For anyone who's wondering

Yeah, I guess I'm leaving this part of the Sim Blog world. I haven't been on in forever and I've realized I'm more into pictures/stories of Sims rather than the forum drama. After a while, I felt like I tried too hard to fit in with everyone else by writing in a pseudo-Nancy Grace tone. No offense, but when FuryRed vanished (seriously, where have you been?) I stopped checking these blogs daily, then weekly, then monthly, then I uninstalled Windows Live Writer, and I haven't been on in months. I'm more of a Tumblr person now, especially for their Simming community. There's never any drama there and it's easier to blog over there. It's more microblogging than original posts but yeah.

Anyway, thank you everyone for coming here for two years and for accepting me as a part of your community! This was the first fandom where I conducted myself as a (semi) mature adult (you really wouldn't wanna see me during my Pokemon phase :P). Thank you ShinyShinx, FuryRed, VidKid20, XXAngelicEvilXX, TheMaresNest, Mike, Kami, and everyone else I have met in the past 2 years! I definitely won't be forgetting you for a while! Even if some of you deleted your blogs or we never actually talked, I enjoyed coming home from school everyday knowing there would be new posts waiting for me.

When I started this blog, I was a shy and awkward 15 year old boy trying to fit in with the athletic crowd at school. Now, I found my own comfort zone and my own friend circle and I feel like I found my own voice as a person. I'm not gonna lie and say it's all because of everyone here but you definitely helped shape me as a person.

I won't be deleting this blog because one day I want to look back at my old posts and my melodramatic high school life. Not to mention, maybe one day I will come back. It probably won't happen, but as long as TheSimsResource keeps being jerks, or Newsea and Peggy keep making weird hairs, or EA acts horrible, I could always have stuff to blog about. I'd love to give my Tumblr URL out here but I have personal info (or at least my name and my picture) up there and I'd feel weird putting it up on Blogger, which I feel is a more public website. And some of the stories I've written here definitely would do more harm than good if anyone knew I wrote them in real life. So maybe I'll privately tell anyone who wants to know, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Oh, and out of curiosity, I decided to search myself on The Mare's Nest. I was surprised when I was mentioned in a few new posts.
I got involved in some Rud3bwoy scandal, apparently? I assure you, as bad ass as that would be of me, it definitely wasn't. As much as I tried staying updated on all the drama, I definitely wouldn't care enough to go that far to rat someone out. And I was in school December 23, 2011 1:PM. :P

Then came an interesting turn of events. Someone out there decided to give the beleaguered cage builder a little tip off – our prime suspect being Armenian Twin – which led to our incoming links page getting hammered with all roads leading to Fauna Classified, and hence how we were able to go over in time to watch the fun.

Quoted from that link; it's cool that I'm being remembered as someone who would try to stop a scammer, especially after being extremely irrelevant and contributing nothing to the Sim Blogging world for 2 years.

Jen is really TtnFn04?  I was surprised when I read this. Not gonna lie, I skimmed through most of it, I didn't bother clicking any of the screenshots, and I haven't followed The Mare's Nest at all in 2012, but apparently this blogger I befriended is a bad person (or at least, in the first world- blogosphere definition of the word bad)? I mean, we never really talked other than commenting on each other's posts, but yeah. Again, it's cool that The Mare's Nest remembers who comments on an irrelevant blog's two year old blog post.

And the other posts were me being mentioned in my tirade against Jarsie9. Not too bad of a legacy, if you ask me. :P

If anyone's curious, we gave up on the Timbersons. We had a chapter all ready to be uploaded in October but then Windows Live Writer wasn't working so we kept trying for a few months but it never got uploaded. :( If you're wondering, most of the heirs remained pale brunettes with a new purple hair streak. I realized that I like playing legacies more than I like uploading them. So I guess that's the 'real' challenge of them.

So yeah, if you want to remove my link from your sidebar, I completely understand! Maybe I'll pop in once in a while to check up on everyone. Thanks for a great 2 years!

Sims 2 Things I’d Want in The Sims 3

I’ve never played The Sims 2 but there are several features I’d really want in The Sims 3.

