Actually I tried that too, selecting everything on the Batmanbox of Awesomeness that looked relevant.  However, I do not have the Stuck Object Remover -- I'll definitely go find and download that now.

I also just thought of something else, based on some comments of those more awesome than I am, to the effect that NPCs' needs decay differently depending on whether or not they interact with playable Sims.  In fact, it might be worse than that -- it seems as if sometimes NPCs become unable to take care of their decaying needs, even if there are perfectly serviceable beds, terlets, etc. available.  I suspect that the passed-out landlord on the one hand, and the "you-didn't-let-me-get-any-sleep" problem I mentioned earlier on the other hand, are symptoms of the same thing.

Before AL, my thought always was, "If Joe Carr wants to play chess all night long, that's his problem.  It's time to put my household to bed."  But from now on I'm going to change my gameplay with guests, such that I always choose Say Goodbye or Ask To Leave before putting my Sims to bed -- especially now that they try to put themselves to bed, as we've all noticed.

This will probably be trickier in apartments, since it seems less clear which NPCs are flagged as "your Sims' guest."  It seems it can even be apartment neighbors whom you didn't specifically invite, but they chatted in the hottub with your Sim, so now they're "guests."  Either way, I'm clicking on NPCs before putting my last household Sim to bed, whether they're in the residence or not, until I'm able to choose either Say Goodbye To/Everyone or Ask To Leave/Everyone.  Same thing with NPCs that come home from work or school.

If I forget, and a Sim winds up passed out and stinky in an awkward place like next to the bed or at the bottom of the stairs, I guess the thing to do is NOT delete that Sim under any circumstances.  Instead I'll use moveobjects to move my Sim to a better location, and have him/her wake up the passed-out Sim, and then Say Goodbye or Ask To Leave.

And we'll see whether that helps.  Not that I'm not still snagging that Stuck Object Remover. 

The same thing just happened in one of my Sims' apartments, except the passed-out Sim was the landlord, and she passed out next to the side of the double bed that my Sim was using.  He then couldn't get out of bed the next morning, until I moved the bed (with him in it) using moveobjects.  Then I deleted the landlord -- big mistake.  That part of the floor next to that side of the bed had something invisible there that I couldn't remove no matter what, not even with the sledgehammer.

In the end, I moved my Sim out.  Word to the wise:  if you befriend the landlord, and he/she asks, "Now that I'm done with work, would you like to hang out?" say NO.  Somehow it made her go into literally three different needs failures, sitting in my Sim's apartment and crying until she passed out in the worst place possible....

Well, I seem to have figured out how to fix one problem, and have noticed two others that I don't think have been mentioned yet.

Others have mentioned Sims with stuck skill-bar blue-thermometer things, that then won't disappear after cancelling out the skill-building action, following the Sim around everywhere.  Simply deleting the blue thermometer by use of moveobjects fixes that problem.  I can then have the Sim restart the skill-building activity, and it works fine.  The problem seems to have something to do with entering a lot after having changed some hacks around, kind of a lesser version of the problem where Sims that were at work or school when you last saved, show up at the mailbox upon reloading the lot.

And the new problems:

1.  This has happened several times.  An NPC who comes home from work with my Sim, will (as they often do) spend the night in the hot tub or at the chess board or whatever.  A dialog box comes up the next morning where the NPC angrily says, "You invited me to spend the night, and didn't even let me get any sleep!  I'm leaving!"  This in spite of the fact that (a) I thought being invited to spend the night, and then the other party not letting you get any sleep, was considered by many people to be a good thing? (b) My Sim did not, in fact, ask the NPC to spend the night; and (c) There is always a perfectly serviceable sofa, or even the other half of a double bed, in any of my Sims' houses, where the NPC could have slept if he/she really wanted to.

2.  This I only noticed once.  I had one of the Cordial sisters, after she became a witch, get some form of the plague.  So since she had learned it, I tried having her cast the spell on herself that makes a sick Sim healthy (I forget its name).  Two dialog boxes popped up:  "I'm cured!" followed immediately by, "Kimberly has the flu!  She must blah blah blah" etc.  The spell looked like it worked, but maybe it actually failed?

