visitors and customers coming into my Shop….. and best of all, a steady flow of customers who want my products! The Dictatorshop is doing better than ever.

Lights…. So, “considering” my last few blog entries and the situation as a whole….. Onyx wants to re-start his lighting business again, full tilt, and is offering me LaserTech back in exchange and twice my investment back…. or if I prefer, four times the amount I originally invested and he keeps LaserTech. Well, I’m not sure what to do here. He doesn’t think there’s a point for him to not have his light business if giving it up didn’t solve or fix anything. I’m inclined to agree….. I’ve got no use for the light systems myself, except they’ve been coming in handy for custom builds….. and it’s a lot of waste if nothing is done with them. If Onyx wants the lights back for his business, he can have them. I don’t really want LaserTech back, so, I’ll take the money…… between spending time with Emma and friends, running the new Shop, my own product developement, and the requests for commerical builds…. I just don’t want to spread myself too thin and end up doing too much and stressing out. So, I’ll just sell the lights back, let Onyx keep LaserTech…. and then I’ll wash my hands of the whole thing entirely. Honestly….. there’s no point in Onyx’s business suffering for nothing, and while I wish my former friend the best of luck in business and the best of success…. I don’t feel any need to protect his business interests from his competitors….. he’s a grown man, he can fend for himself. And as far as I’m concerned, once Onyx pays my investment back, I’m no longer involved, and he’s free to do whatever he wants. Onyx would’ve started his business with or without my money….. so, have at it, Onyx….. let’s see if you’re the business savy shark I thought you were.

Busy Again! D’oh!

Just as soon as I finished getting my Shop up and running….. I get another offer to take part in yet another fairly big build! “Woot!” is all I have to say….. either I did something really, really good this past week, or karma made a mistake last weekend and has decided to kiss and make up with me this weekend.

Again, I can’t say what I’m working on or who I’m working for….. but, you’ll see eventually, I’m sure!

In the meantime, swing by the Dictatorshop and buy the new product by Pannie Paperdoll…. “Cuddle Me Bondage Cock” or “Cuddle Me Bondage Bear”. They’re the cutest little things, and you’ll pee yourself laughing (your friends too!) once you own a Cuddle Me Bondage Cock and take it around on the town! Seriously…. *everyone* will want one, be one of the first!

The Dictatorshop……

…… has opened in the sim, Damsel (91, 63, 38).

The frills aren’t quite finished, but the new building is up and the Shop is now open for business. The new Bondage City sim is a perfect place for the Dictatorshop, and I can tell I am going to like it in this sim quite a bit! I don’t need to use any gimmicks to gain traffic here, and it’s all genuine traffic belonging to my target market. Even before the Shop was open, many people flew onto the land (at least 1 every 2-3 minutes) to see what was being constructed. At one point, there were about 50 people in the sim and not the slightest bit of lag was to be found.

They say everything happens for a reason…. and well, while I was a little upset and quite stressed that the old Dictatorshop had to close because of a camping site….. I think the negative, in this case, will turn into a better positive.

Yes, being in the most popular bondage sim….. the sim *will* max out on traffic and prevent people fromt teleporting to the Shop often, but, at least the Shop is trapped in with people who have its interests at heart, and not just a pile of inactive campers!

Sim ….. Light ….. Tunnel ….. Bright! Dammit!

….. and I can seriously blog! Freedom!

After just about a week or so couped up in a hidden sim, building secretive things for secretive people…. I finally have a chance to come out and breath some fresh air and spend some time with a few friends, at least until I’m called again. The build is up for management review, so now, it’s just time for me to await the judgement….. ooh, the suspense, sort of. Well, I am just a “little” excited since it’s the first major contract build I’ve ever done for anyone, so there’s a lot being held over the fire, especially considering the exposure of my name and potential affect for better or worse on my reputation. Several long days, building, texturing, and then re-texturing again and again, to the management’s specifications and to just get the “right” feel for the place….. anyway, it’s done….. so yay!

Emma…. finally! I finally get to spend some quality time with my beloved Emma. I’ve missed her much in the past week, maybe spending 45 minutes to a hour with her in total. The aforementioned build had been taking an uber amount of my time….. sadly, that’s time I missed being with Emma. I can’t wait to snuggle up with my Emma and share the tales and trials of this past week.

