Happy Christmas

New Zealand Christmas Tree

Where I am...

Eleven days to my final exam and counting down! :)  Am swinging between feeling vaguely confident, and terrified.  So far, its looking hopeful - I got 70% on the final piece of class-work, a presentation, which is the highest mark I've ever got on a major piece of work in this paper. Then, there were short weekly online tests, chapter reviews of the textbook, worth a point or two towards your final grade if you get over 90%.

I got 90 - 100% on all of them (even the one I did at 11pm, after two wines, because I was away from home and forgot it was closing at midnight :)   )...  except the last one.  80%!  My response to that would make a two year old proud, although stomping my foot and swearing at the computer unfortunately did not produce a higher grade.  But despite losing a couple of points (and I need all the points I can get!), I could see a good side to it.  It reminded me of that horrible sinking feeling of seeing a fail grade on the computer screen, and fear is a really good incentive...

As for Richmond, I had hoped to have another update before the exam.  I've been picking away at it in little bits, but I really don't know if it will be done in the next couple of weeks.  I've got a lot of other r/l stuff I've been putting off while I'm studying, too.  Earlier update or not, my plan is to get back into regular updating in the week of the 6 of November.

I can't wait because I've got so many stories in my head that I want to share! :)  I've been thinking about it a lot if not typing about it, and consequently even the current update has changed a bit from the way I originally imagined it.  And, I've made a mistake...  I shouldn't have mentioned school starting back in Allie's update, because I've got at least two more that have to happen while school is still out.  My solution will be to just go on with the other updates, with explanation, then move Allie's one when I get up to where it should be, so its in the right place for new readers looking back.

It's funny, when I play my college sims, I only make them study when they have study wants or study-dependent wants (like, make Dean's list etc), so if they fail, they fail - except in their final semester.  If they're on academic probation in their final semester, and they look set to fail again, then I give them enough of a nudge to scrape through... because damned if I'm going to get them that far, then have them not get a degree for it!  Now that I'm in more-or-less the same r/l position, I'm hoping that whatever powers there are out there might return the favour for me :)

The single most sensible thing ever written about hood corruption

From the comments on this tool:

Phoenix Family - Richmond

Allie Phoenix

(Allie Hutchins)

Age:Adult

Asp: Popularity/Family
LTW: Become Captain Hero
Career: Law Enforcement - Lieutenant
Romantic: Married, Jimmy Phoenix
Children: Anna and Nicky
Other Family: Parents Ashley Pitts and Allie Hutchins; Foster Parents Orlando and Gretchen Centowski.  Half-siblings Cory, Chris and Aaron Green; Ashley Pitts, Jami Jakobsens, Helen Cooke and Grace Gold.
Significant Friends; Ruth Cadey, April Bertino.

Jimmy Phoenix

Age:Adult

Asp: Popularity/Knowledge
LTW: Become Media Magnate
Career: Journalism - Magazine Editor
Romantic: Married, Allie Phoenix
Children: Anna and Nicky

Nicky Phoenix

Age:Teen
Asp: Popularity
LTW: Become Mayor
Education: Private School
Career: Employee - Picture This Photography
Family: Parents Jimmy and Allie Phoenix, sister Anna
Significant Friends: Joshua Pitts, Dennis and Kevin Waters

Dreamer - Richmond

Cameron Dreamer

Age: Adult

Asp: Family

LTW: Marry off 2 children

Career: Law Enforcement - Desk Sergeant

Romantic: Married –  Alicia Dreamer

Children: Lucas and Nathan

Other Family: Parents Darren and Cassandra Dreamer, half-brother Dirk Dreamer.

Alicia Dreamer

(Alicia Pitts)

Age:Adult

Asp: Family

LTW: Reach Golden Anniversary

Career: Business Owner - Curl up and Dye Beauty Salon

Romantic: Married, Cameron Dreamer

Children: Lucas and Nathan

Other Family: Parents Ashley Pitts and Jordan Johnson; siblings AJ Pitts (twin), Becky Kauffmann and Elle Green; Half-siblings Joshua and Ivy Pitts, and Jay and Lisa Johnson.


Lucas Dreamer
Age: Toddler
Family: Parents Cameron and Alicia Dreamer; brother Nathan


Nathan Dreamer
Age: Baby
Family: Parents Cameron and Alicia Dreamer; brother Lucas

Randomness...

(First of a series... I've started keeping a draft post running as I play, for outtakes and other random funny or interesting things that happen.  Each time it looks big enough, I'll post it... )

Butler fail...

it's going to be quiet here for a little while...

