After much consideration, I have decided to remove my coverage of Babe’s kittens. I’m not going to be adopting one of them after all, while I still love cats, I won’t be sharing about Babe’s kindle anymore.
Last week I decided it was time to backup my laptop and have another go at installing SolydK 12. I installed it back in December but something was nomming hard drive space like there was no tomorrow so I quickly went back to SolydK 10. But I have SolydK 12 installed and I can finally run all sorts of shiny programs. The screenshot of my new desktop has a photo of Babe, my neighbor’s feline, that was taken in August.
SolydK is my preferred Linux distribution, and version 12 comes with Plasma version 5.27.5 and runs on Debian Bookworm. Among the programs I can finally run are the Calibre ebook reader version 6.13 and version 6.6.17.70368 of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life. Plus, I can finally run the brand-new beta of Firestorm version 7.1.3, which has the new PBR functionality of Second Life. No, it isn’t named for a can of beer, and it’s not codenamed Peanut Butter, although many of us do refer to it as Peanut Butter. It stands for physically based rendering, and rather than try to explain it myself, I’ll just let the always awesome Inara Pey tell you about it. But it does mean one thing I can explain quickly: Second Life has actual mirrors now! Granted, they’re not great mirrors as I write this, but they’re semi-functional mirrors. Yippee!!!!
As you can see from the sticky note in the desktop screenshot, I’m not having any unexplained hard drive space loss this time, and I’ve got my recording software reinstalled. I’ll be working with that in the coming days, especially since my new audio interface arrives on Tuesday. I’ll be writing a full article about that once I’ve started using it.
It’s getting late, and Babe is already letting me know it’s time for bed, so I’ll leave you with the images I made for this article. As my (admittedly arsehole) brother used to say, be good, and if you can’t, be good at it.
I finally got the video of Babe the kitty, or the “goddamned kitty cat” as George Carlin once put it, is finally up. It’s her proper introduction to the white stuff she saw falling from inside, and she’s definitely not like other felines on YouTube. A lot of cats get into the snow and have a ball with the cold white stuff, but not Babe. Her primary human put her down on the snowy ground, and let’s just say it made for a very short video. She’s usually a very quiet kitty, but she makes her displeasure quite known when she finds the kitchen door closed to not let the heat out.
Needless to say, Babe was mad at her “dad” for putting her down in the snow and not letting her back in fast enough. And she was pissed at me, her “aunt,” for getting a video of it. Thank the Great Mother she didn’t do what a friend suggested and lock us both outside.
I meant to write a post for the end of 2023, but I didn’t get it finished to share it before the year ended. I have jury duty, and I finally got picked for a trial, so my time for doing things online is a lot leaner than it usually is. Still, I wanted to share a few things before we got too far into January 2024.
I’m still kind of amazed at the fact that my Bois en Bleu, the Los Angeles Dodgers, not only signed Shohei Ohtani but they also won the Yoshinobu Yamamoto lottery. They also got Tyler Glasnow and Manuel Margot, and Mookie Betts will be the regular second baseman in 2024. Unfortunately, between the new signings and the expected return of Gavin Lux, who spent 2023 on the IL recovering from a torn ACL, it looks like Kiké Hernádez won’t be back in Dodger Blue in 2024. Hopefully, his improved performance back in LA will help him get the contract he deserves.
The next cause of worry is super utility player Chris Taylor. If Miguel Rojas is the everyday starter at short and Teoscar Hernández is the everyday left fielder, CT3 could have to go back to riding the pine most of the season. Chris is always to contribute wherever he’s needed, but I’m disappointed that he’s back to being a backup instead of a starter.
And we still have to see what Clayton Kershaw is going to do. He isn’t as dominant as he used to be, and he’s been spending more time on the IL with each season. I hope he gives one more season to LA and doesn’t retire or, even worse, finish out his career in Texas. It’s rare to have a player spend their entire career with a single team, but seeing Kersh in another uniform would look even more weird than seeing Cody Bellinger in a Cubs uniform.
In the spring, I got referred to a new doctor who put me on the Mediterranean Diet. I quickly remembered a Garfield comic strip from the 70s where he called a diet “a die-wih-a-t.” I told my doctor that the things I would need to get at the grocery store for the diet are pretty expensive for someone on disability, and I was right. While I did pretty well on it for the first few months, but my budget got stretched so thin that it was hard to get the good food I should be eating all month. Grocery prices may still be going down, but it’s still hard to make sure I have decent food to eat all month, and I’ve noticed myself getting less nutritious food to complete menus for any given month. The fact that I’m still a fiend for good fried chicken doesn’t help.
