Paolo looks like he just stepped out of Uru. That's weird. All he needs is a pith helmet and a Yeesha shirt, and he's ready to go on a marker mission.

I play almost exclusively at speed 1, with aging on.  The most I normally do is hit pause if I'm trying to set something specific up.  Aside from that, I multitask.  I often read a book (or browse on the laptop) while the game is running, and switch focus as necessary.

Then again, I've not been able to install OFB yet, so I have no idea how that will affect my side reading activities.

Since shortly after beta ended (I only played then using a friend's account that I played GS with previously, to see if I liked it better).  I think...I played for ... I'm pretty sure it was SimuCon '98 that I became a GM just after, and then I did that for somewhere like 3-5 years.  In any case, quite a while.

I remember vividly embarassing the heck out of myself calling down the MM Guru of the time because I opened a rogue gate in town one day--Crossing--in one of the inns.  I was absolutely certain I still had time left on the beam.  I passionately explained how upset I was (because I was horrified I'd actually done that).

As it turned out, I had seconds left, not minutes, so it was my fault.  I took my jail time with appropriate shame, and thankfully my gweths did not break.

But yes, I used to love watching more daring people do that to the bank sleepers while I sat there laughing while invis.  That and cheering all the invasions at the guild to clear out that lot.

I have an even more embarassing moment, but I think if you wanted to know that, it should go to PMs, I suppose.

You betcha!  And I was a darn good one, too.  Alas, those days are over.  Though, I must be honest.  I never killed another player.  Just used Mental Blast liberally on snotty little wankers.

Balance?  Balance stinks!  The day I stopped being able to keel things with Telekinetic Throw and a sprig of clover was the day I wept in sorrow.  Okay, so not everyone gets a thrill from killing creatures (and the occasional fellow player) with foraged goods and bakery items.  Let me tell you, those slices of wedding cake made for a hilarious death in my opinion.

Regardless, Mike, let me just say (in a totally OOC fashion) that your avatar of Laguna makes me swoon.

As for "nekkid," I'm a yankee/brit crossbreed, and I've used that for years if I'm feeling lazy, I think because of my father (though he's a native Downeaster).  Then again, he insists that people don't have chimneys, they have chimleys.

Uh, yeah.  The last time I cut my hair was a couple of years ago, and at that point it was down to my knees.  I can definitely attest to issues with trying to use the loo, especially if it was unbraided.  Naturally, it's been growing back and is just about down to my thighs again.  (My husband threatens to divorce me if I cut it much above the middle of my back, you see....) 

Yup, but as anyeone said, sometimes it's a defensive reaction.  Then they'd give me a coy smile and act all innocent.

Oh, I know.  We had a wiley bunch of programmers.

We had a complete network of machines set up with multiple servers, and our machines were set up (I had several on my desk) with removable drives, so I could yank out Windows 98 and put in Win XP (in German, French, etc.).  Gah, installing Windows in a foreign language was not my idea of fun, never mind testing the software in it.  We only ever rebuilt those if the hard drive died on us or something else happened to make the install unusable.

It's a bit different when we're talking about games though, I understand.

I used to take great delight in having a gaggle of programmers clustered around my workspace so I could show them exactly how to replicate a bug.  Fun a lot of the time, but frustrating too.

In contrast, the job I had doing support (which morphed into testing as well) involved a single programmer who I sat down with once a day with a list of issues reported by our customers.  He was an amazing guy.  Always listened, never gave anyone grief, always assumed it could be done if I showed up with a problem, and then proceeded to fix it.  I really liked him.

I worked in QA for a number of years for a company that wrote and sold anti-virus software.  Every last dinky bug we entered into the database was reviewed and assigned a priority, and you could be damn sure no new builds went out that contained showstoppers (though, things were more lax for beta builds, since our external testers knew what they were getting).

I remember working around the clock at times, waiting for the next build to hit the server so we could test, test, and retest all over again, and finally getting a gold master set and us being told to go home.

I think the worst problem I ever ran into during those years was a constant refrain from our programmers of, "But it works on my machine."

Still, I think EA/Maxis really needs to shape up a bit.  I don't know if it's EA that's the real problem, or what, but it's sad to see such glaringly horrific bugs make it into a release build of a product--bugs that even the most lacking of users can replicate on demand.

On the other hand, having been used to years of my old Win 98 machine spontaneously rebooting and simply having got used to it, sometimes I think I'm just too laid back when it comes to bugs.  I know someone out there, either Maxis or a modder, is going to fix it for me, so I just don't usually sweat it.

That might not be entirely true if you check http://www.kqix.com/home.php -- they aren't Sierra, but....

That would explain it.  Mind you, I started out with a Ranger and a Thief Rogue in Gemstone, then dropped that (I couldn't really afford the $300-$400 monthly bills I was getting anyway for so many play hours) and moved to DR with a Thief.  Though when they made some change to the experience system (I forget exactly what happened), I used that opportunity to work the dickens out of my Thief and finally got her to 20th or 21st circle (and got that spiffy new title), and started a Moon Mage, which became my main character (hey, you have got to LOVE being able to kill anything with one shot of TKT, even using moldy cake , tufts of grass, and clover sprigs as ammunition [at the time, anyway]), not to mention gating people across the chasm on the way to Shard.

