w00t w00t booyah

No, really.

I went out to Sis' Sunday and forced a whole bunch of pomegranates to give up a gallon and a half of juice. I took pictures. As soon as I can, I'll share. POMEGRANATE CARNAGE!

(Complete with knives. YES.)

I think I'd do better with my siblings if I just learned to nod better, keep my mouth shut and quit being so much work. Honestly.

Thanksgiving looks to be 17 people at least (this is GOOD) - but I think I'd better get the lead out and get another table. A big one that will seat more than six people. I want this. Very, very badly. Theme for this year is World Travelers and I'll start acquiring the proper trimmings soon. (I'm thinking of putting world maps under clear plastic as the tablecloths, for example.)

The idea of having macaroni and cheese went over BIG, caitlin. VERY BIG. No worries.

I'm going to schedule another weekend out at Sis' to actually make the jelly - it was a true bonding experience.

--

I've stress-tested the new Sims2 expansion pack, I do believe. There is plenty of hue and cry going out all over the communities - there's a new anti-copying 'feature' that might interact badly if you have something that could actually - pirate - the CD-ROM. (Nobody would do that. No, not after EA Games will basically make you BUY a whole new software package if your disc should actually arrive broken, or become broken. No, they won't replace. Not even with the license key. Yerks.) There are a lot of new NPCs being spawned - with the attendant concerns about Too Many Sims crashing your neighborhood (upper limit was something around 1,200 last time I actually got a number - I've been playing over 1,400 for some time now. Months. Hm. Maybe even a year. I've lost track), and all the hacks that just don't work anymore.

I took all this very seriously and began watching my ass.

I've sent at least five families on vacation already, watched my number of Sims go from 1462 to 1531 after playing all three locales and sent some of their townie buts to college. I've had one Sim meet his wife-to-be on a vacation, have her invited over for a visit, get asked to move in, propose, get married (with party) and go on vacation to second locale...and nothing Bad happened.

Transitions are slow, but they've been slow for some time. C'mon. Custom content and over 1,400 Sims. Gimme a break. I get a new cup of tea. What.

I have used some boolproppage. Some Tombstone of L & D action, and I have to boolprop my graphics down or I get the blue screen of death - I have a slightly older video card that isn't patchable or upgradable. It's a known issue and I cope. *shrug*

Oh, and this is on a latop, BTW.

I don't use any hacks. Matter of fact, if I ever acquired one with a download, I got rid of it.

I think this game is approaching four years now. It's the only explanation. Database integrity and no surprises.

Oh, and no stuff packs. I'll live.

Matter of fact, the game runs better than it did with Seasons. I don't get it.

--

I've signed up for yuletide. Some of the choices were mouthwatering - I have high hopes to get something truly challenging.

And now, your life - now in progress.

No, really.

I went out to Sis' Sunday and forced a whole bunch of pomegranates to give up a gallon and a half of juice. I took pictures. As soon as I can, I'll share. POMEGRANATE CARNAGE!

(Complete with knives. YES.)

I think I'd do better with my siblings if I just learned to nod better, keep my mouth shut and quit being so much work. Honestly.

Thanksgiving looks to be 17 people at least (this is GOOD) - but I think I'd better get the lead out and get another table. A big one that will seat more than six people. I want this. Very, very badly. Theme for this year is World Travelers and I'll start acquiring the proper trimmings soon. (I'm thinking of putting world maps under clear plastic as the tablecloths, for example.)

The idea of having macaroni and cheese went over BIG, caitlin. VERY BIG. No worries.

I'm going to schedule another weekend out at Sis' to actually make the jelly - it was a true bonding experience.

--

I've stress-tested the new Sims2 expansion pack, I do believe. There is plenty of hue and cry going out all over the communities - there's a new anti-copying 'feature' that might interact badly if you have something that could actually - pirate - the CD-ROM. (Nobody would do that. No, not after EA Games will basically make you BUY a whole new software package if your disc should actually arrive broken, or become broken. No, they won't replace. Not even with the license key. Yerks.) There are a lot of new NPCs being spawned - with the attendant concerns about Too Many Sims crashing your neighborhood (upper limit was something around 1,200 last time I actually got a number - I've been playing over 1,400 for some time now. Months. Hm. Maybe even a year. I've lost track), and all the hacks that just don't work anymore.

I took all this very seriously and began watching my ass.

I've sent at least five families on vacation already, watched my number of Sims go from 1462 to 1531 after playing all three locales and sent some of their townie buts to college. I've had one Sim meet his wife-to-be on a vacation, have her invited over for a visit, get asked to move in, propose, get married (with party) and go on vacation to second locale...and nothing Bad happened.

Transitions are slow, but they've been slow for some time. C'mon. Custom content and over 1,400 Sims. Gimme a break. I get a new cup of tea. What.

