It has been awhile since anybody has been here....

I'm finally getting new windows installed for my office in a few weeks. Because of that upcoming project, I had to move Sterling and Diamond out of my office. Sterling likes to sleep the during the day and I don't want either of them inhaling construction dust, ect...

Moving Sterling's cage wasn't a big deal as it is on wheels. Diamond's enclosure is not on wheels and weighs about 50 pounds. I put her in the tub while I moved her "house" in the event I dropped it on my foot or something, then put her back when I was done. I put my walking pad where Sterling's cage was and took some plants from the living room and put those where Diamond's enclosure was. They've got plenty of light as I snagged the plant light from the living room as well.

I can't remember the last time my office was free of critters. I've always had a fish tank or something. It feels empty, but I'm not going to move them back when the windows are done. No more mornings of Chica trying to go after Sterling while Sterling tries to bite Chica's nose and or kick sand at her from her dust bath box. Then there was the constant vacuuming because Jingle would grab pieces of hay, chew them up and leave a trail all the house. Blech! My house is a frickin' circus.

I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I've already taken some Advil as my chest is tight already from lifting Diamond's enclosure. Sore or not, there is no rest for the wicked, I need to vacuum, dust my plants, water them, order a pad to go underneath them, blah, blah, blah. This how things go. Start one project and it opens up a entire can of worms.

EDIT: My hands are going to be sore as well. I have bruises on my right palm and one on the pad of my left index finger. When I washed my hands, I thought they were dirt. I was wondering where the dirt came from.

I am a bit worried about @PANDAQUEEN - she has not logged on for a while, and usually posts here most weeks. Has anyone heard from her?

Trigger warning: Violence and drug use

That's a negative. But then, I was also off for two weeks, cause I broke me effing arm. Might be a ton of reasons.
How long she been gone for?

I have finally remembered to sit at my computer + whip out my phone to log into MTS and then get the confirmation code from my email (that I set up when I was 12, probably, and that's only readily accessible via my desktop email client). Maybe Panda is just stuck behind the activation process. Hopefully she's only lazy and she's ok otherwise!

This is about sims, but doesn't belong on the TS3 forum. This isn't a rant or a game problem, it is yapping.

I've been in a love / hate relationship with my game for many months now. I spent the weekend removing offending script mods that were causing NRAAS to act up and while this has helped as playing with no crashing is always a good thing, now instead of hating my game, I've moved to the meh part of the fence. I don't love anything, I don't hate anything. I'm indifferent.

The one thing about my game I do still like is farting around with Reshade. Here is where things take on a tale of its own. Playing around with Reshade and or doing things in Photoshop I could do for many hours. That being said, the outcome is typically predictable and okay, but I'm tired of "okay". I wanted something completely different, so here is where I'm at which more than likely I'm going to be bitched at for, but here it is



Here is the original that was taken with Reshade. The outcome was pretty standard, could use some help with Photoshop to remove dark shadows and such, but other than that, it is what it is.

This sim has lore along with her several side characters. My thought was to create a sims version of a YouTube channel that has gotten under my skin as of late. I might do something with this idea, I might not. It is another 'fence' thing I'm still debating. I digress.



Here is the same image using a filter. I didn't add or remove anything from the screenshot but in order to get the result, the filter I used was AI. I have hunted high and low for a action to use in Photoshop that would give me similar results. Currently there isn't any.

This is not something that takes hours to do. It should take about 30 seconds but because I have shit internet, it takes a minute or so. Is doing this AI slop? I suppose it could be since the filter I used is AI. Do I love the result? Yes. Could I find something similar with a filter for ReShade or Gshade? Maybe. It is something I'd have to look into.

This is one of those paralysis by analysis things that people shouldn't participate in. This isn't deep, but my brain is trying to make it that way.

This is another one of those this is about sims but doesn't belong anywhere on the TS3 forum. If nothing else, I'm consistent. The picture of Bonehilda will make sense when I'm done.