I thought I had found a great social media platform to use after Elon Musk bought (and trashed) the bird platform. After the attacks of 7 October, I discovered that my support of the civilians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank wasn’t very welcome there. I refuse to use any platform owned by Meta due to all the hate and BS, so I’m basically off of social media. It’s good though, because it freed up some time in my days for other things.
I still need to reopen my virtual t-shirt store in Second Life, and I’m moving my real-life merchandise back to Spreadshirt this year. If you want to keep up with the happenings with my merch, you can keep an eye on things on the Nanci’s Naughties website. When I get my Spreadshop set back up, I’ll announce it there. With the war in the Gaza Strip expected to continue for several months, I’m considering adding the virtual posters I made to support the Palestinians to my real-world store. I really should have done that a few months ago, and I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to make money off the Palestinians’ suffering. I simply want to give people a way to show their support for people who are routinely treated like they’re poop that needs to be scraped off a person’s shoe.
As I wrote in May, I am the proud owner of a virtual bowling center in Second Life, the Pride Lanes Bowling Center. It’s not a very busy place, and I need to look at giving more folks reasons to visit. I tried using a machine to give out free Linden dollars (the currency in Second Life) to get people to go to the bowling center, but they only stayed around long enough to get paid. If you like to bowl in real life and you’re in Second Life, I hope you’ll head over to Pride Lanes and see how much fun bowling in Second Life can be You don’t even need to worry about renting bowling shoes, and I’ve even bowled in high heels without twisting an ankle or falling on my arse.
I’ve loved cats my whole life, but my budget is usually so tight that Abe Lincoln has gotten laryngitis from screaming so much. As a result, I haven’t felt I could be a good primary human to a feline. Earlier this year, my upstairs neighbor catsit for someone in the hospital, and Mr. Jack came down often to spend time in my half of the house. When Jack went back to his primary human, my neighbor realized he really liked cats after always preferring dogs. One of my neighbor’s friends heard there was a pair of abandoned kittens in New York, and the kitties moved in upstairs. It was a brother and sister, Tommy and Babe, but Tommy got too aggressive, so he had to go to a new home. It worked out better because Tommy thrives in his new home, and is loved by everyone in his new building.
I’ve become Babe’s “aunt,” and she’s gotten the run of the entire place. She comes down several times daily to see what’s happening downstairs, and I spoil her with treats and toys from time to time. Her primary human doesn’t have a climbing toy upstairs, so I built her a cat condo from cardboard boxes. She now has several places to get a nap, and she loves having a maze and a higher place to sit.
I’ve started posting some videos of Babe to my YouTube channel, and I have a video of her getting introduced to snow that I need to get online. Many felines like the snow, but Babe isn’t one of them. I was surprised at how fast she turned around when she got off the porch.
As I said in May, I started working on a pair of songs I had written years ago. Life got in the way, and neither song has a demo recorded. I finally worked on the second song again last month, and the chord progression for the song’s intro reminds me of the solo section of Del Shannon’s Runaway. The melodies are very different, but the underlying chord progressions are similar. I hope I can share it before it’s time to celebrate Pride Month.
Last month, I did something terrible to my computer and had to do a clean install of SolydK Linux. I’m not saying what I did because I’m not sure what I did, but I was losing available disk space at a prodigious speed. Having to do a clean install of my daily work computer wasn’t a great thing to have to do, especially since I had to get into Second Life every day to get goodies from advent calendars.
I finally reinstalled some software to record demos of my music, but I still need to get fully set up for recording. The plan is to write an article on what I installed once I have something musical to share with it. I still need to get some gear to make proper recordings, but with my tight budget, I plan on seeing what my current setup can do. I’m going to see if I can use my Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp and my phone to record some guitar tracks. I miss making music, both from the creative and production sides. I was a recording engineer when I lived in New Orleans, but it was hard to get a job at a studio with all the students in Boston when I moved up here in 1989.
I hope I can be even more productive in 2023 than I was in 2023. Once the trial I’m on the jury for finishes, I’ll be able to create a decent working routine. I hope to give you more reasons to visit My Two Lives in the coming year. There is a whole heap of question marks ahead of us between the US elections, the war in Palestine, and life’s seeming predisposition to throw more on our plates than we thought we could handle. Remember, you’re better than you think you are. You’re worth more than you think you are. You’re more loved and appreciated than you probably know. The more the haters want to put you down, the higher the possibility that they’re trying to keep you from knowing the full value of your being on this planet.
