By DrFran Babcock
Trying to find oldbies who are either still around, or who are willing to talk about the old days
is like trying to have a lag-free Relay for Life. That is why I was so
thrilled to be contacted by Pie Psaltery with a request to participate
in the Oldbie Project.
I am beginning to realize that the original residents of SL were a very special breed: self-selected
for creativity, intelligence, and a lack of fear for the new, the
different, the “out there.” Come along with me for a visit with the
wonderful Pie, who has saved a lot from the early days, and displays an appreciation for the step up in quality that SL represented, when compared to worlds like The Sims Online.
SL Newser: How did you find out about Second Life™?
Pie: I’d been playing The Sims Online since its beta and in early Autumn of 2003 I’d begun to hear of a new “game" called Second Life™. TSO and a place called Cybertown (which is actually still open), were my only other ventures into virtual worlds I’d made before Second Life™.
I remember distinctly the incident that prompted me to log in to SL the first time; I was redecorating my property in TSO and complaining loudly about being unable to place furniture catty corner. Since I redecorated frequently, this was a common rant for me. But this one time in Oct of 2003, while I was complaining again, one of my roommates said: "You know that place Second Life I keep telling you about? You can do that there." I made my first SL account that day, however, because I only had DSL at my business and it was not available yet in my home area, I let that account go, rather than paying the $9.95 membership fee that you had to pay after your free trial period. Pie Psaltery’s rez day is exactly one day after DSL became available at my home.
Here’s the email from that long lost first account:
Second Life
Oct 4, 2003
Welcome to Second Life!
You have now registered for your free 7-day trial of Second Life. Your
account name is "PieOhPah Phaeton". (Hold on to this email as a reminder. You will NOT be billed for this free trial.)
To confirm your account registration, visit the following URL:
http://secondlife.com/ss/
Once you’ve confirmed your registration, your Second Life account will be activated. Once you first log in to Second Life, you’ll have 7 full days of
unrestricted gameplay, free.
Best wishes, have fun, and welcome to Second Life! We look forward to
seeing you in-world soon.
Sincerely,
Linden Lab and the Second Life Team
It’s funny to me that I’ve kept that email all these years, but don’t have Pie Psaltery’s Welcome to Second Life! email.
SL Newser: How did you find out about Second Life™?
Pie: I’d been playing The Sims Online since its beta and in early Autumn of 2003 I’d begun to hear of a new “game" called Second Life™. TSO and a place called Cybertown (which is actually still open), were my only other ventures into virtual worlds I’d made before Second Life™.
I remember distinctly the incident that prompted me to log in to SL the first time; I was redecorating my property in TSO and complaining loudly about being unable to place furniture catty corner. Since I redecorated frequently, this was a common rant for me. But this one time in Oct of 2003, while I was complaining again, one of my roommates said: "You know that place Second Life I keep telling you about? You can do that there." I made my first SL account that day, however, because I only had DSL at my business and it was not available yet in my home area, I let that account go, rather than paying the $9.95 membership fee that you had to pay after your free trial period. Pie Psaltery’s rez day is exactly one day after DSL became available at my home.
Here’s the email from that long lost first account:
Second Life
Oct 4, 2003
Welcome to Second Life! You have now registered for your free 7-day trial of Second Life. Your
account name is "PieOhPah Phaeton". (Hold on to this email as a reminder. You will NOT be billed for this free trial.)
To confirm your account registration, visit the following URL:
http://secondlife.com/ss/
Once you’ve confirmed your registration, your Second Life account will be activated. Once you first log in to Second Life, you’ll have 7 full days of
unrestricted gameplay, free.
Best wishes, have fun, and welcome to Second Life! We look forward to
seeing you in-world soon.
Sincerely,
Linden Lab and the Second Life Team
It’s funny to me that I’ve kept that email all these years, but don’t have Pie Psaltery’s Welcome to Second Life! email.
SL Newser: What are your earliest memories of Second Life™? 
