Today was the first day of camp, and it was crazy. Let me see if I can recap.
The day started off earlier than usual. I stayed up a little later than I wanted to last night, and then I set my alarm clock an hour earlier. The camp "Breakfast" is at 7:30am.. and honestly I really enjoyed that last camp. It was a great start to the day, and usually got me off and ready for all the best events in the 9:00a-5:00p block of the day.
There'd been some last minute talk about a big-kids get together before camp, but I was far more concerned about the fact that I owned 2 mesh shirts and a mesh pair of shorts, so when I got inworld, my first order of business was to hit a few store in search of a few new tops and a pair of pants. I ended up with 4 new tops, and 2 other pairs of shorts, and a pair of yoga pants... and the Hogwarts uniform set that I've been eyeing for ages.
Hufflepuff.
After that, I had a brief visit with Sesen (the neighborhood kitten and occasional human lady) to say my goodbyes before camp. Then, I took a quick trip to look at the collection of "Bunk decorations" that I had and had made, and I decided that yes, I'd like a corkboard for 'pinning up' pictures and notes. I dashed off a quick model of one, and then I packed up the pile of things and headed to the sandbox.
There, I finally tried adding the bangs from my old hair, to my new hair, and decided I didn't like it. Then I sorted through the hairs in the new set, found one with a dark texture like the old one, and set up a similar 'dark brown' look like I used to have.
Then finally back home to set up a new "base" outfit (with the new hair, a new set of basic underwear (important under mesh clothes) and with the mesh feet included on the av by default.
While I was working on that, Pygar rattled the can on the string, and said 'hey we're taking our waiting-for-the-bus pics, grab your luggage and come on over'. So, I got dressed, and did that!
We hung out for a while, taking pics and trying to remain calm. Eventually we ended up getting our camp backpacks, and almost moments later they were calling Cabin 1! (Mari's and my's cabin)
Technical issues were the order of the day. Mari and I took turns crashing, not having things load properly, restarting, etc.
When we finally got to the 'departure point" where parents are invited to come say their goodbyes and see their kids off, NONE of the worn meshes around me would load. I had to relog. As a result, everything was grey for a long time once I got back. Unfortunately, everyone else in my group was ahead of me due to the relog, and because an alpha texture covered a doorway we were supposed to walk through, I stood around for several minutes trying to guess where people were supposed to go before the solid grey wall resolved into a doorway.
Now don't mistake this for complaining. Technical issues are more common than not in SL these days. So many things are made of mesh, so many outfits rely on alpha masks, rigging, and avatar skeleton distortions.. and every plant and wall seems to quickly be becoming made of mesh. The grid is straining under the work of delivering all that data, and my computer surely isn't the only one that's having trouble rendering it. Not to mention my switch to wifi several months ago, and my failing hardware.
Toss into this kettle the impact of 20-50 avatars all trying to get into the sim at once.. all loaded down with Ao's, huggers, yuus/nuu huds, life huds, camp HUDS, and so on; not to mention the huge numbers of meshes that everyone is wearing.
It's a rough task to ask any computer, and wifi, and dsl, and SL, to handle. So it's no surprise that my somewhat aging, crash-prone system was having trouble.
Thankfully, I was able to get most of the textures to load in time to get some pictures.
The departure point was dressed up a bit like midwestern farm from what I could tell. We entered a sort of barn (again not all the textures had loaded by then) and we were fed into a sort of teller window queue line. Like you'd expect at an airport or train station. Since we started out in something resembling farmland, it was a bit of a shock to find metal detectors and roped queue lines inside.
They took our tickets that they'd just given us before (I really wish they'd let us keep them long enough to get a really good look at them, I wish I'd had the presence of mind to screenshot it, but again.. even with the queues, I was lagging behind the group because I kept trying to take pictures.
When we left the 'station'.. the door opened into more farmland. I began wondering what sort of transportation we would find. Wagon train? Horseback riding? Some kind of mule caravan into a great canyon?
I wasn't expecting a balloon ride!
My inner oldbie is still blown away by the idea that you can have more than 1 person sitting on a 30 'prim' vehicle. There were so many of us on that gondola.
I want to be able to tell you that the trip was exciting. Unfortunately I'd been hit by the need to document. It really does seem to come down to a choice between Roleplay OR Photography.
They did a really lovely job with this transportation scene. If I had any complaint at all, it's just that it was too darn fast! Should have lasted 3x as long, minimum! Let us dawdle in the clouds and soak it in.
Speaking of soaking, it started to rain a little.
The screaming gestures of the toddlers didn't seem so bad this time, though maybe it's because we had fewer of them this trip.. or perhaps it's just because I had my camera outside, taking pictures.
Interesting note, the first camp, I rode the train to camp without camming outside. I actually didn't know we were moving, and had assumed that the 'ride' was just effects played against a stationary train car. It wasn't until the camp video was posted that I realized we'd been on a mobile train.
This time, there was no doubt, and the outside was coming inside!
Mari's version of this pic is much better.
But just as suddenly as it started, the storm cleared.
This is unfortunately where technical issues bit me in the butt. The camp HUD is a device that uses the new experience tools to do a force teleport at a certain point. The screen goes white, and then we're teleported to a landed version of the balloon. Unfortunately, in all the excitement of attaching our huds at the last minute, I missed the popup that asked for teleporting permission. So while I stared at an unchanging solid white screen, making jokes about having died and gone to heaven.. everyone else was enjoying the conclusion of their arrival at camp.
There's more to talk about, but it will have to wait til morning. As it is, I'm not going to get near enough sleep before the alarm goes off again.
Nini
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