I hope I'm not too late to reply.  I am expecting that I will reinstall my entire SIMs 3 when the new expansion comes out - so I will more than likely be restarting my legacy family at that time too.
-I like biographies, but won't cry if the majority prefers not to have them.
-Hope I'm not being difficult, but I would prefer~3 to ~5 tailored households with the nifty stories, and then a handful of fillers.
-I would have to look those up, I am unfamiliar with both.
-I would search, but I'm not certain how actively. I do love finding easter eggs and I like original and interesting characters and relationships.
-I have no problem documenting or taking screenshots to be used, as long as I don't get my head cut off for being slow. I'm a grandmother of 12 grandchildren and I often have them around me visiting and wanting my attention.  During those circumstances my grandchildren always come first.

I think your plans sound intriguing and I will  be interested in seeing what you decide.

I finally got a chance to play a lot today - it says it's a 64x64. If you were already envious of how my computer runs you're going to hate me after reading the next sentence.  I realized last night I forgot to mention my graphic settings - I run everything on high, even the edge smoothing (I think that's what it's called). My husband said that is what causes the most lag in most games, so I set it lower for about 2 hours and I couldn't stand it.  I moved it back to high to see if it caused lag and it hasn't so I left it there.  The graphics just look so much nicer with the smooth edges.  My husband built this system for my birthday with the SIMs 3 in mind because he knows how much I love the game and I get very upset when it doesn't run right.  So far I have my Sim moved into a huge house.  It's way too huge for my liking - it even has a partial kitchen upstairs.  I like the house, but I don't know my way around it yet and I keep having to hunt for bathrooms.  It has room for 4 cars.  There has been no lag whatsoever.  I didn't turn the game off it's sitting on my toolbar and ready to play when I get a chance again.  My 2 year old granddaughter is with me and will be with me all day.  She loves to sit in my lap and watch - when she hears the SIM music and sees the SIM icon loading she runs through the rooms singing, "Grandma's making babies!"  I'm sure I will get a chance to play it some more later in the day when she is up.  I will try to get my SIM pregnant and get some children on the lot and see how it runs.  Then I have a custom house of the "Lake House" I'm dying to play.  I am really surprised I have no lag, I really expected a little.  I might get some lag if I leave it running for several hours (several meaning a whole day) and play - sometimes I do that and I don't turn the game off for two or three days.  I'm going to have to tell my husband he did real good.  I have been wanting a version of his gaming computer he advertises for years - and I was so shocked when he surprised me with it this year.

I only wish I knew why it doesn't want to play nice with the awesomemod. I really liked features of that mod and it doesn't make sense to me that my old system would run it and this one doesn't.  I've learned that the SIMs games can be very fickle.

As for that hair file.  It only does that when they age up after a birthday, otherwise it is just fine.  I have to change the hair and change it back to that file after they age up. I usually make changes to their appearance and clothing at that time anyway.  It's a little annoying but not really bothersome enough to drive me too crazy. It does do it every time they age up - it always has so it has to be a problem with that file.  I don't think any other file or mod is causing it to happen. 

I did find a few 60x60 lots that I liked this morning - when I get a chance I will play them and let you know how they worked.

When I told my husband I see two empty slots in here, he said, "It will hold more RAM but it will be just be sitting there doing nothing."  What I meant by future Christmas present is when I'm ready to upgrade to a newer operating system I want a BIG FAT RAM to go with it.

About trying out the 60 x 60 lot - I will check and see what I have loaded already.  If I don't have something that size I will hunt one down and try it out.  My preference is the medium sized lots.  I have been playing on the huge lot for my legacy family and the house has gotten rather huge.  Bigger than I really like, not because it plays badly but because by the time the SIM walks from one edge of the lot to the other they are hungry and have to shower and pee again and then after they shower they want to go to bed.  It just seems like the big lots are more work than they are worth. If they are pregnant you might as well forget it.  I sometimes feel like building a pregnancy room with just bathroom plumbing, a bed and a fridge and letting her live in there until she has the baby.

I'm not certain when I will get to this because I have had a lot going on in my family at the moment.  Two deaths in the family in one week and one of them was my 16 year old niece.  She has fought Cystic Fibrosis all her life.  It's just been a rough time right now.

I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly about the hair file.  Do you think my file may have gotten corrupted?  If that's the case I might try to download the file again and replace it, but as I said I can fix the problem.  Although it's annoying I can deal with that.  As for awesomemod - I tried using the method to cut out the things I don't need but still it crashed on me. The other program the Indie one - I see no difference when I have it in my game so I left it out.  I did use the tool to check for conflicts.  The few that it listed didn't cause any problems so I just ignored them because I wanted both files. 

I will get back to you when I get a chance to play the 60 x 60 lot unless my legacy lot counts.  Right now there are 8 people living on it and two ghosts. They have parties all the time with the maximum number of guests.  I get a very small amount of lag if several things happen at once - such as the maid showing up as the husband gets a raise while his wife is giving birth to triplets and the school bus just showed up to take the older kids to school.  But the amount of lag is just a few moments - it doesn't bother me.  The game loads up and shuts down quickly and the CAS screen comes up quickly when I want to plan their clothing or change their appearance.  I'm basically a happy camper.

I was curious about why the game seems to not like to get along with certain files myself.  It seems like every computer handles the game differently.

I seem to be having a manic moment and don't mind sticking my neck out on the chopping block tonight.  I rarely respond to posts anymore because the last time I did so was hours from having surgery and I did not have the time to search through a bunch of details that did me no good.  However as it was pointed out to me that was my own stupidity.

