I've never been able to get any of those options to work while on a Vacation, even when I didn't have AM installed.  I have to invite them over to my home in the main neighborhood for any of the options to appear.  It may be as designed, but if so it's an annoying design. 

That's not Awesomemod.  That's EA borking the thing when an opportunity triggers on it.  The entrance borks and stops working.  Just edit the lot and replace the building (use moveobjects on if you need to) and it will work fine after that.

Those are different.  That is actually a Skill opportunity and not a Career opportunity.  The career switch while working does not show a Skill icon (it has no icon, actually, it's like a phone call from a friend).

Unsurprisingly, Don Lothario in Riverview flirts with anything that moves.  Male or female.  And apparently if you have a "love" with someone and they flirt with someone else, you wind up mad at THE OTHER PERSON.  But only in the "Lose friendship with them until you apologize to them" kind of way. 

The paperboy doesn't mess things up, but there's no reason to let him spawn unless you really want a newspaper

I'm not having any comfort problems to speak of.  I know it ignores comfort until it damn near bottoms out, but then they go to lounge normally for me.

Did you save and exit after creating townies?  Did you wait until the game said it was done making townies?  It takes a bit of time for them to all generate and the game will continue marching along in the meantime (this is why you use the Synch Timer to reset the lot time and prevent unwanted paperboy spam from happening)

Call Targets appeared on the Newson family despite none of the Sims being employed.  I did notice that it only shows up if Sims are actually available to be called, though, and if they are not already Friends, and thus more appropriately handled under Call Friends.

As far as sims picking up the phone and dropping it right away, I noticed this ONLY happens if I ignore a phone call until it auto-drops and then attempt to do a Call Sim.  I need to play around with the screening features because the stupid "hey, want a magazine subscription?" calls will ring for freaking EVER if you don't pick them up.

Skillinator -> Cooking will occaisionally lock when there's a TV but no bookcase on a lot.  I had this issue with the Newson brood that came with AL.  I placed them in a modified crappy default home with all the awesome things they need (sleep clocks, BUY controllers, flamingoes in the yard) and no other skill objects other than the TV.  Sometimes it worked like a charm and one kid would turn the TV on and they'd all plop down, but as soon as Eat would queue up for one of them and they began running around to fill their motives, they'd all eventually wind up with the macro icon in the queue but not flashing any sub-actions and the TV just sat there turned off like a lump.  The Sims themselves stood there doing nothing.  Eventually I gave up and installed a bookshelf.  I'm not convinced that this isn't just a problem with this family, as they have other issues plaguing them (one of the Toddlers cannot be trained to talk, walk, or be taught a nursery rhyme), but I figured it may be worth mentioning.

Of course, the answer of "quit being a cheap ass and buy a damn bookcase already" is perfectly acceptable.

Because then we'd never see all the cool crappy vehicles they made for the game, or be awed annoyed by the hellicopter. 

The game seems to generate Good, Neutral, and Evil witches.  Two of each.  I have to double check that, though.  You'll get the Grand Witch who flies into a lot and sometimes you'll get a different variety who does a walkby on community lots too.  At least, my first post-AL neighborhood did that.  I recently nuked my neighborhoods and started over and have yet to have the random walkby witch happen.

Yeah but it's not like there's really much else a child sim is useful for.  Unless you have an Easel factory set up for conscription purposes.

Wait, what?  Hobbies actually change your Interest numbers?   

That is so completely freaking retarded.  It's bad enough that it clogs up your want panel with "Talk about Hobby" and "Blog about Hobby".  And yet, talking about an associated interest doesn't actually fulfil the first want.  Idiotic.

Rep gain and loss seems to only require a townie witness to the action.  It can even be as little witnessing as a townie doing a walkby on your lot.  I've had Sims going up in reputation while on a date with another playable (visiting) sim on their own home lots (which is theoretically impossible according to what the guide says). 

Best rep gains and losses can be gained by going to a community lot and picking a random townie you don't know and Auto-socializing them into friendly or enemy status.  Fighting, despite the fun and long drawn out animations, doesn't ultimately have that big of a relationship hit attached. 

I also suspect it's nerfed in social loss due to all the Cop/Burglar fights that happen.

Except for the thumbnail.  At least, in my fresh The Sims 2 folder that I had it make after I patched.

Well, it looks like the "fix" to the neighborhood decoration issue was to replace the big honking decoration that ate the mini tower with said mini tower.  So, Downtown looks better on playable lots now, but the other building is now missing. 

If it were just Witches, then no it wouldn't be enough.  But Witches + Reputation + new objects and socials make it worth the effort.  I'm not a huge Apartment fan, I think they could be much better implemented, but that's not a big loss.

It's infected the Cheerleaders and Mascots pretty badly, too.  They even bitch about being told they could stay over but having nowhere to sleep. 

And this is why they invented Emtpy templates and notownieregen. 

The Clean and Empty template thread does have some "cleaned" templates which have only the playable and known sims in them, so you may want to get ahold of those.  Most people stopped caring and reverted to the empty templates, though, because who really needs 500 townies of any flavor in their game?

Well, ya know, kids are always depicted as freakishly good at mending relationships/setting people up, aren't they?  I mean, how many variations of The Parent Trap have they made?

This sounds very familiar for some reason.  I think this happened before in Sims2.  May have been Sims1.  If something in the game tries to write to those files and fails it could cause file corruption.  In theory, the only files the game should write to after install would be the ones in My Documents.   Try making the files Read Only after reinstall and see if you can run the game that way.  There shouldn't be any need for the game to alter those files.  Obviously, back up your neighborhoods before doing this as VBT could always happen when you muck with files in the install directories.

The only thinking caps on the lot were brought with Sims in their inventory when they moved in.  No others had been placed.  This is a Maxis Made lot, though (the Frat house in Sim State University), so it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was fubar.

Skillination has an interesting little player-stupidity-training freakout when all of the Thinking Caps on a lot are in a Sims Inventory as opposed to laying about.  Gold/Plat sims will sit there spazzing over the unobtainable Thinking Cap in their own inventory rather than do any actual skilling.  On the one hand, makes the stupid player (in this case, me) drop the thing on a table.  On the other hand, sometimes I want my Sims to suffer a slow and agonizing slog through their skill gains.  Happened on a Greek lot when three Sims had caps in their inventories and managed to hit Gold during skillination and then stopped to eat a pizza.  After eating, they stood there with the rapidly flashing icon for the thinking cap going through their queue.

I prefer to do my shopping on Community lots anyway.  More opportunities to meet Sims that don't involve me teleporting them to my home out of frustration.