Career Rewards- Career Rewards look really fun and interesting. It makes careers useful after your family doesn’t need the money anymore (which happens after a few generations in legacies). The Obstacle Course one, the plastic surgery one, the pinball machine thing, and the koi pond look interesting. I like that there were goofier rewards, too.

University- Maybe I’ve been watching too much Undeclared lately, but college looks fun on TV and it probably would be interesting in TS2. I guess it’s probably because I’m going into my junior year at high school and everyone is all ‘omg college SATs scholarships!!!!’ and stuff but the scholarships and majors intrigue me.  

The old supernatural stuff- TS2 had more interesting life states, in my opinion. Plant Sims, Witches, Werewolves, Zombies and Aliens look more interesting than what TS3 offers, IMO. And apparently they have hybrids? The TS3 Simbot and Imaginary friend are really similar to me, but then again, this is EA that we’re talking about. And does the Mummy even have any advantages?  Maybe EA is saving all the good ones for last. And apparently Pets is bringing a unicorn? Honestly? That sounds so stupid. You could bring a unicorn with a magic EP but you can’t bring a werewolf with any other EP. And as least the other ones were human-shaped. I swear. EA’s next life state is gonna be a rock or something even stupider.

The usual stuff- seasons, old careers, less glitches, a company that cares, etc.

Okay, so this entire rant could be summarized as ‘If you want these features, play The Sims 2.’, as Jarsie would say. That’s a good point, actually. Especially with all the collections that are 20 dollars. I could own the entire series for less, I could skip EPs that I’m not interested in, and the game would probably work better on my laptop. The only thing I’d miss would be Create a Style and the trait system.

Rambling

LiveJournal is seriously complicated for a blogging website. It’s impossible for me to successfully use the ‘read more’ part without wasting half an hour trying to figure out how to use it. At least on Blogger and Tumblr you just press ‘split post’ or you press ‘insert read more break’ and it works. But I shouldn’t have to go to the FAQ each time I want to use the ‘read more’ option.

Oh, and I hate Blogger’s new website. I can’t use it without the window freezing up. And I want to update the blog links section but I can’t because of Blogger.

In other news, NewSea left TSR. Good for them, I guess. Looks like I lost all my reasons to check PMBD, then.

Free EA Store Content

If any of you are interested in EA’s Regal Living Kitchen set, today it’s available for free. It normally costs 350 SimPoints and includes 7 items, but today it’s free. The sale ends tomorrow, so download it while you can. It’s nothing special, and I would much rather get something else, but hey, it looks pretty and it’s free. I like some of their clothes but I don’t plan on buying it anytime soon. And it’s EA, so they’re probably gonna do something stupid like make it free with a certain EP after you buy it. Didn’t that happen with OLS and Generations?

Again?

What’s with EA and making a million EPs and SPs so close to each other? Who could afford to spend 40 dollars an EP and 20 dollars and SP every 2 or 3 months? I mean, I still haven’t done everything in Ambitions, which I have almost owned for a year. I haven’t even gone clubbing in Late Night yet. I still don’t even know all the features in Generations. Honestly, they’re just gonna go through the Sims 3 way too quickly then in 2013 it’s gonna be all ‘Coming soon: Sims 4!’. And it’s not that they’re making so much EPs too quickly, it’s that they’re all identical. Generations, Town Stuff and Pets all have a suburby feeling to me. At least in TS2 they’d have box sets of stuff like University then Teen Stuff. But now they’re not even doing that so having all of these similar EPs is poor planning on their behalf.

Another Stress Rant

It’s official. The school year is coming to an end. How do I know? I’ve been swamped with work this week. I came home from school at 6 twice this week, because of the Spanish project. Let’s just say Julia got controlling. The Senior Girl dealt with her well. Unfortunately, we had to film outside, but Julia has allergies…. she didn’t come to school yesterday. Oh well. I hope I have enough speaking parts. I have like 7 or 8 lines but two of them are three sentences. SS and Julia have 17 or 18 or something, and Senior Girl said she’d take care of her parts.

