WHY YOU SHOULD BUY A MAC: Lazarusputer. It's back...sort of. And lame Sims 2 pix.
ETA these brilliant quotes, courtesy of a Friends Lister who also had her computer "go poop" this week.
"'Anybody who's spent any time with machines at all,' he added, 'and baby, that's us all, knows first and foremost there's only one thing certain about them, computer or bicycle. They go wrong.'"
- Gibreel, in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
"This computer makes me all frowny with pure nougat-filled hatred!"
- Jhonen Vasquez
Yessssssss.
And an lj-cut, as I borked that more than once this week. Gah.
So I got my computer back, and am having to reinstall every goddamned thing. Instead of MY programs and settings, I have horribly annoying Winsettings and BUY THIS CRAPPLICATION icons everywhere.
I hate this.
So, nearly three days later, my browser looks funny, I have too many spy and virus detection programs fighting amongst themselves, which is something I paid to have resolved already, and too many unnecessary start-up items, which is something I paid to have resolved already, my Photoshop and Illustrator programs aren't working, which is something I paid to have resolved already, my NVidia graphics card driver was rolled back to the borkinated version, which is something I paid to have resolved already, there are Win98 programs cluttering my XP drive, which is something I paid to have resolved already, and my computer STILL does weird shit. Say it with me. This crap is, collectively, one big annoyance which is something I paid to have resolved already, GHOD FARKING DANGIT!
Turns out that 4 hours as an estimate of how long I'd have to take to reinstall my Sims programs was GROSSLY incorrect. It took about ten hours, because I had to try to install them off the disks, realize that the disks were not installing (usually craping out at a config .dat file for no logical reason), then make disk images of every CD and install them all one by one by hand. The computer only borkenated itself once or twice during the process. You fucker, you ran all of these things a week ago. CUT THE BAD BEHAVIOR CRAP OUT.
Will my Sims 2 stuff -- characters, houses / businesses, downloads / custom content, and so on -- even WORK now? Only time will tell. And since class started TODAY, I now have no real time to play the damn game.
I am running a trial version of Photoshop / Image Ready, and crossing my fingers that I can get a working serial for it and Illustrator. If I can, that may be the ONLY good news, as the only trial version I own is for CS, which is an upgrade for both my PShop 7 and Illustrator 10.0.3 software. *tentative, nervous, wood-knocking 'yey' here*
Then I get to dig around in my 98 machine for all my Brushes, Textures, Gradients, Custom Shapes, Fonts, etc., that I've collected and/or created for the past eight years. And then try to figure out how to get them from point 98A to point XPb. There will have to be external drives and cords in between.
My MP3s are...gone? Haven't found them yet. NOT happy about that. Probably had 60G of MP3s, and about half of those were ripped from old vinyl and cassettes in my collection, which took for fucking ever. And I was overjoyed to find out that my five-disk compact disc player is now borked. What next? It's a plague of electronic DEATH upon my house. SO, SO glad I do not have a pacemaker right now. Others were super rare things from a friend of mine who is also a deejay. He's a TEN AND A HALF hour round trip away by car. If I say they were rare and I didn't own them, you can only imagine how difficult it will be to get them back (IF I can), and how unlikely it will be for me to find them laying about in a secondhand store.
Bah, humbug.
And now for something completely different.
I apologize in advance for the picture size and quality, these were taken before I revised my cam settings.
The one time I play without a censor blur removal tool, I get this. Mr Random Forgetful wanders in and serenades a neighbor. Then....
As promised, some Law and Order Sims. My first ever custom-made pixel people.
Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green.
These big, bad cops run and flee when a cartoony Sim-burglar boldly cases their new house during broad daylight.
Hmm. Lennie's eyelids didn't look like that in BodyShop. (An ex-game Sim-creation tool.) This was fixed later on, but who knows if those characters exist anymore.
Can't have Law without Order. One of a platoon of female prosecutors on the shows. A ginger version existed at one point, but the hair was the wrong shape. This ended up being closer. (Picky, picky.)
This is Olivia Benson. I think it actually looks like Mariska Hargitay, so I was pleased. Oh. That BLUE THING? The Sims game has had issues with accessories flashing blue. Since I have not actually played with these characters, I couldn't go to a mirror to get the Sim to reset the texture on the mesh. This is a super annoying glitch if all you want to do is make characters, not actually deal with game woes.
More characters. Needless to say, the limited selection of male hair with receding hairlines makes for a fugly attempt at Elliott Stabler. I think when I remade the character, I sighed and gave him a baseball cap with an "undercover" outfit. Adult males with facial character are incredibly hard to make without photoskinning. And another shot of the annoying BLUE THING.
This is as close as I could get to Mike Logan / Chris Noth (a.k.a. "Mr. Big" on "Sex & The City") at the time. From some angles, it's a fair resemblance. This isn't one of those. I later improved on him with the help of thicker brows and some cosmetic eyebags by 'Hairfish' from Mermaid's Cove.
