I've become hopelessly addicted to Second Life, the virtual world by Linden Labs. For those of you not familiar with it, its a massively online "game" but there's no real game. You create an avatar and live a second life (hence the name). There are regions known as sims. These sims are mostly user owned and created. The company owns 3 major parcels of land and you can rent space on those from them, otherwise, people purchase or rent sims and build houses, clubs, museums, stores, amusement parks.. the list is endless. The really neat thing about SL is that it has a virtual economy.. yes.. a virtual economy. You can (but certainly don't have to) purchase currency called Lindens. These trade at different values depending upon the trade volume on any given day in your sovereign currency. The game costs nothing to purchase or play (the download is free) but you can get a premium membership which allows you to own land and gives you a L$300 a week stipend to spend as you wish. Otherwise, you can download it and play to your heart's content for nary a dime.

You can also earn Lindens by getting a job or creating objects for resale. The leading entrepenuer in SL a few years back made over 1 million US. Yes.. that's 1mil US. See the neat thing about this economy is that you can link it to paypal or credit card and cash out the lindens. While the RL economy has tanked and taken the SL economy with it, the potential is there to make some neat dough. I've always thought that skilled photographers could upload pics and sell them via a store in SL and make some money as people want to decorate their houses, clubs, etc...

Of course, just like RL, one of the largest areas of the SL economy is sex... .... go figure. Sex clubs, BDSM clubs, and strip clubs are quite popular (I for one, work for a ladies only club...lol... its a hoot).

There's also sims dedicated to combat and role playing games. If you can think of it, odds are there's a sim for it. While the engines are nowhere near as good as a gaming console, there's an endless variety of gaming sims to play... pretty cool.

The best things about SL, as far as I'm concerned, are the friendships and comraderie. I've met some very, VERY good people in SL from all over the world.

If anyone out there plays (or gets into it) look me up as a friend. My avatar name is Connor Wrydan. I'll be the only Connor Wrydan in SL as accounts are driven by first and last names and only one person can have a name...

Oh well, back to being a virtual dork..

Jay