On an unrelated note, now that we have an EP with evil green witches and annoying toy dogs, I suppose it's only a matter of time (if indeed it hasn't happened already) that someone posts a screenshot with the caption, "I'll get you, my pretty!  And your little dog, too!" 

Actually, I think I've seen a couple consisting of an elder male and an adult female -- at least, they had the same last name, but I didn't look up close to see whether they were wearing wedding rings.  I'll double-check that though.

As for the free money, where can I sign up?    But seriously, the only thing I noticed is that one time a new CAS Sim family had a $30k handout instead of $20k....

I had the same thing happening, along with a landlord who was stuck in an endless loop of picking up a pile of trash, putting it in a trash can, taking it out of the trash can, and putting it on the ground.  I can't remember what the exact problem was, but a binary search revealed it.  I think it was a couple pieces of AwesomeWare that applied to FT, that I had forgotten to remove after uninstalling FT.

On another note, am I understanding right that people are seeing children and teens in NPC apartment neighbor families?  Because I'm seeing only adults and elders.

I am more than a day late and more than a dollar short, but now that I finally have AL working on two different computers, here goes.

LIKE
The garbage chutes!  I eventually stopped using both garbage compactors and (interior) trash cans, because they'd just need emptying anyway, all my neat freak Virgo Sims would keep autonomously emptying them, etc.  This solves the problem.

The new Walk To Work/School interactions.  Since I'm running just base+UNI+AL, I have no cars (except the helicopter, which isn't exactly a car and seems to be broken anyway).  Now that my Sims are finally able to walk to school or work, even late, I have no need for cars.  Though the Maxis apartments that come with carports are making me want to try it with NL or FT added....

The witches are interesting.  I couldn't find the Infallibly Good Witch the first time I played Belladonna Cove, so I turned one of my college student Sims into an Atrociously Evil Warlock, with the intention of making him good eventually.  It took a while, but finally I did.  I couldn't agree more about the witch idle animations.  Oh my goodness gracious yes, they are annoying.  At least it's fun watching them make the ingredients.

DISLIKE
Broken toy dog
Broken helicopter
Broken everything else
Not being able to add hot tubs and other essential goodies in apartment common areas after moving Sims in
Stupid Maxis clothing, slutty women and stupid men with painted torsos (I want to see a pic of the painted-torso-guy cemetary)

Apartment roommates being absolutely uncontrollable, even with the InSimenator.  I cannot change their skintones with Christianlov's painting that way.  It is also unfair that they get to stay up all night watching TV until they are almost in three different needs failures, then Run Errands to get their needs filled.

Not being able to build inside apartments (it causes "invisible furniture" after reload if I do).  This makes it much harder to make "un-shoo-able" bathrooms, since I can't add walls to make separate shower rooms and terlet rooms.  I can use UNI community showers and Hunter240x's divider urinals, at least for the men, but the other "shoo-able" items have to go by themselves into a spare bedroom, or even (as I did yesterday with Ajay Loner's apartment) on the back porch.  (I'm using an old "no naked emitter" hack, and even if I weren't, it seems that the apartment porches act like enclosed rooms.)

I would be surprised if the laptop doesn't have enough hard drive space, as this desktop sure seems to, but stranger things have happened.  I installed the base game and UNI on the laptop from CDs a while ago, and then installed AL from its CD.  One thing I haven't tried yet is uninstalling everything, then reinstalling everything.

What you're saying also makes me think of setting aside enough memory for a given piece of software (this too has a techgeek term that I can't remember), and it's just possible that there isn't enough reserved for my laptop.  This I will also try.  Of course I'm open to other suggestions too.

By the way, I love the caek-eating lolcat.  I have a couple of cats here that would do the exact same thing. 

