Current oddities

I haven't posted for a long time about current bugs and problems. I used to find that I gained a pretty good picture of what was going on by listening to the mentor channel. Mentors would post questions about whether this or that was happening a lot currently, or ask about workarounds and fixes for common problems, and one would get to know what was affecting people in general.

Unfortunately, policy regarding the mentor channel has changed and become very prescriptive: mentors are allowed to post questions but anyone who tries to answer the questions in open channel is jumped on and told to reply in IMs. I think this ia a big mistake, and the indications are that the Lindens recognise this as they have started a new Q and A group for the mentors where it is acceptable to post answers.

Anyhow, people are out of the habit of sharing their problems, and so it isn't so easy to keep track of what is bugging everyone this week. I've personally experienced a couple of strange things over the past few days however.

The first involved my alt avatar, which I use for testing things when I need someone who isn't a member of the same groups who doesn't have mods on my stuff. I decided that unlike my main avatar Cali, who is 25, slim and attractive, I would make this alt closer to my real self. I haven't spent a huge amount of time on her, but I was fairly pleased with the realistic appearance I had achieved.

Unfortunately I crashed out while in her body, and when I returned, her shape (or bodypart) had disappeared. The avatar was "ruth'd" having reverted to the default female with red hair, which looked very odd, as her wig was showing through her eyes, because the head was far smaller. The shape had been lost altogether from my inventory, and the previous shape too. Relogging, clearing the cache were no help.

What was infuriating was that the system kept telling me that I could not change my appearance or clothing because it was still downloading, and that message continued to appear when I attempted to change anything about her appearance, including taking off her wig, for at least half an hour. I was on the verge of seeking help when it cleared and I was able to put her out of her hair-in-the-eyes misery.

The second rather strange experience was that while testing a vendor in my alt yesterday, I appeared to be able to delete an item that I did not make or own, and for which I had no special mods. When I clicked to delete as an experiment, I got a blue pop-up which informed me that the permissions system in the sim did not allow me to delete the object. In the past if the permissions system did not allow you to delete the object, you didn't get this as an option on the pie chart.