Welcome to RyconFox

     Hello Internet, alot's happened since posting last. I created this blog with the intent of sharing with everyone my thoughts, feelings, and views on the world around ,me. I've been having nightmares on and off the past few months and they've intensified this past month. The subject matter never leaves me with enough to remember but my wife Nicole says that their usually in reaction to whatever's on the TV(wither it be youtube, netflix, etc..).

     This morning's nightmare was different. This morning's nightmare was about the aftermath of my wife passing away and how I coped with the loss. I love my wife to death. We've been together for seven years and been married 3 years on the 10th of this year. I knew when we met that she had alot of mental and physical issues including PCOS and a weak heart. As a first time married couple we feel we have something most couples don't: Love. There's something in most of these couple's brains that clicks which usualy end in divorce after a couple of years of being married. We still have this connection, this bond, that's unbreakable. Do we argue? You bet - unless you were married in the 50s or 60s any married couple that's never argued once in their marriage needs to be evaluated. I explain a bit more about my marriage and how much I love my wife because when I have nightmares like this one, it hurts. It's a physical pain that wakes me up out of sleep like something's been torn from my chest. With it getting closer to the winter season, Nicole's gotten sicker faster. In fact we'd just gotten home from the hospital because she had blood in her stool that wouldn't stop. ER doctors says it's colidis. Last week when we were there it was something else.

     I thankfully don't get this type of nightmare very often, but when I do, it makes me re-evaluate things. If for some reason Nicole really did pass away, how would I handle it? Would I go insane? Would I be calm as I have been before when I'm around people and secretly cry it out? Would I get severe separation anxiety? Would I attempt suicide just to be with her? These are just a sample of things that run through my head in a matter of minutes when this type of nightmare wakes me up. Thankfully when I do wake up Nicole's right there to comfort me, as I am for her when she's in the hospital. I dread the one time I do wake up and she isn't there. The last time I had such a nightmare was a few months ago when again, she was in the hospital because of something. That time it was when we were told Nicole had a weak heart. I explained everything above to my dr and she put me on blood pressure pills because the stress these nightmares gives me could give me a heart attack(then Nicole would experience everything I would've experienced and I don't wish that on anyone).

     There's no moral to the story but it makes me feel better to write how i'm feeling, wither it be on a blog or talking with Nicole about it. I'm tearing every few words just writing it. I also just got done loosing my Aunt Karen to MS last month. She taught me how to live a little and to live life to it's fullest as it's too short to be stuck up. She taught me the proper way to play poker and told me stories about how when she was younger she use to smoke punks in a stock Buick Riveria. Her mom passed away 10 years before that from a fall in the house, It didn't seem to effect her as much I guess because she was around my dad and me, and felt it was important to try and pass on things that were taught to her so that I didn't come off so stuck up. Honestly I think she did it to rattle my mom because my mom was born from the then rich area of the island.


Thanks for listening internet,
Rycon

     So I hear OsGrid was down this past weekend due to server issues. This got me thinking about things and recalled a conversation I had with a friend last week about what needed to be done to bring stability to Second Life like clones. As it stands there's currently 3 major players in this "let's make the best virtual grid ever" game. You have Second Life, OsGrid, and InWorldz. You also have smaller grids poping up all the time and are offline just as quickly as they came. People from these grids who think they can hack it and host their own sim get a rude awaking with setup - download the server, open ports in your router, add the exceptions to firewall software, and hope everything goes good. The problem is 90% of these people either own computers who can't handle running both a server and a client at the same time or have internet that lets them host a sim, but can't invite any friends to come visit. I admit I'm better off then most. I pay for 100/100 true fibre optic internet and almost all the computers in the house are either quad-core or octo-core.

     Back to the conversation with my friend. We were discussing what we thought needed  to be done about these smaller grids that keep poping up everywhere and how to effectively bring people to InWorldz and keep them there. Most that come to InWorldz end up leaving the first day or a few days after. Why? Some have said they were tricked into visiting because it was better then Second Life and more stable then OsGrid. Once there, they realize InWorldz feels exactly like a clone of Second Life. To an extend their right. InWorldz is largely based off of OsGrid, which uses Opensim,which is a release of the Second Life software. The major differences being Second Life and InWorldz are closed non-hypergrid systems where as OsGrid is open, allowing anyone and everyone who wants to start up a server connect without much issue. The problem with being out in the open however is anyone can hypergrid to your server, steal your content, and go back to their grid where your objects now show up as theirs.

     Back before I'd even heard of InWorldz I'd hosted a 2x2 off my quad-core laptop and another 2 sims on a dual-core laptop in OsGrid. I had the then idea to create a furry hang out spot but as time wore on, it was evident why most things don't work in OsGrid. It wasn't until I'd downgraded to a single sim did furs start to visit and they came from their own personal grids, not from within OsGrid itself. Just walking around the mainland mall showed evidence that no one goes there. There's shops everywhere because there's no money system so it's all free.. but in the hour and a half i spent there, no one visited or passed by me. No one was on radar, leading one to conclude that OsGrid's a dead grid. I admit part of InWorldz are the same however, there's structure here. I was able to find people here within five minutes of creating an account. There were close to 200 active people on grid for the 4th of July(bots in InWorldz are scripts, not alts).

     The ideal solution would be to see OsGrid and all of those smaller grids go. Let the big dogs play.
Ever since their major server crash a few years back that saw Kitely, InWorldz, and other grids lend them money to get back and running, they've become a liability. Running on borrowed time before the next major crash ends them permanantly. It was just last year that French grid New World Grid finally called it quits and they were more along then most grids.