EDIT:  More things tried, after verifying that the better part of 100 GB of hard drive space remained.
1.  Tried running program in Windows XP emulation mode.  Result:  FAIL
2.  Increased size of virtual memory to a minimum of 7 GB.  Result:  FAIL
3.  Uninstalled AL.  Tried running base+UNI using the UNI CD.  Result:  success.  The game generated a complete "The Sims 2" folder, as it should.
4.  Reinstalled AL.  Tried running base+UNI+AL again using the AL CD.  Result:  this time the opening cinematic worked after the opening splash screen.  At its conclusion, I saw the "The Sims 2/Apartment Life" opening screen and the music started playing.  I thought I had it beat until about 15 seconds later, when there was an audible CLICK and it froze up.  PHAIL

The CLICK is making me think that maybe the sound card needs its driver updated too, even though I'm pretty sure it's nothing fancy and integrated on the motherboard.  I will try that next.

EDIT 2:  Incredibly enough, that was the problem.  Game now loads just fine. 

I get that UNI bug all the time too.  I never waited to find out that it was just visual, but what I always do is turn on moveobjects, delete the Sim in question, turn off moveobjects, and save the lot.  After returning to the neighborhood and then reentering the lot, the Sim will appear at the mailbox of course, and the problem generally is solved too.  I have never figured out what causes the bug, and have seen it in dorms, frat houses, and regular residential lots on campus.

So I had the bright idea of trying to install AL on my laptop, now that it's finally working acceptably on my desktop.  My laptop is actually newer than my desktop, a dual-core machine running Vista, as opposed to my desktop, which is also dual-core but still running XP.  My laptop has an NVidia GeForce 8600M video card, and I believe my desktop has an (earlier) NVidia card also.

So as to get the same setup as on my desktop (base+UNI+AL only), I did the following operations (after doing a search here and looking at MTS2 for ideas):

1.  Uninstalled FT from my laptop, leaving base+UNI only.  (Base+UNI+FT had been working just fine earlier.)
2.  Installed AL, which apparently went without a hitch.
3.  Copied over my "The Sims 2" folder from the desktop.
4.  Replaced the TS2EP8.exe file with the no-CD crack version.  Opened the game.
5.  Screen went blue as expected, then black as expected, then "EA Games" splash screen with appearance of plumb bob and "Soo soo!" as expected.  Then black screen and nothing for 10 minutes -- no opening cinematic, nothing, dead.  Had to do a hard shutdown as the three-finger salute had no effect.
6.  Thought that perhaps EAxis had figured a way to defeat the no-CD crack with Vista running.  Returned the old TS2EP8.exe file to its place and replaced the no-CD version.  Opened game, same result.
7.  Reasoned that it might not be liking something in my "The Sims 2" folder.  Deleted it, so as to allow it to generate a new one, whereupon I could copy over my Downloads and Neighborhoods folders if it started successfully.  Opened game, same result.
8.  After hard shutdown and restart, I noted that it had started making a "The Sims 2" folder, and had made a complete "Logs" subfolder and an empty "Teleport" subfolder before hanging.
9.  Thought that my video card driver was perhaps not up to date.  Updated it with the correct one from the Dell website, as instructed from the NVidia website.  Opened game, same result.

So I'm at my wits' end.  True, the game does work on my desktop, but I'd really like to get it working on my laptop too.  I'd really appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

I had a very similar thing going on, with the blue skill meter that wouldn't go away, and also Sims were unable to gain skill points while the blue bar followed them everywhere.  I have a very different setup, though -- base+UNI+AL and no SPs.

In my case, it seemed to have been because of a couple pieces of AwesomeWare that are related to FT, that I forgot to remove after I uninstalled FT.  Once I did so, everything was fine (or at least as fine as the unpatched EP8 is so far).  Perhaps you have a hack that you accidentally overlooked, either Awesome or not, that relates to BV or FT?

I admire those of you with the long legacy histories, since I'm exactly the opposite.  I reboot very often, partly to avoid VBTs from happening, and partly because I seem to tire of each new EP within about a month or two.  And I don't want to keep adding all the EPs on top of each other, since the load times on my computer get out of control very quickly.  It also is kind of a point of pride of mine to run as "lean" a TS2 system as possible.  I have also needed the process to decide what I like and don't like about each EP, and thus which EPs I can live without.

