User:Orange Planer

29 June 2008

Nice to meet you, come on in! Can I get you some coffee? I just brewed it. Here, have a seat at the kitchen table. Tell me about yourself. You want to know about me? Oh, I don't know. There isn't a lot to tell. I've been in Second Life since August 2007. I discovered a lot of people, for whatever reason, just couldn't seem to figure out what they were supposed to do, or how to do it. So, I listened to a couple people and picked up the patter. Left-click on that sign right there. No, over there. Here, let me walk over to the sign so you can see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, it grew from there. Someone asked me to become a mentor, but I'd only been around for a couple months. So, I waited. The day I turned six months the person came by and said "It's time." I had to laugh. Anyway, I applied, got accepted, and started looking around. The state of mentorship? Oh, it has its issues. Too many people have no clue what to do or don't care. The process took all the warm bodies they could find, so it's been rather interesting to see what's been called a mentor. Now they're trying to fix it after the fact, which is like closing the barn doors after the horses have escaped, but what the heck.

I couldn't just sit there and do nothing - I mean, people run around spreading wrong information without doublechecking what they know. "Sure, I'm police. Who told me that? Oh, I heard from another mentor (whose name I will never reveal to you)." Yeah right. Did you check the wiki? Did you look in the JIRA? What about the knowledgebase? Did you ask the VTeam? How about any of the mentor groups? No? Come on, you can do better than that...

Someone suggested running a class, an idea that had been percolating in the back of my head for awhile. I've taught. It's not easy, but you get used to it, and there's a big upside at the back end when you see someone walk away with newfound confidence. After sending the other person an email or two we began a group dedicated to creating a class for mentors. I'm hoping we actually get the class off the ground. Right now we're brainstorming.

Peeves

• Griefers
• People who should know better
• Litterers
• Gas guzzlers
• Glaring bugs in programming
• Being sick - it's just such a drag

July 22, 2008

SL has become a huge part of my life. In fact, it's become so huge, what with mentoring, doing some writing, teaching a class here and there, and working (I'm a bouncer at Sixx Pack), that "real life" is beginning to get seriously impinged upon. This is bad. I have a wife, and while my wife is also my Second Life partner, we don't do much in SL because I'm always busy. I'm in a quandary. I have the job to pay for a wedding in SL, but I can only do the job once or twice a week because of mentoring activities. This is getting frustrating. If there were a way to only mentor for an hour, but often some issue will come up at 45 minutes that takes 30 minutes to resolve. I could hand the issue off to another mentor, but I hate foisting my responsibilities off on other people. sigh NOW what?

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Orange_Planer/What_do_Second_Life_Mentors_Do

November 11, 2008

I'm giving a class on "The Lag Monster: how to handle it." Come find out what causes lag, what you can do about it, and find out what limitations there are. https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mainland_Mentor_Coaches_Class_Schedule

February 2009

Ran into a Dilbert situation. Got asked for help, did research, suggested problem areas and constructive solutions and got told, effectively, to go to hell. Some people do not know what they don't know and are not willing to accept the possibility they might not know what they're doing. Instead, they frame the answer inside however they view the world. We are all guilty of this in one form or other, but for GAWDS sake, if you are going to ask for help, be ready to consider the answer you get seriously.

March 9, 2009

Life moves in mysterious ways, but if there's one thing I find to be a constant, you are the quality of person your friends are. Do your friends create tons of drama? Do your friends make a habit of griefing others? Look not inward to find who you are, look at your associates.

The End Of The Second Life Mentors

2009 December 4

I'll be honest. I threw myself body and soul into the program for almost two years. I know that others have been in it longer, I'm not comparing myself to them. My expertise is computer technical information, my strength is in figuring out procedures that work and can be documented. My sworn enemies are "belief without facts" and, worse yet, "making facts fit my beliefs." By day I'm a network administrator where it's what I know that's important, not what I believe. I've researched information, tried various things, applied analytical thought and given my results. I've handed out notecards, made suggestions, emphasized education. The end result has been - nothing noticable.

People are generally resistant to change. They stick with what they learned back in the beginning, no matter how flawed it might be. When new information comes around many times it becomes an issue of "my teacher didn't teach me that, so it doesn't matter," or "it isn't the way I've done it, so I don't care." Or it simply gets lost in the chatter. They didn't use it in a long time so forgot the information even existed.

Now the Second Life Mentors are done in seven days. Next Friday. Two years of blowing in the wind, hoping to make a difference, and yet only, apparently, building a name for myself. I couldn't care less about building a name for myself. All that matters to me is the dissemination of correct information to help others. I've discovered the mentor groups really haven't got a lot of interest in spreading correct information; they'll spread whatever information they have, thinking it's good.

So, I've left all the mentor groups I was in. They're now all applying for Resident Help Network status and more power to them. Me, I'm going into teaching. It's not that I object to people who are resistant to change. Sometimes that's a good thing. A little cynicism goes a long, long way. I just wish more people who disseminated information had a passion for it being correct information.

The Times They Are A'Changin'

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30 December 2009

I hate concussions. You don't even know you're injured. You can't see what needs to be healed. Even if you are aware that there's an injury, there's no way to tell on your own what you're missing. It happened to me right before Thanksgiving. It was two weeks before the headaches stopped. Three weeks before my sense of humor started to be evident again. Five weeks before I started to feel normal.

Projects are moving forward. Even I'm working on my material now. And I'm on vacation! This is the first extended break I've had all year and man it feels good. SL Cert Dev is making steady progress and we're getting some assistance. It's hard to believe but after these last two years it appears we're finally on track.

People Constantly Surprise Me

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26 February 2011

Virtual Ability constantly surprises me with doing what they say they're going to do. They help people with disabilities and they're the only group in Second Life to start a transcription service for both voice and text.

A friend of mine contacted me to ask about legal issues with the generation AFTER the next generation internet. I didn't think he knew anything, just some whippersnapper. Actually, he's my age and has been a computer scientist all his life.

Someone else I knew runs a help group and every time he builds his area to be used by all the new residents he and his cohorts drag in his area gets better. More content, less confusion. His latest version is an awesome piece of work. Finally, someone is taking seriously the needs of those who know nothing of Second Life. At some point, someone is going to create the Ivory Tower of Prims version of "training up new residents." My money is on him.