interview | Kesseret Steeplechase

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Ana Lutetia | 2 Comments

Kesseret Steeplechase | Oct. 21, 2006*

1 – How did you discover Second Life and what made you create an account?
In Feb 2005 my husband had joined Second Life thanks to Slashdot. He immediately started scripting games and asked me to make textures. I obliged and even mused on my livejournal about making an account but it wasn’t until my bff Marissa Racecourse said, “Hey join Second Life with me” that I decided to log in. I logged in and my husband gave me Lindens to go shopping. What more can a lady ask for?*

2 – How did you come up with your Second Life name?
Kesseret has always been my online name, it’s actually a character in a fantasy novel. I read the novel when I was a freshman in highschool. If I recall correctly the whole series is kind of emo and the character the lady Kesseret ends up dying in a pretty dramatic way. It’s a pretty cool thing when you are a 15 year old girl, but now at 33 I laugh at the dramatic emo behind the online name I’ve chosen. Steeplechase was chosen because I thought Marissa’s last name was Racehorse. I thought that would be so funny! The ultimate joke was on me, though. I never really thought about the word “steeplechase” until a Brit friend passed me the Wikipedia article and I realized how rich of a history is behind that word.*

3 – Lots of people only stay inSL for a week or a month after creating an account. What made you stay and what motivates you to log back in?
My husband and best friend were inworld. I dragged everyone I talked to routinely on SL at least once. I showed them all the good stuff like the sex clubs and all the crazy stuff that doesn’t exist anymore but if it did it’d be on the mature continent. I spend a lot of my time creating items for my stores now and I think that is what really keeps me here. My husband logs in once a month to collect sim rentals and Marissa isn’t on anymore but I’ve met wonderful people who I consider in my circle of friends so that keeps me around.*

4 – What have you been doing in SL? Tell us your story: what have you been up to or what have you created.
I own KessKreations and Hilarious. KessKreations is jewelry and wedding items and Hilarious is my apparel store. They are going to merge under the brand Miao. I also maintain Metavirtual which is a blog feed currently just for Second Life. I maintain the server for the Artist’s Voice and write for the Virtual Fatshionistas. My latest project is SecondList which is a Craigslist clone for Second Life. *

5 – Have you found, developed or improved any skills because of SL?
My photoshop skills have increased 1000-fold. I used to not want to deal with maintaining a blog and a website that is more than just storing files to share. Now I do a lot more with my webhosting. Naturally I’ve improved my /ignore skill *

6 – Could you share a funny or awkward story that happened to you inSL?
Most awkward thing is when I first started maintaining the sandbox at GT HQ I had a dirty habit of returning half of Jadz0r Conover’s store. I’m surprised he never yelled at me for it either. Most funny thing was I loved catching people having sex in the sandbox. We’d rez all sorts of signs and stand around and type play-by-plays. I once returned everything around a couple having sex in a treehouse. The bed they were sitting on fell out of the sky to the ground as they were humping. I logged off laughing.*

7 – What would you change or improve in Second Life?
This could be all day if I really answered this question but I will keep it to my pet projects.
1. Following the DMCA process properly
2. No inventory loss whatsoever.
3. Remove client side security checks and fix it on the server side (properly)
4. Lower sim tier back to 195 and homesteads to 75 (limited homestead resources though)
5. Don’t segregate content (mature v. pg)
6. Either charge commission or charge fees on XStreet, not both.
7. I’d dump XStreet and go back to OnRez’s UI
8. Put everything back on one blog and stop hiding stuff
9. Get real forums- whatever is going on now is ridiculous. (Blog comments? HELLO? Not a forum)
10. Make me Queen of the Metaverse (haha I kid, I kid.)*

8 – Can you share your current and/or future projects for SL?
Secondlist, Metavirtual, and Virtual Fatshionistas are my ongoing web projects.
Miao is my ongoing inworld project.

9 – Have you ever had any issues whatsoever within Second Life? If so, how did you reported and was the feedback positive?
I’ve been blessed as most Concierge tickets I’ve filed have been responded to quickly but lately I’ve been leaking inventory like it’s going out of style and there’s nothing they can do. My account has always been messed up since I rezzed so it’s no wonder when they do inventory purges that my account probably gets messed with.

10 – Is Second Life merely an online game or do you consider it more of a metaverse or a virtual world?
I treat the people I meet here like I would like to be treated and I take the work I do inworld just as seriously as I do my real life career. I consider Second Life more of a platform. Whether or not it will survive, I have no idea.

11 – Imagine a new resident asks for your help. What would do? What would you tell him/her?
I LOVE to help newbies but most people ask “What do I do here?”. What do you do in your first life? I basically would tell them to spend about an hour or so a day or every other day just exploring Second Life. Find a sandbox and meet people and learn to build and how things work. Just those acts alone will help you find out what you want to do in Second Life, if not actually start you down the path towards what you want to do.*
*When I started SL I immediately looked up classes to learn to build. I was fortunate to be ‘born’ into a sandbox where I had a group of people who taught me a lot of neat tricks. I wish that on everyone who starts out in Second Life. *

12 – How would you describe yourself in one word?
I had to ask a bunch of people in plurk and geeky was it. **J*

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Your urls
http://blog.kesseret.net
http://metavirtual.us
http://virtualfatshionista.com
http://theartistsvoice.org
http://secondlist.org

*Blog: (see above)*

*Flickr: I have a flickr but there’s nothing interesting on it: kesseret*

*SLurls*
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amira/40/105/21/
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Amira/41/72/21/

*Mentions*
Thank you Ana. <3

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