I ran base+UNI+FT for a few months at least, which is very long for me.  I cannot live without UNI because I need the career reward to dock with the InSimenator so that I can beautify all the ugly townies.  I stopped using NL because the only things I used were the cars, the Pleasure aspiration, and the sectional sofas.  Cars are back with FT (of the you-restore-them variety), the Romance aspiration often seems to be an acceptable substitute for Pleasure, and sectional sofas are back with AL.  OFB was fun for a while, as was BV, but both got repetitive -- and when I learned that Sims cannot buy hotels (perhaps I was doing it wrong?), I lost interest in both.  I don't think I need to mention Pets around here.  SNS was really cool except for having to monitor Sim temperatures, and avoiding them getting hit by lightning.  Thus SNS didn't seem to mesh well with BV (how many "hotelies" need to get hit by lightning while in the hot spring, until someone realizes someone is doing something wrong?), and from what I hear, may not mesh well with AL either.

I think the secondary aspiration element in FT is really interesting, but the hobbies are otherwise beginning to get annoying.  Also my AL roomies are constantly hogging the FT exercise bike.  So I'm about to uninstall FT and go to base+UNI+AL, and then once I get that working, add the two stuff packs I just bought (TSS and K&BS).  I have the feeling I'm about to get to know Lord Darcy's work in this area.

I am aware that I'm weird and probably phail, but what the heck, in the end it's only a game.  And one good thing about rebooting and trying simpler setups is that AwesomeSpec doesn't have nearly as many requirements with fewer EPs installed.  Though I will admit I once installed Pets for a brief time just to try out the fences AwesomeSpec calls for, to prevent strays from digging up the yard.  It was very satisfying. 

Oh my goodness gracious yes, I think AL generates more townies every time you move a Sim into an apartment.  I believe I've already started to see identical (weird) looking townies with different (weird) names.  Oddly, it seems there are rather more elders thrown into the mix, not just adults.  I think my newly minted good warlock brings home a newborn townie from work every single day.  Why he couldn't just bring Benjamin Longnose or good old Goopy or someone like that, is beyond me.  So far I haven't seen any child or teenager "apartmenties" though.

Since I "reboot" the game very often, usually at least once or twice a month, it probably won't get to be a problem.  But I'll take the advice and get notownieregen, as well as looking into nopedostalkers (which JMP advised me takes care of some of the annoying crap that NPCs constantly do, getting in the way of necessary controllable Sim activities, such as taking out the trash and going to work).

As for the ugliness of the townies, I use the InSimenator to grab hold of practically every male and at least 50% of the females, and then beautify them.  Presto, no more frog lips or beak noses.  Even the rather pretty NPCs usually have incorrect proportions of their facial features -- eyes are almost always too large, for instance, and mouths too small, like anime characters.  But this feature of the InSimenator requires UNI as it seems to work off the career reward, only without giving those nightmarish "failures."

I don't know whether I am gwilly, but I am certainly fat, and I am certainly asking.  I'll go look around for it in a moment.  This must be due to the afore-discussed tendency of EAxis to give new items and interactions increasingly higher advertising (or whatever it's called) with each new EP.  In fact the exercise bike thing I mentioned earlier must be an example too -- didn't that come with FT?  My Sims' roomies will not touch the weight machine, though I wonder if they would if I took away the exercise bike.

Yes, I had that for a while.  Either it was due to tight pants which I loosened, or the critical fixes in the DC fixed it.  Others had it too and presumably fixed it.

I really wish my Sims could have more than one roommate (we can has hack?  pleez?), but another potential problem I forgot to mention before is that roomies will not share a double bed with my Sims.  This is even though I have an old hack called ShareBed that allows Sims to sleep in the same bed regardless of relationship (and only sleep of course, none of the other stuff).  Roomies can find single beds just fine, but if there is a double bed and my Sim is sleeping in it, they will sleep on the couch rather than in the same bed.

