I finished the challenge at 1 a.m. today.  I thought I would NEVER have my show biz sim get through that career.  Stupid me actually answered a chance card for her (I didn't have to).  She was demoted to cartoon voice.  It wouldn't have been so bad except she was an elder.  Luckily for me, I then discovered I couldn't save, change lots, neighborhoods or exit the game.  I became rather hysterical when my geek hit the reset button as I didn't remember when I last saved the game.  I lost two sim weeks so I basically had to do the last three careers over. 

Besides the whining over not bathing and food, plus the ghost everywhere, what I really didn't like about the challenge was having to look at the default Maxis hairstyles for so long.    

I'll be honest about my hacks:  the only ones I pulled were the smart serve and harder jobs.  I'm selective about which hacks I use.  The phone hack is a cricital hack as far as I'm concerned.

I"m closing in on unlocking my last three careers.  Of course, it only took three tries to get this far.   I discovered early on to find the townie sims who had the careers I wanted to unlock.  I'd send my college student to downtown to befriend the adult sims.  I never worried about atrraction bolts as I know I can make any sim fall in love with any sim I want.  I'm sure in a post nuclear disaster genes and skills would be more important that "true love" aka three bolts.  The founder unlocked medical (yeah bathing).  The spouse was a townie who came in at the top of athletic.  Culinary and military were unocked in the second generation.

Just how hack free are we to be in this challenge?  I certainly don't want any game stopping glitches to show up because I pulled every hack I have in my game.  In my reading of legacy stories, I notice an alarming tendancy for glitches to occur.  Since I have been there, done that in reglular game play, I don't want to subject myself to such problems again.  I would appreciate any comments on this.

I decided to replace cheap items with more expensive items.  I figured the "Family" would want a bigger cut of my Sims' money. I also thought of the same crime work around that Kyna mentioned.

Only five more careers to unlock! 

I'm having my spare households live at the same restriction level as the main family.  At least I've made it to generation 3 so far.  Four restrictions gone, 10 more to go.   

If I ever get my first heir to teenage years without his parents dying, I'll almost consider that an act of God.  I've got to get another adult onto the lot soon. 

My game didn't like my founder using the grill to make breakfast.  He was at level 9 on his career when errors began to occur.  I managed to hit reset every time but one. Yup, I deleted him.  Now I'm saving every two Sims days instead of every 7 sim days.  He's also eating cereal for breakfast on work days.

I grew up surrounded by military bases etc.  Cheyenne Mountain was west of us, Omaha (home of the B52's ) to the NE plus all the missle silos were scattered all over the Great Plains.  We were sure to die a slow, painful death.  Now days I live near a major defense plant and a nuclear power plant so I figure I'll die fairly quickly.

The one thing that is irritating to me is that one is almost forced to use a male founder.  I started off with a female founder and quickly realized that there was no way she was going to rise to the top of her career before the biological clock stopped ticking.  Let's face it, the first generation female will need to be a breeding machine.  I suppose I could have her boyfriend come visit and make her pregnant, but who knows how many genereations it would take before one could lift any restrictions? 

On a side note, like Pescado, I grew up during the time we thought that nuclear winter was around the corner.  Most of the strategies I plan to use in this challenge are what we were taught to do to hopefully survive after a nuclear blast.

Nice to know that my video card is supported and is at the high end.  However, I'm still not convinced I need this pack. 

I remember having a different type of problems when I moved a bed from the downtown neighborhood to the main neighborhood.  And yes, I had just moved a bed in inventory before the current problem expanded. 

No problems after I pulled the custom content.  Now I'm slowing adding it back a few files at a time.  It is amazing how much faster my game loads when I don't have all that cc.

Thanks.

A bed?   That should be easy to find.  So much for the water bed of love.  Sigh. 

The past couple of days, I'm seeing the object error box pop up almost constantly with certain sims.  Most of them are "Atrribute number out of range" type errors.  At first it was affecting NPC's who became controllable sims, but not it's beginning to hit Sims that I created.

I pulled the non-aewsome hacks thinking one of them was conflicting with a hack of JM's.  Below is a typical log that I found after pulling the hacks.  I plan to pull my cc next, then JM's hacks if necessary. 

Any other suggestions/reccomendations are welcome. 

[attachment deleted by admin]

Thanks, simposiast.   I'm assuming that JM is judging this contest so I wanted a better feel for what he was looking for.  I know what I want in a house.

JM, I'm a visual person.  The suggestions you've given are a bit vague.  Could you post one of your lots as a example?

I rechecked my hacks dates last night before I sent the logs.  Unless you updated one after I sent the logs, they should be the most current.  Appreciate you checking.
Does this mean I need to bite the bullet and reinstall my game? 

Edit:  For good measure I just rechecked all my hacks' dates not just the hacks associated with "business uses you.  I found some that needed the updates.  Hopefully this will help.

After installling the "business uses you" hack, the "too many interations" error box show up.  I made sure the all the supporting hacks were the most recent.  As long as I had the "business uses you" object in the home business, I didn't get the error.  I have attached two logs.  I currently don't have the hack in my game.

I noticed something similiar in my game today after I installed OFB.  I saw all the downtown people on my list.  I clicked to go to a downtown lot and that lot's family screen loaded but I went back to the main neighborhood lot I was on.,

This is definately going to be a challenging game.  Since 11 a.m. CST, I have run two maxis made busenesses into the ground.   

Thank you!  I hadn't experienced the bug, but I believe in being proactive.

There, there.  *pats Morons_should_die on the shoulder* "The invisible house" started me posting on MATY. 

Thanks for the suggestions!  Finally had success! I don't know if Emma's suggestion of looking in another neighborhood or Angelyne's suggestion of removing the files in the teleport file did the trick, but I found the lot. 

Another firiend downloaded the lot and had the same error so now I need to give the bad news to the builder. 

This was certainly a group effort!!!  Appreciate it! 

Unoccupied lots, Emma, but thanks.

Ah, angelyne, I hit tech overload with your suggestion.   Mulitpacksim2extractor? 

Thanks!  I'll have to check out that site.  The builder I'm using is a member of this forum and another forum I use. I'm making a medieval neighborhood.
 
Usually (not always) my technical problems tend to be ones that I accidently cause.  I was hoping that that it would be a simple problem to correct.

I redownloaded the same lot.  Again I got the error box with Clean Installer. 

I guess I'll just have to make my own lot.  I can assure you that my lot will not even come close to the same quality as the lot I tried to install.

Thanks for the suggestion, MissDoh.

Thanks, Jorenne!  I tried your suggestion before I started this thread.  That's when the error box came up.

So do I delete what I downloaded today and try again?