Journaling our sims

[amylu1988]

It'll load, it's just been taking its time as my laptop is struggling for 'virtual memory' again. I defragmented it tonight so it should work ok tomorrow. *sigh* My laptop tends to work fine for ages then gets to this point and needs sorting out again. It's 6 and a half years old now, so it's doing pretty well really.

Jessica is generation 4, so the original zombie George married Olive Specter, then their son married Jill Smith, then their daughter married Ajay Loner. I've got her parents on a picture, as neither of them have the scary mannequin zombie skin.



I've had Ajay Loner sitting in the sim bin for years, and I finally moved him into a house in Strangetown the other week, to use him for this challenge. He has good genetics but his children have big eyes and small lips at toddler and child ages.

[joandsarah]

I love watching these good gene challenges, never done one myself but I do love seeing how everyone’s sims turn out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Apple Valley news nothing much happened as I spent my time trying to get that Pleasntview house made over for the MTS contest. I looked at that count down time on the clock they used and thought it closed this weekend. Note to self *Check that you're not a week behind by knowing the actual date it is today!* I had up until the 13th!

I played the Goodies apartment. It's noticeable that now it's spring large lots are crashing less. Still crashing but not as much. I'm guessing snow and temperatures tax my computer more. In the bad news I realized all three of their boys are clones! *head desk* I think with the crashing I tend to forget about randomizing on these lots. I'm going to have to randomize them when they get older. Might do some encouraging as well. The oldest son Philip just started Prep school. I've decided that will be $100 per week. I did wonder what to do at the start as many kids might only go one or two days before a weekend but decided they can still pay $100 as those uniforms would have to cost a fair bit I should think. All because $100 is the smallest amount Monic's hacked computer will allow you to bank. They simply transfer it to Julian Cookes account from their own home. Herb was doing well in the science field until a bad chance card demoted him to test subject, while Faith who looks such a sweet thing is really part of the criminal underground, her LTW is to be a criminal mastermind. I'm planning on seeing what chance cards come up with that as I'm sure there is one where they get caught. I'm planning on building a jail and testing that out. Faith better be careful if she doesn't want to land up there. The criminal element is quite busy there as two houses got burgled recently the last one being the cops house. I used my fight burglar hack and had her (She is leader of the swat team!) beat up Russ. The funny thing was he went outside I think to try and steal her cop car. I don't think Faith will have too much trouble reaching the top with brains like that around.

Also agian photobucket decides my saved pictures are not really saved. *grumble*

[joandsarah]

I'm thinking I should move this thread as it keeps getting buried under the what’s happening now thread. Any suggestions as to where you would like to see it?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway yesterday I decided Apple Valley needed a mayor, but I didn't want to just make one as I've tried that before and it was boring. So it suddenly occurred to me I should have two candidates running against each other, as what kind of politics doesn't have rivals? Well unless you have a dictatorship-no thanks. But who should run for office? Then I thought what about a couple of pre-mades? I looked some up on Wiki and thought about Monty and Capp but gosh darn he's so ugly. I've never actually played Veronaville (sp?) It's one of the hoods I don't even have in my game. Then I thought of my old favourite Malcom I do rather like him and his interesting genes. I didn't really want Blue Water attached, but decided to anyway as it give me a larger gene pool. So I got Malcom over the easy way by selling his business, moving him out to the bin and putting him into the main hood. I changed him to pop and rolled aspiration and become mayor was there, bingo! Tried to change him back to fortune but the LTW won't stick if I do that. Now who to run against him? Lokie? Circe? Then I thought Mary-Sue Pleasant! She is in politics and I think her and the girls could do with a fresh start. Politics is not her LTW and after also making her pop it won't come up.
At this point I decided to exit the game and download Mary-Sue, Lilith and Angela. Much easier then extracting them myself. I also downloaded some fancy beach houses, as that's where they will be side by side. I got that set up and managed one day of play with the Pleasant’s. I set them up in game as close to how they are in Pleasantview. Again I'm too lazy to exit, use simpe and reload, plus I don't have the time. It was very eventful! I've never seen a run away before or if I have it was so long ago I forgot. Lilith run away and was returned all on the same day. So Mary-Sue or Malcom will be the mayor, whoever makes it to the top first.


"My daughter has run away!"





So much drama! Actualy setting sims to hate other family members was quite hard to do, but I felt I should keep them to there Pleasantview dinamics. I don't want to step in and just make them friends but rather work it out themselves. Quite different then how I normaly play. I was hoping they would fix things up but instead it quickly escalated. I notice both here and back in Pleasnatview it's Angela who starts the poking! I do occasionally like to make a different kind of family so this once certainly take the title of 'fighting family'.