Those same days, I had to study for an APUSH test and Bio test. I probably failed the bio test and I don’t know how I did on my APUSH test. Some questions were easy and others were hard. You know how there are those practice websites for tests with practice quizzes? Well, I studied using one for APUSH and I swear, some of the questions were on the actual test. o.O

I have to film an English commercial this weekend, combining Stephen King’s literary style and cyberbullying. The teacher said we need 3 to 5 people in the group, but I got lucky and I’m working with SS and nobody else. The hardest part will be doing the camera stuff, but oh well.

My game went faster! It loaded in 2 minutes and the game had no noticeable lag. The worst part is I got some CC off of the exchange last year and I don’t know where it is. It’s only make up and stuff like nails and leggings, but still. I guess my Sims could go natural.  

I have a lot of homework this weekend, but I guess it’s my fault for not doing any yesterday. So I probably won’t be on a lot this weekend. That, and I got Just Dance 2 for the Wii yesterday and I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, so I wanna try it out.

And I like Taylor Swift’s new song, Mean. Sure, it sounds a lot like Fireworks lyric wise, but Taylor Swift sings without flaunting her body or using controversy.

I don’t own the video, Taylor Swift, etc. I got it from Youtube.

Personal Post

Here’s a lot of short and random personal posts that are way too short for their own posts, so they’ll be clumped up here.

Yay, Osama Bin Laden was killed! I hope the war ends soon. But since I don’t know much about the war and I’m not going to blog ignorantly, that’s all I’ll say about this.

I made the script for Spanish, but Julia and my teacher didn’t understand it. Julia said she’d fix it Friday but she still didn’t send me anything, so… yeah. And I know she’d probably just fix easy stuff like minor conjugation stuff and I’d have to add more lines that make sense.

A few months ago, my laptop got a virus so I got paranoid and changed all of my passwords. I changed like at least 5 passwords at once, but I forgot all of them, so… yeah. I lost the email for this account and the account I share with SS. But the personal one only got religious forwards from my cousins and uncle and aunt, so that’s no loss. And I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t there a forgot password thing? I made some of these emails when I was 11, so… yeah. And it’s only relevant now because AE’s changed her privacy stuff due to trolls and I forgot my password over there, so I need a new email and a new account but I need to be invited to join…. I need to write my passwords down somewhere.

And I uninstalled all of my CC except Riverview so the game could go faster. I get most of my CC from the same few places, so it’s not that big of a loss. I hope it works.

And happy 26th birthday, Lily Allen!

Attack of the Lag

So last Saturday night I went on a downloading binge on MTS and then my game became laggy. It’s not as laggy as it was last summer, but it took 14 minutes to load an 8 Sim household that’s like 3 or 4 weeks old in game. And once the game fully loaded, it acted slow there, too. You know how if you go to a new room everything is white or gray at first? It stays white for a longer amount of time for me. And changing camera angle stuff takes forever now.

I wanted to see if it was just that game, but I went to my other Twinbrook family and they were laggy, too. Geez. I didn’t know a few teen clothes would be the apocalypse.

So this week I didn’t have that much homework, so we uninstalled a lot of stuff. But last night, it was still laggy. :/

I understand that that’s what happens when you download CC, but after like Generation 5 in the Timbersons, the game took literally hours to load but everything was better once the game started, and we had like twice the CC and 5 generations of Sims, including in laws for everyone. This is just an 8 sim household where everyone’s single. EA, if you’re going to be glitchy, at least be consistently glitchy. *rolls eyes*

New Generations Info

I read some new stuff on Generations. I’m still gonna wait a while to get it though, like Christmas or Black Friday waiting. The only thing that would convince me otherwise is like, a winning lottery ticket or a billion SimPoints or something.

