Grid Expectations

It’s rant time for yours truly again.

I own a fairly large swath of land in a mainland sim that adjoins an empty ocean sim. I chose to invest in this property for several reasons: (A) it’s mainland property, and I like that I can do whatever I want with my land without being bound by estate rule restrictions, (B) the adjoining sim is an empty water sim, and (C) the sim reseller terraformed and carved out the parcels with great care, arranging them in a manner conducive to a nice looking neighborhood as opposed to simply selling off lots of little blocks of land. (The reseller, btw, was Jessie Beckham of virtuositydevelopment, and I totally recommend dealing with her if you’re interested in buying land, whether it’s mainland or estate.)

Here, let’s expand a bit on point C. The land in my sim was terraformed in such a manner so that there is land on all three sides that aren’t adjoining the neighboring empty water sim, while the water section in the middle opens into that same ocean sim. When Jessie cut up the parcels, she deliberately cut out a T-shaped strip of land in the middle of this water section and left it open and not for sale; the idea was that once the sim filled up with residents, she would return the strip of land to Linden Lab. This, in turn, would cause the land to be dubbed “Maintenance” and it would ultimately serve as an open ocean access channel for everyone in the sim, regardless of who has banlines and security orbs.

A few days ago, I discovered upon opening my world map that the access channel had turned purple. I quickly found that if a parcel is marked purple on the world map, this means it is being auctioned off.

What the hell?

When I look at the mainland, what do I see? Dollar signs and patches of yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, and yet more yellow. All. Over. The. Freaking. Place. Perhaps LL could, I dunno, focus on cleaning up that huge mass of yellowed parcels instead of worrying over an itty bitty strip of land in my home sim? I really did not need or want more land and prims, but since I wasn’t about to let some vile scum ad farmer plant his extortionist ass in front of my land, I participated in the tiny bidding battle that took place this afternoon.

And yes, I won the auction. Meh. Oh well, at least I am now the owner of one bitchin’ good mainland property, if I do say so myself. I’m only grudgingly happy about it, though.

UPDATE:  Roughly two hours after my ARs were filed, the offending prims were removed.  W00t! 

[7:16] Melanie774 Kidd: Hi James, I feel I’ve been extremely accommodating, giving you more than ample time to move your items out of my property space; all it takes to move your items is nothing more than a few clicks of the mouse. Unlike RL, moving one’s house and belongings in SL is -NOT- a big hassle and takes mere minutes, if not seconds. I am tired of asking you to move your skybox and rock prims out of my space, only to have you wilfully ignore my requests time and again. I am going to file an Abuse Report with Linden Labs against you for property encroachment by sometime this afternoon SLT.

I sent that message to my neighbor, James Moran, this morning.

He owns a 512 sqm parcel, the corner of which touches a corner on my own property.

Some time ago, he rezzed a skybox over his parcel. No, I’m not complaining about the fact that he has a skybox; what bugs the hell out of me is the fact that his goddamn skybox consists of a 40×40 megaprim cube that OBVIOUSLY cannot possibly be contained within a parcel of that size. His ugly ass box overlaps into *every* other property that adjoins his. He rezzed it so that it goes up to exactly the 768m altitude, probably in the hopes that no one would notice it. Well, I tend to do most of my work up at around the 700m altitude, too, so yes, I’ve definitely noticed that he’s been shoving his elbow in my face and I do not appreciate it.

He’s also thrown a few prims into my space on the ground level, as well. I’m unable to return or delete them, however, because the root prim is on his property. This really irks me because I know that his prims are being deducted from my own prim allocation. How do I know this? Well, I discovered this back when I resided in the Peraut sim. I had emptied out one of my Peraut parcels while preparing it for sale, and to my surprise even after I’d cleaned everything out via auto-return, there were still two prims being used. Turned out those two prims were part of a plumeria tree my neighbor had rezzed in the corner of his property; one of the branches was overhanging onto my space. Hitting delete and return was ineffective; there was nothing I could do about it other than ask my neighbor, nicely, to please move it out of my space.

Which is precisely what I’ve done with my current neighbor: I have asked him several times, nicely, to please move his things out of my space. I dunno, I guess being nice just simply doesn’t work with some people. The last time I spoke with him, I told him that my only other recourse is to file an AR, to which he promptly replied that he would move his things. Yeah, well like the saying goes, talk is cheap, and his word is apparently worth zilch because he has yet to move his shit, hence my curt message to him this morning.

I reside on a continent. Yes, I realize that by choosing to live on mainland property, I open myself up to this sort of problem. I really really really hate that there is no zoning ordinance in SL; I seriously considered going into an estate sim for a long time, but… I just can’t do it. I can’t willingly subject myself to someone else’s one-hundred-and-one estate rules regarding how I may conduct myself on my own property. Hell, I’ve even thought about splitting up a sim with a bunch of friends but even that idea just introduces a whole new set of complications. -_-

Yeah, I guess I want to have my cake and eat it, too.