Second Life® “celebrity” and genuine sweetheart Tateru Nino’s real-life father lost his 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer on Sunday morning in Australia. She took a few moments in her “Dwell on It” blog to reflect on the impact he has had in her life.

Thanks, Tat, for taking the time to share him with us. –SB

I’ve been asked more than once lately where I’ve been in Second Life®—or more specifically, why I haven’t been around much online in that community.

The main reason: I honesty haven’t had much interest in the SL platform since most of the activities that I used to be involved with—The Sanctuary, The Gin Rummy (which went female-avatars-only and then closed not long after), other places—shut down and fellow avatars that I used to hang out with decided to pursue other endeavors both inside and outside the community. Given the amount of activity in-world that is mainly “adult-oriented” in nature, there just hasn’t been much for me to do that isn’t “clean” in nature, except to hang out at The Shelter in Isabel or attend services on Sunday mornings at ALM CyberChurch (which I haven’t been to in a very long time).

I have kept my premium account active, mainly because I got in early enough to keep the L$500 (roughly US$2.00) weekly stipend before Linden Lab started dropping the stipend amounts for new premium subscribers; but otherwise, I sold any land holdings that I had and have pretty much put Second Life® on the back burner, dropping by The Shelter every now and then or logging in to see a live show.