Back in business

On Monday I played Sims on my own computer for the first time in about a year! I'm hoping to get back in the blogging groove but Real Life Baby #2 is due in 10 days so who knows what my schedule will be like between a newborn and a 3yo who will probably not be happy AT ALL about being deposed.

Still hiatus-ing

A couple of weeks ago my old computer stopped booting altogether, so I finally got a new one! Being 9 years younger than the old one, it was super cheap even though it has WAY more space and fancier stuff on it ("fancier stuff" is a technical term). But we are super busy right now so tech support (my husband) has not had a chance to help me figure out if I can get all my Sims over.

I've been getting my Sims fix by visiting my sister and playing Sims 4, which is actually really fun except NO TODDLERS. (Why???)

Hiatus

It's probably silly to post a vacation warning five months after my last post, but I can be silly if I want to. :)

A couple of months ago my 8.5-year-old laptop stopped reading CDs. Which means I can't load the Sims. :( I was hoping to swing a new computer for Christmas but now it's looking more like it'll be a tax refund present. So I'll see all 2-3 of my readers in a few more months, hopefully.

Testing...

Jeannie and I are trying to figure out posting from a Picasa web album.

Placeholder

For those of you who still follow this blog and are getting bored, I have a bunch of new posts over at my BACC blog.

Also, here's a cute baby for your inconvenience. He's going to be six months old next week and is almost crawling, so expect posting to remain sporadic as I discover just how not babyproof my apartment is.

Administrative notes

1. I've started making profiles for my Sims so I don't have to put their aspirations etc. at the beginning of each post. You can see the ones I've made in the archives for 2001. (Obviously I did not actually write them in 2001.)

2. I also published the family tree online. My one or two regular readers will have to tell me if they can actually view it; I might have to set all the Sims to "dead" so the tree doesn't try to protect their fictional personal information.

3. I won't be doing the "house end of week" pictures anymore. It was fun the first few weeks when everyone was climbing out of poverty, but then I kept it up well past that point. So now I'll just do pictures of new houses or major renovations. If I feel like it.

Now I should go get stuff done IRL so I can work on an actual story post later. (Riedmayer Cove is about 75% done.)

The Return of Prosperity Plains

So, did anybody miss me?

During April and May, I was sick on account of being pregnant. Then during June I've STILL been sick on account of being pregnant (second trimester does not live up to its reputation...) and I've started a BACC. It's a lot easier in terms of rules--I only have to check my print-out when I want my Sims to apply for jobs--but harder in terms of math. My BACC Sims will probably never hire a maid simply because I won't be able to figure out when the population is high enough.

Anyway, I have a so-far empty blog for that here, and I'm hoping to be posting more over on this blog. I've got a good 10 lots that I've played but not blogged, and I'm going to try to get through Round 7 at least by December, at which point I will have other things occupying my time. (BABY.)

Right now I need to get off the computer and go do laundry, though, so more later.

I made a banner!

Hey, everybody! I hope you didn't miss me. We've been a) busy and b) sick over here in real life, so I haven't had much time for Simming. But look up there for what I made!

The banner is currently the Riedmayer-Landgraab family in 2053. I'll probably change it once a round or so. I wish I could get it to stretch the width of the blog, but it's disappointingly grainy when it's blown up anyway. I might have to check my camera settings and see if they got bumped down when I installed new stuff.

Speaking of, I have Pets and Kitchen and Bath stuff now. (Courtesy of my husband's grandparents, who sent me cash for Christmas. They're the best.) I don't have Apartment Life yet, but we'll see what happens.

Hopefully things will slow down around here and I'll have more time for real blogging soon.

For anyone who's curious, the banner pictures:

Top from left: Edith Riedmayer, Thomas Dai, Francine Whitfill, Jihoon Whitfill, Blake Whitfill, Millie Whitfill, Malcolm Landgraab V holding Malcolm Landgraab VI, Theresa Dejackome holding Melinda Landgraab, Marion Landgraab holding Michael Landgraab, Maggie Landgraab, Greg Pons, Joan Pons.

Center from left: Ingrid Riedmayer, Charles Riedmayer, Elijah Whitfill, Tamara Whitfill, Beata Riedmayer-Landgraab, Malcolm Landgraab IV, Jeannie Pons, Gabriel Pons, Edward Pons, Brian Pons.

Bottom from left: Todd Riedmayer, Fritz Riedmayer, Lauren Whitfill, River Whitfill, Landon Whitfill, Ginny Whitfill, Douglas Long, Sarah Long, Joseph Pons, Seth Pons.

P.S. Credit goes to Carla at Sullivan Sims for pointing me towards pretty much every piece of custom content that I used to create the banner. Most of the custom hairs are from Almighty Hat, but a few are from Garden of Shadows.