Now that you're bored with my newbie attempts at Sim creation (I've only had the damn game for 6 weeks, and have been able to play maybe all of 12 hours total since), meet MillaSim (me) and SheilaSim (CyanideFish on LJ). We used to be roomies in real life, so to amuse ourselves, I made a CySim and popped her into a lot with a MeSim. As usual, I hadn't actually played with the MeSim, mostly because of lack of time and the inherent creepiness of seeing myself all pixelated and doing stupid Sim things, so it (she?) was standing by the kerb looking bored when CySim arrived. I contributed my self Sim to a Sim forum, and it will probably be burninated or drowned and / or forced to marry fugly Townies or something. Luckily I'm not too sensitive about such things.
CySim discovers the piano. I am not sure which is funnier, Cy's happy-manic one-finger pounding at the keyboard, or the expression on MeSim's face. (Make up your own caption here.)
The household adopts a cat. Maxcat is much like our ex-real-cat Maxwell, in that he's a bit dim, eats a lot, sleeps a lot, and is fairly easy-going and dim of brain.
The new Simroomies decide that the best way to make friends would be to pummel each other with pillows. Pillows that they pulled out of their butts. In real life, a little conversation about our mutual interests greased the wheels. No real pillows were injured.
Before CySim discovered the joys of nearly spontaneously combusting in water-filled hot tubs, she spent several Simdays without a single pee break fishin', catching boots and fish, and sticking them all up her arse. Which is where the fishing rod came from. The deep, dark mystery of Sim anatomy: Tardis butts!
Neither Simroomie likes the telly all that much, which is surprisingly true-to-life. The house has five bookcases and one thoroughly ignored television. Kill your TV!
CySim, saved from untimely roastification, decides to go Downtown in her swimsuit for no apparent reason at all. You probably already know where the cat toy came from, and where it was put afterwards. No images of the near-burnination or the downtown water balloon fight rally where 24,984 Sims all decided at once that it would be super fun to stand in the middle of the road and throw water balloons at each other for a Simweek or two. No pictures survived of MeSim walking up and down a flight of stairs 8 times to serve hamburgers to total strangers on two different floors of the building, either. Sims are stupid.
That's all I've got, today. No story, no exquisitely-planned screenshots, no unusual Sim activities. But if my game blew up in a Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space during this week's 'puter woes, at least we have a few tiny, blurry images to be nostalgic about. Hoorah!
ETA: I do not know why the farking lj-cuts aren't consistently working for me. AGGRAVATION! I even cut and paste the tags, to make sure I don't typo or try to use an underscore instead of a hyphen. I need to actually look at my journal after I post an entry, I guess. Ugh.
"'Anybody who's spent any time with machines at all,' he added, 'and baby, that's us all, knows first and foremost there's only one thing certain about them, computer or bicycle. They go wrong.'"
- Gibreel, in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
"This computer makes me all frowny with pure nougat-filled hatred!"
- Jhonen Vasquez
Yessssssss.
And an lj-cut, as I borked that more than once this week. Gah.
So I got my computer back, and am having to reinstall every goddamned thing. Instead of MY programs and settings, I have horribly annoying Winsettings and BUY THIS CRAPPLICATION icons everywhere.
I hate this.
So, nearly three days later, my browser looks funny, I have too many spy and virus detection programs fighting amongst themselves, which is something I paid to have resolved already, and too many unnecessary start-up items, which is something I paid to have resolved already, my Photoshop and Illustrator programs aren't working, which is something I paid to have resolved already, my NVidia graphics card driver was rolled back to the borkinated version, which is something I paid to have resolved already, there are Win98 programs cluttering my XP drive, which is something I paid to have resolved already, and my computer STILL does weird shit. Say it with me. This crap is, collectively, one big annoyance which is something I paid to have resolved already, GHOD FARKING DANGIT!
Turns out that 4 hours as an estimate of how long I'd have to take to reinstall my Sims programs was GROSSLY incorrect. It took about ten hours, because I had to try to install them off the disks, realize that the disks were not installing (usually craping out at a config .dat file for no logical reason), then make disk images of every CD and install them all one by one by hand. The computer only borkenated itself once or twice during the process. You fucker, you ran all of these things a week ago. CUT THE BAD BEHAVIOR CRAP OUT.
Will my Sims 2 stuff -- characters, houses / businesses, downloads / custom content, and so on -- even WORK now? Only time will tell. And since class started TODAY, I now have no real time to play the damn game.
I am running a trial version of Photoshop / Image Ready, and crossing my fingers that I can get a working serial for it and Illustrator. If I can, that may be the ONLY good news, as the only trial version I own is for CS, which is an upgrade for both my PShop 7 and Illustrator 10.0.3 software. *tentative, nervous, wood-knocking 'yey' here*
Then I get to dig around in my 98 machine for all my Brushes, Textures, Gradients, Custom Shapes, Fonts, etc., that I've collected and/or created for the past eight years. And then try to figure out how to get them from point 98A to point XPb. There will have to be external drives and cords in between.