Pie: I spent nearly my entire first month in SL alone on top of a mountain in Ahern, playing around with the appearance sliders, trying to make myself look like "Pie" (meaning mostly, what Pie had looked like in TSO). I knew only one other resident personally (one of the people I brought with me from TSO), because no one I knew had either DSL or a computer that could handle SL. I didn’t socialize very much the first month or three, but did a lot of exploring–which was far easier when there were only a few dozen sims, even though you had to walk or fly nearly everywhere. I loved flying (still do).
SL Newser: What kept you logging back in during the early days?
Pie: There was raw imagination everywhere. There was none of this white canvas syndrome you see these new virtual worlds suffering: people staring at the blankness, complaining it’s blank. Everyone in SL 2004 seemed to be doing something or teaching someone else how to do it. Lindens spoke to the world at large frequently, and often with humor. There was a hum in the air of hundreds of nerds and geeks all shouting "Hey kids, let’s put on a show!" I’ve never really felt the same vibrating possibilities in any other new world I’ve ever visited, and I’ve visited every one I could find at least once.
SL Newser: What are your fondest memories of the early days?
Pie: 1. The day my partner from TSO finally got DSL and logged into SL. I showed her how to turn her avatar’s head using the ALT key so we could face each other while sitting on invisible prim cubes ( this was pre-custom animations. I am pretty sure the animation used was "motorcycle sit"). After being in TSO for so long, with the disconnected way sims interacted with each other, when she could turn her face to face me facing her, she was almost in tears. The power of SL to "connect" two individuals separated by distance in First Life was never lost on me.
2) Randomly teleporting somewhere while shopping one day and seeing a lighthouse I had made (for sale) off in the distance: "HEY! That was something I made! and someone bought it! and was using it!!!" I was thrilled. It didn’t matter that the person who’d bought it had completely modded my pretty lighthouse into a horror, LOL. A Linden had bought that lighthouse too, which tweaked me even more. I knew people had bought some of my stuff, but it was the first time I’d come across one of my own creations randomly on the grid, being used by someone I didn’t know.
SL Newser: What are your funniest memories of the early days?
Pie: 1) The default attachment point being your head. I think it’s blasphemy that LL changed it to the hand position. (ED NOTE: Newcomers may not remember the box on the head being a symbol for a newbie, but trying to wear a package in the old days resulted in that, rather than holding a stylish shopping bag: the norm nowadays)
2) The much refined and repeated Head Up Your Own Arse bug that has plagued SL since forever. It’s my personal favorite bug and it delights me every time it pops up again on the platform.
3) One of the only original FICs (ED NOTE: Feted Inner Core - a supposed group of residents that were/are the beloved of Linden Lab employees) that I’d ever spent much time with, Marilyn Murphy... we’d kinda known of each other through mutual acquaintances, but the very first time we met, the very first thing she said to me was: "Here,
let me help you get your boobs out from under your chin" and gave me
some tips on adjusting the torso sliders for a more natural look. I’ve always thanked Mari for making my boobs better.
SL Newser: Did you fall in love in Second Life™?
Pie: Yes
SL Newser: Who was your favorite Linden?
Pie: Philip, of course. Probably not Philip as an actual human being, but certainly Philip as an idea. In my mind, the word Linden has been indelibly etched with Philip’s face.
SL Newser: What were your favorite activities?
Pie: 1) Building. It was one thing to arrange pre-made objects decoratively in The Sims Online, it was mind blowing to be able to imagine anything you wanted - and make it! It didn’t matter how badly you made it - in 2004, every boxy, prim-gapped, texture flickering build was a masterpiece. Because you’d made it.
Here's a pic of my First Land, mine is the plywood thing in the middle: I didn’t live there very long, because I immediately wanted MORE LAND. I splurged and got a edge-of-the-map water front plot and built my first real home in SL a month or so later
2) Socializing. At first, I was quite the social butterfly in SL. I ran a Second Life™ group, maintained a club, a little vendor center, and free noobie apartments related to the group for almost two years. I’d brought a lot of people I knew in TSO over with me, so I sort of immigrated a pre-made posse, lol.
