Friday, April 6, 2007

Private Island

 Mordecai's New Look
Written 5 April, 2007

Private Island

For a couple of months now my brother Mordecai Scaggs and I have had plans to go 50/50 on a private island. Our own sim, half steampunk and half volcano!

Selling my properties in Dreamland and my First Land on the mainland would come close to giving me the $800 down payment I need for my half of the $1600 purchase price, but even so I’ve been sweating it. I’ve been trying to set some money aside, but you know how that goes. Your truck needs to go in the shop. Your cordless phone dies. The electric bill is bigger than expected. You absolutely _have_ to have that outfit!

Now I’ve come into some unexpected money—not a lot, but enough to move forward on the half sim, and perhaps even enough to buy a sim of my own.

I had a nice chat with Mordecai last night. He had been wanting to see the Dragon Skybar, and I wanted to touch base with him about our sim, so I teleported him over and we sat in chairs on the deck and talked via Skype.

Mordecai has been stuck with an extra $135 US tier fee and has the same sort of things breaking down issues I have, so he, he informed me, is at least two months out from having the money.

I love Pele. I have everything I need here—a volcano, a beautiful house, no end of beachfront, a night club in the sky, a totally hot girlfriend— so I’m in no particular hurry to move. In fact, I would be happy here indefinitely; it’s just that half a sim would give me twice the land and twice the prims for only about $30/US more than I’m paying (and selling a couple of 2048 plots would return some of the purchase price and lower the tier to or even below the $100/month I’m now paying. It just makes sense to go for half a sim.

If I bought a sim of my own I could divide half of it into plots and sell it—but who wants to deal with the problems and squabbles or 20 or so people with entirely different ideas of what Second Life should be?

Bill Havercamp has asked me to go halves on a sim with him. Bill is a great friend, both in RL and SL, and I would not hesitate to take the plunge—but I’m committed to Mordecai. And to be truthful, half volcano, half guitar shop doesn’t quite have the same impact on the imagination as half volcano/half steampunk. Mordecai’s vision of Victorian mechanistic utopia just meshes well in my mind with my volatile volcanic island.

I’ve been knocking ideas around in my mind to let Mordecai and I move forward. Perhaps I’ll buy the sim and rent half of it to him, with the understanding that he’ll buy his half of the land gradually over a six-month period. That would mean a commitment to him of half the tier and an additional 133 a month, or $200 down and $100 a month for six months.

I’ll talk to him about that. He’ll know if that’s eminently doable for him, or if it makes better sense for him to stay in Caledon, where his heart clearly is.

And I guess it wouldn’t hurt to touch base with Bill Havercamp, too.

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Late Note: Skyped with Mordecai last night. He’s now doing the math that will let us know if we’re go or no go.

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