A small announcement, a minor correction, and a very large piece of evidence supporting my hopeless nerdiness

First, the announcement: Starting in Week 7, I am going to shorten my rounds to 3-4 days instead of 7. So, the next Kules update will be "Week 7 Part 1.0", covering Monday morning to Friday morning, and then "Week 7 Part 1.5", covering Friday morning to Monday morning.

I could do Monday 8 a.m. to Thursday 8 p.m. if I wanted to be even, but my Sims are often in the middle of birthday parties and such at 8 p.m., whereas at 8 a.m. there is less going on. (I long ago developed the habit of pausing as soon as a lot loads and sending all children to school immediately.)

I am motivated to do this partly because a round takes SO LONG that I get bored and start to forget what happened in the early houses and such; cutting the time spent at each house in half will enable me to cycle through them more quickly and hopefully keep things fresh.

I also did it to keep my neighborhood more in sync; a week is actually a really long time when you're a Sim. It was having a negative impact on friendships among kids from my 'hood; children are only children for a week so it is hard to have a back-and-forth friendship; teens are sometimes teens for only four days. It makes dating really difficult. For example, say you have a child in House #1 who ages up to teen on Tuesday night and thus will be going to college the following Monday morning. All her peers in the other houses on the playlist are children and will remain children as long as I'm playing her house. She will still be a teen after I leave the house (I send them off as soon as I load their house again on Monday morning) but if her intended life-mate grows up to teen on Thursday night in his own house that gives them only one weekend together instead of the two they would have gotten if they had been aging more in sync. (Well, they still would have only gotten the one weekend, but they would have gotten to live it twice over, once in each house.)

That also brings me to college...if Girl Sim grows up on Tuesday night, she will be "17 years old" by my reckoning the following Monday and therefore eligible to go to college. Boy Sim, having grown up Thursday night, will only be 15 and thus will not be eligible for college until a full week later, when he is 22. So Girl Sim and Boy Sim will not be able to marry until a full week after that, when he is 29 and she is 31.

Under the new system, Girl Sim will grow up on Tuesday night and then I will leave her house on Friday morning. Boy Sim will grow up on Thursday night and I will leave his house Friday morning. Then back at Girl Sim's house she will get to spend the whole weekend with her beloved and then he will get to spend the whole weekend with her at his house. She will still leave him behind when she goes to college on Monday (boohoo), but he will leave for college on Friday and join her when she is a junior and he a freshman.

"Wait, what's that about leaving for college on Friday?" you say. "I don't remember you mentioning that!"

That's because I didn't yet. As part of this new system, I will be doing two college "calls." Monday morning, everyone who is at least 16 years old will get packed off to college. I will play them through their first two years. Friday morning, everyone who is at least 16 years old will get packed off to college. They will get played through their first two years and the other batch will get played through to graduation. After one round of this, it will mean that nobody is older than 19 or 20 when they go to college, and a range of 16-20 seems more realistic than a range of 16-22, without having to send every single Sim the year they turn 18 and having chaos.

(They will be between the ages of 23 and 27 when they graduate, which might seem weird, but I decided to do it that way because Sim college always seems like college + grad school to me, what with them graduating and immediately becoming General Practitioners and such.)

This will have the side-effect of eliminating the need for townie placeholders, since there will be a batch going Monday-Monday and a batch going Friday-Friday. Unless I have a baby drought, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

The only negative effect will be on students who want to move out and found new lots. See, if they leave on Friday and graduate a "week" later, it will be Friday for everyone else in the 'hood, but on the new lot it will be Monday. I refuse to allow that sort of discrepancy. So for the time being I am going to say that any Sim who is not permanently moving back with parents or moving in with a significant other has to temporarily move in with a sibling or friend or some such person who has a properly synced lot. 10 days later, they can move out on their own. (10 days and not 3 because part of the challenge rules says that college grads have to stay in their first post-college household for at least 7 days.)

You are probably hopelessly confused, dear reader, so I will give you a pretty picture to make you feel better.

Clicking on that should enlarge it. I made it this morning; it is an index of every playable Sim in the neighborhood, unless I am forgetting somebody. (68 living, 4 dead.) Someday I hope to have all sorts of interesting information in here, but right now it just has names and birthdates.

Right now they are sorted from youngest to oldest, except Ryker who has 0/0/0000 as his birthdate because I couldn't be bothered with giving him a real birthdate. The kids who have birthdates like 0/0/2053 are babies/toddlers and I would have to check in game to know exactly how old they are and then randomly generate a birthday for them. (Actually, with the babies I would have to wait until they become toddlers to know how many days old they are.) I don't have time for that at the moment (too busy making spreadsheets), so they have placeholder birthdates.