The Dictatorshop…. Yes, I’ve ranted about it. The Dictatorshop mainstore is closed….. and for a short time (like a day), I was in a funk over it. Then, I decided…. well, feeling sorry for myself isn’t going to solve anything, so I went about doing what I had to do to get my vendors back online, first of all. I’ve been talking to a few private island owners, looking for a nice place to re-establish the Dictatorshop mainstore for the long-haul. There’s a few promising leads….. so, a new Dictatorshop store is just around the corner. I can now say, the Dictatorshop closing has had a major positive effect on my mindset and my fire for business has been flamed anew. A newer, more modern Dictatorshop will rise out of the crumbled ruins of the old…. it’ll be bigger, better, and far more competitive.

Onyx…. Some have questions and some have wondered, “Who is Onyx?”. Onyx was (and potentially still is, depending on his behavior) an investment on my part…. a quasi-friend, but like most men (sorry, guys) Onyx is stubborn, obnoxious, egotistical, and everything else I generally dislike about men….. the one thing which can’t be denied is his sheer scripting prowess. He’s no Fox Diller, but he’s pretty good….. Onyx wanted to make club stuff….. easy money he calls it…. camping chairs, games, HUDs, lights, etc. With the camping site that had set up behind my shop which was squeezing profit out of me…. big time…. and I’ll admit, I knew Onyx from previous experiences….. and he is interesting enough and smart enough to take a chance with…. so, I did. I took a risk, and I gave him enough money to buy land to start his business, told him the best way to get attention in the Search list, and how to drive traffic without using camping chairs. Anyway…. so, just after Onyx had gotten his land and started on building his store (quite frankly, Onyx sucks at building *points and laughs*)…. I was asked by a nice big R/L business if I was interested in building them a sim. So, of course…. I said yes. I was more or less sequestored away on a deserted island for a week…. while Onyx was doing whatever Onyx was doing…. which turned out to be lighting systems for clubs… it’s just a part of the club scene…. and when he first showed me what he can do he had given me a couple unique lights which he designed especially for e-Motion, I thought they would be a nice touch so I put them up without any thought. Big deal, right? A couple lights. The problem occured when one of my friends(ex) noticed Onyx’s business and flipped at me….. and I was kind of shocked…. well, mainly because….. while I was occupied with the sim, Onyx started a pure lighting business and was busy making a lot of lights…. and I mean a lot…. and my friend(ex) saw them in e-Motion and saw Onyx ’s store had a similar style of traffic generation system as e-Motion. So… that was it, bang, de-friended, no chance, no questions…. after almost a year of being friends. As soon as I found out what was going on there, I told Onyx to chill on the lights. Onyx didn’t quite get it…. but was willing to close down his light business if I would let him take over LaserTech. That would save us from having to take a “loss” on the land, so, that was done…. and when I finally went to visit Onyx’s store, he indeed kept his word and had his store closed and his products unchecked for sale with a sign up stating his intentions. Anyway…. so…. that was that. My friend still remained defriended…..

And while I liked friend dearly…. but I question…..

Did I deserve to be just tossed aside like that? No.

Did I have to ask Onyx to close his store? No.

Did Onyx have to close down his light store when asked? No.

Well, you know…. I was upset…. I wasn’t happy….. and well, a couple people said to me, maybe my friend was only my friend as long as he agreed with everything I did…..  and looking back at it now, this certainly seems to be the case, because up until now we never had any sort of “disagreement”. And even though I did everything to “right” the situation when it came to my attention…. it just didn’t matter to my friend. What does that tell you?

But now…. what about me? What do *I* get for my suffering? What do I get for having this “friend” drama thrown on top of me at the worst possible time? The Dictatorshop was being “camped” out and I was losing a lot of money. I was also concentrating on this incredible opportunity I was given…. to build a sim for a major business…. a fantastic chance to move beyond products and not having to worry about those lost sales…. this was where *all* my focus was supposed to be. Despite the Dictatorshop’s troubles….. I was elated and I was “happy”, and then I get that message…. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to revoke your friendship.” So…. that was it, my focus was lost on what I should have been concentrating on…. and I had more to worry about than I had to be happy about and it made concentrating on the build that much more difficult and I sort of fell into a slight “what does it matter” depressive slump…..

Anyway…..

