Place three fish on the ground directly in the penguin's path, after the third fish it never fails to pee for me.

Well now that you mention it, that lot was getting many visits from the penguin.  I had fed it a lot of fish and it was, of course, peeing after every third fish as usual.  It is easily possible that cleaning those puddles could have caused it, just as you say, and your explanation makes sense.  Concerned that it might have been a portent of impending doom, I cleared the furiousness with strawberry juice shortly after seeing it.  This worked as it should so I didn't think much more of it.  Glad to see it is otherwise normal behavior, apparently.

Is there a 'furious with...nobody' behavior related to this?  I have been thinking it might be corrupt behavior but this thread makes me wonder if anyone else has seen it.

Example:  There was a puddle in one bathroom from a sloppy sim in the shower that did not get mopped up, then more from bathing a dog, and yet more from another shower by a different sloppy sim, eventually covering almost the whole floor.  Quite some time had passed before the mess was cleaned autonomously by a neat-freak sim.  Sometime after the cleaning I noticed a 'furious' behavior and a completely blank flaming thought bubble associated with it.  Checking the relationships panel verified that the sim in question had no specific target for the furiousness.

I would expect that several factors are involved in auto-repair.  I have seen it happen, but only very rarely, like on the order of alien abduction.  I can only think of seeing it with the community shower and the cheap bathtub for certain, but it seems like I might have seen the computer repair once, perhaps.  I've never seen the MP3 behavior, but then I don't typically use them because they suck and blow at the same time and this dichotomous conundrum disturbs me.

It was Ford who tried.  Carter did not take office until 1977.

I am reasonably certain that there has not ever been a 'hand baby to' interaction for sims holding toddlers.  Besides, toddlers are toddlers, not babies.

I actually thought she was implying that she had some cyberpunk-quality makeup uploaded somewhere and she was afraid that someone might find it and submit it to the contest.  This does bring up a question of eligibility.  If one were to find said hypothetical creation and submit it would the submission be disqualified because the creator is a judge, or would the appointed judge be removed for having one of their creations submitted?

From Spicy Sims.com, one of the most retarded pay-sites around, and hot-linked as per instructions.

Behold, Awesome Lashes!  By 'im_a_disaster'!  For certain.

Because you don't like 'pretty girl sims'?




Awesome or non-Awesome?  More Awesome Than Your lashes?  You make the call.

I know Crayola Magic Marker is supposed to be washable, but that does not mean you should use it to draw eyelashes!  One has to log in to find out if you would have to pay for these.

This is likely a dead end.  I have two 7600GT's running SLI mode with no current issues and I have exactly the same listing in my 'config-log'.  Current full-release driver is version 162.18, but there have been various rumblings here and elsewhere that BV broke the BSOD fixes featured in this release.  I have not and am not likely to install BV soon, if ever, so I don't know if I can help you further with this.

After attempting to make nearly 100% certain that CPU or RAM heat is not the issue, you might try acquiring your driver from the manufacturer of your card, rather from nVidia directly.  While nVidia is the chipset manufacturer of the GPU, the video card manufacturers will sometimes implement the GPU's in slightly different ways.  If your graphics card manufacturer is reputable, they will have the most up to date version of drivers recommended for your card available from their website.  My XFX-brand cards seem to run with less stability unless I install drivers acquired directly from XFX, for instance.  This may be somewhat of a superstition, but this issue is addressed directly on the nVidia website.  If you are having problems, it could not be any worse, surely.

Of course, if the true culprit is BV brokenness, this will not help at all. 

Actually, it sounds like you can't get across the river Styx.  Do you not have a talent for Charon?

You have the final driver version, not the beta, and it is the most current driver for XP.  This does not mean your driver installation is not corrupted, however.  Administrator settings are located in Start>Control Panel>User Accounts.  Uninstall nVidia drivers from Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs, the way nVidia recommends.  If you are having trouble with driver installation, use Safe Mode, it is evil and should work just fine in Hell.  To get to Safe Mode, press and hold [F8] while Windows is trying to load during startup.