Last night after doing all the real life things and tucking the pets in for the night, I decided to give all of my sims hoard ( screenshots, cc, mods, ect...) the Marie Kondo treatment. Put like things with like things, keep what you love, ditch the rest. I have not one, not two but three external drives with sims shit on them. Two of those drives I haven't touched in literally years. I have zero clue what is on them. They're not full, but in my cray-cray sims brain once upon a time I thought it would be a good idea to keep a back up of my back ups of my back ups.

Now that it understood where I'm going with this, let's talk about how far I got last night. I spent two hours just cleaning out crappy screenshots. I'm nowhere near done. I gave up at 10 PM and went to bed because my eyeballs felt like they were full of sand. What do I mean by crappy screenshots? Like the posted above. I took that screenshot years ago. It is not exciting but I thought it was funny at the time. WTF was I doing so far away? Your guess is as good as mine. I have many years worth of screenshots that were taken the same exact way. I can't explain it, it was just a thing apparently. My screenshots today look completely different. I get all up in my pixel peoples business.

Sure, I've come across a few that I'm going to keep, but do I need to keep hundreds of screenshots that I don't like? Many of those came from saves that no longer exist for one reason or another so the 'stories' attached to those pics don't make sense anymore. I have zero attachment to them as they don't mean anything. I know it isn't just me the does these things. For some I should probably be burned at the stake for even considering deleting things that have been in my procession while collecting dust for years. I'm only kind of kidding about that. The sims community and the unspoken 'rules' and 'laws'... a post for another day. Right now I'm currently getting the side eye from many because I dared to change the style of my screenshots. I'm sticking a pin in that topic for a later date. I went into it expecting to have tomatoes being thrown my way. Any morsel of doubt has been removed.

The other reason I picked Bonehilda to use with this post is because I'm going to look like Bonehilda by the time I'm done with this cleaning out / dealing with the hoard. After 20-plus years of playing sims and being part of the sims community for most of those years, I've come to realize just how unhealthy my little obsession was. Keeping one back up, that's fine. Is three external drives of back ups normal? No, it isn't. There should be meetings about this or something; Sims Anonymous.

It is a new day, I'll have to see how far I get cleaning out my hoard. The only other thing I need to deal with is a second Amazon delivery aside from dog walking, giving the pigs their morning salad, ect.... The delivery for dog food already showed up, so there is one order out of the way / put away. Amazon is on the ball today for a change.

If there is anybody else that finds themselves in a similar situation of keeping sims things that don't matter, free yourself of the stuff. You might offend the sims community generally speaking, but you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. What the witch burners don't know won't hurt them.

Lol this is literally why I barely play ts2 or ts3 any more. I have so much junk to sort through to make my games be what I want them to be - which includes removing stuff I don't want and sorting through the stuff I do want because I have like 5 variations of the same cc??? What I really should do is just get rid of it all and start from scratch which I've done a bunch of times in the past and is why I'm in this situation again. Low key would legit miss not having some of that cc cos finding it again would be an ordeal (missing creators, dead links etc). Buuut I barely play so why should I keep it?? Could use the space for other stuff like music, movies, and books.

I wonder if sims are also this silly sometimes

As I see it, if I have stuff sitting around for years and don't miss it, it needs to go. I'm the same way with most physical things with a few exceptions. The problem I'm having when it comes to digital things like sims stuff, I can put all of it on a external drive and forget about it. There is no mess to look at. If I kept my house the way I treat my computer, I'd be living in a hoarder house.

I got one drive done today. It is the one I keep on my desk so there is no out of sight, out of mind. I'm just starting to dig into drive number 2; it's a total dumpster fire. Hot mess doesn't even begin to describe the disaster. I'm not going to finish it tonight and probably not tomorrow either. The stuff I keep for the drive on my desk is recent. This second drive has been sitting around collecting dust for a long time and it isn't even just sims stuff. It is everything but the kitchen sink. Yikes!

