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!

The other day, I revealed everything about an international singer from my country, who belongs to a Masonic mafia and espionage group, stealing three of my songs last summer, including the one she did with Björk. My profile has received over 800 visits; I know the truth is out there now, and she knows it too. That’s what she gets for monitoring me and stealing my work. Gay little birds do more damage than any formal complaint. It’s so ironic being a normal person to most people, yet a sort of muse watched by many stars and secret groups... xD