Today there was a party for users of the Firestorm Second Life viewer and afterward, I did some exploring of Firestorm’s sims. Joining me was Eliza, my new feline from We Love Pets. This Eliza is a tuxedo kitteh just like the Eliza stuffed animal I have in my RL home. I’d originally named this kitteh Sarah Jane, but I realized that my RL Eliza is a tuxedo cat, not a black cat, so I swapped their names.
We started off in the Firestorm Dow Forest, where we found these beautiful waterfalls. The picture doesn’t do the view justice, and a little farther down the path, we found a nice place to just sit, chillax, and enjoy the view for a bit.
I know I should probably make Eliza a little bigger, but it seems her size changes between being on my shoulder and being on the ground. Yes, where the landowners allow it I can set Eliza down and she’ll explore the area. I can even set a distance so she never gets too far away. I can also change the color of her collar, and I can change her sunglasses to coordinate with my wardrobe. I can even take them off her completely, but I love having my cool kitteh. Her future’s so bright, and all that.
I shared this picture on Twitter because it’s such a great shot. I don’t see the old woman who lives here with her gaggle of little ones, but of course, she’s a grown-up flower child. But can we get a cobbler out here? Her home could use some TLC.
I found a great memorial to some of Firestorm’s support team members. I had to ask in the Firestorm Support channel in SL but I love that there’s this area for people to find. I’ll post more pictures in the slideshow below.
As I walked around the sim I saw this island, and if you didn’t know it’s all code you might think it’s a real place somewhere. I love how the clouds reflect off the water. I considered changing the atmosphere settings, but it looks so good why mess with it, right?
I also came across the ghost town with its abandoned carnival. Unlike most ghost towns, though. all the games still work, including the swing. I’m really glad Eliza doesn’t get motion sickness. That would have gotten messy in a hurry.
I have one more picture from our excursion because I saw this sign and had to take a picture. How well it knows me, right? This girl loves her burgers, although she usually just cooks one a week. There are so many other things to cook each week, you know?
I wandered around a bit but I know there is still a lot more to explore. One of these days Eliza and I will pop back over again some time now that I know some of what’s here. You can use a teleport board to move around, but I really like walking around. It reminds me of the days I’ve spent walking around the Franklin Park Wilderness.
In addition to my stuffed kitteh at home, I had gotten a feline for my home in Second Life (mine is black, but I can’t find it on the marketplace now), but I was recently told about the kittens over at Jian and I love the little darlings! Not only can I rez more than one, but I have one that will follow me wherever I go. The one thing I don’t have just yet is a shoulder kitteh, but I’m looking for one.
At the suggestion of a friend in SL, I took a picture of me and my babies to hang in my SL home. Of course, I had to post it online so I can share it with folks not on SL.
In the front are Coco, Clara, and a shark cat bed with two kittehs who aren’t named (they are part of the bed, alas). In the back are Eliza (who looks like a bear in this picture), my SL avatar Nanci, and my companion kitteh. Clara is usually upstairs on my second floor but I brought her downstairs for the picture. The companion kitteh doesn’t have a name yet, but I’ll have to name her soon so I can introduce her as she explores Second Life with me. The companion kitteh has a name! She is now Sarah Jane, as in Sarah Jane Smith, the journalist who traveled with our favorite Gallifreyan. She makes the second kitteh named after one of the Doctor’s companion because Clara is named for Clara Oswin Oswald.
For the record, and for those who don’t remember, Eliza is named for Eliza Schuyler Hamilton as played in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton by Phillipa Soo (and several others). Coco isn’t so much named for anyone, but one of my friends on Dodgers Twitter is Coco, and she recently lost her longtime canine companion so her name was available in my mind, as was the name of the Oscar-winning Disney/Pixar movie.
Updated 10:25 pm: I’ve changed my companion kitteh. I like the kitteh following me around, but I want a cat I can carry in my arms, or better yet wear as a shoulder cat. I found the Kitty AIO UnLeashed cat on the Second Life Marketplace. I now present the new Sarah Jane.
She has several poses she uses, including one upside down (silly cat), and she can also dance and do flips! If she’s on my arm I can pet her, but she purrs quite a bit on my shoulder, in fact, I’ve had to turn down her volume because she’s been so loud in my ear.
I may have to replace my Jian cats with other cats like Sarah Jane, but I need to think about that. One annoying thing about the Jian cats is that they walk through the walls of my house and I keep getting errors that I can’t rez objects there.
Updated 13 July: Silly me realized the Eliza in my RL flat is a tuxedo cat, not a solid black cat, so I’ve swapped the names for Eliza and Sarah Jane. In the picture of my kitties above, the cat at my knees is now Sarah Jane and the companion cat to the right of me is now Eliza. Sorry, girls!