I decided to add my details in case they help you with what you are searching for.  I also feel the need to respond because I am one of those idiots with over 1000 downloads, and yet my system basically runs smoothly.  I am not going to make major changes until the next expansion comes out.  It has been my experience that with each expansion EA causes a lot more turmoil with all their mistakes, so I have decided to deal with any problems at that time all at once instead of tearing out my hair a little at a time trying to fix every little problem daily.

Even though I have many downloads - I only download from certain sources.  I don't download just any file - I download for quality work. I am a detail fanatic, and each of my SIMs have a personality of their own. I don't like using the same files over and over again. I have collected many files to feed my desire for having unique SIMs.

I am running Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 and will do so until my software will no longer run on it.  Maybe by then all the kinks will be worked out of the newer systems.  My processor is a AMD Phenom II Quad Core - 3.00 gigahertz speed. My graphics card is a Radeon 4890 with 1 GB RAM.  I have 4.00 GB of system RAM, I just noticed I have two empty slots for more ram but my husband is telling me I will have to upgrade my operating system to use it.  I guess I know what I want for Christmas in the future at some point.

I have 860 files in my Mods folder and 1,495 files in my downloads folder.  I have a few hacks - one changes the lighting and adds shadows that look more realistic. One makes the baby bottle a normal color and of course I have gotten rid of the censor blur and I have default skins.  It bothers me more to see body parts that should be there that have been cut off; I have never been offended by realistic bodies. 

Most of my downloads are patterns, clothing, hair, a few lots that I feel were exceptionally done.  I do have a NoCD crack because I hate having to switch out my CD all the time.  I prefer to keep it put away safely so it stays in good condition.  I would love to know why EA has such a problem with that.  I have also found that my system runs much more smoothly running the game in this manner. I just recently added a mod to get rid of the intro but as of yet I have not played the game to see if it works yet.

My husband built this system for me in April so I am still getting used to it.  I had awesomemod on my previous system and it ran smoothly.  However when I switched to this system I could not get awesomemod to work.  My game crashes after seeing the SIMs 3 logo.  I spent an entire day trying to fix the problem with no results so I gave up.  I tried to add awesomemod to the game after installing it with nothing added and it still crashed. The only conclusion I came up with is that the mod must not like something in my new system.  My game runs smoothly - it never lags even on huge lots.  When I play it is for long periods of time, sometimes I will leave it on two full days and still no lagging.  The only time I have had a little lag is when I make major changes building and that's after spending hours doing so.  I have no lag on busy lots, I have parties with the maximum amount of guests with no problems. I'm very happy with how my system performs.

Problems I have had have been minor and as you have noticed in your own game seem to be from custom content and not the hacks.  I downloaded a hair file that causes some trouble when the SIM ages.  The hair sticks out of their stomach until I can get to a mirror and reset it.  I decided to just live with resetting it because it's a hair that I really like.  The other problem began just recently.  It seems that a bathing suit that I added to the game has taken over the EA whole bathing suit.  If the SIM has that in their collection of clothing it makes them nude when they wear it.  It's not one of my favorite pieces of clothing, however it is a bit of a problem for my insane SIMs.  I use the insane trait as the trait passed down for my legacy family.  Some of those have this suit in their collection and because an insane SIM will wear whatever they want - whenever they want even if it's inappropriate this makes life for my SIMs rather interesting.  My insane SIM will stroll around stark naked in some of the most inappropriate times.  Again I decided to just deal with it because I don't feel like rummaging through my files to find out which one is guilty.

I'm not sure my experiences will be any help, but there it is.

I found the mental picture of a sim stuck in the mailbox very funny, last night I had a similar thing happen.  One of my triplets got stuck in their potty chair - not on the chair - in the chair.  Luckily I used moveobjects and they were separated.  I am going to assume it must be some kind of glitch.

I have a legal version of SIMs 3 on two different computers. My original that my husband built played the game fine with all the patches and all of my CC. It lagged a little with settings on high when I played for many hours, not a big deal.

My husband built me a new system that looks like a tower full of fans. He built it with gaming in mind for me for my SIMs game. I have had a lot of problems getting it set up. It kept crashing and I went back to my old system while he worked on the new one again. Last week I installed it on the new system again. It worked fine with the first patch, but when I tried to add the second patch the game crashed before it would even load. I tried everything to remedy it but nothing worked. I did a reinstall - it would load until I tried to add the framework, then I got a red city. Again I tried everything other than throwing the kitchen sink at it - nothing worked and I reinstalled the game over and over yesterday (spent my entire day). I found out that my problems started with the framework, so I manually added the necessary files. The download Monkey works with my setup, so that's no problem. I loved the Awesome mod, it works wonderful on my other computer but it does nothing, and changes nothing on my new system. I wanted to try that IndieStone I have been reading about, but same thing. It's like my computer just ignores that it is there. The files were put in the right place. I'm too tired to see if the second patch will work, and I have no intention of messing with it as of now. I would like to actually play my game. I have had to start my legacy family over for the 3rd time now. I have had to reinstall it every time she finally was able to buy a toilet, a bed and a tub.

I don't understand it, because this system was built to play the Sims.  My old system met the requirements but my processor and graphics card are not nearly as good as my new one is suppose to be.

It's my wanting certain CC in my game that has caused my problems, not the patches themselves. My problems were done by me.