I don't think I ever mentioned Aviv Or. She's an Israeli comics artist whose work I've been intermittently aware of since we met on the CrossGen message boards years ago. Every now and then I'm moved to google her name and see what she's been up to lately. This webcomic is 4-5 years old, and I think I've seen it before. Webcomics about video games would be funnier to me if I didn't play The Sims 2 almost exclusively, so that's what the strip I linked to is about.

Edit: I found one that's hilarious even though I have no idea what game it's from.

So, with my new, clean Pleasantview, I decided to do something new. I killed off most of the playables via testing cheats and merged the remaining seven characters into one big, carefully balanced household.

Alexander Goth presented a mild difficulty, because I killed off Cassandra and Mortimer when there weren't any other adults on the lot, and so he was taken by the social worker and had to be adopted in. This means: 1) his name is now Alexander Langerak, and 2) I had to use a hack to adopt him in, because, yes, Kaylynn was pregnant from Daniel Pleasant, and of course she had twins.

I didn't have the same problem with Beau Broke, because I merged the Brokes into the Dreamer household before I killed Dirk, Brandi and Dustin. Darrin survived and immediately bonded with Beau. He currently shares a room with Lilith Pleasant, who was evicted out of the twin room when Beau moved there, to make room in the nursery for Kaylynn's babies. Other participants are Jennifer Burb and Don Lothario, so I really have one of each of the core aspirations.

Playing a household of nine Sims isn't easy. There's a reason I try to keep them down to 4-5.

I was meaning to pick up the laptop yesterday evening, but the shop was closed when I got there (after leaving work early). This morning I went there and the tech said he tried to call me and couldn't catch me -- they can't retrieve my data, he needed my okay to format the disc.

There was no writing on there, the only good side effect of the block. My simming backup was far out of date, enough that I think I'll just throw in the towel and start over. It's just a game, after all. I might do a prosperity challenge with custom skins and stuff. I don't know. Anyway, I'll be picking up the computer tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I've been reading Morality for Beautiful Girls. I'm about halfway through, and I love it.

We are midway through S3 of BSG reruns. I'll want to rewatch the first half of S4, since so much went over my head the first time. Hopefully we'll get 4.5 sometime next month, although I'm debating reading spoilers since ( spoilers )

I am basically really speculating in thin air, but I'm actually really looking forward to the sequel, because I want to know more about how the Cylons were designed and created, to see if it matches up to my speculation.

I am also wondering whether I should make BSG Sims to integrate into my crossover neighborhood, and if so, who I should pick. I usually pick families of characters that I feel were a bit neglected. For instance, Alex Rousseau is living with her mother and has just had twins, who I named Valentine and Theodore. The most family-like structures in BSG are the least neglected, except... Hmm. I don't know.

I woke up just recently feeling quite like shit, but now I'm drinking tea and I'm better. I think I haven't had coffee since Sunday morning. Also, I've been having freaking weird dreams. Let me record the most recent one, before I forget it:

( Read more... )

Then I woke up.

I worry for my mental health.

I am a captive of the effect. This is the second night in a row where I was up well past midnight, and well after I'd planned, because just one. more day! My apocalypse challenge! It's going so well! I'm in the last semester of senior year!

There is always one more goal after the last one, and they're close enough together that I can easily say, "Well, one more won't take that long. I'll go to sleep at midnight, like a good girl, because I have work tomorrow." Then I say the same thing every half-hour or so. Then I stay awake for another half-hour or so, because I can't get the game out of my head and I'm planning ahead the gameplay.

I will kick the apocalypse challenge's ass, though.

I started posting image updates about my Sims at impromptusims. Warning: the individual entries, though LJ-cut, are very image-heavy.

I was planning on cleaning and doing a laundry today. Instead, I played The Sims 2 and watched some Doctor Who.

I really want this but have not been able to find it anywhere.

I was supposed to be playing with my electronic dollhouse right now. However, the game launcher refuses to read the DVD and all indications are that it's a SecuROM problem. I actually didn't realize that Double Deluxe had SecuROM on it, but even if I had, there's nothing I could have done about it. The store didn't have any of the base game left, as they apparently don't ship/manufacture/whatever those anymore, and it's not like EA Games was about to reimburse me for disc 1 getting stolen with my last laptop.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to get into DRM politics just yet. I so don't have the energy for this. However, what's done is done. I generated a diagnostic report and submitted it to both EA and SecuROM. I await their speedy response, and in the meantime, am starting to think about uninstalling the whole mess and buying an original flavor base game second hand off eBay. If I can find one that ships worldwide, it's a definite option. If it works, it's also an option for non-SecuROMed expansion packs, IE OfB and Seasons.

