7 Days...

I have one week left, and what did I find a couple of days ago that's eating up 90% of my time awake? Second Life, or as the "lingo" goes in the game, SL. I read an article in a magazine a while ago, and decided to check it out. I was expecting something fairly primitive looking, but I was amazed when I downloaded the client and logged on for the first time under "Christopher Longduk" (I purposely picked a similar name to my own so that people could find me easily, and "Longduk" was the closest of the choices to my real last name). People were flying around me, typing chat messages to each-other, and the amazing thing is that we all looked different because they have an amazing "avatar" editor in the game, where you're even able to edit the position of your cheekbones.

Last night I was getting the hang of things, and this guy who was supposedly a "Sith Leader" (a.k.a. his "second life" was a geek, if it wasn't his first already) and he taught me the basics of building, and how everything in the game was built by other people using very basic shapes that everyone can build. And there's no limit to what you can build; everything from an intricate piece of clothing to a roman coliseum (which I was amazed when I saw one the other day).

SL is free to download, but if you want to own land or buy things that other people have made in the game, you have to provide them with a credit card. Then you get Linden Dollars, or L$ for short. It acts as real currency, which has a daily exchange rate. L$1,000 is about $3.98 US. There's literally no limit to what you can do in SL; you can attend classes in a classroom that is identical to the one you normally have class in, or take a cooking class in SL and learn how to make the perfect veal.

Check it out and download the client from http://www.secondlife.com and look me up! (Christopher Longduk). Just be sure that your second life doesn't eat away at your first.