I have used some boolproppage. Some Tombstone of L & D action, and I have to boolprop my graphics down or I get the blue screen of death - I have a slightly older video card that isn't patchable or upgradable. It's a known issue and I cope. *shrug*

Oh, and this is on a latop, BTW.

I don't use any hacks. Matter of fact, if I ever acquired one with a download, I got rid of it.

I think this game is approaching four years now. It's the only explanation. Database integrity and no surprises.

Oh, and no stuff packs. I'll live.

Matter of fact, the game runs better than it did with Seasons. I don't get it.

--

I've signed up for yuletide. Some of the choices were mouthwatering - I have high hopes to get something truly challenging.

And now, your life - now in progress.

I promised.

This Sim's name is Misa Naora - Romance Aspiration, and he has at last count, about six full siblings - and five half sibs. (I breed Sims. That's what I do.)



These are her parents, Aya and Noa Naora:



Dad is scary - and a download from The Sims Exchange (he came with a lot with a house on it and four other Sims). I built Noa in CAS.

( There are a couple of other pictures of Misa under here )

Unless they include being inside a lot, skip it. Boss just got put on alert through the weekend - the storms approaching us are expected to drop a LOT of water on us. Like, flooding lot.

And there was to be a family picnic for my agency Saturday. I've called them already - they can't find space indoors and may reschedule. I could use a rain check.

Jim, is also sick. As in, fatigue to drop a horse sick. If I get it, I won't be doing much of anything until it's over. VERY glad I got the apple business done last weekend. VERY GLAD.

We really need the rain, though. I'm just planning on doing a lot of nesting this weekend. Between bad weather, slim finances and sick Love - not much choice.

I had the follow up dental appointment in Arcadia yesterday - and stopped by Cliff's grave on the way home and dropped a small bottle of sake, a bag of REALLY spicy chips, one bottle of Tabasco and a bunch of red tulips. It's nine years folks.

That made the headstone look a whole lot better, BTW.

I need to take some pictures out of my Sims game for cyberotic_waste - the Sim she found so attractive when she was here, looking over my shoulder, has graduated from University and promptly got GORGEOUS. Holy cow. I built her mother, but her father was a download from TS2 (and the designer did a good job on him - he was supposed to be Asian and scary, and he is). My gal, born in game? You can see both her parents in her - and striking doesn't cut it. I was frankly amazed, hit the pause button and went WTFWOW for a moment or two. She has siblings. This is going to be fun.

I have no ugly Sims, mind you. Interesting, unique ones, yes. Ugly, never. The ugly ones continue to roam the halls of the secret society and deliver newspapers. FOR-EVER.

Unless they include being inside a lot, skip it. Boss just got put on alert through the weekend - the storms approaching us are expected to drop a LOT of water on us. Like, flooding lot.

And there was to be a family picnic for my agency Saturday. I've called them already - they can't find space indoors and may reschedule. I could use a rain check.

Jim, is also sick. As in, fatigue to drop a horse sick. If I get it, I won't be doing much of anything until it's over. VERY glad I got the apple business done last weekend. VERY GLAD.

We really need the rain, though. I'm just planning on doing a lot of nesting this weekend. Between bad weather, slim finances and sick Love - not much choice.

I had the follow up dental appointment in Arcadia yesterday - and stopped by Cliff's grave on the way home and dropped a small bottle of sake, a bag of REALLY spicy chips, one bottle of Tabasco and a bunch of red tulips. It's nine years folks.

That made the headstone look a whole lot better, BTW.

I need to take some pictures out of my Sims game for cyberotic_waste - the Sim she found so attractive when she was here, looking over my shoulder, has graduated from University and promptly got GORGEOUS. Holy cow. I built her mother, but her father was a download from TS2 (and the designer did a good job on him - he was supposed to be Asian and scary, and he is). My gal, born in game? You can see both her parents in her - and striking doesn't cut it. I was frankly amazed, hit the pause button and went WTFWOW for a moment or two. She has siblings. This is going to be fun.

I have no ugly Sims, mind you. Interesting, unique ones, yes. Ugly, never. The ugly ones continue to roam the halls of the secret society and deliver newspapers. FOR-EVER.

Not soon enough to suit me.

Driving to work BLARING whatever comes to mind. And with my musical taste, that's a sure case for confusion.

Case in point:

John Denver - 'Dreamland Express'

Someone who knows how to get lyrics around notes like nobody's business - the only person I know who can keep up is Barry Manilow - and I truly miss this guy like no tomorrow. He and Steve Fossett are probably sitting around a campfire right now going WTF.

Clint Black - 'No Time To Kill'

That, and this one are for doreentracy to with whatever she wills. I miss my show. I don't want to be reminded that it's 15 years next year the show's been off the air. Just. Don't.

