Another midnight at the Lonely Yak Roadhouse, another empty bottle of motor oil.

Bartender's also the deejay, and he's prone to jumping on the bar and grinding in circles instead of getting everyone another drink.

"This crap's synthetic, you son of a bitch," I growl, and he shrugs.

Damn synthetic oil. Doesn't have the flavor of the natural stuff. I know the synthetic's better for me, but do you see my mechanic anywhere around?

Hell no. Car mechanics, maybe, but windup mechanics?

They're artisans, eh. Craftsmen and tinkerers.

Not just your average greasemonkey can keep a windup looking as good as me, dammit.

I mean, sure, I've got a few scuffs, some dents, but that's all a part of Second Life, right?

Where's that damn bartender?

Dammit... I... well, it just tipped over and... stupid grid.

Worst part is when I keep folding up and my head goes up my ass. You humans, you've got flexible spines, but it takes windups like me half an hour on a 50-ton press to get back in alignment after a few of those.

Okay, so I know that's Ducky's alt, but still, what is it about her alt that's so much... well, better than Ducky? I mean, that's crazy, right? It's the same person, and yet, it's not the same person.... or two people at once... or...

I'm so confused. Maybe Andi might be able to explain it to me. Or Raz. Or Cog.

Ebel's so full of crap. Robots do get depressed.

Especially when nobody's getting them another round. Come on, folks... Valvoline? Mobil? Penzoil?

Anyone? Just one bottle, I'm good for it.

Dammit, I just need one more bottle. I swear, I'm good for it, I'll just go camping somewhere and I've got a big check coming and I can sell some of these outfits in my wardrobe, 'cause it's not like I wear anything other than this or the white suit and...

No, I'm not going to dance at the clubs again. I don't care what they pay there.

Besides, with Voice, I can't compete with the other dancers. Because... because I've got a cold. And my sound card's broken. And I gotta stay quiet because everyone's trying to sleep and... and... I need to get a new microphone. And... and...

Sure, you're just a no-label generic motor oil, but that's really the good stuff... the stuff we windups really like after a hard day's shopping and building and scripting. Something that goes with the gritty, hard-edged music.

No stupid Andy Williams tunes pimping you like those crapty clear Eurobeers. No, you're a sweet, dark petrodrunk just waiting for me to pop the top and chug down.

*sigh* She's just like her other self. No key in her back.

Oh well.

Nobody's perfect.

No thanks, I don't need a TP home... I'll just hit control-crap H and... and... control... shift... H.... dammit, not the History... control... control...

Oh, fine. Take my teleport HUD away from me. I'll just sleep in the back.

Maybe there's some cases of oil back there.

Just one more, that's all I need.

Just one more.

Poor Jane2. Abandoned by a crashed-out Rocky, left behind by a busy RL Jane.

She looked so sad there, standing alone on that couples dance ball.

So...

Oh hell yeah.
Oh hell yes.
Gotta put on that party dress.

Last dance with Jane McMahon
One more time to kill the pain
I feel lag is creepin in and I'm
Tired of this sim again

Well I don't know what Ive discussed
You never wind down, you never grow rust

I was introduced and we both started movin
She said, "I hate prim-babies, they're always chat-spammin"

And then, Rocky came on the stream and said he'd crashed, he was coming back, and I knew the moment had to end.

Bon soir, mon ami!

Well, it was a busy night. Wanted to check out Matthew Perreault live at Circe's Luxor, then BTMC, then Hotspur's rezday, and then a little building.

Oh? The folks are Boxing Day Dancing at Yak?

Well, let's head on over...

And then, the chatter happens... Bush Derangement Syndrome... we're all liberals here, right? ... yadda yadda yadda... can't... take... the... madness...

Uh oh. Problem with the viewer. Too much moonbattery makes heads explode.

Oh no! The Prim Reaper!

Someone call a tow truck, please?

I wonder what they're doing tomorrow night?

You know, it's been forever since I've done a dance-and-build contest.

Anyone up for an "Eight Prims To Hold You" on Sunday afternoon?

