Yes, it's a Sunday; sometimes you have to wonder who makes the decisions about when to release these things. But Sidewinder Linden is calling for you to fill in this survey to help the Lindens determine how inventory is still occurring. This is in addition to reporting inventory loss via the support portal.

The survey is mercifully short (9 questions, mostly pick one type answers), and forms part of the initiative both Moo and I wrote about recently. Let's hope not too many of us need to bookmark the survey page, and that it helps find out and stamp out inventory loss.

I don't remember the first time I heard a massive complaint about inventory loss. (I do know hearing about upgrading Havok came before that though). Maybe it's only been a major issue for two years - I do remember one update that "collected" large parts of inventory of about 1 in 3 residents incorrectly, and more recently we've had the rezzing and losing no-copy items problem.

Although the former can still occasionally strike, particularly when "optimitsing inventory" the latter has been largely fixed. There are still issues however, as anyone can tell you. Linden Lab are, fortunately, taking this seriously and instituting a series of measures to hunt down and hopefully eradicate the issue once and for all. This will, inevitably take time, but if you'd like to know more, and/or contribute to the process have a read of the blog or go to office hours with Hamilton Linden on Wednesday at 2pm or add to the inventory loss wiki.

Well, okay, not quite so bad as all that - but there is a reason we get updates on a Wednesday rather than on a Friday - it leaves a couple days to fix things if they go sour. Stuff that gets broken on a Friday even generally stays that way until .. well, usually Tuesday.

The broken function is llGiveInventoryList() which gives someone a bunch of objects in a named inventory folder. Most objects that give you multiple items use this function. The breakage occurs in that (since the rolling update today) the function does not now give you the items in a folder. Scripts go into your scripts folder, notecards to your notecards folder, animations to your animations folder, clothing and body parts to their respective folders, and (worse!) are automatically worn!

This alone promises a poor weekend for Residents who spend their time helping newbies.

Inventory issues, sorting, folders snapping open or shut unexpectedly getting you down? Suffering from notecard, or texture spam? Optional viewer update 1.15.1 contains fixes for all of these, contributed by those open source mavens - particularly Jason Giglio. Jason? You rock.

Plenty of other bugfixes to please and delight the discerning and the discriminating. Grab the new viewer from the usual place (faster than relying on autoupdate) or check out the release notes.

Following my post on Moo Cards, I must ask this: Why can't I email photos I've already got in my inventory? Sure, there's the workaround -- Open your photo, save it to disk, send that as an attachment. But it really should be just a right-click option, amirite?

It's just funny how things you think are no-brainers just seem to slip right through the net. I just keep hoping that my little missives to the Intarwub will fall upon the right ears and make my life all better.

Okay, watch this video and tell me you wouldn't love to do this with the Inventory in SL. It's BEGGING for this kinda treatment! I mean, c'mon, how much better would going through your inventory be if you could see a little representation of the object itself, rather than a name?

I don't know enough about scripting to know whether such a thing is even possible, but someone out there will see this and say 'Hmmm ... ' The makers of this interface are considering plans to make this a desktop replacement for any machine. I'm sold, sign me up. *hopping from foot to foot*

Jeska Linden, CommMonkey for the week, reports that the week-long migration of some residents' inventories to a new server is 'almost done' and that they're hoping to have the inventory data consistent and correct 'when it is ready'. Apparently no actual ETA is specified, "As of today, this process almost complete."

Residents with missing inventory after that point (whenever it is) should file abuse reports, then contact either Kona Linden or Beast Linden with the tracking numbers that they get in email. Hopefully we'll get an update when that point actually happens.

At approximately Noon Thursday SLT (Second Life Time), it appears Linden Lab performed an upgrade or extension to their Inventory cluster, which involved the migration of the inventories of some residents to another database server or servers. It didn't exactly go well.

Affected residents were greeted with the not very cheerful message "Login Failed. Unable to complete transform' Copy inventory to new database' Please contact support@secondlife.com", which then accompanied what was essentially the apparent loss of the contents of their inventories. The system's failsafe mode gave them a 'temporary inventory', only things taken into this temporary inventory actually had no home and likely weren't saved -- quite possibly turning apparent loss into actual loss.

Linden Lab labored until 14:40 SLT, before announcing that most of the inventory issues had been corrected, and asking those whose inventories had not reappeared to please contact them. This seems to continue a recent run of unfortunate issues and problems for Linden Lab as they battle to keep pace with the growth of Second Life.

I was confused the other day when I dragged what appeared to be a Christmas ball from my Lost and Found folder, only to find it was a whole Christmas tree in pieces. I had been editing the tree on a sandbox when it was unfortunately returned to my inventory. "Curses!" I thought, "80 bits of tree in my Lost and Found!" Then I forgot about it, until it rezzed before my eyes.

But no, not 80 pieces of tree exactly. One big bit of tree coalesced from the individual prims returned from the parcel, but unlinked. I hadn't heard anything about this new feature until Darcy Remington happened to mention it in a post to the Brits and Pieces group email. Ahhhh ....

In case you have inadvertently deleted "object" from your Lost and Found and still have the chance of rescuing it to find your wand, car and pet dragon hiding within it "coalesced", I commend this forum discussion and this Linden knowledge base article to your attention.