So…. for my suffering…. what did I get? What do I get? Nothing! I sacrificed myself for someone else’s business for no reason….. certainly not for a friendship…. for someone who was just concerned about his bottom line….. but you know what I’ve come to learn from this…..

“FRIENDSHIPS ARE NOT BUSINESS DEALS” EVER!

You are not friends with someone because of what they make, or what they do, or what they are…. you’re friends with someone because of who they are….. and because of the fun you have with them, and the silly things you do together. If that’s not enough….. then it wasn’t much of a friendship to begin with.

Did I make any lights?? No….. hell, until the other day the only lights I personally saw from Onyx were the ones made for e-Motion. Like I said…. I was busy with the sim build…. What Onyx might have been doing hadn’t even crossed my mind up until this whole situation blew up. We were in our own seperate little worlds.

Now…. as for me, I’m friends with all sorts of people who make products which compete directly with me…. I don’t defriend people who ARE making products which directly compete with mine, let alone those who “might” be. Hell…. I even HELP my competition with scripting problems…. but I guess that’s just me. While I care about my business, I don’t worship the “Almighty Dollar”, and I care about my friends more.

So…. Onyx…. while not fussy about it…. closed his business because he did understand friendships are not business deals.

But what was my former friend’s action right after defriending me, and me trying to figure out what happened? “Go ahead and sell the lights! I’ll devalue mine so neither of them make any money!”

I didn’t want my friend to devalue his lights…. Why? I still cared…. and well, because I had this crazy little notion maybe if I fixed it and convinced Onyx to do something else besides lights…. things would go back to normal, but…. it hasn’t. And it won’t…. ever…. because…..

I thought about it…. and I thought long and hard…. and I’ve come to the conclusion that…..

MY FRIENDSHIP IS NOT A BUSINESS DEAL.

You are either friends with me because of the fun we have doing the silly stuff.

Or we weren’t friends at all…. and it was just a “convenience”.

And while I, personally, still don’t intend on making any lights…. I’ll never be a convenience to anyone ever again…. got it?

Good!

Now, deal with it!

Byebye! *Kisses her hand and slaps her ass*

Second Life is Unbecoming…..

Everything is just falling apart, one thing after another…. constantly. I’ve been occupied with this build I’ve been hired to work on, so I’ve been more or less been here for 12-16 hours a day in the last near week with only teleporting out once in a blue moon to spend a little time with Emma, but even that’s been reduced this past couple days now that it’s getting into crunchtime for this sim build.

Yes…. I closed the Dictatorshop….. the store anyway. I’m still going to run the vendors, though really…. it’ll be like a potential 500-600 USD loss in sales for me, not that it mattered since half the time nobody could get to my store anyway. The camp site started by the club behind the Dictatorshop more or less killed my abillity to do business….. killed my sales, prevented me and my customers from teleporting into my store most of the time…. and the Lindens’ answer to the whole thing was, “Screw you! It’s their land, we can’t help you!” Yeah, thanks a lot Linden Lab…. you cost me my business because of your hands off policy where someone who owns 10% of a sim can screw over the people who own the other 90%. I couldn’t afford to move again, and even if I did it would only be a matter of weeks before a nice new shiny club, casino, or camp site opened up next to me. After all, this wasn’t the first time I had to deal with the issue…. and had to move. The same thing happened in the Buckler sim, with a crappy club (go visit and see for yourself) running its 4000 or so scripts and saying, “Screw you! This place is unzoned! We’ll do whatever we want”. I’m getting tired of being chased out of sims, setting up somewhere pleasant (or even unpleasant like Knieff which was foggy snowland), and having it turn into a hell hole because of some stupid club setting up a campsite thinking their horrid club is going to make money because people who are too lazy to do something to earn money are sitting on their asses, clogging the sim, making 5 L every 10 minutes. Yeah, congradulations on your success!!! I’d hate to disappoint you club owners…. but 99% of clubs fail, close, and are replaced by an even uglier club than the one you owned. So anyway, Linden Lab no longer gets my tier….. they lose even more money from people buying L$ to buy my products….. but…. I’m just 1 in a million, what does it matter? I know how businesses think…. I’ve worked in a few major corps to know the philosophy is, “We don’t care if you leave because two more will replace you.”

…..the nature of Second Life.