Oh yes, one other thing, I've also had the problem with NPCs crowding on the porch of my Sim's trailer home, and getting him to work only with difficulty.  If it isn't jumping rope, it's an endless succession of High Five and Earthy Hug (which actually does differ subtly from the regular hug) and Fake Out.  Though I guess if it weren't that, it would be Play Red Hands and Prank/Ventrilofart and Hang Out right in the way of everyone, and let's not forget the problems we once had with endless pillow fights.... 

EDIT:
Sounds like as good a description of me as I could hope for. 

Well, I've got almost all the kinks worked out.  The following remain.  This is with some of the DC installed (including the critical fixes of course), plus some tight pants.

1.  The "invisible living room" problem that (I think it was) HystericalParoxysm reported earlier, seems in my case to be related to editing the interior walls of apartments using the boolprop cheat mentioned elsewhere.  As long as I do not do that, everything is fine and the apartment loads and reloads normally.

2.  Someone mentioned about the toy dogs being broken.  I have the same thing.  Sim goes to pick up the dog, and is cuddling an invisible dog while the actual dog is between his feet.  I told Sim to give the dog up for adoption, and the action fell out of the queue and the dog became stuck.  Could not be deleted.

3.  I am not going anywhere near helicopters.

Other annoyances that are probably not bugs:

1.  The good news:  Besides being able to find a roommate with the computer or phone, once your Sim becomes buddies with another Sim, there is a new Propose/Become Roommate.  You may then later on choose Propose/Move In, whereupon the roomie becomes fully controllable.  After Move In, the second Sim cannot go back to being a roommate.  The bad news:  Someone else probably pointed this out earlier, but it is ridiculous that your Sim can have only one roommate!  Surely there are posh urban apartments out there shared by three and four people?  Also, I haven't had Pets installed for a long time, but I am certain it was possible to have more than one pet, so why not more than one roommate?

2.  Speaking of roomies, I think we have a new AI here.  They are smarter than dormies in certain ways, in that they never miss work and will even do light housecleaning if they are happy.  However, if their needs are too low even to be filled during work, they will get the action "Run Errands" on their queue, and leave the house (even if in their undies or jammies!) to go (as I assume) to Best Buy and get all their needs filled.    My Sims' roomies so far also are in love with the exercise bike (a great way to go almost into at least three needs failures), and also have a habit of making food, even when there's leftovers in the fridge, putting it on the counter, and standing there staring at it for a couple of hours.  Then going to Best Buy to get their needs filled the easy way.

3.  I have also never yet seen NPCs so in love with birdwatching and jumping rope.  I am certain that, if I uninstalled FT, they would do nothing but jump rope all day long.

4.  Have yet to see the Good Witch.  I'm about to try to get one of my college students to befriend the Atrociously Evil Witch, and then see if I can make him a good witch anyway.

Other than that, no BFBVFS or anything like that on my end.  Thanks to all of you for your help!

After adding in the AL DC (or at least the things I wanted), doing a binary search, and finally removing all tight pants except what I absolutely couldn't live without, I'm pleased to say all dorms and regular houses are working fine.  Cell phones work again, fridges act like fridges, and my Sims can go to community lots.  I have yet to see the Good Witch, but I have seen the Atrociously Evil Witch twice.  I could have wished they'd given her a different voice, as she sounds nice but looks evil.  The other feature I haven't tried is the lap dog, but I'm a bit afraid....

Incredibly, I'm not only running the InSimenator, but also using a version that's pre-FT.  I believe they said the AL version would be out in about a week.

I am still getting dormies using my student Sims' beds, unless I tell them to lock their doors -- and I'm not using nouniprotect.  My guess is this may have to do with keeping apartment roomies from passing out.

Also, is it me, or are Sims' needs decreasing much more quickly with AL installed than before?  I could also live without my Sims trying to put themselves to bed so often, but it could be worse.

Next I'll try an apartment again, just with a single Sim.  And let me add my vote that those row houses look fantastic! 

Oops, now I think I really did break it.  I would suggest avoiding the helicopter (!) now available for purchase for a cool $20k.  I was going to try to use it to get a Sim to a community lot, then changed my mind and cancelled it out.  This turned out to be a VBT, resulting in an endless loop of error messages of the type "A vehicle is trying to return, but there is no driveway for it to return to".  I couldn't even quit the game and had to do a hard shutdown.