I think I was up to a thief, MM, cleric, and empath by the time I finally cashed in my chips and went cold turkey, and that included several bodies set aside simply to sit on the ships crossing the pond to the islands so I could check in and see approximately how long I'd have to wait for one to hit port.  Ah, remembering that original 4-hour trip over, pockets so weighted down with coin that I had to have some brawny fella haul me to my feet because my burden was so high....

I really miss it sometimes, but they're right.  Becoming a GM really does take some of the sparkle off things, and it's hard to properly rant about the state of things when you've got projects out the wazoo waiting for you to finishing coding, testing, etc.

"Went" pay?  (Did they not charge during beta?  I forget.)  Of course, now I'm curious as to which guild you played in.  I favored MM myself.  Now, back in the day, we all hung out in Gemstone over at, er, what was that damn service called again?  GEnie?  Then came the great freeze...or was it the thaw?  All I know is one day, laen weapons suddenly became rare.

Now, if only I could have a spider cloak IRL.  That'd freak some people out right good.

For reference, A Clockwork Orange is a movie.  Go to http://imdb.com/title/tt0066921/ to see about it.  It's darn creepy at times.

And I wasn't being insulting, so I don't understand your reaction.

--

And for heaven's sakes, if anyone needs copies of Louis's original (non-default) skins, PM me and I'll email them out.  I don't mind.

Actually, Louis is a she, not a he.  And she is fileshare friendly, so you can request just about anything of hers over at Neighborhood 99 (which I've done several times myself) for stuff she hasn't put back in place at her simpage.

On J.M.'s fix, after I influenced a Count to bite a townie a while back, eventually he bit my own sim autonomously while visiting the house.  It just took patience (not something I usually have).  I did try to see if the bitten townie would do it, but decided (why?) I'd have a better chance of it happening with a true NPC vamp.  Twisted logic, perhaps.

I thought it was nice that I had something amusing to look at in my dorms while my sims were rampaging.

For what it's worth, I have 95% of J.M.'s collection (minus stuff for the latest patch and the noregen sets, but plus a scattering from several other modders like twojeffs, crammyboy, etc.) and I just graduated a guy from uni with no issues.  Granted, it was a normal dorm, and admittedly, it was a brand new neighborhood/uni/downtown.

I tend to think it's an issue with queuing things up.  I've noticed that with one of my sims with fairly low outgoing, he'll get up from the waterbed (properly nekkid, of course) and go off to do whatever it was I ordered him to do, and when he's finished, he'll do that, "Oh my, I've got no clothing!" deal and spin into casual.

Oh definitely.  We also use a router and firewall, plus UPSs.  I never disconnect from the internet...unless I'm moving the laptop from one location to another (I refuse to use wireless because of the transfer rates, at present, anyway). The only time I've ever seen something nasty was coming in through email, and there's AV for that.  Granted, I let my husband do the configuration for the router/firewall, since I haven't got a clue (ignorant through choice, though).  The biggest trick in my opinion is making sure you have a UPS that's rated properly for your machine.  Otherwise, it's the next thing to useless.

You know, you'd be right in saying someone like me never bothered to post at MTS2 about the problem.  Then again, I so rarely actually say anything anywhere that it'd be a miracle indeed if I had.  I won't reiterate earlier comments I made--you've already read them.

I will, however, wander off that way shortly to see if it's corrected itself now.  Danke.

Because I (for one) would rather not deal with the metal stress (or whatever it is) that comes from heating up the innards, then letting them cool, then heating them up, ad nauseum.  I've lost components that way when they finally cracked from the expand/contract stress.  So long as I turn off my monitor, I'm good to go.  In fact, I only reset when the computer starts acting a bit dodgy, or shut it down when I must change something, or move it.  Besides, I let our laptop share drive space on my desktop so I can work on my stuff anywhere in the house and not have to be tied down to the desk.

Well, I'm sorry, but it's not fixed.  For reference, I browse with Mozilla 1.7.11 (Gecko/20050728).  In a short test I just conducted, the first several pages loaded fine, but the next loaded with incorrect column widths again.  I doubt it makes a difference, but I was in global hacks/testing at the time.  Something is still being overlooked.

As for using IE, I'll be damned before I use that piece of trash unless I absolutely have to (SimCribbling, anyone?).  It has nothing to do with spyware, et. al., because I have other programs to handle those intrusions.

Additionally, I do not see the point in having to click back, then forward, when I can hit F5 and have it done in a single action (if I'm lucky, because not even that works every time).  Maybe I wouldn't care if I happened to be on my desktop and could use the mouse buttons to programmed to handle those actions, but I'm not.  Heck, I'd probably just hit F5 anyway out of habit.

Mind you, I'm not angry with the response, but I am annoyed with the some of the advice given.  I'll also continue to wander through MTS2.  After all, I've had years of practice with dealing with annoyances from Win98 in the past.

Not since several months or so before I got TS2.  And at that, the only thing I really, really miss is the bed from 8DS with the custom "animations."  Now if I could just have that plus Lizzlove's waterbed coding....

Of course, I had to rebuild my machine so many times in a short period of time before I finally threw up my hands and got all new components, it wasn't like I bothered to reinstall Sims 1 + all expacs.  I think I would be bored senseless if I tried Sims 1 again.