• Imaginary Friends- eh. They sound creepy. They look like SimBots or something and they appear from nowhere? You could have romantic relations with them?… Yeah, that’s not weird at all.
• Day care career- It sounds okay for spouse hunting in legacies. But are they gonna be actual kids from townies or people we’ll never see again?
• No new town- I’m bummed. They could’ve have a cute little 50’s town with suburban houses, or something. It could’ve have retro rabbit holes, like the Diner could’ve been a milkshake place with a jukebox or something. XD But they have the 50’s store set, so that probably has something to do with it. But maybe because there’s no new town, it’ll cost less? I remember I read that the new towns have to do with the cost, like a WA formula: 3 towns (3 * 10) + 10 dollars of online bonuses = 40 dollars.
• New community lots- I hope they put effort into them and people actually will go there.
• Treehouses- Yes, this gets its own category. I hope that it won’t be like the Jungle Gym thing which is horrible for pictures. Seriously, it’s too small and there’s no good camera angles for anyone. I heard you could use it to spy on others or do pirate attack stuff, which sounds fun.
• Rabbit hole schools: This sounds really good. Apparently, you could send kids to schools like military academies or sports academies, but it’s out of town. I’m happy because it could clear out slots in legacy houses, and I could use them to play around with genetics until I get the combo that I want.  
• Bunk beds & Loft beds- Amazing! I didn’t know what Loft beds were, but I Googled them and wow! They look cool.

All my info was from here.

England

All About Style, one of the better CC websites I’ve seen, has created a Kate Middleton set. I think they kind of nailed it, although I don’t know if I’d actually get any of them. Some of them look similar to default stuff, but then again, they’re making Kate’s wardrobe, not their own dresses, so yeah. I like the hair, though. And the third dress is probably my favorite, probably because I’ve seen the original one so much. It’s kind of annoying but refreshing for the media’s obsession with them. It seems like Kate and Will truly love each other and it’s nice to see something good happen, for once. I don’t like how there’s a lot of ‘buy Kate Middleton’s engagement dress/ring/toothbrush/etc. knock-off to celebrate the special day for 19.99! It’s the gift of a life time!’. Just let the couple have their special day.

And I was right. FarmVille did let me go to the English Countryside after waiting a while. And I went… and there’s nothing. Which is kind of stupid because they pumped it up so much since February. They were all ‘Sheep Breeding! New crops! Themed items! Fertile land!’ and everything but when you go there, there’s literally nothing besides a few plots of land, some default animals and trees, and a cottage or two. I hope things get better. I mean, it truly sounded fun but it’s even worse than when FarmVille originally started out in 2009.

The Result(s) of my Downloading Spree

Remember how I said I started to learn how to download CC Saturday? I went on a downloading spree, and this is what I got…

Yes, a single Newsea hair. Well, not like a hair off of Newsea themselves, XD. That would be creepy. But like one hairstyle designed by Newsea.

Everything else I wanted was .package format.

But still, I love this hairstyle. I like the bangs and how they’re organized but not too organized and how the hair isn’t too majestic horse-ish or whatever. Sure, I don’t think I’ve seen someone with this IRL, but it looks better than a lot of other hairs that look like this, or try to get this result. It looks better in game, but I forgot to take pictures, so… yeah. I want to know where Newsea got the name, though. Like seriously, is Janine or whatever too unoriginal?

Oh, and I got the TMobile EA content. If you don’t have the code yet, it’s GET CONNECTED. But you could only unlock one a day, so start getting the stuff you like the most before EA ends the promotion.

 

… Did I just take your trademark, SS?

I’m in a CC mood

I just learned how to download Custom Content not from the exchange. Well, SS was telling me exactly what to do each step in the process so I won’t screw up. I suck at the whole CC scene. But yeah. I’ve had the game since… December 27 2009?

It doesn’t help that I’m reading a Sims 3 Custom content related magazine, Sensation. It’s more like Sim Modeling and stuff, and they creatively mention what CC to get. Like, it’s not like ‘so and so made this dress. Download it now!’, but more subtle stuff like dresses for fun nights out.

In other news, the weather is getting better here. And it didn’t really snow that much yesterday around here. I saw Massachusetts in the news and they had a lot of snow, to the point of shoveling. o.O

Oh My Gosh

You know a week is going to be stressful when you barely finished your homework on a Sunday. :/ So yeah, I’m not gonna be on until… Spring Break?