The next time in the game, it hung up during a save of that same family.  The next time in, I deleted the helicopter and the helipad, and was then able to save -- only to have it hang while in the middle of loading a community lot.

I'm about to do the binary search thing tomorrow, then if that doesn't work, I'll uninstall and reinstall everything.  I might have killed something when I cancelled out the helicopter interaction.

I do not have the DC installed and wasn't using nouniprotect, but I'll wait to get that until all my other CC is working and the game is working as well as it can, at least minus helicopters and cell phones -- oh yes, and minus apartments too. 

Another new thing I'm noticing, now that I'm trying UNI out with AL added on top, is that dormies are constantly entering my playable Sims' bedrooms and sleeping in their beds.  I've never had this happen before.  I suppose I could just lock the doors, but it still strikes me as odd and phail.  I'm running base+UNI+FT+AL at the moment, and there is some tight pants including the InSimenator, but oddly, almost everything else is working OK -- besides cell phones and anything inside an actual apartment.

I have yet even to see a witch in-game, much less try out magic, though....

Besides the broken cell phones, and my Sims' weird tendency to go to sleep before I would have told them to (just because it's nighttime), the only other glitch I'm noticing is in the house in the new neighborhood with a helicopter pad on the roof.  I moved the two single men into it, whereupon I noticed that the floor tiles couldn't be edited in the room in the rear right corner (with the mailbox and trash can directly facing you).  All other rooms are fine.  My guess is it's due to the very bumpy lot (I know AwesomeSpec requires a completely flat lot, and preferably a completely flat neighborhood), or else to this new thing with ceiling tiles.  I use walls-down mode, so I don't know whether there are ceiling tiles in the room, but next time I will check.

I am having no errors otherwise, as long as I keep my Sims in houses rather than apartments, and use regular landline phones rather than cell phones.  But I have yet to see how "Screen Calls" works, which may make me no longer need cell phones anyway.

I don't have SNS installed right now, but one thing we were worried about is the temperature control with the new central AC units -- has anyone noticed whether that's working?  Just curious.

Thanks for your hard work, JMP -- I know we all appreciate it!

So far everything I've experienced with AL is fine, except for the apartments. 

The good news is that JMP was, of course, right about the 1xn "buffer zone."  I'm sure it will make its way into AwesomeSpec for apartments (assuming the rest of the borkenness can be fixed).  This works great to stop your Sims from being awakened by the rude neighbors.  I never did experience my Sims being the rude neighbors and getting complained at.  (Sorry for small pic size, I should have zoomed in the camera.)


The bad news is that defining what things inside apartments may and may not be edited, and indeed the problems with what exactly the definition of "inside" is, are killing everything else.  Imagine my surprise when Mary Gavigan suddenly started wanting a refrigerator, when they clearly already have one.


Of course I quickly found out that she wanted a fridge because that fridge-shaped object wasn't being recognized as a fridge.  Couldn't delete it at first until I entered boolprop aptsublotspecifictoolsdisabled false.  The replacement also wasn't recognized as a fridge.  Neither was the cheap basegame fridge I replaced the replacement with.  The only option I saw was Juggle Bottles.

That's when I moved out the Gavigans, as well as any other Sims I had in apartments.  They will be going into houses, there to enjoy a normal life where a fridge is a fridge, a terlet is a terlet, a fence is a fence, a nanny is a nanny, and Christian Love is a hazy memory.

Hopefully the regular houses aren't now borked also....

I can deal with OFB servos being Sims, since they are at least humanoid.  But remote-controlled cars and helicopters is another thing.  I wonder whether Amin Sims and his other Leo buddies would therefore greet a remote-controlled car?...

I must say I don't even know what hydrobots are -- they must come with BV or some other EP that I don't have installed right now.

I will add, though, that reading the "Bork Pool" thread for FT gives me some hope, as it was just as hilarious as this thread, only I have had almost no problems with FT.  I would like to hope that therefore AL won't be as bad as we fear, but I don't think I dare. 