It's time to clean house.
Matt

     Man oh man has it been a fun few weeks. After I became DJ for Kicking Country, the sim owner decided to change the layout of the sim(which I was cool with) putting down 24 shops people count rent. Then decided to remove the race track on Xanadu Lake and put down an additional 24 shops people could rent. In the midst of that, the sim owner put Kicking Country in the middle of Xanadu Lake and gave me the center of Xanadu Plaza where I put up a Furry/Neko Welcome center with an additional club upstairs.
     Scrapping wise I could swear the summer brings out everyone who wants to get rid of stuff but doesn't want to lift a finger to deliver it or work with you. That and everyone wants to get rid of their CDs. Was also recently told that Best Buy has decided to stop taking CRTs for free, which I knew would happen sooner or later as Best Buy's in the market to make money. Doesn't matter to me as I don't accept CRTs no matter how good, how bad, or how many of them you have. Was talking to Upstate Shredding's staff about things and found out that some big shot from Canada came down and underhandedly bought Metallico, even though Ben had the majority shares. A lawsuit against this company was launched and they settled that this company would stay owner of Metallico but Ben would be allowed to keep his shares. Either way it made the stock price jump to over $10/share.
     Also learned Roth Steele was purchased by the city of Syracuse this past week. Their going to spend the money required to cleanup the mess Roth left behind and use the land for the Destiny USA Project that was proposed 5 years ago. I personally would love to see the project completed, as the setup looks nice(saw an overview image once). Also this week a company stepped in to save Great Northern Mall(which is good) and their going to try and bring the mall back to it's former glory so the business partner from the previous company can get paid(something like 65mil).

Fun stuff.
Stay Frosty Everyone,
Matt

Yep I'm a DJ in InWorldz, and my in-world daughter Sage is my host. I'd give away who she is in real life but she'd kill me so enjoy this picture of the club instead. My set's will be every friday from 7-9pm PST and if you can't make it in-world, we'll be using the FOUSE Radio stream so you can take the stream on the go or listen on your pc.

-Matt

    Been thinking long and hard since coming to InWorldz about how to best transfer over what the Fur Valleys is and what it means. My interpretation of the valleys is a collection of sims named after a animal with the name valley after it to provide a place for furs to do what they do best. If you look back into the history of the valleys, it started with one sim in the Chung Estates of SL and became it's own sim after disagreements. Since renting a fairly large parcel from Calia Estates, I decided to wonder over to their main office and discovered the sim I rent on is apart of a set of sailable sims right off the mainland called The Crystal Sea. This is a collection of 55 sims right off the Eastern part of the Mainland. I see this as the opportunity the valleys has been looking for.

    The idea would be to raise enough IZ to buy up the sims but keep them in the Calia Estates and have then renamed after an animal, and thereby renaming The Crystal Sea to The Fur Valleys. This would look good on both parties because it would show that Calia Estates is Fur/Neko friendly, and would provide a home for the valleys. Now comes the fun part: raising IZ to make it happen. By looking at the rental boards, it would take 192,000IZ to rent out a sim per month(roughly $350/mo). The valleys would start on Jersey and once that sim is rented out and becomes sustainable, I'd move on to Glenan as Crystal Pass is non-livable but is sailable. I don't expect anyone to jump on board with this unless their willing to toss cash at this to create a community. I believe the road's been pained, -Matt

After a talk with the wife, we decided to put some money down on a parcel in InWorldz. For those that come from Second Life or grids like it, this is worth it. Parcel's a 16,368m2 w/11,239 prims for $20/mo. Even started work on a cabin(yes, that's a mesh cabin). Cabin weighs in at 51 LI which isn't that bad when you have 11,000+ prims to play with lol.
  

    Decided to stop by the Scrap Metal Forum and wee what everyone was up to and nothing's changed. A few new people, a yard sale or two, and a bunch learning from their mistakes(which is always good). It reminded me of a similar set of issues I ran into. The first was in January. Ebay had seperated from Paypal which was good because the Paypal service has gotten better in releasing tools and stuff for merchants. I had attempted to reopen my consignment shop after getting all my fees paid off and was presented with a kind message from Ebay that my account was suspended from a conflict of interest. When I called to find out what was up, the person who didn't sound like they knew what they were talking about to being with, said that they added a clause to their rules that forbid consignment shops that conflict with their own consignment service. I proceeded to explain that this clause wasn't in their rules anywhere and the person hung up on me. I was like wtf and called back only to be prompted with a "you're number has been blocked from Ebay support". I didn't think anyone could do that, but lo and behold, it happened so - my consignment business has been effectively been put out of business.

    The second part to this story was this past March I enlisted with Etsy to sell the guitar picks i'd upcycled since my folks sent me a pick punch for Christmas. Things were going good, people were buying the picks and fees were taken care of until I received a notice from Etsy that they were raising their fees and were now going to tax all sales coming and going(poor business model imo). So I took my store down and am no over on Bonanza(which is where I was to begin with). I think I'm going to stay there unless something else happens. I swear, it's like 2016's become a continuation of 2015 in terms of business' fucking customers over and becoming overly offended. I've been staying off Facebook because of that crap.

    In the meantime, how about this snow in April, ae? lol. Snow is the indicator to stay indoors and away from the idiots that don't know how to drive(like the asian that was in the right lane about to turn right and decided to veer over into my lane, almost bumping me off the road. I honked and he gave me a blank stair like "what are you honking at"). I haven't fully given up E-Scrapping. The office is still a mess with towers and boxes but haven't had a chance to get things in order or bring in new inventory. It'd be nice to get sold what i've got which is what Ebay was for, but at this rate I may have to make another Bonanza store and sell what I've got on there. I feel cheated doing it that way but I feel I have no other choice. There was another auction site that I was apart of that I might look back into that was similar to Ebay but not as stickish.

-Matt