That was fun

I was over at the Sims 3 store. I decided to update my wishlist with a better variety of things - it was getting down to only expensive sets left. :)

I found several freebies I'd previously missed by using the Sort by [price lowest to highest] which puts the free stuff on page 1. About the only freebies I'm still missing are the New Years Eve hats - which I just can't imagine using.

And sorting by price meant I bought several small cute and very inexpensive items while I was there.  I can recommend doing that if you are in a bit of a shopping mood.

EA/T-Mobile

There's new free stuff on this site including some great glass furniture and sports themed objects. There's a basketball hoop hamper that made me immediately think of Travis Kane.

EA T-Mobile

The code is getConnected

On special request

Phillip, Vanessa, Vincent, Stephen, Penelope and Veronica are now on the exchange.

http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=3505935

For Kal

I can't decide if Jeb's been tutoring or misdirecting the blame for certain activities.

Twallan's new mod

CAF - He's making it possible to do some more and different linking when you are doing the Create a family stage of CAS.
"    The restriction that a young adult must be part of the family has been changed to include teenagers
     The "Edit Relationships" window has been adjusted to remove many of the age-restrictions on family links"

It is V 1 so I'd wait a couple of versions for the obvious bugs to be ironed out. But it sounds like a) you will be able to create a family that has only a teen and b) that there will be more ways to link since some of the age restrictions are gone.

New random topic - share musicians/bands you like that others might not know

Long topic line - but that's the gist of this idea. Share some music you think not everyone is well acquainted with.

Now I'll start with the same one I was sharing with Kaleeko yesterday - Peter Gabriel. If you've seen her video of Sammy Stride with Pride, you've heard at least one of his songs but here are a few more

Rhythm of the Heat
San Jacinto
I Have the Touch
I Grieve

That's a good starter for Peter.

My suggestion is to only do one artist per post.  But a couple of different songs to show their style.

A Quick Sim Survey!

So, there's something I've been curious about for a while, so I figured I'd throw this out there as a brief topic of discussion while we hit the lull of the holiday season.

Just a few questions, each Sim/trait related:

1. Of all the Sims that you've created/had born in your game, which is your favorite, and why?

2. What's a kind of Sim that you'd like to try out, but haven't gotten around to creating yet?

3. Is there any trait that you avoid/never use? Why?

4. If you could Simify yourself and be transported into the Sim universe, which Sims would you first want to meet? What Sims would you avoid?

PiB added:
5. What are your favorite lifetime wishes for a Sim?

6. What kind of career do you like?

7. What do you hope to accomplish from one of your EPs that you haven't done yet?

---

As a starter, here's Kaleeko's answers:

1. Favorite Sim?
I've got about 3 Sims right now that I absolutely adore, but I think I'm going to have to hand it to Jebidiah Kane as my favorite. He's the kind of guy that's rather pleasant on the outside but absolutely poisonous on the inside -- he rarely shows his evilness, and he seems to love his family to no end, but there's just something always 'off' about him. He kind of reminds me of what it would be like if an evil nerd took over the universe. He's also probably the least predictable of my Sims, which means he's a huge catalyst for my story; I wouldn't be anywhere without him.

Jeb is also, quite obviously, the main character of my blog; Brad takes a close second, but Jeb's still the King Cheese.

2. What would you like to try out?

No Kane has ever had the 'Green Thumb' trait, so that's something I'd like to try out someday in sort of a Freebird-Hippy type of Sim.

Also, while I've had a Bookworm sim before, I'd really like to have one again.

3. What trait do you never use?

Aside from all the 'little' traits that are mostly useless, I think the BIG one I terminally avoid, despite how obviously awesome it would be, is "Insane"; it's an incredibly interesting and story-changing trait, but I just can't bring myself to use it.

4. You are a Sim; who do you meet, who do you avoid?

Well, first Sim I'd want to meet hands-down is my own Bradley Kane, just to give the darn boy a hug. But, I honestly think that of all the Sims out there in our blogs, the Sim I'd most get along with would be Rosaline from MJ's blog, because she is an absolute sweetheart. She's the kinda girl I'd love to hang around. Though, I think PiB's Thomas and Chrysame's Gwen would also make fantastic pals.

Sims I would avoid? Dee's Carolina and Raisin's Katalina. I'm pretty sure they would both scare the bejesus out of me, since in-person I am a very timid, shy gal. Also, the Big-Hat lady from MJ's story, because she's... well, creepy; Cheezy's Angie because she would eat me for dinner; and Meredith from my blog, because she would drive me absolutely bonkers.

There's obviously more, but those are the ones that immediately strike me off the top of my head. :)

---

There's my answers! Feel free to be equally as long winded as me, moreso, or less so! I just like hearing opinions like these from other people, because it'd be fun to see how we all differ in our Sim-Tastes. :)

Feel free to tack on any other questions you might be curious about, too.

Have fun! Happy holidays! Whee!

Well, if we've discussed this before, it's been quite a while ago.

I think I've found a particularly good way to work on my blogs.

1. Title the blog post - notice that I'm generally horribly lazy about it and most of them require minimal effort these days.
2. Get the pictures into the blog post and size to large
3. Put a few words to a sentence or two below the pics
4. Let ideas stew
5. Now go back the next day (generally) and fill in the details.