Just a quick note about why I'm taking so long to post... I'm working part-time on a Master's degree at the moment, and I'm in the middle of my most difficult paper ever.  I have a major assignment due on the 30th of this month... however, I'm going on holiday/vacation on the 24th for a week.  Aside from the fact that it kind of spoils the whole relaxation thing if I take the assignment on holiday to finish, there's also the practical problems of trying get the poster part of the assignment printed, and getting the whole thing collated and sent in, from out of town.  So I want it finished and on its way, before the 24th.  I'm working full-time, so I have to fit it around that.

This means I probably won't be updating until after it's done.  I have one gameplay-based update that I'm slowly finishing in my 'down-time', and that might be up before the 24th, but nothing more involved than that - which means leaving Cory's story hanging until the end of the month.

The good news is that this is a winter holiday, with long dark evenings to fill :)  I'm hoping to get a few updates finished and saved ahead of what I'm posting, to make a kind of buffer against things grinding to a halt again with the next big piece of work.

So, apologies to everyone waiting, and I will be back in a couple of weeks... and also apologies to fellow simmers who's blogs I haven't commented on for so long... another planned holiday activity that I'm really looking forward to!

Goodbye, Samantha Bradshaw

Just because I'm feeling nostalgic... 

Good memories.

Sometimes, this game really creeps me out...

So, I was playing a couple of weeks ago, and we were at a community lot and, there in the background...

The Ottomas Family Ties

A note on this post, and on the Ottomas family in Richmond.

I played the Ottomas family in my original Richmond hood.  Dee and her brother Pete were the twins Samantha was carrying, when you first load the family.  By the time the old hood became unplayable, apart from Dee and Sharla the family were all non-playable, and therefore treated like townies for gameplay purposes.  When I recreated the hood I didn't need to recreate them, as there was a new version of the family in the bin.

Of course I couldn't be sure that the new twins would be a girl and a boy, or that they would look anything like their Old Richmond counterparts.  So I used Insim to terminate the pregnancy, then I aged everyone up to the right ages, then remade Dee and her brother in CAS. The next step should have been setting the Ottomas parents as their parents, but somehow I forgot.  I only realised about a r/l week ago, despite having played Dee before in the new hood - she and Pete were essentially orphaned siblings.  So now they have their family back, and Dee was so happy over that!  She rolled so many wants to interact with her parents and her siblings, as I played her the past few days... enough to make me change her aspiration from Pleasure/Fortune to Pleasure/Family.

I have some fairly strict rules about changing primary aspiration, but I'm a bit looser with secondary, usually it's something that I feel the sim was telling me anyway, as in this case.  So, yeah, she really has changed her attitude, and it ties nicely into the story I already had planned.  So far, no marriage or baby wants, but that's ok, she's not changing too fast...

You might notice that the Ottomas women look a bit different in my game, too.  I don't use 'cosmetic surgery' much on my sims, as I don't need or even want the whole hood to be beautiful... usually I just fix really extreme stuff, like the plague of townies with ridiculously oversized mouths that I seem to have here.  In the case of the Ottomas women, they all had anorexically skinny faces, so I used the slider to fatten out their cheeks a bit.  They don't look too bad, when they put on a bit of weight. :)  .

There's one other difference in the Richmond Ottomas family.  By the time I remade the hood, the grandmother Dora was long gone, but she had a new counterpart in the bin family.  I needed more non-playable elders to fill my new retirement home (an apartment building in-game), so rather than killing her off, I used SimPe to change her family ties and make her Peter's sister rather than his mother (named after their deceased mother, of course :)  ).  She moved in and it couldn't have turned out better... while I was using her to test the home, she fell in love with a townie elder neighbour, so now my Ottomas adult kids have an aunt and uncle living in the retirement home.  They're non-playable too, but you'll probably see them, when I play Serdar and Brandi at the home.

First Time for Everything + Vacation Picspam

This is not the usual reaction he gets! And he has the 'massive attraction' bonus too...  

A new blog, a question, and whatever...

So, I have a babble blog.  I like the idea of keeping my story blog for story alone, so I've moved all my outtakes and behind-the-scenes posts here.  I'm also going to clean up the earlier entries in my main blog, make the pictures the same size on everything, create links between the two blogs, etc.  Gradually.  Probably, very gradually.  I'm not going to kid myself about the amount of time I can afford to spend on this thing :)

The Hole in my Blog, and other non-story stuff...

I only realised when I posted this morning, that it's been over a month since my previous post!  I have no idea where that much time went!  Actually, scratch that... I do have some idea.