Why am I being treated like a thief? It feels so awful.

Work tomorrow, and then a dodgy schedule for the rest of the week. I haven't quite figured out how to balance it all out so that my brother and I can go to Icon and fill up on our graphic novel quota. And also see Hellboy II, which is only getting to Israeli theaters next weekend.

I should be sleeping, but instead I spent all day reading Apocalypse Challenge stories and experimenting with recoloring hair for a theoretical Sim story that I might someday play, assuming I ever have a freaking DVD drive in my laptop. After I finish the Impromptu legacy, that is.

In short: I'm as boring as ever.

Over the holiday, I wanted to test-install The Sims 2: University on my father's desktop, to make sure the new activation code I got was working. Of course, once I installed it, I couldn't resist playing a little and created an impromptu little family using the legacy challenge rules. Once I was playing, I started missing all the added options that Nightlife gave me. My couple didn't even have turn-ons or chemistry!

So today, I brought over the Nightlife expansion and installed it. Smartly, I backed up my entire neighborhood folder, against the need to uninstall and return to the Uni-compatible version of the files, right? Right?

WRONG. I was only semi-smart enough to back up the downloads folder (although it did not get deleted during the installation like I expected) and the one neighborhood I'd set up my legacy household in. Then when I loaded the game to start playing, everything seemed all right, until I realized that I could not play more than twenty minutes or so before the game froze. I'm guessing my dad's processor isn't strong enough.

Rats.

Real life news? Don't be ridiculous. Nothing interesting is happening there.

I do, however, have a bunch of new Simlets. Angela and Dustin's son Dominic has a little sister, Abigail. His cheating ex-wife, Sandy (nee Bruty) had a daughter with Don, whose name is Sif. Lucy Burb and townie husband Leo just had a daughter, Shannon... who I then played to toddlerdom. I really shouldn't be playing more than 2-3 Sim days at a stretch, but the habit, it is forming.

More gratuitous Sim blather.

( Lilith Pleasant is Captain Hero. )

I'm off to play Lilith's adoption.

Okay, so there's no way in hell that Spore will run on my laptop. The requirements are for 2Ghz processor, which is the barest of all bare minimums, and I have a 1.37GHz dual core. Bleh. Earlier today I was like, "CANNOT WAIT UNTIL SEPTEMBER" and so I downloaded the freebie creature shop to mess around with. Now, I'm just better off not tempting myself with herbivores. It will only end in grief. Or me buying a new laptop, which is out of the question.

Maybe I'll play a little Sims to cheer myself up.

For my own reference: realistic system reqs and upgrade recommendations for TS2.

ETA: The more I read stuff like this, the more convinced I become that I desperately need a better processor. I'm not even sure if the processor on my laptop is upgradeable or not, but the Intel Pentium Dual CPU T2310 @ 1.46 GHz 1.47 GHz I have ain't doing jack, and I'm convinced it's the weakest link, and responsible for all the leakage, buggage, freezage, asplodeyness and giant balls of fire visible from space in my game.

So last week I got The Sims 2: University and today I got around to installing it. As per protocol, I play-tested the game vanilla, with no hacks or mods. Since the game is still borked and won't let me into Strangetown, or allow me to create new families, I assigned a campus to Pleasantview and picked one of the OTB households to play. One Family Sim, two Knowledge Sims, three different majors potentially leading to three of the four new careers; good times.

Except, my original plan for play-testing was to create a household of four, so I could move them through and out of uni together, so I could have a household with all four careers. So when it turns out that one of the household friends is majoring in Drama and thus eligible for the Show Business career, I pounce on the opportunity and move her in. Except it turns out that she's a Romance Sim, and has a crush on my male Knowledge Sim, who's involved with the Family Sim; without jealousy mods, a one-sided crush is grounds for her to get a memory of catching him cheating on her, because he slept with his girlfriend. And she's a Romance Sim.

I've mentioned before that I hate how jealousy works in this game, right?

Anyway, no more playing vanilla for me. I'm restoring my full Downloads folder and hoping I can neutralize the extra girl's fury. Or else, I'll just dump them and pick up one of the other households.

Since I just finished playing through a whole damn week (game-time, naturally, not real-time) of The Sims 2, have a gratuitous post detailing where my game is:

( Read more... )

I am an enormous geek.