back from a long hiatus

It's hard to believe that it's been more than six months since my last post. What have I been up to in that time?

takin' care of business

April 2044 - Amin and Brenda Zhang are 30, Barack is 2.

When Brenda decided to run for mayor, she wasn't expecting to be pregnant during her campaign. The baby is due in September, just two months before the election.

Lowell College: Spring 2044

Fall 2044 - Seniors: Nate Centowski, Theo Centowski, Opal Raymond; Juniors: Christian Andrews, Ellie Fairchild, Justin Kim, Meg Stanton, Aimee Wheeler; Sophomores: Isaiah Gavigan, George Smith, Tina Traveller, Riley Wilder, Curtis Wren; Freshmen: Georgia London, Harper Myers, Toby Wright.

Nate and Theo are graduating in June, which means this is the last semester they'll be living together. Even though the twins are very different, they've always gotten along well, and it'll be strange not seeing each other every day anymore.

almost ready to update again

I spent all day installing Boot Camp, but when I downloaded and installed The Sims 2, I didn't have very much space left on the partition. I think Windows 7 takes up more space than Windows XP. So I have to repartition the drive again tomorrow. At least this time it'll go faster. But I tested The Sims 2 briefly, and it loaded very quickly. I'll probably spend a day making sure The Sims 2 works on Windows 7 before transferring all of my CC and neighborhood files.

trying out The Sims 3

While I've been waiting to set up The Sims 2 on my new laptop, I went ahead and bought The Sims 3. I've been wanting to play it ever since it came out, but my old laptop couldn't handle it. I really wanted to try out the new features, and while I'm still getting the hang of it, it's a lot of fun and I think it's very different from The Sims 2.

The main difference, of course, is Story Progression. Since the rest of the neighborhood ages together, there's no need to rotate households. For me at least, I find it harder to play an entire neighborhood since they're doing stuff when I'm not looking. But it's a lot easier to play a single household. I've been playing a legacy family in Riverview, and I like that their friends, extended family, and neighbors keep aging and changing along with them. I am a little worried that there aren't enough babies being born though. What if my legacy kids don't have anyone to marry? Maybe I should download one of the Story Progression mods.

I've also been trying to play the whole Riverview neighborhood, which I've found very hard. I want to keep switching households, but then I worry about what's happening to the other households when I'm not playing them. I think for me The Sims 3 is better for playing a single family, while The Sims 2 is better for controlling an entire neighborhood.

What do other people think? What did you think about the differences between The Sims 2 and The Sims 3?

update coming soon!

I have my new computer now (woo!), but since I haven't had time to set up my Windows partition (I've been a devoted Mac user for about four years), I don't have an update yet. I'm hoping to get everything set up this weekend, and have the next update finished sometime next week.

But in the meantime, here is a teaser pic:

real life interrupts

I've been trying to get back on a regular posting schedule, but I keep getting delayed. The main problem is my computer. My poor MacBook Pro is over three years old, and the cooling system is completely shot at this point. I have to keep the fan on maximum at all times, and even then it frequently overheats when I try playing The Sims 2. This is especially problematic because I'm working on the college update, which requires me to play four households for three days each. But I ordered a new one last week, and it should be here soon. It'll take me a while to get everything transferred, but then I'll be able to play for longer than an hour at a time.

The other distraction has been setting up a new neighborhood. I've been watching a lot of Revenge, a wonderful prime-time soap about duplicitous Hamptonites, and it inspired me to set up a Hamptons-like beach neighborhood for my Sims. So I scrapped my old version of North Port (which you haven't seen, but it's where Tina Traveller and Isaiah Gavigan grew up), and have been building a new neighborhood from scratch. I'm using Phaenoh's lovely Sand Simoleon Point as the neighborhood and have been slowly adding houses and community lots. I don't have any pictures of it to share with you, but I have uploaded two of the lots on Mod The Sims, a residential lighthouse, home of Trent and Trisha Traveller, and Trisha Traveller's restaurant. Next I'm working on a beach house for the Gavigans based on the one in Revenge.