But to make this post less depressing, here’s a funny video about the Sims online. It’s kind of long and I’d give it a PG 13 (The ‘riskiest’ thing they mention is WooHoo).

Yay

I found out that I miscounted the weeks we have until spring break, so now it's only 3 instead of 4. :D And there's an EA promotion thing going on with T Mobile, and it's moderately good free sports stuff from EA, so that brightened up my mood, too. I like how it's not just jerseys and uniforms, but it's actually usable sports content. No offense, but the Sims 3 CC makers aren't exactly in the 'sports playing crowd', so they make better casual or dressy stuff. Like, most CC I see is like hipster clothes, not FootLocker. And if you're wondering, the Hipster style is like, stripes, plaid, thick glasses, converse, skinny jeans, scarves, and 'those' kinds of stuff. But yeah, I wonder if the hoop content thing is playable.

Generations

I have mixed feelings on Generations. The trailer didn’t seem exciting or even new. I feel like the either have that from 2009, ie the base game, or they had to rush it before Amazon had the news before they did, like what happened for Ambitions last year.

The only exciting thing so far from the trailer seems to be home videos (Did we already have that?) but I could only watch what I already played so many times, you know? But maybe it could be edited to have stuff like custom TV shows. I also thing the possible magic part seems fun, but I’d be more interested if it’s like magic-magic. Like stuff from the Sims 2, or what I’ve seen from legacies. Not just random moodlet spells. But then again, apartments were ruined. So magic, which was from the same EP, probably will also be ruined. Would it be too big of a wish to expect decent kid’s and elder stuff?

Dislike… well, I don’t want to write a novel. I don’t like the pranks because they seem more malicious than ‘humor’ ish or Mischief night style pranks. Like ‘I stole your bills and you’re getting evicted because of my prank LOL!’ than buzzers and whoopee cushions. Not that kind of whoopee, game show fans.  

I feel like this EP will be more at home stuff than clubs or new lots. Like, at least Ambitions had new places to socialize with people like the Laundromat or salon. Sure, they’re not like the watering holes of spouse hunting (like Clubs), but those NPCs sometimes had family members or something. Besides, custom content makes anyone look like a model.

Oh yeah, clubs! I haven’t really had the time to play them yet, but I wish they’d have clubs for kids. Not like pedo bait places, but after school clubs where kids could befriend others with similar interests. Like science club for genius Sims/Sims with logic points, art club for any ‘art’ trait Sim or ‘art’ skill (There’s no way I’m writing down 90 million traits and skills down), sports teams, orchestra and so on. And they could be rabbit holes that meet once a week after school or something. So this way, spouses could have stuff in common, not just be high school sweethearts.

Sims 3: Generations?

To be honest, I’m kind of excited if this EP is true. There’s literally nothing for children to do besides practice skills or do the playground stuff. Sure, they could play video games but that’s boring. But this EP can add a lot of stuff for everyone.

Not to mention, I could probably play this while keeping my current family. Yeah, I could do the special Ambitions jobs in any town, but having 8 Sims and 2 or 3 professions is really a bad idea. And from what I’ve read, clubs in non-Bridgeport towns are annoying.

And there’s so much stuff they could do with this expansion. I know it would be impossible coding wise, but here’s my speculation/wish list:

• Bunk beds!
• Board games.
• Slumber parties.
• New traits (black sheep, prankster, sentimental)
• New skills (sewing)
• New ‘concepts’ (I don’t know what this would be called)- I saw something on the official EA forums about adopted kids finding their real parents. That sounds interesting; teen pregnancies (Hey, teens making new family members. That’s pretty on topic if you ask me)
• Party stuff like games (Red light, green light anyone?), supplies, diving boards, pool toys like inflatable stuff for kids and so on.
• Better ways to keep in touch with family members that moved out.
• Those castle toy stuff that kids jump in at parties.
• Raised house limit?
• Maybe school clubs and more part time jobs. It’s not like adding new rabbit holes is that hard.
• Party lots, like those birthday party places for kids IRL. I’m sure I could find some on the exchange, but it won’t hurt writing it here.