Two Holy Sonnets by John Donne combined at The Lonely Yak last night:

Hrm... need to find my nose-glasses.

I'll just catch some of Paisley's New Years set at Freestar's island:

Woot! Um... er...

Sim crash.

Blech.

I heard that the Lonely Yak Roadhouse might be changing locations...

I hope they move closer. And somewhere I can rez my couch so I don't have to sit on the ceiling fan.

Joaquin Gustav is playing at the Lonely Yak right now.

I'm using Babelfish to spout my usual madness:

Recepci�n a los yacs solos Roadhouse. No mire para arriba mi falda. El hombre pasado que miraba para arriba mi falda est� vendiendo los l�pices en una esquina de la calle. �l ten�a tales ojos verdes bonitos. Ahora los mantengo un tarro.

�Aqu� est� una cierta informaci�n sobre nuestros anfitriones! La belleza legendaria de Jane ha ganado su fama, fortuna, y un lanzamiento temprano de la prisi�n. Rocoso despierta a menudo para encontrarse para limitar y amordazado por los enanos.

... and so on.

Lonely Yak is at Blakslee now:

Riding the ceiling fan works.

Riding Smittygal works too.

Someone put a yak on the ceiling...

Rule #1 of Second Life - Everything is a chair.

TallGuy Kidd (aka Dale Marsh) played the Lonely Yak Roadhouse tonight, and he had some houseguests from Iowa who played a few numbers during his set.

So, it turns out they were heading down to Houston to play at Anderson Fair tomorrow.

That's on my way home from work, eh.

I'll be offline tomorrow, hitting Katz's Deli for dinner and catching these folks at Anderson Fair afterwards.

Capos Calderwood (aka Alex Whitmore) finished off the night for The Lonely Yak:

I gotta say, after the initial problems with rezzing and texture access (Cogsworth and Sidewinder popped in to check that out), that Havok 4 engine and server update on BlaksleeWorld handled the load of 30+ avatars dancing nicely.

The stats didn't twitch all that much when avatars came and went.

Here's hoping that's a good sign of things to come.

So, here I am, trying to come up with a series of products that the crazy Martian Industries technicians could develop under the Lonely Yak brand name to compete with the Clever Zebra offerings...

• The 1-Seat, 4-Sim Amphitheater
• The Ultimate Clocktowers And Statues Of Founders Generic Academic Build
• Invisible Branded Shirts

But I'm hitting a brick wall here.

So, what useless and silly generic items do you think Lonely Yak should be peddling in their gift shop like those twenty-dollars-for-a-burger whores at Hard Rock Cafe?

So, Max-a-sim Kleene gets booked for a Saturday night on Havok-4 enabled sim BlaksleeWorld in the Lonely Yak Roadhouse:

The crowd builds up slowly... 40... 42... 43... Raz ponders raising the sim limit from 60 to 70...

Heh. As if.

He jacks it to a 100 quickly for an impromptu Havok 4 test!

Oh this is going to be fun... 70... 75... 80... 90... 95... 96... 98... 99... 100!

And the server's running .15 to .25 time dilation effect, script load peaks over 22.4 big time, but it still runs. I'm getting 1 or 2 frames per second, which is about the same as if a normal sim were chugging along with 50 avatars or so in motion.

Just keeping an eye on the crowd... just one troublemaker... sitting on tipjars is a good indicator something's up.... and... yeah, gets out of line when told to get off of it... backchatter... gone.

At 90 to 100 avatars, people start rezzing below the venue because they fall through the floor on arrival:

I wonder if that's a factor of the floor not showing up for them on time prim-wise, or if that's a factor on the arrival routine not finding a clear space for them at the landing point.

All this thinking... not good for a simple mechanical servant gone rogue...

Oh well.

Smittygal turns one:

Did she come into SL because of my idiocy, or was it Rocky dragging her into this thing after I lured him in?

I'm sure it's all my fault somehow. I just know it.

You know, she used to write these noir-style 100 word stories in the day.

Maybe when it's time for Weekly Challenge #100 she'll come back.

Or...

Nobody dips like the robot, kids.

