Hey everybody,

​I'm sad to inform you all that I can no longer provide personal technical support for any of the products that are available on my own store and on the virtualdisgrace.com marketplace store.

I really tried to please everyone, but at this point I am so occupied with answering product questions and moderating social disputes at Arcadia, that it is impossible for me to get any focused development and design work properly done anymore at all, which was the only thing that I still really enjoyed doing on Second Life.

I don't have the funds to hire another CSR, Luna is sorely missed, but even during the times when I had her, most questions and problems ended up with me nevertheless. Every day I find myself responding to messages for at least 3 hours when starting my day, before I can even begin to do real work, and then still get constantly distracted with questions.

It is hard for me to understand why so many people expect of a developer/designer to provide this amount of technical support and after sales service, especially during the times when there were support contacts available - and all that for digital downloads that sell for cents and hot-dog prices.

Probably it is because I would almost always respond to every DM or IM, but I stopped doing that now because it really didn't solve anything. It is always the same questions, that are answered in the same way they are on this website, like in an ancient greek version of hell, where the tormented soul has to repeat the same action for all eternity. Like Sisyphos.

The work I do on SL is not rewarding for me unless I can do at least what I enjoy doing to some extent. I'm feeling so fatigued and done with it all, that those customers who try to pressure me into compliance for doing over-over-time, so I hopefully would prevent negative word-of-mouth and 1-star reviews, can't reach me anymore emotionally at all, because I truly just don't care.

If I had to scrub toilets and floors in some office building as a 38.5 hour job, I would earn more than tripple the pay that I do now, and work half the time. You see where this is going?

I deserve to have a life and some level of self fulfillment beside my job or work on SL. I am not a customer support person, but a designer and a developer. I work a minimum of 10 hours every day, and I can easily fill these hours with design, studies, tests and creation, without doing any support.

The reason that there are no new releases anymore is because I barely get the chance to create, although I am here all the time and do work really hard. Being social and helpful, and being productive and creative, is a completely different space of mind for me.

​These two are exclusive to one another, they are an entirely different construction site.

I can no longer do both at the same time. Not only because it makes me less product, effective and slowed down, it frankly makes me unhappy. I have to make a decision about what to do now.

Something needs to change, and probably I will come up with a good solution anyway.

In all fairness, I did have great help when people asked questions in the Fire Flower group on SL and on Fire Flower Deluxe on Discord. The help I received when others were answering questions was awesome, it's just that most people don't go there to ask, they all ask Wendy Starfall instead.

Now, I know there will be people being upset over this. I know there will be people saying that if the job is too hard for me, I shouldn't run a business and quit. I realize that customer entitlement is out of control since eBay and Google empowered the whole wide world to award stars and put comments on every- and anything, but... this is how it is now with me and with my products, sorry.

For the virtualdisgrace.com line of things, and the Gift of X collars, customers who don't want to ask in Fire Flower or Fire Flower Deluxe, can also try to contact:

VirtualDisgrace Resident
Garvin Twine
Grey Mars

I am however off limits for customer support now and forever, and if that means my little shop dies, well then so be it, I'm cool with scrubbing floors and toilets, I can listen to Spotify while I do that too, and when I come home, I can do whatever I like - no questions, no pressure, just free time.

Sincerely,
Wendy Starfall

PS: Please don't misunderstand my post. I don't blame people who are looking for help. They just contact who they think knows the answer, which is usually me. The problem is not everyone else, it is also me and my personality, because I feel worried and guilty when not responding, as I genuinely want everyone to have a good experience with the things I make. Just, please, let me make the things, and give me that freedom and peace of mind back. Thank you. ♥

I'm releasing an update that addresses the problem where users of the RLV relay's "Auto Mode" can be spirited away to arbitrary locations without their consent. Some people will moan about this and say, "then why not just use Ask Mode", but not everyone is knowledgeable about RLV. Most users just do what others tell them, and setting the relay to "Auto" mode is a very common bad advice.

In Build 301 the RLV relay will always ask for confirmation before processing a teleport command.

The only exception to this rule is when the command attempts to teleport the user within the same region (with the user having set the RLV relay to "Auto" mode). That is done so that RLV teleporters, such as portals or elevators, can continue to function like they used to, although it would be best if sim owners would transition to scripted experiences for this kind of use.

Because of the obvious importance of this update, I'm going to explain in some more detail how to acquire and install Peanut N°9 Build 301. Please concentrate for a couple minutes and read it carefully. If you have any questions, please join Discord, which is the best place to ask anything. ♥

If you already have the Peanut version you can either download the update from my marketplace store, or pick it up in the Arcadia region, or at the Archaic store from one of the Peanut N°9 boxes.
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• The updater listing on my marketplace store
• Archaic store in-world (find it to your left or straight ahead)
• Temple of the Collar™ (straight ahead right of the amp stack)
• Little Temple of the Collar™ (straight ahead opposite the oak tree)

If you have any of the premium apps, you can also use your update card in the Arcadia region to get the most recent version of your app bundled with the updater. The same is true for the Heartcore update which I have also refreshed with Build 301 source. Just use your update card.

Copyable premium collars from the virtualdisgrace.com store can be picked up from the redelivery terminal, or if you made your purchase online, then at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/orders

Enter VirtualDisgrace in the "Merchant/Store" field to get a list of your collar and app purchases.

Every collar that you can pick up directly in the Arcadia region for free has Peanut N°9 Build 301 pre-installed. The Heartcore version has the new relay included as well and ships out of the box as version HC-301 ➤ http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Arcadia/86/211/21

All collars on the virtualdisgrace.com marketplace store come with the new version out of the box. The Chatiquette, Herzchen, Magic Leash, New Spy and Sobriquet premium apps also come bundled with an updater ➤ https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/178184

All of the collars that you can buy in my own marketplace store come with Peanut N°9 Build 301 pre-installed. You can also grab my free updater and load the new version on your collar, granted that your third party collar of choice is compatible - if you are unsure, just try it out, the updater will work in most cases ➤ https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/89143

You can use my collar updater to bring your existing stock up to speed with Build 301. For you that means having to re-box and re-list all of your collars, and while I usually say "only do it if you want", this time around I strongly suggest you do it. I did it for our own stores today and took 11 hours (outch!) but I also have to build the updaters, you don't have to do that, you only need to use it. ♥

For building new collars you will need a refreshed creator kit. You can either pick that up with your update card in Arcadia, or you get a redelivery at https://marketplace.secondlife.com/orders

Enter VirtualDisgrace in the "Merchant/Store" field and select the creator kit from the list.
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Depending on how many purchases you made on marketplace, loading things may take a while, especially if you are hailing from anywhere else than North America. For me that takes > 2 minutes.

If you are just getting into creating collars, it is a great time. Peanut N°9 is now more robust, secure than ever, and collars don't require anymore patching with Build 301. ♥

You can learn how to create on the workshop page of this website. It will require an average of 2 minutes reading time from top to bottom, so you will know everything you need. Note that the picture tutorial has little numbers on the side that you can click to cycle through the building steps!

I have been working on a next generation system that doesn't supersede Peanut collar, but is an alternative thing with a more modern approach. I enjoy working on it but, it is still in an alpha state, and I don't want to make any promises that I may not be able to keep any time soon. I'll try though!

If next gen won't happen for some reason, OpenCollar, and with that I mean Peanut N°9 Build 301, arrived very close to its final version. I might follow up with one more version in a couple months. ♥