Doesn't Catalyst require Microsoft.net framework 1.1?  If it does, 2.0 will not likely do the job.  They are actually different operating environments, and 2.0 is not merely an upgrade of 1.1.  I have vers. 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0 on my system currently.

I use nVidia cards by preference, so I might not be the best to help here.  I have used ATI in the past, and as I understand it, all new ATI drivers come with Catalyst Control Center and it is needed to run the card correctly.  ATI CCC requires one of the Microsoft.net frameworks to operate, so you need to make sure you have it before installing the drivers.  I don't remember the version number but the ATI website will tell you if you look for installation help there.  I recommend these steps:  Check for required Microsoft.net version from ATI website.  Make certain this version is installed and update as necessary from Microsoft Update.  Uninstall graphics drivers.  Reboot into Safe Mode.  Install desired graphics driver version.  Reboot.

Before doing any of this make absolutely certain that your anti-virus software is not only closed but also disabled in it's settings and that the option to have it load during startup is also disabled.  AV software can and will sabotage driver installation if it has any opportunity.

Try reducing anti-aliasing settings in game.  It is the slider in graphics settings that reads 'smooth edges'.  Also, make sure the graphics card settings for anti-aliasing are set to 'application-controlled' before launching the game.

If they were not so tight then the ladies might not notice the armadillo hiding in there.

Bulldozing definitely works, but the bulldozing activity must be done from the neighborhood view before placing your empty lot, not from within the lot once placed.  Just place an empty lot template down in the neighborhood view, to be sure select one larger than your desired lot, then select the bulldoze tool and clear it away.  This will leave a flat terrain for your lot.  If you want to verify the flat edges of any lot, just select a shrubbery (not a tree) and run it along the perimeter of the lot.  If it is placeable in every one of the perimeter squares of the lot, then the lot is level, because the game will not allow you to place a bush on terrain that is not flat.

Here's my amount of character files:

Idylleville, 3903.

No worries.

Aargh!  That was not the answer I was looking for.  SimPE is no good for me.  This is probably due to all those VBT's I have done that everyone keeps mentioning, that and/or the sheer weight of my neighborhood data.  For me, the BFBVFS comes when I try to use SimPE, and as long as I stay away from it everything goes fine.  I have never been able to run that program even once without it barfing and crashing and corrupting the neighborhood data.

Perhaps a bit a clarification is required.  I have a custom university that is over two years old and it has had a lame mEAxis secret society lot that I placed there in the beginning.  What I am hoping to accomplish is the removal of this lot so that I can build one of my own from the ground up, on a new lot.  As far as I know, the game only allows one secret society per university neighborhood, so the old lot presumably must be removed before adding a new one.  Removing the old lot is at the center of the issue since the lot is apparently not selectable from the neighborhood view in any way.

Has anyone nuked their secret society lot to replace it with one of their own design?  This is something I want to do, but I have an innate aversion to being a test subject.  Currently, my plan is to visit the secret society lot, 'changeLotZoning' cheat the lot to commercial, then leave.  Hopefully this will result in the ability to bulldoze the former secret society lot and build anew.  I am interested to know if anyone has done this successfully or if they have a better way.

Interesting.  I would have expected you to be quite amused by the 'Influence>Repair' electric light show.  What is not to like about that?  Granted, it is not as effective or efficient as the 'Smite' option on the lotdebugger, but still fun, and it works inside.

I just wanted to point out that lots with non-level edges can also be used to shape the terrain of the neighborhood to make a contour that is not level.  In fact, this action is the only method I know of to purposefully alter the terrain of the neighborhood after it has been created.  It may be one the stupidest methods anyone could ever design for such a thing, but I have used it since the beginning, considering that it seems to be the only one.  The geniuses who designed the game did not include any useful tools for anyone to accomplish this, while simple logic would seem to suggest this feature might be desirable.  One must ponder why anyone might create such a thing as TS2 without adding even a simple neighborhood elevation tool set. It is truly incomprehensible to me, and really is almost my number one disappointment with the game.