Resist my charms? There ain't enough sides on dice to make that saving throw.

Okay, so I forgot to plug Open Mike in advance...

That's what the calendar up there is for, eh. Subscribe to it, get alerts, blah blah blah.

Kaklick started things off, and then I had to hop for something at Colette's before getting some work done on the Rezzable build.

Many thanks to Eshi for the pointers, help, and textures to liven up the build.

I can't post any snapshots because of the embargo, which is cool by me.

Lots of neat folks building over there. Lots of names that got me going "Wow."

Mark your calendar for Saturday November 29, 2008 - 7PM

Tired of hopping from live music event to live music event, poseball to poseball? As tired of it as leftover turkey and stuffing?

Why not settle down for some good old fashioned tall tales and storytelling at the Lonely Yak with completely unfamous writer Laurence Simon (Crap Mariner), author of the 100 Word Stories Podcast.

Other authors who appear on the podcast's Weekly Challenge are being invited to present their own similarly-brief tales.

The festivities begin at 7, or when Dick Cheney clears out the broken glass from the night before.

(Sadly, we can't ship you a nice pepperoni pizza to break the monotony of the turkey.)

Hopefully Chivalrybean, Caleb, Evamoon, and a few others can make to so that it's not just me rambling for an hour.

Already added it to Second Life's events listings. I'll put up a poster and landmark giver soon.

Here's my usual simple design:

Gotta love that typing monkey.

Head over to The Lonely Yak on BlaksleeWorld at 7PM SLT for some free-form storytelling...

I'll be pulling a few of my favorites out of the recent archives, but I really don't want to hog the stage this time around - there's plenty of others like ChivalryBean Ragu ready to knock me off the hardwood.

I got several messages during and after the storytelling gig at The Lonely Yak asking when it would start.

Me, I'm a storyteller and a tinkerer. This whole "promotions" and "advertisement" and "marketing" think is a bit of a cloudy mystery to me.

If folks see the posters and blog entries and Twitter/Plurk squeaks, well, cool. If not, no worries, eh.

Thanks to Jane for suggesting we do one of these after the Thanksgiving holiday and everyone who came out of their tryptophan comas.

Extra-special thanks to Justin, Caleb, and Smitty from preventing this from being just a boring solo act Hopefully Anima will get her Voice going again and others will have a chance to get their thespian on for a December medley of madness.

Back to the Yak, or over to Moondust for The Newggenheim/Jackson Street?

Alidar Moxie released a really simple and useful countdown timer recently:

CountdownTimer

Buy this gadget and the next words from you mouth can be "Start the countdown! Whether it's counting down to your next Big Event or the opening of the next Big Movie/Concert or the next election, you will be prepared with this handy, simple-to-use gizmo. You can either:

a) Rez it and have a simple countdown timer to some event. To use it for that purpose, just edit the SETTINGS notecard and maybe put new notecards in it for before and after the timer goes off to explain Why the Countdown. Settings are pretty easy. Countdown time is the time to count down to YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM format (Hour is 24-hour format).

b) Write your own scripts to do more advanced things with the device. If you're not a scripter, this next part is going to be tricksy ... The countdown is controlled via linked message, specifically the 'num' parameter of the linked message. The enclosed 'Coundown Controller - Simple Example' should include all of the information a scripter needs to write their own scripts. The 'Countdown Controller - Running Example' is the script actually running the clock.

If you have any questions you can IM or drop a notecard to Paypabak Writer or send an e-mail to info@mechanizedlife.com. Visit my Web site at http://www.mechanizedlife.com/ or my wiki at http://mechanizedlife.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page.

If you want to keep in touch for future events and updates, join our “MechanizedLife Updates” group either in the store or via searching for the group. I won't spam you—promise!

Thanks a million,

Alidar Moxie

Version History
----------------------
1.0 Initial Offering

Copyright © 2008 Alidar Moxie

You can check out Mechanized Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Chindogu/17/195/24.

It's only 5 prims - won't break your prim budget.

I figure The Yak count use one, so:

As if they need reminding of that event, right?