Baa Mootilda, I especially like the fact that you included the actual patch number for those of us that are easily confused. The first North American mirror wasn't working for me but the second was. So now I'd better brave the BBS and get the patch.

I've played 137 Short St for a sim week now and it plays very well. The house is plenty big enough for one sim.
The Saturday landlord party was interesting on such a small lot. One landlord and a pizza in a corner as my sim was at work. It might be worthwhile having an extra tile space in the yard for this to avoid sims getting stuck. (Not that they did). The landlord here was slack at tending the plants as well, but eventually got to them on the Friday. There was no shortage of passerbys so my sim made plenty of friends and even scored a plasma tv from one.
The invisible trashcan is a new toy to me. I haven't decided whether I like it or not. It works well here, however having no trash can outside another house I was playing was shock. Had a couple of moments wondering what I'd stuffed up now till I worked it out lol.
This house is going to fit into odd little spots so I can see it being very useful, thank you. I put it in the middle of the Road to Nowhere in Strangetown, just because it fits.
 

Very very nice. Any sim would be lucky to live there. I love the concept of several houses together so families can really get to know the aunts, cousins etc. Unfortunately my machine struggled with it so my guys will have to make do with something less. Machine upgrades on hold until TS3 spec's come out.
I did move Lazlo Curious in. As it was so beautifully furnished he didn't bring anything from home. Mistake, as all the furniture disappeared. (That's an AL feature?) He certainly enjoyed the games room though, all the stuff in the community areas stayed.

I wish I had thought to download pictures with the zips. It would make life so much easier. Especially if you use anything from WDS, the file names there are impossible.

Yes baa floopyboo. My female sims are in for an interesting time now 

My problem is similar. I was getting the no cd in drive message so now I reinsert the cd every time I start up the computer, then the game realises there is a cd there.  Then I wait. If I click the icon to start too soon I get one of two different messages, either "Insert original disk, not a back up" or " unable to verify disk in available time". It can take several tries before the blasted thing works. I find starting the game from the launcher icon in the TS Bin is the most successful way to get the game working.
My hope is that I have a corrupt desktop shortcut, as it was working until recently. I do know in my heart that it is probably SecuRom though. I am just too illiterate to manage installing emulation software, so I have to hope that L&P Appartment Life will have a friendlier shortcut.

I just moved them into a house, 5 Poet's Place I think it was called and then moved it to the lots and houses bin. Then just put the occupied house in the new Pleasantville.

This is usually considered a very bad thing, I'm not sure of the technical explanation but the opinion around here is don't do it!. It's something to do with all the extra files that come with the sims relating to their memories and friends. Unattatched files get unhappy and mess up your game  ???I'm hoping that as the Ottomas family had met no one, not even Rod Humble or a mail carrier they will be okay. If not, I'll just restart, I do that so often it really won't matter. But if your game is precious to you you might be safer to find the Ottomas family uploaded somewhere, perhaps the exchange?

I have recently downloaded HP's version and am loving it. All the neighborhoods are there as shopping districts. So now Jill Smith  knows Alexander Goth and Jules O'Mckay.
All your previous hoods will still be there, no problem. The only family that did not make it is the Ottomas family. I brought them over from my unplayed Veronaville, and hope that won't blow up my game!

I had the same issue as Lerf. The patch seemed to object to my Objects package. I decided to try uninstalling and reinstalling BV as it suggests. Given that I once uninstalled Uni and had the devil of a time putting it back on this was a risky decision. Defragging the computer after the uninstall was the longest bit. The game actually reinstalled without a problem. Except it wiped out the entire TS2 folder, I didn't realise that it would do that  Good thing I have a backup.

This is happening to us too. My son decided he wanted to burn a cd, and of course it didn't work.
The computer that is having issues does have Securom on it. But as it does not have BV or H&M I'm guessing that it is an older version of Securom brought in on another game.

So we moved his files to my computer, which has BV and the latest patch (so I'm guessing the latest version of Securom) and it worked perfectly. So I can't blame Securom after all.  I wonder if the cd/dvd player on the family machine is dying and this inability to burn is just a symptom of that. I do know that the drive is several years old, the computer has been rebuilt around it.

Maybe yours is also dying Tigerlilley?

I haven't tried this since BV, but I normally use the Christianlov hacked dresser for this. As long as your sim has the outfit in his dresser you can dress your townie in it. I use this a lot with dormies, they just look so silly in their tattered and torn outfits.

