So one giggle gets a person tossed in the trash pit.  Don't you think your knees are jerking just a bit fast, there?

Interesting how afraid you all seem of newcomers.  I wonder what that's about.

I think, rather, that they don't get mine.  But they will.  People usually catch on after awhile.

Laughing is taboo on MATY?  Don't you find that rather grim?  Personally, I find that there are some days when laughing is the only thing that gets a person through.  I mean, if we didn't laugh at W., we'd all have committed either suicide or murder by now, maybe both.

I'm a clinical psychologist, and when I was in training, one of my interviews for internship was at a place where the interviewer said, "I notice that you've seen a lot of incest survivors.  That's really heavy work -- how do you keep yourself sane?"  And I thought, "Well, she's probably not gonna like this, but it's the truth, so I'll say it anyway."  And I said, "Mostly through a rather dark sense of humor."  And she beamed and said, "Oh, that's good; humor is the best defense against the bad stuff."

There you go, free advice, worth every penny. :-)

*rolls eyes*  *yawns*

I guess people usually run away and cry when you pretend to be fierce and scary.  Personally, I think it's mildly amusing, but then, I have a sense of humor.

I gather that you *don't* like giggles.  Well, you don't have to.  Just close your eyes when you see one coming.

Yay!


*giggle*

Has anybody else found that their sims are WAY more interested in writing in their diaries than they used to be? 

I have a guy whose "natural" hobby is Fitness, and the two hobbies that he's maximized are Arts & Crafts and Cooking.  You'll notice that none of these is Film & Literature.  Yet if I leave him alone for a second, he makes a beeline for the bookcase and writes in his diary till the cows come home.  And he's not low on social, so he's not using it to fill that need; he's just obsessed with his diary.   His wife is writing in her diary a lot more than any sim I saw before FT came out, though she's not quite as obsessive as he is.

Anybody else having this happen?

I think a lot of people confuse personality points and skill points.  Five points is indeed average for personality but not for skills.  The fact that skills go up to ten doesn't mean that halfway up is average.  For example:

5 Charisma points will get you as far as President (Level in the Business career
3 Body points will get you as far as Starter (Level 4) in the Athletic career
5 Cooking points will get you as far as Executive Chef (Level in the Culinary career
5 Logic points will get you as far as Scholar (Level 7) in the Science career

Being a starter on a professional sports team is a pretty elite level of skill.  Being the president of a company is not something that happens to Joe Average.  Five PERSONALITY points is average, but five skill points is not.  We think of five skill points as nothing special because we're all expert slave drivers :-), but in fact, the person who has enough athletic ability to be a starter on a professional sports team AND enough cooking ability to be an executive chef in a restaurant AND enough brains to be a scholar AND enough to reach the same levels in the other skills is wildly rare.

I think that average for skill points is more like 1 or 2, and the person who had 5 in all of the skills would be admired as an incredible polymath.

I think the kind of Mr. or Ms. Ordinary that you all are thinking of is more likely to have one or two points per skill, and I agree that such people don't get scholarships.

How many people do you know who are pretty good at every area in life?  Personally, I don't know very many, though since my colleagues are mostly professors, they are a rather more-skewed-than-average group.  :-)  But I see plenty of kids who are, say, jocks (Body who can barely pass their courses (Logic 2) or smart kids (Logic who have no idea how to have a social interaction (Charisma 1).  There are plenty of artists (Creativity who can't find anything because their space looks like it was taken out by a hand grenade (Cleaning 0).  Oh, sure, there are exceptions, but these things are stereotypes *because* they are so often true.

So, I don't think that being pretty good at everything is being mediocre.  It seems pretty damned rare to me.

The badge scholarships are a cool idea; thanks for implementing that.

One thing that always annoyed me about the skill points scholarships was that a kid would get $$ for having eight points in one skill even if s/he had no points in any other skill, whereas a kid who had, say, five points in every skill got nothing.  I was thinking that it might be nice if there were a "well-rounded" scholarship, for kids who were passably good (around 5?) at everything.

And that was my original point -- that this rating scheme seems to have been set up by people who aren't getting enough. :-)

I've seen this one, and I'm glad to hear that it's supposed to be that way, because I was thinking it was a bug. :-)

I'm not denying the essential preferability of woohoo to much of the rest of life, just saying that it's not much of an ACHIEVEMENT.

Thanks, that's useful.

So, First Woohoo is the top-scoring achievement, and it beats such things as graduating from college, satisfying one's lifetime want, and reaching the top of the career track.  Can you say "Programmed by people who don't have a life?" :-)

One of the specials is under Entertain, where there's now a third kind of joke.  There are regular jokes and dirty jokes, and for BFFs only, private jokes.  I don't think that an in-joke is the same as sharing a secret; you can have in-jokes with people you wouldn't trust with your secrets. 

Sorry.  I hadn't realized that my post was useless.  I've gotten so MUCH useful stuff from this site that I wanted to give something back.  Guess I should have realized that I'm not awesome enough for that. :-)

Here's the Amazon pre-order bonus for Free Time, which is a ballerina poster.  Not too exciting, but then, maybe you'll be more into ballerinas than I am. :-)

Very nice!  I love the woven one.

Prospect University also features custom recolored pennants, shirts, athletic clothing, and signage. Each dorm features faceplates that tell sims where they live, just in case cramming for their finals has sapped them of their ability to navigate.

Wow.  That's so cool!

Phaenoh at MTS2 made a tree swing; it's an old tire at the end of a rope.  Try http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=268218

Their own search engine still sucks rocks, but they've added the ability to search MTS2 with the google search engine, and that's actually pretty useful.  Not perfect, but WAY better than their own.

Thanks for the heads-up on CEP!

Baaaaa!

Yep.  Me, too.

Sara, it's so generous of you to share all these with us!

THAT is a true WTF!