To be certain, altering the terrain by moving uneven lots around can result in undesirable terrain effects, but these things are almost always correctable in a similar manner to that which produced the terrain damage.  It can be like a sort of broken puzzle at times, especially when roads go vertical or get twisted, or an intersection folds over.  In my experience, it always remains at least somewhat workable and repairable with the right pieces.

I would, theoretically, use any lot I liked regardless of the slope of the edges, within reason.  It would certainly be nice to know about this fact before placing the lot, however, the mere existence of uneven edges does not bother me even a little.  Just a note, lots that are perfectly flat can be just as damaging to much of the real estate in some neighborhoods if used in the wrong location.  Basically, this means that they must go on terrain which is already flat, or another place where the amount of radical edge justification is tolerable.  It is in this way that uneven lots can been seen as actually superior to flat lots in certain instances, since the effect of justifying the uneven lot with the neighborhood terrain can be much smoother than a flat lot.  In fact, the game actually justifies the edges of an uneven lot with the surrounding terrain, whereas a flat lot is placed like a bulldozer went before it, the process of justifying the perfectly level edges resulting in a sharp, unnatural, mechanical slice in the terrain and often an angular fold in the surface of a road.

Of course, few things are as industrial and functional as perfect level, and I can certainly appreciate that aspect of flat lots.  Still, I have variegated terrain and I am not afraid to use it.

I'd say this is definitely random.  I had a similar occurrence once, save it was the private school kid that had to go to class and the public school brat got to stay home.  At first I thought it was planned this way, since it reminded me of my youth, having to go to school while all of the neighborhood kids got to stay home.  Overall, I'd have to say that snow days do not happen very often, and do not seem to have any relation to the quantity of snow on the ground either.

Place an empty lot template down on the uneven terrain and then bulldoze it away.  This will leave the terrain flat.  As for the second question, you would have to start over with a new lot.  Once a lot is placed, repositioning it will not change the edges of the lot, but it will change the terrain of the neighborhood to match the edges of lot if you move it.  This latter issue is the basis of El Presidente's objection.

Was there a contest here I entered, or something?

Clearly, my bribery skills seem far from adequate.  However, I pay nothing for the opportunity to win nothing, which is better for me than paying something to win nothing.  It feels like I win.

 

The 'viewing deck' was reinvented as a 'viewing angle' instead, with consideration given to minimizing camera rotation.  Switching floors and required rotating of the camera are similarly annoying issues, but neither bothers me much.


Other issues apparently derive from my ignorance of the importance of certain features in use with the full 'director's cut' of hacks.  I accept the judgment;  Ignorance is never a valid excuse.

Well, this issue does not really bother me at all.  It makes at least as much sense as the business owner being able to spend a whole day at work and then go home so that they can go to a career job all day.  What irritates me about the way the ownable business works is that the employees always have the '9 to 5, M to F' schedule.  MEAxis should have make the business owner capable of setting a 'schedule' for the business, with specific work hours for each employee and days off.  If a business owner hires a teenager to work the cash register, for instance, they should be able to set the work schedule for the employee to show up at 2, so that they can stay in school, especially since they gave no option for teenagers to 'drop out' of school.  I am sick of having to make my playable teen employees quit their jobs so they can go to school, since eventually they must go to school, due to they way the game is handled.

So, in my opinion, the most awesome adjustment that could be made to businesses would be the ability to set work schedules for each employee individually, and also set business hours for the commercial lot.  After all, there are not many real businesses that do not have either schedules for their employees or standard hours of operation.  I do not understand why they did not include this in the game.

As for the 'double-dipping', do the employees also get paid when visiting the lot with a third party, so that they are actually 'triple-dipping' or even more, depending upon how many times the business is visited by playable customers?  I never really bothered to check this out.