and if you don't have anywhere to go, you go down on the pedal and you're ready to roll

Anyone not living in the current USA might find this tale difficult to believe, but as an American, I can tell you--while it's appalling and wrong, it's also standard operating procedure at this point. After all, we've had people detained for hours at airports for reading Prisoners of Azkaban in line; what's a little terrorist accusation for a comics artist between paranoid, suspicious enemies?

Also, the category changes for the Marketplace are in! I'd list the changes, but there's a ton, so read through the wiki to better make sense of them all.

Also II, this is one of the stranger ads for noodle soup mix out there, but damn, it sold me, and I don't even live in Japan. I am honestly tempted to go to our local Asian market and hunt it down, so I'd say as ads go, that's a very successful one.

Also III, I'm amused by people calling their spokesperson the Asian Robert Downey Jr.

[And also IV: An anonymous friend told me I was wrong on the derivation of the noodle soup--it's Korean!]

This is a lovely thing, but I think it would be a collectible only--actually using it to hold beer would result in alcohol abuse, as it would pour through the rings.

While wandering around the grid tonight, I got a dropdown message I'd never seen before:

"We are sorry, Linden Lab has discovered degraded performance on your connection to the sim you are on. You will need to restart Second Life and log into a new region for the next 30 minutes to an hour. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Really? I was able to port home, the message disappeared, then reappeared, so...I logged out. Strangest thing.

Finally, what do you get when you combine the Powerpuff Girls and Minecraft vidders? Well--at least if you're talking about the three Canadians in the bunch, VintageBeef, Etho and PauseUnpause--you get this. Which is disturbing enough in its own way.

Though I think VintageBeef really does rock that little blue dress.

and it's starting to get, you know, a little uncomfortable

Woke up this morning to another anonymous comment saying Google was the best search engine imaginable. What the hell are they on? And Google is now paying spammers to hit blogs? Have they lost their minds??

But on to SL matters. After seven crashes, trying to build, I finally decided okay, that's enough of Snowglobe, and hopped to Emerald. The first two windows I saw scared the hell out of me. First, this message, which, in four years, I have never, ever seen:

Unable to save shape to central asset store.
This is usually a temporary failure. Please customize and save the wearable again in a few minutes.

If this problem persists, please click on the 'Tools > Report Bug' pull down menu and provide details about your network setup.

This was followed by a drop-down menu that said "Failed to find body part in database."

It got worse, though, when I started to click windows closed. Apparently, there was that inability to save anything--eyes, skin, jacket, pants, undershirt, shirt, panties, socks, and shoes--followed by "Failed to find clothing in database" messages.

I went home; logged out; logged back in on Snowglobe. I was ghosted, so I grabbed a quick shape-shift and then set down to the business of actually getting dressed. Which I found I could not do. I tried everything; everything said "cannot find in database". Now I was getting worried. I cleared cache, logged out once more, logged back in under Snowglobe, and changed to my emergency avatar. Still ghosted. I changed my group, my shape, and my bald cap. Still ghosted. I logged out again.

I logged back in under CoolSL, and voila, everything I thought I'd been in previously showed up. Okay, step one: good. Step two: changing into what I want to wear--in two minutes, not the fifteen I thought I had!--and getting over to the Solace sales office. It was a struggle just to get any outfit to rez in, let alone be selected. I ended up in mostly system layers, gritting my teeth.

At which point I opened my time card to record the time I arrived and saw this:

*

I closed it, and opened it again. Now it seemed to say

?*a?

I closed it again.

Fawkes: Evening love. How goes the hell of building?
me: Hellish
It's getting worse
Fawkes: That bad? That doesn't sound very good. What's wrong?
me: First: any time I get near another avatar, I crash
Second: if I port to a sim that has any lag at all, I crash
Third: if I pull my inventory in, I crash
Fourth: It's telling me most of my skins, shapes, eyes, hair, shoes and clothing are missing and cannot be found in the database
Fifth: It won't save notecards
Sixth: if I move, I crash
me: This is the definition of Not Good.

I checked the grid status:

[RESOLVED] Asset Server Issues
Posted by Status Desk on August 6th, 2010 at 07:32 pm PDT

[RESOLVED 06 Aug 2010, 08:49pm PDT] The asset server issues have been resolved at this time.

[Posted 06 Aug 2010, 7:29pm PDT] We are currently experiencing some isolate asset server issues. This may present delays in viewing textures and some teleport failures. We are investigating the cause, please check back here for updates.

Hmm. But that was supposedly yesterday...

Meanwhile, the grid remains very, very unstable and I have at least three more hours in the Solace Beach sales office before I can flee screaming. Pray for me.