User:Fr43k Paine
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About fr43k
I was born into Second Life on March 9th 2007 and hit the ground at Orientation Island, where I spent 2 days, before I found the teleport feature. Then I spent hours and hours in SL, exploring, and collecting freebies as if there was no tomorrow! I was a bit disappointed though, because for some reason I did not meet a single person for days, but I decided to give SL a chance.
Beginnings
SL was difficult for me in the beginning because everything was in English, even my client. (English is NOT my native language, that`s german) Finally, after a whole week I met a girl and two guys, who were having a discussion about money. I was still a bit lost, with no idea where to go or what to do.... so I stood there and was just happy I had some company. That is until one guy asked the girl to give him some money. Of course she denied his request, but to my surprise, she paid me instead! I felt uncomfortable at this point but she said it would be ok and then her friend gave me some more money. In this way I became the "richest newbie" in SL or so I would guess. :)
So, I had money and nothing to do... I liked the freebie wings I had found during my first few days, so I decided to visit a store to buy some "real" wings. Huge wings, and my favorite item in SL ever! I was really proud and happy with those wings and of everything I had so far discovered about SL.
Changes I
Soon, with my pair of wings on my back I again went exploring SL. I met Ro Gastel, who is a nice artist and a great man! He was impressed by the wings and offered me a little job as a model. I was very excited to learn there was a better way to earn money than working as an escort! Ro was very patient and explained a lot of the SL basics like how to build things as well as other aspects of SL like photography. Soon I was “grown up” and no longer considered a “newbie” but I was still exploring SL and learning. I am very thankful to Ro for always putting his trust in me and motivating me to continue exploring and learning about SL.
NCI
After I had been in SL about 3 months I found NCI ( New Citizens Incorporated ) and spent the most of my inworld time there. I helped a lot of new residents, just as Ro had helped me. Finally I graduated to become an official NCI Helper and went on to become an NCI Officer. I soon began teaching my first Q&A class. From there I taught more and more classes, met a lot of new people, made a lot of SL friends and got more and more involved with NCI. Finally I had to drop the classes ( Q&A, Consumer Awareness, Dealing with Griefers, Business Forum Meetings ), as I got 'promoted' and became one of NCI's directors, that took and still takes a lot of time. Close before that I signed up to be a Second Life Mentor so that I can help more people right at the beginning. I got accepted and try to attend to the office hours and help newbies if I can afford the time. I like to be a "Ninja Mentor" as we call it, not always there, but I can appear out of nowhere as needed. :)
Changes II
I used to switch between NCI and the SL Mentors group from time to time, spent most of my time for NCI though. Directing the NCI AdNode group/project was a very time-consuming task, as I was the primary contact for all of our sponsors and had to keep our spreadsheet up-to-date, as well as the in-world server and sometimes NCI's blog. Additinally I was working on my own creations, and planed to reopen a store. The work on the new Welcome Area, we were asked to build by Linden Lab, aka OI for german residents, is has been done for now. If you're interested to know more about this project, please visit GWA_Project.
Today
The work on the GWA has been finished at the end of 2008 and became a part of a bigger project known as 'G3D' (Germany in 3D) during the spring of 2009. Certain circumstances made me leave NCI after over two years of teaching, helping and maintaining the AdNode system for our sponsors. I am really sorry it had to happen, but after Carl Metropolitan left NCI it became more and more difficult to organize several group related things, and the ongoing controversy about the "how to lead NCI" gave me the push to go on without being a part of NCI, before friends become foes. It has been a good time there, everything ends though.
Anyways, I used the additional free time to create certain things and built a new shop with my business partner Alexa Soyer, the owner and founder of 'Filigreemotion'. As a part of Filigreemotion I spent most of my time at the store, creating items, or just wandering around. With the ongoing economic crisis in 2009/2010 Alexa was finally made to close the store and we had to use less cost extensive alternatives, such as SLX. Today we're still creating different attachments and sell them there.
But I have to admit that SL had become less interesting at this point, and I deceided to make a longer break, and wait for the things that the future may reveal...
After that break I began to spend some more time on 'Schiller' and 'Bach', some of the sims that were part of the GWA-Project, and at NCI again. With Timmi Allen's restructuring of 'Schiller', I finally found a little task in SL again. I placed some additional buildings and did some scripting work, although it has never been 'my thing'. But it's pretty awesome to see something's working, that you've made.
So, I now spend my time creating items, do some scripting work, mostly for my own pleasure, nothing professional, or just hanging out at NCI. With SL's 7th birthday (June 2010) and Philip Rosedale's (Philip Linden) return to Linden Lab, replacing Mark Kingdon (M Linden) as new CEO, SL has become more interesting again, and I am waiting excitedly for the things and changes that are to come.
So much for now and thank you for reading my Wiki page. :-)
Thanks to Gramma Fiddlesticks for helping me to set up this text.
Also thanks to Carl Metropolitan, Afon Shepherd, Eric Boyer, Garn Conover, Muttenchops Chaplin, Nardok Corrimal, Locke Cardway and all I missed that were helping me during all these years.
fr43k Paine 12:08 PM, 26 June 2010 (PDT)