Yoko Kanno/Seatbelts - 'What Planet Is This?!'

WAKE UP.

$#@%^! get outta the way.

I want my weekend. RIGHTNOWNOWNOW.

Oh, and BTW? Sims2 Bon Voyage? NINJAS GO BAMF. YO.

I'm tempted to go get the custom skins kiyone's being using for her Warner legacy family and see if I don't get something Truly Cool by accident. (BTW, Maxis? Ya spawning Sims for routine purposes every time you open a community lot? Somebody is going to get a patch out for that, right? *facesmacks*)

And back at work. Wait. I worked all weekend. *slaps self*

I'll be Zod for a moment, so you won't feel bad bowing before me. You'll understand in a moment.

1. We get to the airport half and hour ahead of her flight arriving. (We already know it's on time and what gate it's coming in at.)

2.) We get the perfect parking spot just at the end of the aisle, right next to the crosswalk at the terminal the flight is coming in at.

3.) We are BOTH issued security passes to meet our party at the gate. (Phone call to airline ahead of time? Only one would be issued.)

4.) And we are there when she is the last of the passengers off the flight, and the last one taken off in a wheelchair.

5.) Bow before Zod.

We also kept the fellow pushing the wheelchair through baggage claim, and then out to the car. Bonus!

She got to the house, was there long enough to leave her sunglasses there - and pronounced the house cute. (Lunch was grilled cheese and tomato soup, all good.)

Drive out to Hemet uneventful - Mom made us a perfect chicken dinner, and we then went to Moreno Valley for the grand-nephew's First Real Football Game. (He's 13 and playing midget ball. They lost 24 to 12. Oh well.)

Because the game began at 8:00 PM, we booked a room out there - and Jim decided to make good use of the trip and found time to get his glider ride in on Sunday at 11:00 (there will be pictures on Facebook soon). *checks* Damn, I didn't post this when I did it. For his Valentine's Day present, I got Jim an hour in a glider with Sailplane Enterprises in Hemet. I have to admit, this is an ongoing tete-a-tete Jim and I have. The first Valentine's Day, he got me the South Park movie on DVD. LOVED IT. Thought it was the perfect romantic giftie in the world.

The next year, I got him the Spock vs. Q radio plays on CD. He totally geeked out.

So. This year, I won. And Sunday, he went flying.

However. Super 8, while clean and nice and everything? Had beds loaned to them from the Cathedral Hill Hotel. BAH.

I got home sometime around 5 or so, got my Animal Crossing game up to date and plugged in the Sims and played out my first vacation with the new Bon Voyage expansion pack.

It's SCHWEET. Also, this pack, like others before it, appears to have addressed some database optimization and graphic issues without saying anything about it in the release notes. The game is running better, with more code in it. ALL GOOD.

But I wanted some tree time. As in, being outside under some. Which I didn't get. *pout*

In the whole scheme of things, it's small potatoes. But I'm missing me some tall conifers right now, and the ocean breezes aren't cutting it this morning.

And back at work. Wait. I worked all weekend. *slaps self*

I'll be Zod for a moment, so you won't feel bad bowing before me. You'll understand in a moment.

1. We get to the airport half and hour ahead of her flight arriving. (We already know it's on time and what gate it's coming in at.)

2.) We get the perfect parking spot just at the end of the aisle, right next to the crosswalk at the terminal the flight is coming in at.

3.) We are BOTH issued security passes to meet our party at the gate. (Phone call to airline ahead of time? Only one would be issued.)

4.) And we are there when she is the last of the passengers off the flight, and the last one taken off in a wheelchair.

5.) Bow before Zod.

We also kept the fellow pushing the wheelchair through baggage claim, and then out to the car. Bonus!

She got to the house, was there long enough to leave her sunglasses there - and pronounced the house cute. (Lunch was grilled cheese and tomato soup, all good.)

Drive out to Hemet uneventful - Mom made us a perfect chicken dinner, and we then went to Moreno Valley for the grand-nephew's First Real Football Game. (He's 13 and playing midget ball. They lost 24 to 12. Oh well.)

Because the game began at 8:00 PM, we booked a room out there - and Jim decided to make good use of the trip and found time to get his glider ride in on Sunday at 11:00 (there will be pictures on Facebook soon). *checks* Damn, I didn't post this when I did it. For his Valentine's Day present, I got Jim an hour in a glider with Sailplane Enterprises in Hemet. I have to admit, this is an ongoing tete-a-tete Jim and I have. The first Valentine's Day, he got me the South Park movie on DVD. LOVED IT. Thought it was the perfect romantic giftie in the world.

The next year, I got him the Spock vs. Q radio plays on CD. He totally geeked out.

So. This year, I won. And Sunday, he went flying.

