You have no friends online

For awhile I was interested in the online game "second life"...but unlike other online games I've played in the past, if ya don't have a high speed connection there isn't any point in even trying to log in. When I went to their page to see if anything could be done for us slow connectors...it told me something flat out... "You have no friends online."

Wow...glad that is settled. I no longer have to wonder about these people I've "met" online whether in a checker game at yahoo or wandering around cyber space as some avatar...NOW the computer has just come out and told me...that I have NO friends online. In a way that is a relief to have resolved, so many people these days wander thru life with the belief that they have a group of "online friends" as a subset that adds to the "real life" friends to put with the "imaginary friends" as parts of the overall set of "friends". But I'm told No..not me.

(Or maybe it means none of my Real Life friends are currently "online", now thats kinda spooky, how would my computer know who my friends are and what they are currently doing!)

Then right under that it offers me the advice "Start passing out calling cards in-world to add friends!" By "in-world" they mean...online, in the game. Now they made that so simple didn't they. I guess that would probably work as a starting place in real life too...just make up little cards with a portrait shot on it and a phone number and maybe some little short line about "Currently Adding Friends"...

All kinds of ways to meet people. For instance, between that last paragraph and starting this one about 25 minutes went by, I met 5 people a jersey bull and a jersey cow. Here is how that happened...

One of the boys is coming up this morning from Texas to visit, so we were finishing up projects fairly late. (Got that 2cnd coat of unusual green on the shower floor by 2am.) Mrs. Beans was sleeping so good she wanted to stay in bed another half hour, when that passed I knew she would need a motivator to get up before the youngen got here so even though I was just in my underwear I went out to ring the doorbell.

With many of us country folk it isn't uncommon to go outside in less than formal attire. When I reached out to hit the doorbell I saw the bull and cow walking around behind my pickup, and remembering that the walk-thru gate to the pasture was open (and just 15 yards away from the visiting cattle) I walked on out and closed it. Didn't want them getting out there, they'd be much harder to catch. Thats when I saw the neighbors pulling down the driveway so I had to make a quick dash inside to jump in my overalls.

Seems the cow just walked right over their cattle guard and the bull followed. Probably "chased" would be more accurate. The lady and her son were first on scene, then her husband and probably either her dad or his dad, and another neighbor all showed up so between us all we herded the strays back onto their place. Before today the only contact we all had together was waving as we passed on the narrow lane. So who needs to hand out calling cards when you can just send a bull.

This afternoon plans...go to the matinee to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest . That should help me deal with the disturbing discovery of having no friends online. Need a good distraction after news like that. Kind of like the time I opened a candy wrapper and inside it said "you are not a winner". Made me have to change my ways, like what brand of candy bar I ate...but realizing it only referred to contests, I've been ok with skipping the lotto craze cause someone way up in corporate America already knew the outcome for me when they revealed it to me in that wrapper.