As some of you have noticed, my in-world shops and Creative Academy have been closed for some time now, and very limited access to my parcels is set. Due to the inordinate amount of attention, I have received. I'm going to address why that is.

First of all, Let me make clear, that I am not against using Second Life roads. I welcome it. I like seeing what everyone is driving and laughing at some of the unusual creations. I miss it when Zipper Wurgle doesn't come by for a few days, or he flies his airplanes, because Zipper, is one creative person, and I like the creativity.

What I don't like is the rudeness that sometimes, and more often recently, comes with those who race.

First of all, I don't like racing on Mainland roads. It's too easy to get around parcel flags and bans. When I have filed ARs, I have asked that Linden Labs create a place where people CAN race. We have sailing sims, we have sims with railroad tracks, why not sims that have racing?
Anyway, I am getting a little bit ahead of myself here. Let's go back to when this started.

About 6 months ago there was this avatar who was racing by my parcels on Route 8 often. When I say often, I mean it was ALL THE TIME. He would race through, and then at the end of my parcels, he would fly through my shop and parcels to get back to wherever he came from instead of just teleporting. During his racing, he would race his car through my grotto, shop, and parcels because of the lag that not only accompanied his scripts, but because of many scripts of a careless neighbor too. Non-stop. One Saturday, it was over 200 times. No apology, no asking if it was ok, no explanation, no nothing. so I banned him. Well, he kept doing it and he was fast enough that the parcel flags didn't work to keep him out (He was banned,) the harassment continued, so he got AR'd.

I hate filing ARs. I do. At that time I had a neighbor with so many scripts, that every time I logged in, her scripts would crash my high-end NEW gaming computer. I just had to have patience with her and tolerated it, hoping she would go elsewhere, soon but I just lived with it. So when people are so rude and inconsiderate of the people around them that they keep doing the same stupid things over and over, I start considering my options. That is when I figured it was just easier to set my parcels to group only and be done with it. Nor more picking cars out of my shop. But this was just the beginning.

The next thing I know, I get an IM from a person, who will remain nameless, who DEMANDS I change my parcel permissions back because it's deleting people's cars. I told her no, and before I could explain why, she was calling me all kinds of foul names and using language that even caused my partner's eyebrows to raise, and HE was former Navy! He won't even come into Second Life because of AnnMarie O'Toole's humping spiders that used to pollute Second Life roads and her behavior sealed it.

Anyway, she got muted and perma-banned and I thought that was the end of it. I just figured she was a graduate of AnnMarie O'Toole's scripting academy and had the same ethics. I REALLY didn't want to go through that whole episode again.

Then I got a new security orb. Before I get into that, I need to explain I work in internet security/Gaming/Servers, etc. I hate that Second Life has been plagued with not only the Bonnie Bell Bots but the Brendan Bots among many others. I know the harm they can cause and the information harvested using them. I use them myself for not-so-nefarious purposes in information gathering, but many of those bots are not so nice.

Anyway, this new orb is GREAT. it takes the bot's behavior of jumping from sim to sim and bans due to that sim jumping. The problem is, it gets these people who race too. While for me this isn't a problem, for the racers, it is. Also, there are a lot of people in SL that have this orb too, so many times, these people are already banned by the time they get to my parcels.  They have to pass a captcha to get un-banned, but if they keep racing sim to sim, they get back on the ban list and many of them are butt-hurt because of it. But for me, it keeps the riff-raff out and lets me build in peace.

Now I know there are people out there who think ban lines on the mainland are bad, but some of us get griefed by these people who race or just do it for the lols. Then we have those who have over 1k scripts active (no, I'm not kidding, and sometimes it's even more,) then the scripts on their vehicles, and what are we supposed to do? They bring down sim performance and cause a LOT of lag and when that happens, their cars go into auto-pilot and they get stuck somewhere on our parcels. AnnMarie O'Toole all over again. Try building in that.

Then the aforementioned person (not AMOT) got mad when I refused to change my parcel permissions, she told her friends, LIES and exaggerated the situation so badly that I got hate notecards. Then I get people who think they are going to get me to change my mind and drop in for a not-so-nice chat or just to grief my parcel. Then when she can't get to me one way, she uses alts and proxies to do it another way. This is stalking. This is harassment. This is insanity.

So the parcels get set to access list only, my permissions and my bots permissions get set to no IMs, no accept for anything, and the autoresponse gets turned on. I set to lower tolerances, i.e. no one under 2 years and no one over 5 scripts, payments on files, etc.

I know people think this is the time we should get a private parcel, but not all of us have that option AND I do like living on the mainland. Except for the occasional weenie, I love having people over and seeing what I made as well as making new friends. I just refuse to have that abused and I refuse to get treated like crap. I PAY for my land and I would like a bit of respect, courtesy, and consideration. If you don't like seeing the ban lines, then turn it off in your preferences or just behave. Be aware that your actions may determine your access to someone's land.

I like seeing drivers using the road. It's neat to see people exploring Second Life. Second Life is an awesome place. It is just the few that ruin it for the rest of us and force us into doing things we would not normally do. I hope one day that I can turn these restrictions off and open my stores as well as the Creative Academy again, but after the last few episodes this week, I'm not sure it's going to be soon.