Observant SLI reader Matt Bowerman spotted the latest issue of Good Magazine on the stands in Austin Texas, sporting a cover story on Second Life. Unfortunately, the story chronicles one apparently sex-obsessed writer's wanderings and musings on his lack of a virtual penis. [Caution - contains a virtual penis image]

People who are familiar with Second Life will immediately find author Morgan Clendaniel's narrative littered with inaccuracies, and misleading turns of phrase. Heck, there are five assorted penis references by the time you get to the bottom of the second paragraph, where the author felt the need to violate the gambling ban to bankroll himself some genitalia.

Bolstering the "one man's search for a penis" narrative, is some supporting material and research. The piece aspires to become balanced, and it comes close, but seems to fall short of the mark and finishes with penises again. It's obvious that Clendaniel didn't have a great time. "Something fun and social must be happening in Second Life," he writes, "but it certainly isn't happening where I am."

Take a look. Tell us what your own thoughts are.

Around 4:30PM SLT (US Pacific) around a hundred simulators, apparently in the colocation facility in Texas went offline. These simulators remain offline though there's no sign of them being offline if you check the map - only if you try to teleport to one - so it's hard to spot.

Linden Lab has indeed spotted the problem, however, and suspects a problematic network switch, and tells us that operations is working on restoring the downed regions.

[UPDATE: 11:10PM SLT - Sims just started coming up, and Linden Lab pronounces the problem resolved.]

[UPDATE: 11:22PM SLT - The affected sims just went offline again.]

[UPDATE: 11:57PM SLT - Linden Lab acknowledges that the problem is back and now affects nearly 200 regions.]

In other mixed reality news, San Antonio based content company, Metaversality, is throwing a bash in Austin at Mozarts Cafe. Popular Second Life musicians Frogg Marlowe and Melvin Took will be performing before a live audience of residents. The party begins at 2PM CST and ends around 7PM CST, at which point we'll be going bar hopping!

The confirmed attendees so far are Adri Saarinen, Peter Newell, Haver Cole, Zabitan Assia, Dragontat Zagato, moo Money, Troy Vogel, Moira Stern, Ute Hicks, Memory Harker, Euterpe Roo, Katt Kongo, and many, many more!

• Who: Metaversality
• What: SLTX Meetup
• Where: Mozarts Cafe, 3826 Lake Austin Blvd, Austin, TX 78703
• When: Saturday, February 17th at 2PM CST
• Why: Do you really need a reason to meet your fellow Second Lifers?

On Saturday 6 January, between 16:00 SLT and 16:30 SLT some unannounced number of Second Life sims (aka regions) will go offline for several minutes, while engineers at the Texas colocation facility that houses part of the grid servers make several network router upgrades. Linden Lab does yet not know if this will require the grid to be closed to logins during the maintenance window.

Additionally, between 00:00 and 02:00 SLT, Friday 5 January one of Second Life's network providers will also be doing some routing funk. If they get it right, this window will likely have bursts of network lag and connection dropouts. If they get it wrong, there may be more severe connection problems. More of this work will take place in a second, larger window between 00:00 and 06:00 SLT on Monday 15 January.