However. Super 8, while clean and nice and everything? Had beds loaned to them from the Cathedral Hill Hotel. BAH.

I got home sometime around 5 or so, got my Animal Crossing game up to date and plugged in the Sims and played out my first vacation with the new Bon Voyage expansion pack.

It's SCHWEET. Also, this pack, like others before it, appears to have addressed some database optimization and graphic issues without saying anything about it in the release notes. The game is running better, with more code in it. ALL GOOD.

But I wanted some tree time. As in, being outside under some. Which I didn't get. *pout*

In the whole scheme of things, it's small potatoes. But I'm missing me some tall conifers right now, and the ocean breezes aren't cutting it this morning.

Staying up until midnight two nights in a row troubleshooting Sims2 is not a good way to have a nimble thought process the rest of the day. Just saying.

Yes, I have been bitten by the bad custom content bug. Somewhere in my Downloads folder, they lurks an unspeakable evil that crashes my game. When babies age up into toddlers. Hadn't noticed a problem since backing up on the laptop, and why not - I was playing mostly university lots and stuff like that just doesn't happen on uni lot without a hack. And I have no hacks.

I'm good - I do regular backups and I've found a version of the downloads folder that doesn't have the Bad File in it - we'll see how long it takes me to track it down. Somewhere on the order of 200 files. Better than two thousand, neh?

By process of elimination. That's right - pull these out, try to run - crash, nope, take more out - test again. Repeat.

You can get a lot of book read in that time. I'm into the stack left over from the Festival of Books, which reminds me. I need to go poke Alton Brown via his website and see if I can stick a suggestion for him to come out for it next year.

I'll poke a bunch of folks for that reason in the next year. You don't ask, you don't get. Period.

Past that, has anyone else noticed that Spirit and Opportunity are STILL GOING? Go NASA over-engineering. Holy chrome.

After Jim's eye didn't improve - and actually began to look worse on Wednesday - I called our eye doctor and got him in after work on Thursday.

He didn't have conjunctivitis - he'd never been contagious - what he had was an inflammation of the sclearal and epithilium (he's got the diagnosis on a piece of paper with him right now, or I'd be able to provide it. Episclearal - some itsis or other) more closely related to arthritis than anything else. Etiology - unknown. Back to steroid drops - and he's much improved.

Since they were right around the corner, I stopped in after I got off work. And found they had an opening to see me for my yearly on Friday.

So I shorted Friday and went over and dropped another $500. OH - that's after Thursday, when we decided that getting the cars serviced would be a good idea - oil changes at about $20 a pop.

Well, they were also due for transmission services - and I heard $1.99 over the regular price for the materials specific to Nissan cars - and Jim just heard $1.99 more.

Uh, $199.00 more. Our own dumb fault - but the cars are serviced.

That's right. Both cars. $500.00, with the extras we tossed on.

So for a week where we really didn't have anything to spare, we tossed a grand out of the window between Thursday and Friday - suffice it to say, I'm glad there's a tax return.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl arrived yesterday - is anyone else playing these? We have wifi - and what you should have known is if we met writing Ranma 1/2 fanfic, we'd play Pokemon like mad ferrets. What, you didn't know? Well, now you do. Someday, they'll call it "old school anime" - I'll thwap anyone with pleasure who calls it that. *grumbles* Whippersnappers and all that.

My founder of my Apocalypse Challege died last night. I'm both pleased - and a bit sad. Her kids are not nearly as interesting, to be honest. I am still loving Seasons to itty bits. Can't wait for the Mac version to come out -

Mom canceled her birthday trip out on Saturday, so I've had nearly nothing of import that wanted doing. (Hey, I could always go clean a bathroom or sort junk - I have a house. There's always something that needs to be done.)

I don't mind the getting older - some parts of it, I'm really enjoying.

I don't like buying multi-lensed glasses. They're expensive and I hate having to do it. Bifocals, trifocals - what have you. That $500 is for one pair, period. No sunglasses. And with my current history, only good for a year. So I popped for the Vera Wang frames. Fuckitall. Doctor says my distance vision is good enough to laser out to normal - and get rid of one set of lenses. I just remind him I have the sister who went that route, developed an allergic reaction on the inside of the eye and lost the eye that way. UH, NO.

I have a bunch of things to talk about regarding the recent Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion - but not today. In short, you didn't find out anything new on what "conservatives" actually think about women (what, this surprised you how?) - what I'm waiting to see is just how they plan to enforce that ban. Remember, I was working with a lot of folks who dealt with these issues back in 1995, when this whole thing first reared its ugly head. And I couldn't find anyone, pro-choice, who would have done it anyway. So - how do you plan to enforce this thing, anyhow?

But not today. caitlin called - we're going to eat food in Little Tokyo. That suits me just fine.

Maybe I can find some cookies.