I gave all three a makeover, but tried to keep it similar to how they were. I gave the girls some nose freakles and new make-up. I think Mary-Sue has an Asian store hair as I read she is Chinese and adopted. I plan to have her wear a different suit each day. I have them with pants or skirts. (You wouldn't want to see my clothing catalogue... or maybe you would? ) Lilith either has on a store or later EP outfit and both are wearing a fairly new hair but I forgot what it's called. skoogy.livejournal.com/ although it could also be one of Heidi's. I've downloaded a lot of hair from here lately. Angela has on a bottom only dress and a white tank top. One of these days I'll know what comes from where.

[esmeiolanthe]

I always come to this thread via the "New Topics" button, so I don't notice that it's buried. Wherever you think would be better is fine with me.

I had no idea that Mary-Sue was adopted. Shows you how much I actually play Pleasantview, doesn't it? I think Lilith's dress is from Teen Style Stuff, or is a custom dress based off of that one. I have a modified cc version in my game, without the tie.

I spent about an hour today finishing up all the partial days that I had. I play rotation-style, and I count the days as running midnight to midnight. I ended up with a lot of household that were saved at three in the afternoon, or seven in the evening, or quarter to noon, which means I can't give them a tickmark for completing a day, and I was feeling discouraged by how much of the rotation is still left. (Especially since my personal updating schedule says I should have posted a new chapter last week.) So now all those households are advanced by one day and I feel slightly better.

I also learned that if you have a car alarm, and the burglar walks past the car, an alarm will start going off and the police will show up. Nifty, eh?

[joandsarah]

I didn't know she was adopted until I read Wikki yesterday! Also she is the Oldies daughter (old couple in the sim bin of Pleasantview) which I also didn't know. Here's another, the girls are clones of Daniel, which makes sense as Mary-Sue having black hair should have passed that on to the girls.

Lilith's dress is game content, so teen style stuff I guess, I don't use that SP very often.

I try and aim for 6am saves because if the game has a reset then usually everybody’s home and needs tend to be close to how they would be.

I tend to forget the car alarms, but now with the fight burglars hack I kind of like no alarm so I can get my sims to go beat him/her up.

That's what I was thinking, with this thread being seen or not.

[amylu1988]

Sorry Jo, you're right, I completely missed this thread! I was thinking it could go in The Sims 2 Chatter Box board, as I don't usually post in there, and this is chatting about sims, after all.

My game hates snow, it goes about twice as slow in sim winter, so yours might be the same, Jo. I love all the details in your hood, and ha at Russ trying to steal the cop car!

Yeah, Mary-Sue is adopted, in the original Maxis photos there's one of the Oldies as adults collecting a toddler from a care home, who turns out to be Mary-Sue. I briefly mentioned it in my Maxis Taste Dare, that the Oldies (or just Coral, in my 'hood) can't have children, so they adopted Mary-Sue. I always get confused with their family tree, Jennifer Burb is Daniel Pleasant's sister if I remember rightly.

I love your make-overs of the girls, Jo, the teen style outfit really suits Lillith and I have loads of Skoogy hair, too. I managed to Maxis Match one hair myself last week, but with so much new stuff on livejournal, there's no point me making them if other people are doing it better, it takes so long!

Yay for rotations days, Esme! I usually play half days, daylight and nighttime, or a whole 7am-7am if it's going fast. Mind you, all of my Pleasantview playing is based on what the Main Hypothesis House is doing, so if they're stuck in a plot, no-one else gets played until they're done.

I never used burglar alarms on cars as it took so long to install and I hadn't realised they had a point. But if they do that then they're worth having, I'll have to try it out. Thanks Esme! ;D

[joandsarah]

I was thinking it could go in The Sims 2 Chatter Box board, as I don't usually post in there, and this is chatting about sims, after all.

That sounds like a jolly good idea Amy. I'm going to do that.

Of course you did I don't think it sunk in just who Coral was. I'm not a Pleasantview player apart from a bit here and there, I've never even had Brandi have that baby. I'd be lucky to have played one whole day at any of the houses.

One thing that's really hit me since playing these two houses is I have no maids or gardeners! Well the game does but my self sustaining hood rules are it has to be a playable sim. I need some sims to take on those jobs and then when I play the Pleasants/Landgraabs I can teleport them in to do those jobs. It just didn't seem right having Malcom trim shrubs until 2am and clean his own loo, the man has over $200,000! I do have one lady who is a social worker, I should probably switch her to being a maid, also maybe then I'd stop jumping when she turns up some place in her SW outfit.

Another thing that happened that I haven't seen before is I had Mary-Sue invite the headmaster over to get the girls into private school (don't need there fighting at the prep school) and I thought great they got in.... well apparently only Angela did and not poor Lilith. I've never seen that! I'm thinking it must be because of her D grade.

When we can organize it dh is having his computer tech friend upgrade me to 8GB of RAM(have 4 right now) update the drivers which are old and give it a good dust out. The fans have been whirring quite a bit lately.

I normally play for one season in the SSH.