If I try to do it in one sitting, the writing tends to be really short and few details. It's when I've thought about a pic for a bit that I add details. Like Phillip is helping his son with homework in the kitchen because he's promised the boy a treat and his son wants to be close to that fridge. 

There have been exceptions when the plot I have in mind writes the words and I have to go find pictures to illustrate those words. But generally this works for me.

What works for you?

Check it out

Awesomeness from our friend Muleskinner.
First one is meeting the band.
Second one is the girls playing in the band.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGg9pTE6Xuw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3JD0vZIjyE

More holiday snaps up

I've done about half of the pictures from Florence. I should be able to do the other half tomorrow.

And after that it's on to Milan (not many pics) and Venice.

I knew I shouldn't do it

I put a new post on the blog no one follows - the Sims 2 blog.

And I discovered that the biggest folder of pics on the photobucket account that I put Sims 2 pics in needs work. I had never finished titling and tagging the 400 pics there so searching on a name via tag only brings up some of their pictures.

So I've just spent a lot of time tagging pics that I may never get around to blogging about. LOL

I just hope that the other folders were tagged properly as I dropped the pics in. I think they were.

Hey Pib

When you have time will you put the link to my new blog on her and remove the links to my old ones?
http://simtimeinsimville.blogspot.com/

Pics!

Uber buff Ollie with his uber fashionable hair.  This is just wrong.

Mabel getting her groove on in her home party room.

 O.M.G.

 Jamie Hamilton - son of Josh Hamilton and Shannon Sprague Hamilton.

The new sale code

You all do know about the new store point code don't you? NOV15OFF. There is supposed to be some huge sale Monday. I read on the forum this morning about many items in the store being marked down already. The lower price isn't showing up until you click on the item though.
I bookmarked this link this morning because I didn't have time to go shopping.
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/299773.page

Which of your Sims

Should be joining Mr Sam Grant in Bridgeport? I've moved a few in but only a few.

This time, they should be fairly safe. Sam is going for stardom - so I don't anticipate death or overt evilness for the volunteers. Unlike their last outing with Sam, which was fatal for so many.

Tidbit for PiB

As another teensy b-day present, I bring to you yet another excerpt of the action between Sam and Thomas... Courtesy of Twallan's new Cops and Robbers addition to Story Progression.

For once, it appears that Thomas has been given the short end of the stick, instead of poor, guinea pig Sam! Looks like Sammy's kicking some serious butt. ;)

Hope you had a great birthday, PiB!

If Late Night's Giving You Problems...

... Here's a possible reason why.

I got Late Night last night (yay!) and I discovered when I loaded up a copy of Bridgeport, my game crashed instantly. I'm not sure how my usual save was faring (I didn't check), but it wasn't looking promising.

But, while I was checking out what might be the issue, I discovered two things:

1.) The Late Night .exe was not on my DEP list (because I forgot to re-add it after installing, stupid me).
2.) One thing that EA patched was that the Sims game is now *automatically* allocated <2GB, so you don't have to set it manually anymore.

If any of you have had to use the trick of increasing TS3's memory allocation before, then you'll know what I'm talking about; it's something that prevents a lot of crashing issues, and it's about damn time that EA made that automatically set so that people don't have to download CFF Explorer to fiddle with their program's settings.

But what it also means (I'm assuming) is that, particular in Vista/Windows 7 systems, this makes the program look unstable and unsafe, so Windows automatically shuts it off when it starts drawing too much memory. I could be totally wrong on this, but, it seems logical -- and it also means that people who weren't <2GB'ing their program previous weren't aware that it now is, and so they don't know how to tell their computer how to not wig out about it.

In a nutshell:
If you're having crashing issues immediately upon start-up, particularly in Bridgeport, you probably need to add The Sims 3 to your DEP Exception List.


The DEP List (DEP: Data Execution Prevention) basically just tells Windows what programs NOT to shut off if they look insecure.

To add Sims3 to your DEP Exception List, here's a few sites that explain how:
For Windows XP: http://www.updatexp.com/dep-exceptions.html
For Windows Vista: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/65790-dep-turn-off-programs.html
For Windows 7: http://www.itechtalk.com/thread3591.html

The Sims 3 EXE file you'll be looking for, if you are doing this for Late Night, is:
C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Late Night\TS3EP3.exe

Anyways, I hope this helps anyone that's having crashing issues. If not, make sure to do the usual things, such as checking for mod incompatibilities, mods that haven't been updated yet for Late Night,  yada yada.


Have fun, y'all!

Josh with Slider help.

I still don't have the game but the sliders and lots of other things came with the recent update.
Big difference.
I took two because he decided to move around while I was taking the first one.

Report from holiday

We are still going well. Zurich was lovely but cold. We are about to leave Rome for Florence. Have lots of pics in camera but no chance to upload for a while.
Rome is amazing. Tons of history everywhere you look.
I've been following posts and comments. Looks like MJ and Dee are the active bloggers at the moment.

New house uploaded

My new very old house that I uploaded to the exchange.

Here's the link.

http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=3252310