My MP3s are...gone? Haven't found them yet. NOT happy about that. Probably had 60G of MP3s, and about half of those were ripped from old vinyl and cassettes in my collection, which took for fucking ever. And I was overjoyed to find out that my five-disk compact disc player is now borked. What next? It's a plague of electronic DEATH upon my house. SO, SO glad I do not have a pacemaker right now. Others were super rare things from a friend of mine who is also a deejay. He's a TEN AND A HALF hour round trip away by car. If I say they were rare and I didn't own them, you can only imagine how difficult it will be to get them back (IF I can), and how unlikely it will be for me to find them laying about in a secondhand store.
Bah, humbug.
And now for something completely different.
I apologize in advance for the picture size and quality, these were taken before I revised my cam settings.
The one time I play without a censor blur removal tool, I get this. Mr Random Forgetful wanders in and serenades a neighbor. Then....
As promised, some Law and Order Sims. My first ever custom-made pixel people.
Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green.
These big, bad cops run and flee when a cartoony Sim-burglar boldly cases their new house during broad daylight.
Hmm. Lennie's eyelids didn't look like that in BodyShop. (An ex-game Sim-creation tool.) This was fixed later on, but who knows if those characters exist anymore.
Can't have Law without Order. One of a platoon of female prosecutors on the shows. A ginger version existed at one point, but the hair was the wrong shape. This ended up being closer. (Picky, picky.)
This is Olivia Benson. I think it actually looks like Mariska Hargitay, so I was pleased. Oh. That BLUE THING? The Sims game has had issues with accessories flashing blue. Since I have not actually played with these characters, I couldn't go to a mirror to get the Sim to reset the texture on the mesh. This is a super annoying glitch if all you want to do is make characters, not actually deal with game woes.
More characters. Needless to say, the limited selection of male hair with receding hairlines makes for a fugly attempt at Elliott Stabler. I think when I remade the character, I sighed and gave him a baseball cap with an "undercover" outfit. Adult males with facial character are incredibly hard to make without photoskinning. And another shot of the annoying BLUE THING.
This is as close as I could get to Mike Logan / Chris Noth (a.k.a. "Mr. Big" on "Sex & The City") at the time. From some angles, it's a fair resemblance. This isn't one of those. I later improved on him with the help of thicker brows and some cosmetic eyebags by 'Hairfish' from Mermaid's Cove.
Now that you're bored with my newbie attempts at Sim creation (I've only had the damn game for 6 weeks, and have been able to play maybe all of 12 hours total since), meet MillaSim (me) and SheilaSim (CyanideFish on LJ). We used to be roomies in real life, so to amuse ourselves, I made a CySim and popped her into a lot with a MeSim. As usual, I hadn't actually played with the MeSim, mostly because of lack of time and the inherent creepiness of seeing myself all pixelated and doing stupid Sim things, so it (she?) was standing by the kerb looking bored when CySim arrived. I contributed my self Sim to a Sim forum, and it will probably be burninated or drowned and / or forced to marry fugly Townies or something. Luckily I'm not too sensitive about such things.
CySim discovers the piano. I am not sure which is funnier, Cy's happy-manic one-finger pounding at the keyboard, or the expression on MeSim's face. (Make up your own caption here.)
The household adopts a cat. Maxcat is much like our ex-real-cat Maxwell, in that he's a bit dim, eats a lot, sleeps a lot, and is fairly easy-going and dim of brain.
The new Simroomies decide that the best way to make friends would be to pummel each other with pillows. Pillows that they pulled out of their butts. In real life, a little conversation about our mutual interests greased the wheels. No real pillows were injured.
Before CySim discovered the joys of nearly spontaneously combusting in water-filled hot tubs, she spent several Simdays without a single pee break fishin', catching boots and fish, and sticking them all up her arse. Which is where the fishing rod came from. The deep, dark mystery of Sim anatomy: Tardis butts!
Neither Simroomie likes the telly all that much, which is surprisingly true-to-life. The house has five bookcases and one thoroughly ignored television. Kill your TV!
CySim, saved from untimely roastification, decides to go Downtown in her swimsuit for no apparent reason at all. You probably already know where the cat toy came from, and where it was put afterwards. No images of the near-burnination or the downtown water balloon fight rally where 24,984 Sims all decided at once that it would be super fun to stand in the middle of the road and throw water balloons at each other for a Simweek or two. No pictures survived of MeSim walking up and down a flight of stairs 8 times to serve hamburgers to total strangers on two different floors of the building, either. Sims are stupid.
That's all I've got, today. No story, no exquisitely-planned screenshots, no unusual Sim activities. But if my game blew up in a Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space during this week's 'puter woes, at least we have a few tiny, blurry images to be nostalgic about. Hoorah!
ETA: I do not know why the farking lj-cuts aren't consistently working for me. AGGRAVATION! I even cut and paste the tags, to make sure I don't typo or try to use an underscore instead of a hyphen. I need to actually look at my journal after I post an entry, I guess. Ugh.