Where is it? I just checked MTS2 and couldn't find it, so try the sims2 graveyard. I did try looking it up but as google hates me I had no luck searching.
I swear I can never find a thing with google, but everyone else can in seconds 

Interesting. He shows up fine for me, and I have the patch and the anti redundancy hack in. I have seen him in Uni and in my hoods beach community lot. My problem with him is that since the patch he has lost his monocle and mo and now has a young face. I liked the old look. No doubt EA will fix this with the next patch or two 

Sigh. Who knew that Strangetown was so much trouble! That house really isn't that special. It was just the one all my new people started out in so I thought it would be nice in a new hood. But there are plenty (well two) basic houses in the bin, I'm just using them.
As for making your own......my houses are just big boxes, I have no talent. Though I'm getting practice as the beach front lots are also difficult, so I have to build my own on them. So far the kindest thing I can say about them is that they are open plan  However with those views it would be an ungrateful sim to complain!

I have been having lot troubles too.
I thought it would be nice to have a 'starter' street in which the houses all were the same. Then over time see how they changed as each family developed. So I put the little yellow house from Strangetown in the lots bin, and placed it 5 times on a small street.
The first house is fine, Stella Terrano lives there no problems, but any time I try to use the other houses the game crashes. My mistake was to send it to the lot bin furnished, I think. The furniture has gone, except for the pet stay away sign (Inge's). Though why one house works perfectly and it's clones do not is a mystery.
The bulldoze tool worked on them, so now I just have to look up the street number and download a replacement.

Like Madam Min I assumed the new jewelry option would have caught the fancy of creators, but apparently not yet. So thanks for all your work Gwill, nikita and spookymuffin my sims will have some nice new stuff to buy (rather than get for free in the old way  ).

Consider the thanks button pushed  I have some sims living in a new hood based on the Twikki Village terrain, and there are just not enough beach front lots.
I must be easily amused, but I love my sims living on the beach, being able to look out at the waves as they relax on their beds, or eat their meals. It's just a shame I suck at house building, they are all in long open plan houses, but that view is worth the sucky living quarters 

I found getting rid of the water balloon fights has cured my lag issues, at least in a vanilla game where it is the only hack. Mind you at the end of my sims vacation some silly elders were begining to pillow fight. They simply have to replace one stupid action with another.

A little registry uninstall help from EA
http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=14844&p_created=1181669872&p_sid=yBkEq8Li&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9OCw4JnBfcHJvZHM9Nyw3MDAsMzQ2MiZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PTMuMzQ2MiZwX2N2PSZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PXVuaW5zdGFsbA**&p_li=&p_topview=1

Back to the lag 'sigh'.....I added another gig of ram so now I have 2gig on a P4 3.2ghz 7600 GS video card with 256 ram. Well above spec's I think but I'm still getting up to 5 seconds of lag. That's in a vanilla game, I moved the TS2 folder to desktop and let the game make a new one just to be sure. My game computer is not on the internet and so the launcher at the start just has the play option, no mention of get updates or anything else.
As I only had one sim to follow on the Twikki Hotel lot I had a good chance to see what else was going on. Every time the lag happened some fool was starting a water balloon fight. Coincidence? Possibly, but I'm on the look out for a hack that blasts this behaviour just to check.

The real car isn't released in America yet? We have it in Australia, and by coincidence it is the car I drive. As it is my very first brand new car in almost 30 years of driving, I love it. The car magazine reviews were favorable about it, if that means anything.
 My sims are getting this right now, and if someone makes recolors I'll bloat my downloads folder with them too 

I use jfade's WTF tool to fix floors and walls. It is really useful  I have now backed up my renamed walls/floors folder to have easily in event of another restart.

http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=21

Not really a glitch.....but interesting, I have had parents show up on a lot if my sim is talking to a child on the phone close to midnight. It has happened with Vidcund showing up while Pascal was talking to his (Vidcund's) son. Chloe Singles also always shows up when the father of her son rings the boy late at night.

Here is the bbs link I put in the other thread. This fix apparently works, but I haven't used it. I figure learning the 24 hour clock will be good for me, and I never remember my CAS sims names anyway, so I have changed their christian names and am living with Maxian surnames 

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=578728eb397b07957f7f37fe42b34dce&directoryID=169&startRow=76&openItemID=item.169,root.1,item.43,item.61,item.41,item.127,item.23s

I do wish I had pictures. It seems so obvious now you mention it  From now on I will try to remember to download them, particularly for clothes.
I have been organising by site, but that has proved not the best way to go. So I have an 'essentials' folder with things like the censor blur remover, Inge's no empty potty and Dr Pixels custom fire alarms....items that I really need even in a no cc game.

I do wish I had been organised from the start......maybe with Sims3 

I know people will object to the product placement concept......but I bought a Ford Focus last year, my very first brand new car ever, so I'm happy to have this