I got a new job!!! I'm finally entering the world of IT. It's a summer student apprenticeship, but I'm hoping to make an impression so that they consider keeping me for the long run, so that I don't have to attend any more interviews for a while. Also, because any given day is only 24 hours long, I'll be leaving the world of assistants in terms of educational rehabilitation (an incredibly challenging but much enjoyable side quest-main job I never thought I'd do) to make time to progress in the field of software engineering. Hopefully, my bachelor's degree in math education is ready this fall, too! Life is incredibly stressful but it feels hella fun

However because of the final exams + the interview prep, I have missed not one - but TWO Käärijä concerts (EVSC guy from my avatar) that were an hour's drive from my city, two days in a row.

I was sifting through stuff I had downloaded but wasn't in my game folder, and discovered that I appeared to have a version 1 and version 2 of a few CAS items. Let's talk about extraneous things. There's also some build sets I downloaded ages ago and haven't used. One of these days, I ought to figure out how much of this stuff I really need.

Remember when Halloween decor didn't come out until right before Halloween? Me too.

Next up! Christmas trees and decor coming to a store near you in July.

^ So true - I think I saw the first Christmas decorations/candy in August or September last year. Plus, the second they cleared out Halloween, Christmas was everywhere. They are stretching it with trying to fit in Halloween and Christmas at the same time, though (we don't have Thanksgiving in between, and Halloween still isn't huge here).

It's also true for clothing stores. Want winter clothes during winter? Heh, you wish! They're already preparing for spring after the Christmas/New Year stock is on sale. Summer clothes? Too late in June, they're already selling out their stock, and now they're starting to get the autumn wear.

I mean... You no longer have to wait for the end of season for the sales, you can buy what you need at the start of the season for half the price...

My contractor will be here in a couple of weeks to install my new office windows. Yay for lower heating bills and not freezing my azz off. Other than that, I've spent the afternoon playing with things.



Original



Art nouveaux



Vector 1



Vector 2

The last one is my favorite!

Me and my bestie hung out at a cafe today and it looked like in this clip:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/913725138120939

It has been a week of fuckery. There is no nice or polite way to say it.

It was one of those weeks were you do things to fix one thing then the fix turns into a shit show. In the end, everything is fine, but it's the touch things / turns to shit spiral that is annoying AF.

By yesterday I was over the above mentioned spiral, then the phone rang. It was the big box store that my office windows were purchased from. The store was calling to tell me they fucked up the order, so I won't see my windows for another month as they have to be built, again. There was no point in arguing about it, so I told them "Cool! I guess I'll hear from you again in a month."

Last night was supposed to be a night of playing my game and not doing much of anything else. In my first attempt, I was using the computer I'm writing this post from. My game crashed. I had to use task manager to shut if down. A few hours prior I had downloaded a new world and installed it. I rebooted the computer and decided I would listen to YouTube while I installed the world on my my sims rig.

I installed said downloaded world to my sims rig along with a sim that I downloaded earlier in the week. The sim was supposed to be a 'main character' of this new world. Less than 10 minutes into my game, it crashed. By now I should have called it quits and just went to bed. Did I do that? Of course not. Instead I decided I would play a world that I know works and chill with that.

About a half hour later, the person I was listening to from Youtube went silent mid sentence. The YouTube window closed and I couldn't click out of it. I touched the top of the computer tower, the case was hot to the touch so the shut down was from overheating. I've already replaced the liquid cooling system once, I'm not replacing it again. Not even 5 minutes later, my game crashed for second time. I used task manager again to shut down my game, then went to bed.

Today was supposed to be a chill day. Hubby has been mentioning daily for the past week how long it has been since I've left the house, so we're going to go and get a few things done. Going to the vet to get heartworm preventatives for the dogs, Home Depot for paint swatches and picking up a few groceries is not exciting, but it fills the "You need to get out of the house" requirement. While we're out, we'll talk about what to do about the lawnmower that refuses to start. Chica has been walking around like a clydesdale because the grass in some places is up to her short, little knees on her hind legs.

The rest of the day will be spent cleaning out all the shit from my games. I don't know if it is the world I downloaded, the sim I downloaded or both that are causing TS3 issues, but at this point, I don't care. The world can go away and I can remove any cc from the sim via S3PE. I bought Paralives a week ago. I have yet to open it, never mind play it.

None of this is first world problems, but it is compounding effect that put me in a frickin' mood. I don't know who I pissed off, but sheesh.