Then they are color-coded by when they are going to college. The Pinks are going to college at the beginning of Round 7. Most of them are currently frozen in time with their hands on the telephone waiting to call as soon as I reload their lots. There are 5 of them, which is a nice number, and they even have a good boy/girl ratio. (Their aspirations are respectively Family, Romance, Pleasure, Pleasure, and Popularity, though, so I have a feeling there will be more socializing than studying.)

Orange and Yellow would have all gone to college at the beginning of Week 8 according to the old system. There are FOURTEEN Sims in those two color categories. FOURTEEN. That is way too many to have in college at all, but if I stagger them at least I will only have to deal with 14 students for half a round rather than a full round...though before and after I will have 12 students total (Pink and Orange together, and then Yellow and Green together.) 

Blue and Purple are both more modest and will probably remain so, though if Joan Pons can convince her husband to adopt 3 more children (to meet her impossible want of 10) there might be 1 or 2 more Blues and 1 or 2 more Purples. I also have a pregnant Sim who has been eating cheesecake like it's going out of style, so I anticipate another set of twins in 2054 (just in time for the Purples). 

A couple of quick notes, and then I have to go cook dinner like a normal person:

1. Age is calculated for Sims kind of like it is for Thoroughbred horses: They "age up" on January 1. So, for example, Emmy Whitfill's random meaningless birthday is December 20, 2042. This means that on January 1, 2043, she was considered to be "1 year old." She is only about 6 weeks older than Landon and Ginny Whitfill, but they will always be listed as 1 year apart in age. Fortunately, Emmy will be "eighteen" years old when she goes to college, which makes her 17 1/2. The youngest Sim to attend college for the forseeable future will be Charles Riedmayer, who will turn 16 in September 2057, right around when he leaves for college. (I imagine them going to college sometime between July and September, depending on if they call the taxi before or after school.)

2. I realized when making this spreadsheet that I grossly miscalculated Caitlin and Patrick Seifert's birthdays, originally listed as being in 2033 and 2036. I calculated it out and realized I probably meant to write 2043 and 2046, so birthdates have been updated accordingly in the spreadsheet and in their family's update. 

Birthdays

I have decided to start giving my Sims retroactive birthdays. (I currently have about 50 Sims in-game.)

Here is how I'm doing it:

Each day of Sim time is equal to one year. Monday of Week One was 2011 (because I started this challenge in 2011). Midnight on Tuesday, it became "2012." And so on. In most cases I either know what day of the week my Sims were born or can extrapolate based on their age compared to siblings, etc. (The main problem is having the cutoff be midnight instead of 6 p.m., when Sims age up. I might change this later if it's too much of a pain.)

Then I use Random.Org to generate a number between 1 and 12. This is the month in which the Sim was born. For example, I just rolled for Lauren Whitfill and got a 5, i.e. the month of May.

Then I used Random.Org to generate a number between 1 and 31. (If I had rolled April, I would have generated a number between 1 and 30, if February between 1 and 28 or 29, depending on the year. Etc.) I got 14 for Lauren.

Then I used Random.Org to generate a number between 1 and 24 and got 11, but didn't like that because you can tell very obviously from the pictures that Lauren was born at night. So I rerolled a number between 1 and 12 and got 4. For baby Sims that are obviously born during daylight/darkness, I will roll a number between 1 and 12. (Someone who was born in daylight and got a 6 would be born at 6 p.m., someone born in daylight who got a 7 would be born at 7 a.m. It's very convenient that Sims have exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 of darkness every day.) For Sims who are not obviously born at one time or another or who were not born in-game (i.e. CAS Sims and ex-Townies), I'll roll a number between 1 and 24.

Then I rolled a number between 1 and 60 and got 57.

So, Lauren was born May 14, 2037, at 4:57 a.m.

EDITED TO ADD: Yeah, the cutoff from one year to the next is 6 p.m. I just could not handle trying to calculate relative ages otherwise.

Yay!

I have to break my chronological recounting in order to make an announcement: The first member of Generation Three was born today!

Lauren Whitfill, daughter of Jihoon Whitfill and Francine Whitfill (nee Riedmayer) arrived a little after midnight on Saturday of Week 4 in Prosperity Plains, which was a little after 3:30 in the afternoon on Leap Day in Ohio. She has fair skin, brown hair, and blue eyes. Mama and baby are doing fine.

By the way: Francine is the youngest member of Generation One, having arrived in Prosperity Plains as a toddler. However, since Jihoon is Generation Two, all of their children are Generation Three. I am loving the fact that the youngest member of Generation One gave birth to the oldest member of Generation Three.

Administrative

I haven't forgotten this blog, and I'm still playing the challenge (just started Week 3), but I've been busy and wrestling with this blog is not high on my list of priorities.

I do think I've figured out a workaround for the low quality of the pictures I've been uploading, but fixing the existing posts will be time consuming and writing new posts will be even more time consuming, so don't hold your breath.