My Life, and Simulations Thereof

Gee, look at that. I haven't written anything in here in almost two days. Should I be disturbed by the fact that, when I go a day or two without blogging, I start to get this vaguely unfulfilled feeling?

As for what I've been doing instead of blogging, I guess you could say that it's mostly been a weekend of fun and games (and, yes, I do mean that in a literal rather than a sarcastic sense!). Friday evening I hung out with some friends and played board games[*] until about 1 AM (which is approximately lunchtime for me at present), and then spent most of the rest of the night trying desperately to catch up on my huge backlog of e-mail. I got it down to about 40 unread e-mails at one point (from a peak of about 170), but it's now up to 59 again. Maybe I should unsubscribe from some of those mailing lists...

Then yesterday I played Torg until around 2 AM. Then I came home and played The Sims 'til well after dawn... As it happens, The Sims was the first (and one of the very few) games that I bought for my previous computer, and for a while there, I was hideously addicted to it. As in, I was spending 8 to 10 hours a day playing the damned thing, making sure my little simulated people had enough sleep and clean houses and good social lives, while the dishes piled up in my own sink, my bed went unslept in, and my friends forgot I existed. Well, at least I got a story out of it...

Eventually (and mercifully), my addiction began to fade, but I did keep buying the expansion packs for the game, up until the point where my poor little computer could barely handle them any more. In fact, by the time I installed the Hot Date expansion things were running so slowly and crashing so frequently that it hardly seemed worth my while to keep playing.

And then, of course, I got the new computer... In fact, Gateway offered me a free copy of The Sims with it, which I turned down, because, hey, why bother having them send it to me when I already own it? But they also offered me the Vacation expansion for twenty bucks, which is actually a pretty nice discount, so I took it. And then, I happened to be shopping at Wally-World when the latest exapansion pack, The Sims Unleashed, caught my eye. So I bought that, too, on an impulse much like the one that led me to buy the original game in the first place.

And last night, I installed 'em all. Original game, plus all five expansions. They're probably taking up more disc space than all the rest of my stuff put together. Unleashed by itself requires more than half the hard drive space I had on my old machine!

The Vacation concept seems particularly cool to me, but I haven't actually had the chance to take any of my Sims on vacation yet, because none of them can afford it. I'm pretty sure I could have copied my old families onto my new machine -- I did successfully copy over all my downloaded objects and skins -- but, frankly, I was getting bored with them, so I thought I'd start over and build a new neighborhood from the ground up. But, man, I'd forgotten how hard it was starting out with a new family and no money. (Realism in gaming! Gotta love it!)

I'm making up a science fictional neighborhood (thanks to all the aforementioned downloads). So far I've put in a character who looks suspiciously like me, named, appropriately enough, Mary Sue; the entire crew of Farscape[**] (all living together in one house, poor things); Buffy and her mom; and (also from Buffy) Giles. I've still got a bunch more characters to add: various people from various Star Treks, more Buffy characters, people from Andromeda, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Galaxy Quest... Yeah, it's gonna be an interesting neighborhood.

It's also gonna be a big neighborhood, because one of the really nifty-cool things Unleashed does for you is to expand your neighborhoods out from 9 lots to 41, including community spaces. So you can have lots of Sims interacting with each other! And I haven't explored all of it yet, but Unleashed's "Old Town," from what I've seen of it, is much nicer than Hot Date's "Downtown" (although the Downtown area is still available).

The other main thing Unleashed adds, of course, is animals. Mary Sue already has a cat, and I'm pretty impressed with it. The thing moves, sounds and acts just like a real cat. Including begging for food, roaming around the neighborhood making friends, and scratching her owner when she decides she doesn't want to be picked up (ouch!). All the strays wandering around the neighborhood can get pretty annoying, though, especially when they decide to just wander into your house. OK, cats can get away with that, if they're looking to be adopted, but I'm sorry, dogs should not be coming into private homes unless they're invited!

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to playing around with this thing some more. Maybe I'll go play with it now. Just for an hour or so. Really.


[*] Actually, it was just one board game. Civilization, if you're curious. I lost badly.

[**] Well, the entire crew as of some point in the second season, if you want to get technical. Since both Sim-John and Sim-Stark appear (for them) relatively sane, I figure I must have plucked them out of the TV show sometime between "The Locket" and "The Ugly Truth," rather than during the "Liars, Guns, and Money" trilogy. Yes, I do think about these things...