Hate to tell you this, but the IA will probably not be back, if ever.

Between the hackers that have been attacking it recently and the Hachette book case, they're not doing well.

https://www.wired.com/story/interne...ks-case-appeal/


They're on the hook for millions that they can't afford to pay. They're also being barred from having any copy protected works.

According to Jason Scott (who works for the Internet Archive):

Interesting. I didn't even know that they had a library alongside the Wayback Machine.

Well the plans are that it will be; Brewster Kahle (the guy in charge) says they are still working, but they've had some significant damage done and are rebuilding databases and improving security.
https://x.com/brewster_kahle

I was reading a CBC article about Canada's largest abandoned house:



Sounds like an average Maxis house.

I've built a lot twice now. I had to restore to backups twice in the past few weeks and I now have to rebuild it a 3rd time. But now I'm paranoid that what I thought was causing the issue (SimPE/computer stuff) may NOT be the issue, and it's this lot that's cursed because I used LotAdjuster to move it. So now I'm backing up my game immediately before I rebuild it just in case.

I'm back to playing Sims 2 a bit. I noticed I seem to 'come and go' from Sims a lot. That is, I'll play it a ton for a few weeks and then just drop it for a few weeks/months and eventually come back to it again.

I must be really strange.

Nothing strange about not hyperfixating on a hobby for long periods. Play it when you feel like it, don't play it when you don't - perfectly natural.

CAS lets you do all kinds of things, but it's much more restrictive about what it lets you save to the game.

I was in CAS (in Pleasantview) for the usual purpose of "rolling the pacifier". CAS generated three male Sims, before it generated a female one. I thought it would be fun to give her a child (in CAS) with each of the men. CAS did this with no bother and the children looked interesting, so I decided to save the "family" to the game. But the Family Tree part of CAS simply couldn't cope with her having children by different men, even though that's the way the children were made. If I gave a child two parents, then it made them married. And any other children I gave her, it would make her "husband" the father. Eventually, in order to get them all into the game, I made one child with both a father and a mother, but the other children were paired only with their father. And of course they all came out of CAS with the same surname.

. . . So I had quite a mess to sort out when I got them into the game. It's taken me several real hours, and two full Sim days to sort it out, using the Sim Manipulator and SimPE. Though I have to admit that I (and they) had quite a bit of fun as we were doing it! I used the Sim Manipulator last night to sort out relationships, surnames, and flags, and I used SimPE today to try to sort their memories. I left the woman, Julie Main, with her original surname, but gave the three men randomised surnames, made with my name generator (which I wrote years ago, long before I got The Sims, for the purpose of generating believable names to populate demo databases). So the men became Fergus Rhodes, Gregor Page and Norman Greene. To make it easier for me and my Sims to remember which man fathered which child, I gave the children double-barrelled names, with their dad's name first: Helen Rhodes-Main, Tom Page-Main and Emily Greene-Main. To save myself the bother of building a house for such a large and unusual "family", I moved them into the large 3-storey Maxis property at 210 Wright Way, which I have furnished quite basically. As I see it, they're not really rich, but by pooling their resources, they've been able to buy this quite up-market and prestigious property, where they intend to live as a commune.

Seeing it's in my game, you'll not be surprised to hear that it's a bisexual commune. In the course of time I suspect that (among the adults at least) everybody will be happy to woohoo with everybody else! I am using a version of Chris Hatch's bouquet to make them more receptive to each other's advances. Of course there are occasional disagreements, but, no doubt with the help of the "no jealousy at all" mod that Andrew and Julian made me get, they all seem to be getting on well together. The children are quite happy to play together too. Right at the moment the boy, Tom, is trying to play quietly with his toy car, while the two girls are rampaging about the bedroom round him, trying to shoot each other as they play cops and robbers. I rather like this sort of gentle reversal of traditional gender roles, and it's quite autonomous.

Here are a couple of (spoilered) pictures:

Funny lot imposter moment. My Sugar Cube Bowling lot is a teen club, so I used LotAdjuster to add a road to the side, then placed invisible skating rinks on the side so teens could roller skate in the street. Looks and works great on the lot, but in hood view...