mods that do and don't work
Hook:
My computer stays on 24/7. Now, if I only used it a couple of hours a day, maybe turning it off would be appropriate. But it would never stay off for more than a couple hours (my son gets on it when I'm asleep). One company I worked for only turned off the computers over long weekends.
As for lightning, I have more problem with power outages. I bought a decent IBM branded unterruptable power supply, which also provides surge protection for both power and phone lines, and has some unreasonably high equipment replacement value if your computer fries due to lightning strike. And it wasn't very expensive. Which means it only runs about 15-20 minutes after the power quits. Next time I'll splurge for the 8 hour backup. :D
When I was connected to the internet constantly, I used a decent router with a built-in firewall. This blocked intrusions quite well, and had a good working stealth mode so people couldn't just probe my ports. It wasn't very expensive either.
That full time internet connection was through a microwave link: a microwave antenna on a 30 foot pole mounted on the top of my roof. I've always been afraid it would attract lightning, as by definition it has to be higher than the trees in the neigborhood. But it's been there several years without incident. Even after my broadband ISP went bankrupt, with no one to replace them, darnit.
Disclaimer: just because I've been lucky doesn't mean anyone else will be. But at least there are precautions you can take for most of the problems.
Hook
witch:
Well I bailed the techie b/f about whether to turn PCs off or not. He came down firmly on the side of keeping them on 24/7. He agreed with the poster who said the warm up / cool down period was the most wearing, explaining that solder is made of lead and tin, often connected to copper and other metals, all of which expand and contract at different rates - therefore creating movement of parts.
He said fans are cheap to replace and harddrives nearly frictionless, so the wear and tear of constant running is negligable. He sees more problems with machines that are turned on and off than ones that are kept running. Although he reckons the biggest PC killer is dust. And Linux is truckloads better than windoze for running long periods at a stretch without problems.
He turns his PCs off at night purely because they are in the next room and some of them are noisy.
Shivani:
Oh definitely. We also use a router and firewall, plus UPSs. I never disconnect from the internet...unless I'm moving the laptop from one location to another (I refuse to use wireless because of the transfer rates, at present, anyway). The only time I've ever seen something nasty was coming in through email, and there's AV for that. Granted, I let my husband do the configuration for the router/firewall, since I haven't got a clue (ignorant through choice, though). The biggest trick in my opinion is making sure you have a UPS that's rated properly for your machine. Otherwise, it's the next thing to useless.
Shupinola:
Quote from: MokeyHokey on 2005 September 15, 03:09:49
The clothing tool so far seems totally functional. I've tried it with many different age groups/lots and haven't glitched yet. :D Did I mention that it also uses the new clothing selection interface? ;)
There is one problem with this though and I think it's more to do with Nightlife than the hack.
Prior to installing NL, I used this hack in conjunction with InSIMinator so that I could alter Townies (it really the only reason I use InSIMinator). I would use the 'Career Adjuster' function to make all rewards available and then get the Home Plastic Surgery reward. Then I would use the 'Summoner' function to bring various Townies and NPCs to the lot. Another InSIMinator function allows you to make visiting Sims selectable, so I would do that. With boolprop, I'd boost their Aspiration to Platinum and get then to do the plastic surgery thing. Then I'd use the clothing tool to change their clothes (not with NPCs - just Townies) and set their make up and hair.
In less than a couple of minutes, each of those Townies and NPCs that looked like they were the offspring of John Merrick and had bought their clothes at the local charity shop where given a whole new look.
So, with Nightlife installed (and having to start the game from scratch all over again), I prepared to start doing some more Townie/NPC makeovers. But not so easy! All went well until I used the clothing tool. I selected an outfit for a Townie and clicked on the tick to confirm and it went to the screen to choose the outfit. But their was nothing in the inventory - not even the clothing they had been wearing and the option for choosing between tops, bottoms and full outfits was greyed out. So the Townie ended up walking around naked ... and stayed that way when she turned up next time. I eventually had to use another InSIMinator function to age the Townie to Adult and then drop her back to Teen. She was then dressed in a different Maxis default outfit, but a better one than she had been in originally. Thankfully, the part of the clothing tool that works the same as a mirror for changing appearance, worked fine.
I know JM doesn't support or favour InSIMinator, so I'm not expecting him to look into this particular problem, but it would be nice if someone would create a tool for changing Townie clothing which allows the use of custom clothing. I was disappointed to discover that you can't buy clothes for other people like you could in Hot Date in the original game.
Motoki:
Shupinola: A solution I found to that problem is to use Inge's teleporter shrub. Temporarily move the townie into your household, use J.M.'s clothing planner to pick their outfits (the money will come out of your sim's household funds so I kaching them 1k first then buy about 1k worth of outfits for the townie), then use Inge's shrub to move them back out into the townie household.
If you use Insim, you can also use spawn the family tree adjustor and move a sim out into the townie or npc household.
I've been using this method now and it's pretty easy and straightforward and you don't need to make them selectable because they automatically become selectable when you temporarily move them in.
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