That’s all that I can think of for now. So as you could tell, I hope this is official.

Brief Post

The laptop still hasn't been fixed and I've been trying to avoid the blogosphere to not feel annoyed about the laptop thing, so yeah. :P Winter Break started yesterday. I watched a lot of Degrassi. School stuff happened, but I think I'm gonna stop talking about school now. We ordered Late Night from online and they said it's coming Wednesday, so... :D? On the whole boycott issue, I'm not really buying every expansion or stuff pack they make, and I'm just getting the PC games that interest me, so yeah. But I've spent like 100 dollars on three games (not counting Wii stuff), so... yeah. I've been playing for like 1 year and 2 months now, so I guess it's money well spent. But yeah. I'll stop rambling and go onto other posts.

Random Update

I think my teachers stalk me or something. My laptop started to break around last Wednesday, and guess what? I’ve had like no homework since then. I bet you once that laptop gets fixed, my teachers are going to go assignment crazy on us. Well, I only have 1 test this week, and next week is break, so I think they’re gonna go psychotic on us when we come back.  

I have an APUSH test Friday, but the teacher wasn’t here today, he isn’t coming to school tomorrow, and we don’t have class Thursday, but we still need to take notes. Do you think we’d have a test? The class is split on this, too.

I never knew I’d miss playing Sims so much. D: Once I get Late Night and the charger fixed, I’m probably gonna temporarily move into my basement next week.

Oh well, Degrassi time.

Starting Over

Well, our Sims 3 laptop died yesterday. I'm pissed off about it. Our laptop charger had been acting really stupid lately. Like, we could only plug it in one specific outlet and other ones wouldn't charge it. So then, it died. And new charger parts cost from 30 to 50 dollars, and who knows when they'll ship it to our house. :| And I had like no homework this weekend, AND winter break is coming up. :(
So then SS and I checked our other laptop and computer, to see if we could play the Sims 3 on them. According to System Requirements Lab, both of our computers failed. My Dad has a really fancy computer that probably can play it, but he gets possessive over it. Once I had to print out a slide show, but only that computer has Microsoft Power Point or whatever it's called, so I used that one to print it out. Then when he came home he flipped and went all 'If something happens to this computer, it's YOUR fault'. I remember once he tried to fix our printer/scanner/copier, but then it broke and he acted like it was our fault. Oh, and once he downloaded some annoying virus scanner thing on our computer, and it's always downloading crap to make sure there aren't any viruses or whatever. He's acting like anytime I touch a computer, something explodes. Sure, I could be a little clumsy with the laptop, but it's not like he's always perfect with the computer, either.
And I wanted to buy Late Night with some birthday money, too. I don't care about 'boycotting'  EA, because people will still buy their games the second they come out, and it's not like my purchase is going to necessarily keep EA open. I guess this is a sign that I need to wait more.
Maybe I can go back to Zoo Tycoon 2? I got the Ultimate Collection one for like 40 dollars (Yeah, like 5 games [4 expansions + 1 base game] for 40 dollars :D), but I only played for a few months, because then that computer got screwed over. Oh, and their CC community makes full expansion packs for free, 4 years after the official games stopped coming out. [/shameless plug in]
But on a happier note, happy 1 year anniversary to the Timbersons! I'd make an update, but all of the pictures are saved on my other laptop that died. :(

Legacy Rant

I hate it when I’m reading like 5 legacies at a time and I get all of them confused with each other. They’re great, but I swear, all of their Sims look the same, their (LiveJournal BTW) blog layouts look the same… EVERYTHING is the same. So I don’t even know what I’m reading anymore. I remember a few years ago when I was reading like 90 legacies or something, I just made a Wordpad document with little notes and stuff about their Sims, with custom fonts and colors to specifically remember who was who. Maybe I should do that again.

 

And most of their updates are so sporadic that I even forget to check their page sometimes. I have like a bookmark folder of legacies that haven’t been updated for months, or legacies I haven’t checked and forgot I read them. D:

Maybe I should add them to the nav bar on the right?