CONVERTING THE MENTAL CONVERSION

Well, there goes that heuristic. Back in June, when the market exchange rate was hovering around US$1 to L$250, I got in the habit of estimating the value of in-world goods and services by subtracting the last three zeroes from the price, and multiplying by four. (Since a thousand Linden Dollars would get you about four bucks, at that rate.) Now it looks like the current rate has since risen to about US$1.25. So now I'm forcing myself to mentally remove three zeroes and multiply by five. (Since on those terms, a thousand Linden gets you more like five dollars.) Hence, when the lease rights to a plot of land in the new snow sims are auctioned for a bid of, for example, L$37,000, my mental kung fu now chops off the "000" at the end, and multplies the remaining 37 by five, to come up with an estimated US$185, for that patch of winter wonderland.

Hopefully the exchange rate doesn't fluctuate much more, because like Malibu Stacy says, Math is hard! (For me and Stacy, at least.)

[Hard enough for me, that it took me almost two more weeks to realize there's a much easier conversion method. If you want to buy L$1000, at the going rate, you need to spend US$5. Therefore, to calculate any cost, just take the last two digits off the Linden price, and half it. Hence, $L22,000 is about US$110, $L5,000 is around US$25, and so on. Duh. -- WJA, 8/16]