sims 2

I'm going to play Sims 2 this ENTIRE DAY!

I find it oddly therapeutic to just immerse myself in Sims 2 for an extended period of time. Afterward, for some reason, life just doesn't seem as bad! Maybe it's the feeling of having complete control over a society and its people. Gives me some sort of confidence and satisfaction (I do always strive to give my Sims happy lives!) More so than with games like Spore or Sim City, because Sims are a lot more like 'virtual people' with their various social and interpersonal interactions.

Anyway, I have a lot to do and get done (both online and in RL) so I'm not wanting to be in a down mood much longer. It's hard to fight it :( but I did go and exercise on my own without prompting today, and that's something.

I also joined a depression forum. I don't know whether it will do much for me yet, but it does help to be able to talk about depression and know people know what I'm talking about.

Seriously, this game might just make me disappear for a while. Well, maybe just today. I've needed some time alone.

Oh but Eni, or anyone else playing, my SPORE username is 'darksiren' :D I've only made one critter so far. Some sorta bipedal lizardy thing. I just entered civilization stage and am messing with building creation.

Seriously, if you're the type who likes sim games, this is like... serious crack. It's kinda like part Sim City, part RTS, with a whole lot of customization for races, buildings and vehicles. I still don't even get how to make creatures with proper heads, though. ^^;; Mine just has this big bulbous head without a neck.

Man, I stayed up WAY too late last night just messing with this game. The rest of my life is kind of crap, and I'm feeling mighty asocial, so I'll just play it some more. (Though I'm stopping now to install Sims 2: Apartment Life and try it before bed. God, I need two computers just to play both these games. And a RL pause button.)

I bought Spore today while I was out. I haven't installed it yet though. But I have it, and also Sims 2: Apartment Life.

Wish I was more in a mood to PLAY them. I had a really bad time out. I went to the bank to open my account and then they wouldn't accept my second ID. Seriously. I was so ticked off. =_= They said my account's all but set up, but now I can't set it up because of ID? I have a legal copy of my passport but the bank doesn't WANT it. The only reason I don't have the real one is because the government is LAGGING on giving it BACK to me.

Oh, and I don't have a health card / SSN either, again because of government delays. GRR. I don't even feel confident applying for college with my bank account and other things up in the air, so now I can't even apply early like I wanted to. Maybe I won't even get accepted, because getting processed early was part of my strategy.

Now I'm set back again, waiting again and rather fed up. I waited a god damn LONG time already. I'm pretty much going to give up and go back to live with my parents if I get nothing by the beginning of November. Why? Because November will be FOUR YEARS I've been waiting and I won't wait any more.

So I hope you'll excuse that I am in an extremely NOT social mood right now.

Teehee. RPing relationships between characters with my husband is like falling in love all over again. I swear, it ought to be a technique for gamer couples to keep the romance alive. ^^; (And I apologize for how utterly dorky that sounds.)

My characterization of Iyadali, I think, borrows a bit from the witches of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, and a bit from Wheel of Time as well (though Iya and her culture are definitely not as irritating as the Sea Folk can be.)

I also have to admit to taking a tiny bit of a cue from Nynaeve and Lan -- sort of. :O

Kalli's leaving tomorrow... I guess I've not been very much in the mood to post.

I've been irritable for the past few days. One could say that I have trouble trusting people and thus my first thought is to assume they think ill of me, or think me a burden. I'm very paranoid about that, and enough suspicion on my part can make me just want to disappear.

I feel like I can say little to anyone lately. :/ I've been making an effort to, lately, especially now that I won't be talking Kalli's ear off, but my urge is just to be withdrawn. Maybe it's the big change coming up for me (note: we are indeed moving August 1st.) I have no idea. I know I ought not to discredit my friends -- there are people that truly care about me. But I get paranoid they might change their minds, so I keep a certain distance. Maybe they're just saying x just to be nice, is what my depression says.

So I spend most of my time playing Dragonrealms and Sims 2.

So I've been letting myself rest... it's nice. ^^

Today I've just been playing Etrian Odyssey 2, messing with DR and chatting with peoples.

I found out there is interest in me making a Tower Between Worlds MUD again. :O It looks like it might be based on Smaug, which happens to be one of the types of muds I've never played. Figures! It's more of the hack n' slash type, so there will be actual potential for combat and character advancement, unlike previous Tower projects. *boggles at this*

But it'll be a small project, more like a playground for a few of us to mess with building and writing descriptions and such. Mostly it'll be Eni and Kalli and me, it looks like. Maybe others if there is interest.

Dunno yet when it'll be set up -- probably next month? Or Sept? So let me know if working on Tower MUD interests you.

I already wrote it out in my announcements *points to the left* but here it is again for those of you reading this through a RSS feed and such.

I'm headed to Montreal~ from June 17th to the 20th. That's starting tomorrow, of course. Jon and I are going there both to take a break from being at the comp WAY too much, and to go apartment hunting with the list we've compiled over the weeks.

I might be able to get online to post on journal(s), but no guarantees. Sooo don't expect me around till late on the 20th (or early 21st, if we end up taking the late bus).

If I do pop by it's a bonus, I guess! :P

Time to nurse my headache now though *whines at it* and play some Sims 2 before bed. I'm such an addict!

Okay, so I tried restarting Sims 2 and it just wouldn't start. At all. Jon went and looked for a solution for me 'cause I was busy fuuuming. D: Turns out that I needed to delete my groups.cache and accessories.cache from C:\My Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 (or the Vista equivelant which is more like C:\Users\[myusername]\Documents\EA Games\Sims 2).

I guess either Freetime itself, or the patch, ends up writing garbage into those caches, so I had to delete them to force the game to remake 'em. (Of course, I backed them up first, and you should too if you want to try this).

Other stuff... (mostly RPish)

So, the next expansion, the 8th (?!?) is going to be "Apartment Life" it looks like. The concept seems somewhat like University except with no school, and it applies through a Sim's entire lifespan.

Man. I know I am going to buy it. =_=

I recently uploaded a patch for Freetime that included a Securom update that borked my game. Well, I got the dreaded message indicating a conflict with emulation software (which I don't haaaave. This computer is clean!) I was despairing I wouldn't be able to play, until I found this link to a forum explaining how to fix it.

To put it short, rename your SIMS2EP7.exe (found here, assuming you did the default install: C:/Program Files/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 FreeTime/TSBin) and download this new version straight from Securom.

Worked for me! :O So thought I'd pass it along in case others who play Sims 2 PC and run into the same problem come across my site.

I am probably just feeling worn out from all the "work" (ha!) I've been doing. Bleh...

I guess it's the feeling that I worked hard on something but am not sure it's really going to go anywhere. Well, it's not like I don't have players for Soul Collectors. I could even try to hack it with 3 players, if that's how it goes... but somewhere along the way my hope and enthusiasm started fading. It's probably just a temporary (I hope) depressive phase, but right now I can only think that I have no energy for anything.

It's a nice, warm day outside and I just want to go and fall back in bed and not care about anything. Or maybe play more DR... I mean, at least my DR life has been going okay. :P I probably spent a good amount of yesterday logged in, in fact, though most of it was training Talliska.