SL Newser: Do you still log in? If not, why not? If yes, what keeps you coming?
Pie: I do still log in.
I’ve walked away from SL a number of times over the last decade, the longest being the period of M Lindens reign. I’ve gone thru my fair share of bouts with SL burnout and complete disdain for Linden Lab as a company. I don’t think you’ll find an "oldbie" who hasn’t.
But what keeps me coming back is the same thing that made me so awestruck those first few months on the platform—Imagination everywhere. It’s addictive to me. I can’t shake it.
SL Newser: Did you fall in love in Second Life™?
Pie: Yes
SL Newser: Who was your favorite Linden?
Pie: Philip, of course. Probably not Philip as an actual human being, but certainly Philip as an idea. In my mind, the word Linden has been indelibly etched with Philip’s face.
SL Newser: What were your favorite activities?
Pie: 1) Building. It was one thing to arrange pre-made objects decoratively in The Sims Online, it was mind blowing to be able to imagine anything you wanted - and make it! It didn’t matter how badly you made it - in 2004, every boxy, prim-gapped, texture flickering build was a masterpiece. Because you’d made it.
Here's a pic of my First Land, mine is the plywood thing in the middle: I didn’t live there very long, because I immediately wanted MORE LAND. I splurged and got a edge-of-the-map water front plot and built my first real home in SL a month or so later
2) Socializing. At first, I was quite the social butterfly in SL. I ran a Second Life™ group, maintained a club, a little vendor center, and free noobie apartments related to the group for almost two years. I’d brought a lot of people I knew in TSO over with me, so I sort of immigrated a pre-made posse, lol.
SL Newser: Do you still log in? If not, why not? If yes, what keeps you coming?
Pie: I do still log in.
I’ve walked away from SL a number of times over the last decade, the longest being the period of M Lindens reign. I’ve gone thru my fair share of bouts with SL burnout and complete disdain for Linden Lab as a company. I don’t think you’ll find an "oldbie" who hasn’t.
But what keeps me coming back is the same thing that made me so awestruck those first few months on the platform—Imagination everywhere. It’s addictive to me. I can’t shake it.
SL Newser: What would you like the world to know about Second Life™?
Pie: I am not of the belief that ’the world’ as a whole will ever really ’get’ SL, no matter how much they know about it. SL requires imagination; not everyone has that in large quantities and not everyone is comfortable with their own, or others, being unfettered. But I believe it is that required imagination that keeps the hardcore SL resident hardcore. If you are an imaginative person, creative and inquisitive, who actually enjoys learning new things - you’re gonna love Second Life. For the rest of you there’s Farmville 2. That’s what I’d tell the world.
Pie: I am not of the belief that ’the world’ as a whole will ever really ’get’ SL, no matter how much they know about it. SL requires imagination; not everyone has that in large quantities and not everyone is comfortable with their own, or others, being unfettered. But I believe it is that required imagination that keeps the hardcore SL resident hardcore. If you are an imaginative person, creative and inquisitive, who actually enjoys learning new things - you’re gonna love Second Life. For the rest of you there’s Farmville 2. That’s what I’d tell the world.
After this are comments on the pics. Not sure how you want to handle it. All pics are by Pie Psaltery
Profile poem from 2004:
"this place makes me giddy
awed by the grandeur
delighted by the minutia
my inner nerd mouths a quiet ’o my’
my inner hedonist titters with glee"
Here’s a pic of my very first club:
A picture of a St. Patrick’s Day shamrock replacing the Linden sun over the community center of my SL group:
And, because I remembered I had another "When the Lindens Changed the Sun" picture.
Here’s my first recorded incident of Head Up Your Own Arse, including my friend all in unloaded texture grey:
DrFran Babcock
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