In simple terms, if you have 50 items returned from a parcel they may be coalesced into one item and hiding behind a wall panel or something that you may discard. Check things in your Lost and Found very carefully.

Also: be aware that if things on a parcel are returned and coalesced into one item, they maintain their relative positions, so be careful where you rezz them or you will have portions of the coalesced item all over the place. And Hey! Lindens! I think a bit more publicity for shiny new features like this might be in order, so that people don't delete their possessions in ignorance.

The Linden Blog highlights a current bug which means that recently bought inventory disappears if it isn't rezzed and moved before log out. There have been reports in world of inventory vanishing over the last few days: I saw one IM group chat debating whether or not a creator was being scammed when a customer said that all the items they had bought had turned up in their object folder, but had vanished before the next log in. There was a general feeling that creators ought not to have to compensate for their customer's clumsiness in either losing or deleting their objects, but it now seems clear that the poor customer concerned was a victim of this bug.

The work around for the problem is to rez items immediately, and to move them out of the objects folder. The problem is that many people will have lost items before they were aware of the bug, and while the account history tells people what has been bought by their customers, it doesn't tell you precisely what you have bought.

Creators who don't have a massive turnover will be able to follow up their customers in the last few days and double check that they have received the items they have purchased, but this may be very difficult for those with a very high turnover to do.

Meanwhile, other residents report a general problem with inventory returning from parcels, returned objects and older inventory, as well as newly-purchased items. Some who commented on the blog are loathe to log in at the moment for fear of what they may lose. Do add your experiences of these problems in comments, because shared information may lead to other workarounds, or awareness of how widespread other problems with inventory have become.

This is a confusing and daunting interface, but it's essential that you, the new resident, get acclimated to it as soon as possible. This will not be an exhaustive exploration, but rather an overall look at what's inside the Inventory, and how to use it.

First of all, there are two main sections: Library, and My Inventory. Library is where the defaults are kept: clothing, avatar shapes, scripts, etc. You may never need to access the Library folder. My Inventory, however, is where all the other things get stored. Any photo you take, object you're given, avatar you buy... they all go into their respective folders. One of the most important things to watch is how easy it is to just keep collecting items! It's possible to eventually end up with hundreds of objects, most of which you never use.

The key is to do a thorough looking-over of your Inventory on a daily basis. Just a quick look once a day should be sufficient to manage unsightly overgrowth. In the next installment, I'll go into the peculiarities of each folder. Woo, and then hoo!

I posted a list of bugs and issues reported following the 1.11.2 update a short while ago, but this bug is potentially so costly for people that I thought I should make a separate entry for it.

Something has been a bit odd about auto-return since the 1.11 update, because people who own the land have been finding that if they build their prims are returned to them, in a seemingly random way.

Even on land with no auto return, people have reported odd things disappearing or being returned to them, although I hadn't experienced that until this morning. Oclee is building a set for publicity photographs of his fireplace, and needed a chair to put in the corner, of the right shape and elegance to go with a renaissance-style fireplace.

I dragged my Relic inventory box, by Toneless Tomba, from my inventory to the ground. The notecard that is delivered whenever it is rezzed was delivered to me, but the box never appeared. It has gone from my inventory and isn't in my lost and found or my trash. It has vanished off the face of my inventory and the world. It contains a lot of stuff that has sentimental value, things I have been given and have bought, and don't currently have out in my house.

I even removed the surface patch in case I had accidentally buried it. I haven't.

My advice is, don't rezz anything expensive, or any storage device for things you don't have copies of, really, don't rezz anything that isn't copyable, until they have fixed this. As people are reporting that vendors and buying are not delivering goods to them, maybe it would be sensible not to buy anything too expensive either?

Update: arrived about 20 minutes later, about 100 metres from where I rezzed it. Weird.

And now, the corollary to my earlier post about taking objects: it's important to note that some objects, when rezzed, will explicitly require you to take them back into your inventory before you leave a sim. For example, I have a little purple dragon who I like to pull out of my inventory every now and then so he can fly around with me. His name is Nexium. He's a good little guy, unobtrusive, cute, etc. However, if I've been a bad companion, and decide to teleport to somewhere else without having first taken him back into my inventory, I get message after message stating that 'Your little purple dragon is lost at xx, xx, xx coordinates.'

This just breaks my heart... my object isn't just stuck in the sim I'd just left; he's actually lost. Poor little guy! All cold and lonely and scared, not knowing where to go, or who to trust... hoping that his owner will come back and take him home... *sniff* I -- I'm sorry, I... I have something in my eye...

Please, learn from my example... pick up your toys before you leave. Think of the children.

Willow Zander writes that she has 47,000 objects in her inventory. Yes...47,000.  I didn't go cross-eyed and add a zero. Amazingly, the article is about organising inventory:

So, Moopf started a thread on the forum, asking people how many items they have.  One can assume Willow hasn't contributed as the poll associated with the thread hasn't yet found anyone with over 40,000 items.

I try to keep my inventory at around 10,000 items maximum, although at present it is creaking at 16,000. I have tried all sorts of methods for organising it. I have used boxes, but have found that I lose these never to find them again. I have tried the Toneless Tomba inventory and texture organisers, and to an extent they work. The only problem with texture organising is that one has to decide on categories and then stick to them.

The trouble is, if too many people stagger about with 45,000+ items in their inventory, Linden Lab may be forced to make a surcharge ....