Johnux.com

Un-freakin-believable.

So this past…(thinks about what day today is) Saturday???– my Brother-in-law, sister, and her friend go off to Seattle/Olympia/Victoria for a week long photography journey. Around this time we are closing in on our new issue launch for whitespider online photography magazine. And we have a ton of content queued up for our new issue, should be a great one. Normally Eddie(my brother-in-law), who is my partner in Whitespider.org does most of the issue update. I would say as of the past few issues 95% of the work is done by him with me really only working on technical issues with our site and some of the absolutely terrible software we use. With him being gone we tried to balance out the work load for this issue a bit more by making a checklist of things for each of us to do. Sounded like a very achievable task.

Enter the new heroin…

So after their departure saturday morning I decide that the best thing for me to do since I’m not travelling in real life is to escape reality via the web. I go to my normal stomping grounds, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, some games, and IMVU. If you’ve never heard of or used IMVU, it is a 3d chat program where you use a virtual avatar to represent you. It’s not like a sandbox videogame where you can walk freely and play games but there is some movement allowed, customization of your homes/scenes and full customization of your avatars looks and movements. The thing that really keeps me going back to IMVU is the fantastic conversations I have will all of the interesting people I meet all over the world.

One of my friends from India brings up that she just began using Second Life, and that I should join her there. I’ve done the whole Second Life thing, and I never enjoyed it. From my experience it was a network resource depleter that even with a solid connectiong(by my standards) things were always a bit choppy. On top of that it seemed every person I ran into was a total perv. The motions were clunky, there was clipping everywhere, and I just never felt like I wanted to continue. I started off with a negative opinion about Second Life because of the terrible issues with their site and registration process with which every friend I’ve ever spoken to regarding it has confirmed this annoyance.

So I tell my friend, ya, add me on Second Life, I’ll re-install it. For some crazy reason, my internet connection picks up and ZOOOOOOOMS! I launch the network usage widget and to my disbelief I’m achieving transfer rates of 2.77mb/s! That’s 2,777,645b/s! So for the first time in my life, 2nd life isn’t failing to work for me because of my 1.5mb connection and crazy latency speeds. But where it does fail me is EVERYWHERE ELSE. Even giving Second life a “second chance” it does nothing but disappoint me. I tell my friend; “well, I hate 2nd life, you’re tired of IMVU, Google’s Lively is so bad I question googles tactics and well, everything now… Where does this leave us?”

Luuuuke, come over to the vSide!!!

I forgot one small program in this mix, vSide. I had only used vSide for a matter of minutes in the past due to me leaving for a vacation right after installing it. I say hey, this deserves another chance, let’s install it.

9am, Saturday morning.

I decide I like vSide, and I continue to play it. My Indian friend decided she didn’t want to try it, she stuck with Second Life, good for her. I continue to play on vSide. I meet new friends, go to clubs, walk around the city, have my own loft… I play more vSide.

4am Sunday morning.

My eyes won’t stay open, I set myself to away, and jump backwards and into bed.

11am Sunday morning.

I get up, go to the fridge, get some water, and walk back into my bedroom. I notice my laptop has more chat records on screen than the FBI from all of my Instant Messengers. I take a quick glance, and ignore the shit out of them. All of them. I look at my phone, a text message, 2 missed calls, and 9 emails. I ignore those as well.

11:15am, Sunday morning.

I like vSide, I decide to play it.

5:30am Monday morning.

Suns up, why am I. I jump backwards and into bed.

9am Monday Morning.

I wake up, go to the fridge, grab even more water. I walk back into my bedroom and glance over at my laptop. As far as I can tell it’s littered with little squigly lines of nonsense text from just about everyone I know; I shut the lid. I like vSide, let’s login to vSide.

6am, Tuesday Morning.

My eyes won’t remain open on their own. I hold them open with my hands, but then I cannot type or control my avatar. I fall asleep on my floor under my desk for a while, then crawl into bed.

8:30am Tuesday Morning.

Well thank goodness for seeting an Outlook reminder on my phone with an alarm, otherwise I would have missed an appointment to do some work. I get dressed and get in my car and remember that I don’t have very much fuel, and my car needs new brakes in the worst way. I also think a bolt from the exhaust is now missing because the car is vibrating very violently. Good, it woke me up. I go do some work, and I head home.

11:30am Tuesday Morning.

I pass out on my bed with my shoes on.

1:00pm Tuesday Afternoon.

My laptops lid is still shut. Good. I wonder who’s at my favorite club on vSide. Did I mention I like vSide? Oh water, I need some water. Leaving the house reminded me that the sun still exists and that he’s still an asshole. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

1am, Wedensday Morning.

The club has cleared out and there are but a couple of idle friends in the world of vSide. I’ve found all of the hidden things in Tyra Studios clubs. I don’t want to go to other islands by myself, my legs and back kind of hurt. I sign out of vSide.

1:30am, Wedensday Morning.

Things look a bit differently. The color yellow is everywhere in real life. My dogs are staring at me. Air tastes good… I’m freakin hungry! My head is starting to hurt. I think I’ve lost some weight. I smell less than amazing. I need to check my email. Oh ya, Eddie and my sis are on vacation, let’s check his blog. Wow, they’ve done some amazingly cool things. Holy shitballs, it’s Wedensday! Just over an hour ago it was Tuesday the 9th. The new “The Sounds of Animals Fighting” album came out, I was really excited about buying that. If today is the 10th, and yesterday was the 9th, that means that the 7th has already come an passed? Wow, there went the whitespider deadline.

Current time, 2:12am, Wedensday Morning.

I’ve missed my deadlines. I’ve neglected my family, my friends, my pets, my health, my clients, IRC, IM friends, and any normal day to day life experiences. Do I regret doing so? Do I feel like life has passed me by? Do I feel like I’m a waste of skin and advanced biological engineering? Yes, to all of those, but I like vSide.

You might be asking yourself things like; what is vSide like? What do you do? What’s my name on vSide?  What’s great about it? What’s bad about it?

I could write a very thorough review on it. There are good things, bad things, speciffic details. But that would cut into me going right back into it, right after hitting publish, so I say goodnight.