Ah.  My bad then.  I am not familiar with either of the glitches of which you speak, seeing as I use neither fish tanks nor coffee in my game.  Coffee doesn't give me the shakes, so why should it do so to my Sims? 

I am right though, am I not, that the remote-controlled car is a Sim?  Not that I'm terribly computer-savvy, but who on earth thinks up this stuff, and what are they on, anyway?... 

I'll get maids, someone more knowledgeable about fish tanks can do them.  I can only think of one time I've put a fish tank in one of my Sim's homes.

Not that maids have ever worked really well, even at their best, but in a situation like this -- well, multiply any and all problems you see your maids deal with in UNI by about 100.  The best-case scenario is that the maid comes as scheduled, cleans about three other apartments OTHER THAN the one belonging to your Sim, charges you, and leaves.

If you have the InSimenator, any hack having to do with temperature control, certain (but not all) of Inge's clothes change doors,* or the "Bon Voyage" EP, the maid will not be able to stop cleaning until he or she suffers at least two different needs failures.  Comically, when finally done, he/she will pay you instead of the other way around.

But the real fun begins if you succeed in getting any of your Sims to diddle the maid, a la Daniel Pleasant or Don Lothario.  Afterwards, one of the two Sims involved will turn into a remote-controlled car, and the other into a toad.  Horrified, EA issues a patch, which disables maids entirely, and causes any Sim playing a piano to turn into a toad.

__sigh__  I love this game. 

*No disrespect intended to Inge as I do use a few of her doors, non-Awesome though they may be. 

We have only scratched the surface in our guessing to what degree schoolchildren (whether children or teens) in apartment families will be borked.  My guess is that playable apartment family schoolchildren that come with the game, CAS schoolchildren moved into apartments, and school-age spawn unfortunate enough to be born to a couple already living in an apartment, will all be borked in subtly different ways.

One problem all spawn share will have to do with The One Desk.  If every apartment in the complex has a desk, which is The One Desk?  We will never be so lucky as to have the game count the desk in our Sim family's apartment as The One Desk, especially if they live on an upper floor.  Schoolchildren will enter other families' apartments to deposit their homework, unless doors are lockable as in UNI (which they almost certainly will be).  In that case, spawn will stamp their feet and try another apartment.  This action will not be cancellable, causing all spawn to go into fun and/or bladder failure, and teens to lose their jobs from missing work too many times.

If the poor schoolkid actually succeeds in depositing his homework in a foreign apartment, it will become stuck and/or invisible.  Being repeatedly unable to do his homework will cause him to flunk in school.  Attempting to take the child away, the social worker gets stuck in the foreign apartment, where the schoolkid will also sleep from then on unless you prevent him.

On the bright side (?), JMP will certainly get a lot of interesting projects as a result.  We will be depending on him like never before, because the InSimenator will be broken like never before.

This entire thread is what I like to call "too true to be good." 

Both, I suspect.

I do have to say this in defense of FeeEssen, seeing as I have her cheap shower tub, terlet, and sink.  They are all functional, ugly, matching, and cheap.  You can have a full bathroom using them, for the cost of the walls, floor, and door plus something like 25 Simoleans.  I have been known to use them for Sims just starting out.  The best part is when the Sim guys lift the non-existent lid of the terlet.  I also like how when the shower breaks, you can just throw it out and get a new one for 10 Simoleans.  The truly disposable shower tub, not worth fixing.

However, since this is more or less cheating, lately I've just been using money cheats to get them nicer things anyway. 

Sorry for the delay, I only just noticed that this thread had responses.  Thanks for the help! 

I have been able to change Sims' heights in SimPE, though I have never tried the stretchskeleton thing in-game.  After using SimPE, the height changes are permanent (at least until the Sim age-transitions) and load correctly each time.  The few times I've used this method, though it has only been with YAs and adults, I've been very pleased with the results.  I would do this to all my Sims, except that it is kind of tedious.

I will check the other link regarding changing eye color.  That was more out of curiosity than anything else.  But from what I'm hearing here, it seems at least no one so far knows of any reason that either of these things should  be impossible in principle.

Thanks again!