Sounds like your radiator fans aren't fast enough, check your pump and fan speeds. You should be able to adjust your curves on the pump control so the pump doesn't have to ramp up the speed too quickly, and set the fans faster to remove the radiator heat.

Where are the controls for those? I've never looked into those settings so I have no clue where I'd find them. There is a total of 6 fans. 3 in front ( I removed that cover panel last week), 2 on top and one in the back.

In the meantime, I've removed the glass side panel and cleaned all the dust. I used to clean out my PC towers faithfully once a month. I got away from doing that and paid for this morning. They weren't horrible, but there was enough dust to trigger a allergic reaction.

Then I poked around Amazon to see if there was such thing as mesh side panels for better air flow. I found this DIY kit. The mesh is for airflow, but I ordered it more to keep dog noses out. Jingle is nosy and has no qualms with sticking her snout where it doesn't belong.

EDIT: I did some poking around.

After watching this video, I ended up downloading the following software as I'm not messing around with settings in BIOS.

https://getfancontrol.com/



It is simple to set up and we'll see how it goes. I'm still going to use the mesh panel DIY kit I bought though.

My sims rig doesn't have a problem with overheating, but I'm going to put this software on there as well.

It depends upon the make/ model of your kit, and how you have it set up.


EDIT: Oh yes, that software will do it!

Saw an old man on a scooter/step/whatever with a small fluffy dog sitting inside and hanging out of a half open pocket. That dog really is living its best life

@simsample Thanks for the heads up.

I've spent the past couple of hours watching Cash Oh on Youtube, playing around with Photoshop and playing my game. The PC case is cool to the touch and everything is running like it is supposed to. While I don't think the problem with my game was a contributing factor, it certainly couldn't have been helping. That problem has been fixed as well. It was the world I installed that has since been removed and deleted.

Thanks again!

I come back after a few years and find out that my forum title is "Space Pony"? Never heard of it.


I've been really bummed out ever since I found out Sony was killing physical games. I'm not one of those people who says things like "not there's anything wrong with digital". No, I'm firmly against it on principle. It's why I don't do PC gaming anymore besides The Sims 2. I specially bought this PC with a BD-RE drive, I buy movies on disc, and if I cared enough about music (I don't), it would be on CD's. So I plan to quit buying new video games when they quit making them on PS5. I will go retro and get into new hobbies.

It's based on post count- Space Pony only lasts for a short time, so if you make more posts it will change!

Very rare, so I screenshotted it!

Blech.

Chica had a ugly seizure yesterday. I don't like it when she has a seizure regardless, but yesterday was bad. She kept trying to roll over even though she couldn't, mouth foaming, feet paddling, ect... It was a textbook grand mal that lasted almost 5 minutes. Then I started to wonder if she was going to recover from it as once it was over, she didn't move for another couple of minutes so she could catch her breath.

Once Chica was up and on her feet even if it was just sliding around on all the foam and drool on the floor, I called her regular vet, then called her neurologist's office. She was given her post seizure meds so she wouldn't have a second seizure and now I wait for her neurologist to call me back as he had left for the day when I called yesterday afternoon.

We've been stuck in a loop of Chica having a seizure once a month. Her neuro keeps tweaking her potassium bromide as it is the only one of her three meds that can be changed as everything else is maxed out for her body weight. She's only 12 pounds, so there isn't much room to change anything else without causing harm to her liver.

Her seizures for the past 6 or so months have been very mild. I don't know if yesterday was a one-time event or if we're going to more of those.

I guess if there is a positive about all of this, Jingle is the little seizure alert Shih-Tzu. If I'm not paying attention like I wasn't yesterday, Jingle starts barking when Chica goes into a seizure. I appreciate the alert, but then she doesn't stop barking so I have to put her somewhere else so she'll stop. Yesterday I had to put her on the bed because she wouldn't stop hovering and kept trying to be all up in Chica's face. She didn't mean any harm, but that is dangerous for Jingle and a risk of having her face bitten while the seizure is going on and even post seizure until Chica has fully recovered.