Glad you are liking these updates about this hood, I was wondering if I was boring you all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[amylu1988]

I only have Pleasantview and Strangetown in my game still, I think it makes me play the Maxis houses a lot more. I keep adding Veronaville in and then taking it back out again, I'm never sure if I like playing it enough to keep it in, it feels like there's a lot of teenagers in that 'hood and I get fed up of them really quickly.

Haha, love the image of Malcolm Langraab being really rich, running his businesses, and then going round and dusting his house! I still haven't seen the Social Worker in my game, I should stop being so picky about my sim children just to see her turn up for once.

I'd heard about the grades stopping children getting in to private school, but didn't know they'd let one in and not the other! Well, at least that will stop them fighting in the playground if they're at different schools.

Ah, the fan, I knew there was something I meant to do before I turned my laptop on! Mine's making its usual complaining noises, so it's time for a clean. I'm not actually sure how much RAM my laptop has...I'm guessing not much. How do you find out?

Oops, I meant to go and play Hypothesis, so I actually had something to put here. I am going to play now, promise...

[joandsarah]

Put 'dxdiag' (Without the apostrophes) into your start up search area and that should show you the RAM. Mine actually says 4096MB but I know from when it got done that I have 2 sticks put in and each stick was 2 GB. So I don't really understand that 4096 but it's close enough and will give you an idea.

Right now at the start of the day the fan isn't too bad but after lunch time I bet it will be complaining like crazy-and that is of course when I go load up sims!

Have fun.

[esmeiolanthe]

There are 1,000 (and a teeny bit) MB in a GB. So 4096 MB is the same as 4 GB -- just more accurate, coz it's not rounded.

Just so's you know, there are 1,000 KB in a MB, and there are 1,000 GB in a TB (or a TeraByte). Memory with TB capacity is very new right now, and very very expensive, but eventually we'll all have it, just like 1 GB used to be super expensive but is now ridiculously low.

[joandsarah]

Thanks Esme, I will probably forget all of that, but thanks anyway. yes from a link posted for my on MTS it said I could upgrade my RAM and the sticks should only cost about $37 0_0

[amylu1988]

I've got an external drive which if memory serves me right is 500GB, so half a TB. My parents bought it for me as a birthday present, and my sims back-ups are mostly on there, but also on my other 3 usb pens (half a Gig, 8GB and 16GB) in case my external drive breaks.

I don't have a start menu search box, I'm on XP and if I click search from my start menu it pops up with a window as if I'm in My Docs and asks me for key words and searches my files and folders for things containing dxdiag. *sigh* My laptop never seems to do what it's supposed to...

Sims-wise I just felt creative and wrote two sides of A5 about the rest of chapter 28, so that's good. Hopefully got time to shoot a scene tonight as I didn't manage to get anything done yesterday in the end what with a phone call from my parents and my laptop complaining again. But I feel more prepared for the last few scenes now, as long as I can find the right seating for 12 children eating grilled cheese. :/

[joandsarah]

I'm sure there would be some place to put dxdiag, just I don't know where that would be. :/

Well I had him sell his two business as I think you are meant to do that before moving from a sub to the main hood (not sure on that, but I needed the money anyway) It's a race to Mayor, so he only has time for that now. I decided in my head that he trimmed the shrubs at 1am so no one would see him.

I went over the the trailer park and changed my couple from post man and social worker to gardener and maid, so next time I play Malcom or Mary-Sue they can have them come over and see to things. I seem to have some trouble with the trailer park mail box though. Seems like the tenants are paying both rent and bills. There seems to be some kind of jump bug with the mail box-it's an EA built lot too. Am I the only one with AL? Not sure what I should do about it. They are so poor they can hardly meet all the bills coming in.

[amylu1988]

Hmm, that sounds like an odd bug, I think you're right that you're the only one on here with AL, might be worth asking on LJ?

Ooh, Malcolm would make a good mayor. I only have Bluewater attached to my Strangetown but I'd love to be able to make him mayor of Bluewater. I don't think I've actually played his house yet, he just keeps turning up at other people's.

Not sure whether to shoot the scene at Penny's house or just go for it and work with 10 uncontrollable children at Felicity/Latane's house tonight. I've been putting this scene off for two months now, but I finally have it planned, so as long as the two controllable children do as I ask and invite the others to do stuff, it shouldn't be too stressful to shoot....tempted fate there though, possibly.

[amylu1988]

Looked up how much RAM my laptop model has on Google, it says either 512MB or 1GB, depending on the model. As far as I know, mine is the older model, so I think it has half a gig. Which explains a lot.

I've got a lot more done of Hypothesis, just need to get into a writing mood now. Most of the difficult stuff is written, it's the filler with the kids that I can't be bothered to write at the moment. But at least there's 103 slides with pictures on now. Only one scene left to shoot, and I planned this scene well over a year ago, so in theory it should be easy!